The Flying, The Unifying and The Kitchen Knife(How did the Chinese people think before Confucius?)

The Flying, The Unifying and The Kitchen Knife
(How did the Chinese people think before Confucius?)

by Leechard (Cheng Wing-lim)

Zhuang-zi (also known as Chuang Tsu, or Chuang Tsz, or Zhuangzi, or Zhuang zi) is the most influential philosopher in China. He has become a legendary figure for the Chinese History. So many stories and articles claimed to be written by him, though only three of them are true, others fabricated under various political reasons.

The three articles are The Flying, The Unifying and The Kitchen Knife.
They are very short, but they are the sources of all the important Ancient Chinese thoughts. Though the Han Emperors and many Confucius scholars had tried to eliminate these thoughts, but the thoughts persisted in the subconscious mind of the Chinese. They had constituted a rebellious backup power for the suppressed intellectuals for almost two thousand years.

There was a time around two to eight hundred years B.C., which were the warlord years, and also the great debate years. Lots of philosophers appeared in that period. How ever, due to political reasons, The Emperor of Chin秦 burnt all the books as soon as he had gained control over China. He allowed only medicine books and divination books. Chin (Qin dynasty or Ch’in dynasty, 221 B.C.-206 B.C.) was a very brief period in Chinese history of only 15 years, but the bad elements planted had never been uprooted ever since. The following period was Han dynasty (206 B.C.-220 AD) The Han emperors were reluctant to retrieve the old books from underground, as some people had hidden them to avoid the burning. The main interest of the Han emperor was to rule using the theory of Confucius, because they think the Confucius theory was most suitable to rule. The Han emperors used secret tactics to destroy others schools other then the Confucius school. They rewrote them. Suddenly a complete volume of Zhuang-zi was there. How could such grand volume avoid the burning and re-appear again? No one knows. However, the grand volume had become an important supporting theory for but not against the Confucius school. Though actually the grand volume, were but a mixture of different concepts added into the original work of Zhuang-zi. The added concepts are mostly from Confucius and Lao-zi. Lao-zi was another philosopher who promoted give up knowledge and return to nature, thus doing nothing was the best choice for every one, and thus was the best choice for the emperors. The secret editors for the grand volume actually made up a brand new copy of Zhuang-zi, it was a combination of the three: Zhuang-zi, Lao-zi, and Confucius.

But the questions are: Who is Zhuang-zi? Why is he so “dangerous”? What is his theory?

We shall have a brief introduction here.

Zhuang-zi was a philosopher in ancient China who insisted there was a Creator.

Confucius had a different view. Confucius thought that there was an abstract “heaven” only. He thought that the “heaven” would not interfere with man, and thus need not to look into the matters concerning any supernatural or even natural things. Confucius simply neglected and refused to study all natural and supernatural matters. His main concern was morality. He thought that by using morality, the country could be run effectively. He thought that nothing was important, only morality was important.

Zhuang-zi had a completely different view. In his opinion, there must be a Creator, and the Creator has given us Choice.

This is the basic platform of Zhuang-zi. From this platform, we could see into the secrets of life.

What is a Choice? How could we choose?

In the words of modern philosophers, human rights are self-evident, and need not to prove. Certain rights are build-in ourselves. So no one are allowed to violate these rights.

But in the ancient mind of Zhuang-zi, every one is entitled with a choice.
We can do whatever we can. All limits are external limits, and are secondary. The limits include the common believe of the others, the law, or man-made regulations, etc. But in the mind of an individual, he can choose to do or not to do. Though he has to pay for his deed, but the option is his.

And this privilege of choice, is the most important feature as being a human being.

In this sense, if any one under oppression had actually lost his freedom, can still have his own choice. He can choose what he wished without yielding to any outside force.

Thus we can say, a choice is something before a right.

No matter I have a right or not a right to do certain things, I can choose.

A Choice is an ability given to man. It can not be taken away by any force.

A Right is a living status given to man. It can be taken away by force.

To protect the Right, we have a Choice. We can use our ability to protect our Right.

Zhuang-zi maintained that we are free. We can choose anything, do anything, provided that we know the secrets of life.

What are the secrets of life then?

Zhuang-zi said, life is like burning log. When the log was burnt, life is fulfilled, and the fire could keep on growing because the fire could ignite another log.

With this analogy, the two aspects of life are clear.

The first aspect is The Meaning. What is the Meaning of Life? If you can see what is a real honor and what is a real disgrace, then you will know the true meaning of life. (We tended to honor people by their property, by their social position, etc. But those are not real honors in life, according to Zhuang-zi)

The second aspect is that we ought to handle life (and every thing) from an inner angle, as well as an outer angle. (We used to see things from outside. We measure things, we count things, but we seldom see into things through our mind.)

From these two aspects, Zhuang-zi had come to a conclusion: Life is Free.

How free is life?

It is just like flying; you can fly to anywhere, relying on nothing else but your own.

What does this mean? It means you are on your own.

And this must be the biggest secret about life: You are on your own, and you can stand up. No other philosopher had thought about this. You are “burning” on your own? You are not burning by relying on the help of others? Yes, this is the ultimate truth of freedom. If you can see into this analogy, you are absolutely free. These are the points from Zhuang-zi’s two articles: “The Flying” and “The Unifying”. These two articles can help us see into all the hidden secrets about life and the universe. They are basic philosophical concerns of the ancient Chinese people before Confucius. The third article is “The Kitchen Knife”; we shall talk about that later.

The concept of life and freedom, at first glance, seems not easy to comprehend. Burning on your own? Without relying on anything else?

It is incredible.

But here Zhuang-zi will tell us more: You are not entirely on your own, you are one of the one.

In his opinion, every element of the universe is united, and the unification is absolute, is unconditional, without limitation of time and space.

We are simply one.

For example, a child is a part of an old man. Old man has good memory of their youth. But the youth itself, though it seemed to be gone forever, is still there actually. What is a man? A man is every thing including his young and his old. And ancient China is new China. Ancient Greece is new America. We are all there. And you can say China is America, just like your finger is your toe. They are all you, one of you, and one of one.
To explain the meaning of “one”, Zhuang-zi had told the following story:

The animal trainer gave three nuts for the monkeys in the morning and four in the evening. The monkeys were not happy. Then the Animal trainer changed, he gave them four in the morning and three in the evening, the monkeys were all very happy. We are the same. If we got misery now and happiness later, we do not like it. But if we got happiness now, we think that acceptable though some misfortune in the future might happen. Similarly, would any one like to choose life in the morning and death in the evening or vice-versa, because he is sure that they are all completed in the “one”?

This is the Unifying theory of Zhuang-zi. By taking this viewpoint, we could see life in a more realistic way and we can CHOOSE what is best for life. And this is the very thing we call it freedom. Freedom is free to choose. In this sense, we can say that we are born free, if we are not free, that is because someone had taken away our freedom. Here we must stress that this special kind of freedom, is not in the ordinary sense of freedom. In the ordinary sense, freedom is a limited freedom, we are not allowed to do certain things, we are not allowed to kill, etc. But the inner freedom is that you can if you can. Please do not mistake this important point. Zhuang-zi is not promoting violence. He simply points out a fact that we are free to choose from the beginning, though due to obvious reasons human beings are wise enough to set up some rules to govern themselves.

We can do anything we choose. We might have problems, we will have poverty and death and any other mishaps. But one thing is certain. Once we are determined, nothing can change our choice. We can fight to the last moment single-handedly. Because we know that the last is the first and one single hand is the whole human race. And by this point, one could easily found the same theory in the western culture, originating in the Bible.

May be we need to elaborate a little further.

Freedom in life is the gift from the Creator of the universe. So, it must be self-evident. In the cases of oppression and any other human deeds, the external freedom might be lost. But the internal freedom is always there. No oppressor can violate free will, if the oppressed is determined. Because he has an innate freedom, that is his gift from heaven.


And the question remains: how?

How are we to achieve anything when we are free?

Zhuang-zi had provided us a tool, a kitchen knife.

By using this kitchen knife, we can achieve our goal.

The story of “The Kitchen Knife” is about how a chef uses his knife.
He kills bulls every day for nineteen years. But his knife is always perfect like new without wearing out. How can he do this?

He has two tactics;

One, he uses his mind as well as his eyes.
Two, he enters with a zero-thickness.

How ever, one would always wonder, how do we use our mind as well as our eyes? Just like playing tennis. When you are very nervously staring at the coming tennis ball, you are actually not seeing. But if you can play without staring, without even thought of your eye, you have the whole motion picture in your mind, you could play well. This theory could apply to many other fields. Like driving, playing music, etc, etc.

The next strange insight is entering by zero-thickness. This is the theory of cutting. How do we cut into things? We need a sharp knife. Why should the knife be sharp? Being sharp is zero-thickness. That is the basic rule of doing things. There is always a way to do anything. And that is zero-thickness.

These two tactics are so important, that we need more elaboration. Please refer to Zhuang-zi’s original work and the more in-depth analysis in the book: Zhuang-zi, The Test and The Theory written by the same author.

(November 20, 2008)