Professor Michael Puett on Zhuangzi in Relation to Confucius

this too is a good segue for our conversation today because Strong's ax is someone who is we have seen is very very into things like opening up realms of possibilities finding ways to open up those realms thinking through and in practice preventing our tendency to close off possible options and giving very practical advice as to how to do so we were discussing some of this practical advice we were discussing this intriguing story of the butcher the butcher who spends his entire life we can just hacking meat but then realizes through that seemingly mundane stuff he has to do every day that he actually can ultimately find the way and we noticed how incredibly similar that vision was to Confucius ironically enough here's Confucius seemingly a radically different thinker arguing against something very much as we're seeing in Tromso both are saying it's through the daily ways we live our much seemingly mundane everyday lives that you can become something extraordinary and it's on that point I would like to begin our lecture today because immediately as we've noted the very tail end of the Monday lecture that surprising and counterintuitive parallel raises a ton of questions for us the first is the most obvious if there's a surprising similarity what's the difference in other words why does strong to think he needs to change a ton of what Confucius was talking about why does he think we need a dramatic change in terminology why does he think we need a radically different way of writing a text why does he think it's very helpful to give tons of stories of Confucius talking to his disciples saying put it mildly rather different things than he's actually being portrayed as saying in the Analects in other words what is drawings are up to and I'd like to begin with that as our opening question if it's through the daily stuff that we can achieve all of this if that's how we do it what's different to get at this let's say a bit more about Confucius reminding ourselves of some of what Confucius was up to and then drawing the contrast and parallels could also contrast first let's remember Confucius at that as we noted very similar it's through these daily rituals that we're training ourselves training our ways of responding to the world training ourselves to respond in better ways training ourselves to act in ways that will affect others for the better and slowly over time training ourselves to become an incredible human being note however the key for Confucius is precisely that this was by focusing on the human let me just remind you of a few of these examples the wonderful one we discussed about ancestral sacrifices where he's asked about these ancestral spirits and his response was well you sacrifice as if they're present because of course the focus of the ritual is the human you do the ancestral sacrifice to transform yourself as a human being to be better able to understand and sense the degree to which what you are comes in part from what the previous generations did for you and you're trying to inculcate that learn lessons from that to help you also down the road be a good parent for those generations to come after you you focus on the human and if their spirits up they're fine if they're not it's irrelevant focus on the human remember also that statement we looked at where there's a fire and a stable and Confucius says how was anyone hurt and the disciples noted he didn't ask about the horses he only asked about the human beings in other words it's human disciples asked him about death what happens after death to which he of course gives his famous response I have idea don't be silly we don't even understand life yet worry about that focus on how to live well focus on that and knows what happens after that but let's work on what we can work on humans here and now as we live our lives how do we become better human beings and how do we create a better world that for Confucius is the key it's also of course the key of the Analects it's why we get this text portraying a person Confucius living his life in book ten doing these rituals talking to disciples trying to help them it's portraying a person living his life by these ideas the comment the mundane what he does on a daily basis now let's draw the contrast yes the butcher is doing these daily mundane tasks through those he achieves these incredible things but notice how radically different everything I've just mentioned is when we turn to the drawing so first of all does he really focus on the human absolutely not he thinks that's part of the problem because anything that potentially will limit what we can do anything for drugs is a problem if at any point we simply say a set of things is what we should be focusing on we are at grave grave risk of cutting off everything else and in the case at hand if we are simply focusing on the human look at all of the wondrous things out there that we are ignoring and think about how those incredibly wondrous things could could potentially open up our perspective in unbelievable ways with dramatic effects yes on how we live our daily mundane lives let's begin with some of the toughest parts of this to think through to really get a sense for why drugs and thinks this is so important death as we noted for Confucius death is something we just don't know about in terms of what happens after or is there an afterlife are there spirits up there who used to be human beings we just don't know about it don't think about it focus on what you know we're live now be good now do what you can now that's the focus and then someday we die and who knows what happens after that drama on the contrary does have an idea about what happens to us and he thinks it's the one that we actually should be thinking about and intriguingly not in a negative way or even in a scary way he thinks it's an important way for us to open up our vision of the world and therefore ironically enough to live life more fully and more completely why to begin with do we fear death we fear death for very obvious reasons right but look at me I'm a human being and when I die I won't be and that's gonna be really sad I won't be here anymore this is this horrible thing look at this listen this I'm a human being and I'm gonna be gone that's because I'm making a false distinction yet again I am looking at current distinctions in the world which are true like I'm I'm a human being I'm not this table that's certainly true there are real distinctions in the world but they're momentary and I'm focusing on this current moment me as a human being as opposed to being something else the exact same way we mentioned on Monday when we think of ourselves as oh I just am a certain type of person who is the following we are reifying a certain moment of ourselves not allowing ourselves to transform not seeing ourselves as part of a larger world and in the case at hand at a larger level it's the same thing when I fear my death so let's think through what's going to happen when I die I die and of course the stuff that's me the Chi that is me the stuff all of it my spirit my flesh all of it all of it it sits on the ground or may even be buried depending on the rituals in question and then of course works like a minutes are eating my flesh right and then after the words ain't my flesh smite eat those worms and then Bears might eat those birds and part of what is me now the stuff that's made its sheath its me will someday be worms and and birds and bears and all of this will be going on endlessly and has been going on endlessly and isn't this fantastic I mean what could be more amazing this is incredible incredible and the only reason I fear that is because I foolishly think that I should make this distinction of humans and the rest of the natural world no the rest of the natural world is equally incredible it will be wonderful when pieces of what are us now are birds and we can fly around how incredible is that this is wonderful we should not be fearing it now why is wrong to saying this obviously one of the most difficult things for us to work through he is not saying it in the sense that therefore we should look forward to dying he certainly isn't saying and we should hope to die soon very much the opposite as you can see pervasively in the texts he wants us to live life totally and fully and completely the reason this is so important to him is precisely because it's part and parcel of a key way we limit ourselves if we're really opening ourselves up to the way fully opening ourselves up to the way fully in the sense that we know we have always been or the stuff that is us now has always been part of this endless flux and transformation and endlessly always will be if we can really do that to the point where we wouldn't even fear or ultimate death truly because we can truly hope fully engaging with the way which again in a deeper sense we've always been engaged in and instead of fighting against that we allow it and become an active participant in this incredible flux and transformation what would that mean while we live our lives and why would we live it more fully and completely if we follow this well let's look at some of his terms again radically different from Confucius and let's think through them to begin with one intriguing one that we've seen only briefly so far a little bit in Aloud's a-- that drunks is going to use it more often and in some very intriguing ways the concepts of yin and yang yin and yang are two modalities of Chi so Chi as we've discussed is everything everything is composed of G this matter and this energy everything is composed of that and as we've seen there are different types of Chi some more refined some more turbid and there are different modalities of it Yin is associated with softness coldness Yan is associated with incredible heat but also passions Yan is also associated with heaven Yin with earth there's simply different modalities of Qi cosmologically speaking when everything if you are thinking from Aloud's a cosmology if everything comes from this undifferentiated state the way cosmologically the young moves up the it moves down you get heaven and earth and we humans are in between different different modalities of shape now for Lanza of course the key with this is you're trying to return to this oneness and the way Lauda will do this in a constant rhetorical play is by thinking of hierarchies and always undermining the hierarchy in a way that will actually open us up to this oneness so with you know young for example he will say we think young is the bigger one the more important one the more powerful one and yin is the lower one the lesser one the one associated with softness weakness and of course hardness is better than softness and for loud to therefore what you do is you emphasize the lesser term we think softness weakness yes and by focusing on that you turn over the dualism but of course by turning over the dualism you ultimately break it down because essentially what you're saying is if you focus on yin you're focusing on the soft the weak and the soft and the weak is what allows you to actually connect with things better sense things better become one with things better and therefore if you focus on yin rather than y'all you ultimately break down the dualism again this sense of returning to the one returning to the way and we noticed noted all the implications that has note in contrast the slightly different way that drugs that will use these terms he's not saying so much focus on the yen as opposed to the Yong in order to undermine the dualism ending it closer to the way to get closer to oneness the way he's going to do it is a bit different the way he will put it is everything in the cosmos because it's this endless flux and transformation consists of everything in endless interplay equally true of yin and yang equally true we mentioned seasonal change why does that happen because spontaneously the forces of yin and yang are endlessly in interplay so you get at the height of winter pure yin but by definition pure yen in its purest form will bring around its opposite young and hence you get the slow growth of spring the slow growth of warmth that grows until it reaches its height at the pure height of summer heat incredible heat which draws out its opposite yet and slowly in over the course of the fall grows things get colder again don't be sad about the fact it's getting colder it's part of a natural cycle moving ultimately toward winter pure yen and that endless interplay creates the seasonal change that is what gives allows I should say the birth of all of the things in the world because it generates life through that endless interplay and it's part and parcel of all of the generation of life that happens throughout the entire world natural species human species everything endless interplay endless flux and transformation endless except those moments if it's going to be blocked when that spontaneous endless interplay is going to be stopped and as you can imagine that happens primarily with that little being we talked about on Monday human beings we again uniquely in the entire cosmos bring this to an end and instead of having this incredible endless interplay of yin and yang we on the contrary disrupted how do we disrupt it precisely through the ways we were discussing on Monday we will have a clear plan I am going to be the following sort of person because of my natural endowments I will do the following set of things to get to this place in which I will be the perfect person doing this perfect set of things we set ourselves in this perfect plan to do it thinking that's the way we can accomplish something in the world meanwhile as we mentioned on Monday we are endlessly closing ourselves off from all of the other possibilities and now using these terms what we're also doing is closing off this incredible endless spontaneous interplay of yin and Yan because this will always entail an attempt to say the typical one for us okay by doing this I must be strong-willed and assertive and powerful that's young and if that is young then of course by saying that's what I will be we close off the yin and what happens when we do that it means we lose the harmony of yin yang an endless interplay of yin and yang and this is why as we destroy it we close ourselves off from those yin elements in the self and as we do that as we disrupt this harmony as we disrupt this interplay we cease to have the kind of interplay of yin and Yan around us and within the body we disrupt that harmony and sure enough we become miserable sick and we die on because we're destroying the natural spontaneous processes that group that create the generate life we literally are living in a way that is making us sick unhappy and leading us to an early death literally what do you do on the contrary imagine on the contrary you live your life embracing this incredible spontaneity this incredible generation then what you're doing is encouraging this endless interplay of yin and yang if you're doing that with that interplay and allowing that harmony to go on as it does in the rest of the natural world there's life and there's not just life there's life in the most exciting expansive sense that we can imagine or rather beyond because of our limited human perspective we are likely to imagine that it's what we are taming when we retaining the way you become fully engaged at every level in terms of literally your body your emotions your physical health with all that this endless interplay of yin and Yan going on in the universe instead of fighting against it you're engaged and you're enlivened by it now that's putting it needless to say very um I won't say abstractly but certainly using a terminology we're not used to so immediately let's get back to what this would actually mean okay you're not being you're not trying to follow to clear a plan you're not trying to close yourself off you're not trying to focus on say the young as opposed to the end but you're trying to harmonize these what does this actually mean in practice hence Jones's stories that is what they are aimed at doing because what this means in practice he wants to say is completely up for grabs once you start doing it and the problem is we are limiting ourselves so let's return to some of history's what is it that we're supposed to do to really get at this we've mentioned how you live your life in this daily mundane way training yourself to become spontaneous but we've also now today noted that the spontaneity means becoming engaged in this endless interplay and flux and transformation of yin and Yan and engaging fully in the way with that latter part what are we actually doing well let's give again a few more stories there's one very nice story where John's a falls asleep and he drinks as a butterfly and when he dreams as a butterfly butterflies floating all around it's really fun to be a butterfly and so it's a nice dream the butterfly sweeping here and there and then of course one's awake soft so he's drawings again but then of course it becomes clear to him that there's a problem because was he drawn to dreaming he was butterfly while he was asleep or is he actually a butterfly who is actually asleep and right now dreaming he's strong huh which is and then the story is so often with drawings it ends with these intriguing lines there must be a difference between the butterfly and drawing so in other words the parable isn't saying it doesn't matter we're all one in the same no no there's a real difference if you're a butterfly dreaming your drawings and your drawings in German is a butterfly there's a real difference but if you can understand the perspectives of both you are beginning to understand the transformation of the ten thousand things the ten thousand things meeting everything in the cosmos let's unpack the story what's going on here well the problem is we humans have this close perspective we see the world by definition since we're humans purely from this human perspective that presumably would be true of all the beings in the world but again we're the really problematic ones because we think by being a human or something special so much better than anything else in the cosmos that we alone are the ones that really matter and everything else should of course be under our control because we're the important ones if however we could actually begin to open up that perspective and start seeing the world from all of these other perspectives in our parable think of the world as if you were a butterfly if you could really start doing that then what you are doing is beginning to get a sense of how all of these radically different perspectives what it would be like if you're a piece of mud or a butterfly or bird or a fish or a human being how you see the world in radically different ways or more immediately how you see it if you're this person versus that person and you begin to notice if you really sell honestly started doing this how incredibly limited or vision is and as you're doing that seeing those dramatic limitations seeing the world from so many different perspectives then you're getting a sense not again that everything is purely one at any given moment no no those things really are out there with different perspectives rather what you're getting is a sense slowly but surely of how all of these radically different perspectives are perspectives on this endless fluxing transformation of the way that is the transformation of the ten thousand things that is the way and what you're trying to do is open yourself up to that way open yourself up to world of radically different perspectives more and more becoming and again this incredible contrast with health with Confucius more and more becoming like heaven because what is heaven for drama heaven is the entire natural world if we were seeing the world from perspective of heaven which is simply the entire natural world around us if we are seeing it from that perspective we would truly be seeing and one with the way seeing it from every possible perspective then we would be truly sensing the endless transformation of things the human perspective always limits us dramatically and chillingly again though what does this actually mean well let's return to some of these stories if you're becoming like heaven as opposed to simply a human being human beings are great you just doesn't wanted to limit us what is it like well there's another story weird wrong side tells us what it was like the turns out there have actually been some people who have really achieved this turned out to be quite a few who really achieve this when this with the way and they become true people which is an intriguing way of putting it they're still human beings because there will be human beings until they pass away energy becomes other things but the really true human beings fully alive human beings and what were those people like when they've achieved it they are people like and again typical drawings a way of putting it these radical imagined a fanciful ways they could walk through water and not get wet they could walk through fire and not get burned these were true people no does he really mean this well let's leave that aside for the moment because I think he wants us to think in radically imaginative ways but not limit the possible meanings but certainly he's also meaning of mana logically what his meaning is the following if you're really doing this you start living your life in a radically different way a fearless way in which all of the things of the world instead of hurting you and stopping you and limiting you and being causes of our anxiety and worries become on the contrary things that enliven you and excite you because they're parts of the transformation of things for example again moving immediately to the really mundane stuff before we jump up to the huge cosmic stuff oh those little things really annoying me right it really annoys me when that door creaks where when my roommate comes in and like closes the door in a certain way think about how little these little things just annoy us so much we're walking down the campus and someone rides a bike in front of us we have to stop just these little things to get us so angry note how those add up over the course of the day note how those little worries and anxieties build up note in other words how things are controlling us note how these things are controlling our emotions and bringing out these ugly motions have angers these resentments all of these things the little things imagine on the contrary if you're training yourself such that the little things don't bother you at all it doesn't matter in the slightest imagine if you start doing this of an extensive level beyond the middle things and the big things cease to disturb you and it not only is that they cease to disturb you in the sense that and most importantly you're closing yourself off from the world but they cease to disturb you because you're opening yourself up to the world and the world becomes incredibly exciting because you're becoming more and more engaged in it and slowly but surely you're becoming a sort of person who well again and logically speaking if you're walking through water you don't get wet and if you're walking through fire you don't get burned don't try this but but analogically speaking what this means is none of these things are affecting you in this negative sense all of these things simply become part of the excitement of the world the little things don't pinch on us make us anxious make us worried they actually become things we embrace and can become incredibly excited by again you're beginning to embrace that and that the transformation are the ten thousand thanks if you're doing all of this in other words you begin to experience the world in this radically excited opening way now let us return to our on your question what then exactly are you doing and how does this compare and contrast with what Confucius was saying well let's return as always to these stories which are so incredibly powerful there's one where one of his disciples the disciple of Confucius I mean um asks him what he should do he says Confucius I'm actually thinking of going to a state and and trying to teach the King to be a really good king right to be a good human being and I'll go there and teach the king and drunkest response is very intriguing drawings as responses well you know if you go right now the way you're phrasing this you're going to go see this King and you're basically going to say oh you're being a bad King you should be good you should be good bad King and of course you're not going to make any impact on them of any kind you're just going to get really angry at you and to probably become by being more angry a really even worse King and he's probably going to take it out on you and and you're going to have this miserable life if you even survived the whole thing and so instead cultivate yourself and and don't throw off your yin and yang harmonize them and cultivate yourself and then see what happens note the story note immediately how it seems to contrast with our butcher with our butcher remember the butcher finds the way through cutting the meat right and and logically speaking sensing these shifts in the meat moving his knife through them and logically speaking the way we should be living our lives embracing our lives by flowing and moving with the way sentient with our spirit sensing things and moving with them in other words doing his daily work continuing by the way to be a butcher and also by the way being a really good butcher and through that daily work achieving the way but also being in society being a very active member of society being very actively engaged and that's how he finds the way well here we have this other story where Confucius seems to be saying but literally a saying in so many words to his disciple whoa whoa whoa cultivate yourself cultivate yourself you're not ready to head out there yet cultivate yourself and if you add up all the other stories and there are a lot of them they're all amazing you'll notice they go in not just one of those two ways they go in about any way you can imagine all these people he's talking about some of them like the butcher do their work and they're great they're our rulers in it who actually cultivate themselves and them by the way or amazingamazing rulers sensing things well and being incredible leaders there are also people who run off into the mountains and cultivate themselves and harmonize with the yen and the on there are other people who have these wild things going out of them they start transforming into other animals and they have the way as well all of these all of these are ways of achieving in this human form the way and I think this too is a key point that he's trying to get at with the workings of these stories the danger I think he is saying about Confucius despite what he clearly does agree with distance of daily working through things at a daily mundane level and through that training becoming someone extraordinary I think the concern drugs that has with Confucius is precisely that the terminology is way of putting it potentially limits us it potentially is saying the only real way to do this is to do it in a way that you're engaged in society in a certain way that you can take a leadership position and spread goodness in the world that's the danger for on set note that's not to say it's a bad thing that's precisely what many of the drawings or figures do but many of the drawings the figures do radically completely different things and that I think is the key that drugs is trying to get at if in other words you start doing this if you start trading yourself in all the senses that we've been discussing so you're training yourself for the daily stuff to open yourself up sense with your spirit the movement of things harmonize these forces in your body the yin and the Yan slowly gaining health and vitality and excitement in the world around you as you're doing this you also become more and more aware of the things that excite you and the things that inspire you and you become more willing to flow in a very strong sense of that term with those things that are pulling you in an exciting way not because you're being pulled by external forces again you're becoming like someone who can walk through fire not being burned and logically speaking you're not being driven by external forces you're engaging with things and through that engagement you slowly become fully engaged with everything around you always trying to break the dangers of thinking and too limited away into perspectival away endlessly playing the game of yeah my the human being dreaming I'm a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming I'm a human being in other words seeing the world from is many possible perspectives as you can noting how the ways you're living your life are closing you off from things an endless process of training yourself to spontaneously be engaged in whatever that would mean and as you're doing that hence you get and drawings of stories an unbelievable variety of possibilities opening up to you what would this actually mean you should do for your life drawings is being not only as intentionally ambiguous about that I think he is trying to give you these unbelievable stories saying this could take you in any conceivable direction or more importantly directions you actually could not conceive it could mean in Nathan and hence these incredible stories of the incredible things you start achieving once you do this going in radically different directions and note for all of these all of these different things that people start doing all of these different directions that people start going in note the types of terminology he's using because it's so telling of what he's getting at the terminology are always things along the following lines this unbelievable excitement unbelievable vitality unbelievable sort of joyous exuberance at the possibilities of life unbelievable embracing of this endless flux and transformation constantly breaking free from these things that limit us that prevent us from seeing and be engaged in this incredible set of possibilities every single story is precisely aimed at doing that inspired you to engage this way trying to teach you not to close off what you think you were doing or close off what you're doing thinking it's liberating you when in fact it probably isn't in endlessly trying to break our perspectives so if in short we think okay I am a good liberated individual because I'm going to look inside find myself find my true self and therefore become what I want to become it sounds great but I think drawings that would immediately say in practice it limits you because what you're going to find is a piece of you imagine if you think of yourself in this radically different way this stuff stuff that was other stuff over the past mini millennia stuff that will be other stuff over the millennia to come but in this current type of stuff this incredibly wonderful thing a human being but a complex thing with all these different emotions and dispositions and then what you're doing is realizing how that stuff that is you now is always by the way we're living our lives in danger of becoming limited constrained not exploring what you could be and hence becoming sick dying young miserable well sick miserable bondage basically in other words we're slowly destroying what we could become and if on the contrary you think no no this stuff that's me is kind of like the same but literally and this cosmology is the same as all the other stuff out there and what I'm going to be doing is therefore actively engaging with all of this different stuff out there and through that active engagement with all of that different stuff out there will actually slowly but surely start fully engaging in it fully finding all of these things that excite me and inspire me finding all of these ways returning to our text of truly becoming one with this endless flux and transformation realizing absolutely from day one you have no idea what directions will take you in because it could take you in directions literally you could not imagine and therefore part of the endless training process is constantly trying to prevent these limitations we put on ourselves constantly trying to stop these blinders we put on ourselves constantly trying again returning to our text to see the world from the point of view of heaven not from our limited human perspective and if you do that the text is saying then you truly live as a human being this isn't an anti-human text it's saying truly live as a human being truly engage as a human being truly become all that you can be as a human being which is extraordinary and yes we will die but the adventure doesn't end it just means it continues in radically radically radically different ways in short drunk sin has taken a key vision of Confucius training through daily rituals to become a radically different human being and it's now trying to dramatically expand what that would mean in terms of an entire way of thinking cosmologically an entire engagement with the entire world around us it is an incredible text and that returning to our opening points on Monday is why he feels he needs to write it as he does if he simply laid this out it would be interesting but would we really change our lives the reason he has to lay it out as he does is he's trying to inspire us to change our lives he's trying to give us these in stories that will inspire us to think of the world in these incredible ways to think of the world as if we were or a fish or a butterfly to engage us in these incredibly exciting ways to give us these these people from all sorts of walks of life two radically different things endlessly trying to inspire us to do something unbelievably beyond what we think we're capable endlessly in other words trying to say live life unbelievably if you're a human being because it's incredible to be a human being precisely because we limit ourselves prevent ourselves from thinking that that's why we don't live our lives fully note in short that he is taking this Confucian vision and reading it in this radically different cosmological way to try to open up everything and let me know it immediately in terms of where we're going next week we will be reading shrimpson a Confucian and a Confucian who is read wrong is it incredibly carefully thinks Confucius and you think Strong's I'm sorry is incredibly onto something and we will see how shuns it will try to redirect the Confucian project to try to engage office and short even the confusions will realize drawing Cesare into something incredibly exciting and important and as always let me just conclude with a recommendation over these next few days as we mentioned but now we'll use some of these new terms that we've introduced begin to do this begin to feel this harmony of yin and Yan which may sound an odd way to put it but concretely note when you get angry the flourishing of Yong you calm yourself that's Yin notice when these little things bother us anger gone calm yourself Yin begin start to go to the day harmonizing this yet in the on seeing things that really excite you and instead of being angry at them begin to engage them more begin to feel that higher resonance that comes begin to feel that excitement that comes what drones would call feeling the way part becoming part of this transformed 10,000 things begin to do this begin to gain a sense of what he's talking about and in a deeper sense begin to notice how the world begins to open up and how the possibilities of the world begin to develop in front of you notice how you're limiting what you think you can do and begin to self-consciously break that thinking I'm not capable of doing this or what happens if you think of the world in which you are capable of doing this and self-consciously start breaking down these limits engaging more and start feeling how dramatic be different you begin sensing and engaging in the world that is what drawings is calling on you to do and as you begin to get a sense of this you will find these stories will just become a part of your life because they're incredibly inspiring visions of what it would mean to live a life this way thank you so much and see you all soon thank you

Channel: China X

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Length: 44min 16sec (2656 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 13 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/ZhanZhuang]

This is really excellent stuff. Helps me better understand Zhuangzi better.