Chapter 1.8
The large tree
Master Hui says to Master Chuang:
I have a large tree
that people call holy.
Its trunk bulges and bends and doesn’t fit the plumb line.
Its branches twist and curl and don’t fit the square.
Though it stands by the road for all to see,
carpenters pass it by indifferently.
Now, your words are large and useless.
Everyone alike ignores them.
Master Chuang says:
Have you never seen a wild cat?
It crouches stealthily, awaiting idlers.
Then pounces—east! west! high! low!
And lands plumb in a snare and dies in the net.
Now yak—
As large as a cloud arcing across the heavens.
He’s able to be large, but unable to catch mice.
Now, you have this large tree and lament that it’s useless.
Why not plant it in the No Whys Countryside, the Vast Nothing Wilderness,
and potter about in non-striving by its side,
and wander, amiable and aloof, in sleep beneath its canopy?
It hasn’t died young, felled by axes.
No one cares to harm it.
Lacking anything that can be put to use,
why would it have tormentors!
* * * * *
Master Hui’s story of the large tree:
I have a large tree that people call holy.
This is a pun. The sinograph I translate as holy literally means an ailanthus tree. The ailanthus tree is also known as the tree of heaven. The word also means useless (the wood of the ailanthus is soft and useless). So Master Hui is saying that this large tree is a tree that people see as being useless, but Chuang Tzu is hinting at the fact that this useless tree is a divine tree, a tree of heaven. A comparable English pun is when we refer to developmentally delayed children as special—that is, as useless (unable to do basic math), and imbued with something of the divine.
Its trunk bulges and bends and doesn’t fit the plumb line.
This large tree represents Master Chuang’s philosophy. His fantastical words (words that don’t fit the plumb line or square) can’t be chopped up and built into some sort of useful structure of social control.
Carpenters pass it by.
Rulers ignore Master Chuang’s philosophy.
~
Master Chuang’s response:
The wildcat.
The wildcat is Master Hui. With his quick wit and logical acrobatics he pounces on the views of others and reduces them to shreds. But his being focused on things in this way causes him to be unaware of the broader environment. Overconfident, he pounces carelessly and in this instance lands himself in a snare. The snare is Master Chuang’s closing line: Why would this tree have tormentors?
But let’s not hold tight to the snare metaphor. It’s not that Master Chuang is a groundskeeper who sets out to snare Master Hui. Rather, Master Hui pounces and Master Chuang, with the calm confidence of a yak, simply affirms his position. Whereas Master Hui pounces and negates (this tree doesn’t fit the plumb line and square), Master Chuang stands still and affirms (this tree is good for resting beneath). In the light of Master Chuang’s affirming view, Master Hui’s negating view is laid bare as short-sighted and off the mark. He pounced on what he thought was a wayward mouse, but comes up empty-pawed and finds himself standing in the shadow of a yak.
The yak.
Like Of a Flock, whose wings are like clouds arcing across the heavens (section 1), yak is as large as a cloud arcing across the heavens. Yak, like Of a Flock, represents awareness. Yak is also Chuang Tzu. (Chuang Tzu has awoken to and identifies with awareness.) Being awake to awareness does not give you practical skills, like catching mice, or manipulating people into doing what you want them to do. But it does provide the benefit of allowing you to be at ease in the world, and of being beyond harm.
The No Whys Countryside, the Vast Nothing Wilderness.
Like the Faraway Mirage Mountains (sections 5 and 6): the mythic realm; the psychological realm that exists outside of, and in parallel with, the mundane world (the world of small knowing; the psychological state of being attached to things).
Pottering about in non-striving by its side.
This describes what life is like when your chariot is heaven-and-earth and your team of horses the disputing six energies (section 3). We residents of the Faraway Mirage Mountains, the No Whys Countryside, the Vast Nothing Wilderness—we feel no need to forcefully exert our will on the world, but are instead free to relax into the isness of things and to go along with the spontaneous flow of things.
Wandering, amiable and aloof, in sleep beneath its canopy.
When you’re awake to awareness, life is like a leisurely, never-ending dream. (The dream metaphor is explored in Chapters 2.7, 2.9, and 6.2.)
This tree hasn’t died young, felled by axes.
Useful philosophies are chopped down, cut up, and built into perversions of the original tree by goal-oriented folk who want to control others. Look at what Ritualists (Confucians) have done with Confucius’s teachings. (Propping up a two-thousand-year-old authoritarian state.) And what Christians have done with Jesus’s teachings. (The Inquisitions. Missionaries carrying out cultural genocide. The Roman Catholic Church using all its might to crush anyone who tries to stop its robe-wearing paedophiles from raping little boys.) And what Hitler did with Nietzsche’s philosophy. (Poland. France. The Jews.) Even Gautama Buddha’s teachings—since ancient times to modern times, this and that Buddhist sect has waged literal war on that and this Buddhist sect, and on non-Buddhists. Not that any of this is the fault of Gautama Buddha, or Confucius, or Jesus, or Nietzsche. Chuang Tzu has been fortunate. No one has yet managed, or been bothered, to use his philosophy to oppress and control others.
Lacking anything that can be put to use, why would it have tormentors!
Here’s the punch line. Master Hui laughs at Master Chuang, saying, Rulers ignore your philosophy. Master Chuang retorts, Thank the gods for that!