1 Self, Dependence, and Flow in the Zhuangzi: Forgetting to Freedom

A thesis (or dissertation) submitted to the faculty of ft$ San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of I °l The Requirements for

T h eD eg ree

Master of Arts

in

Philosophy

By

Ryan Patrick Gauley

San Francisco, California

May 2019 Copyright by Ryan Patrick Gauley 2019 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read Self, Dependence, and Flow Experience: Forgetting to

Freedom by Ryan Patrick Gauley, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree:

Master of Philosophy at San Francisco State University.

Justin Tiwaf Professor of Philosophy

David Landy Professor of Philosophy Self, Dependence, and Flow Experience: Forgetting to Freedom

This thesis explores the notion of ‘freedom through complete dependence’ that Zhuangzi scholar Scott Cook glosses over in his article, “Harmony and Cacophony in the Panpipes of Heaven”. The first section of the thesis surveys previous conceptions of self in the Zhuangzi and consequently challenges them, attempting to wrestle what exactly is meant when one is instructed to ‘forget oneself in the text. It will be argued that in preserving shen #and keeping xin '6 empty, which extends to forgetting wo and ji B, one is not to mortify or abandon the body but rather preserves oneself whilst maintaining an all-encompassing flow experience in the Dao.

The second section builds upon this new interpretation of self and establishes the relation of action to the self through relevant anecdotes in the Zhuangzi. Subsequently, it is explored how one should act, embodied in the concepts of wuwei and ming 0J.

The final section combines the former two sections into a loose account of Zhuangzian freedom, utilizing Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of ‘optimal experience’ in his book, Flow. Ultimately this will both elucidate Cook’s notion of attaining ‘freedom through complete dependence’ and how one can live a meaningful life merged in the Dao.

I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis

Date Table of Contents

I. Introduction...... 1

II. Self...... 3

A. Exegetical Considerations of ‘Self’: Interpretive Conflations...... 3 B. ‘Self’ as ‘Shen and ‘Xin ‘b ’ 5 C. On Forgetting ‘Wo and ‘Ji B ‘ 10 D. Auxiliary Themes Regarding the Self: Ceaseless Transformation and Emptiness...... 14

III. Dependence and Action...... 21

A. The Relation Between Self and Dependence...... 21 B. On ‘ MingBJ’ and ‘Wuwei MM * 23

IV. Flow and Freedom...... 27

A. Flow Experience in the Zhuangzi...... 27 B. Forgetting to Freedom...... 33

V. References...... 36 I. Introduction

The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other, who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says—he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. (...) There I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity, which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing: I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. (Emerson, “Nature” 1836)

In his essay, “Harmony and Cacophony in the Panpipes of Heaven”, Scott Cook unpacks the notion of the panpipes of Heaven, one of the most enduring images from the Inner Chapter of the

Zhuangzi: “Discourse on the Leveling of Things” (Qiwulun In the process of breaking down this instrumental metaphor, Cook glosses over the concept of attaining a certain freedom through complete dependence, i.e. a conception of freedom in which, ”... one need not await for anything in particular by virtue of the fact that he instead awaits everything to come to him. Like the mirror of the pool of still water, one actively seeks nothing while clearly reflecting all that happens his way.”1 In the interlinear commentary to the passage, Neo-Daoist commentator Guo Xiang illuminates this further, as he states,

“For he who lets things be self-so (ziran § M) and forgets right and wrong, within his body he merely gives sole reign to natural trueness.”2 ( tianzhenJk.%) Another prominent American scholar of the

Zhuangzi, Brook Zipporyn, inquires the implicit relation and independence, noting that, “...to wander without end—what would such a one have to wait for/depend on?” As he skeptically remarks,"... for the assertion seems to be being made here that in this submission to fate and subordination of the individual

'Scott Bradley Cook, “Harmony and Cacophony in the Panpipes of Heaven,” Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses On the Zhuangzi. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 71. 2 Cook, “Harmony and Cacophony in the Panpipes of Heaven,” 82. perspective to the whole, rather than being passive and dependent, one has suddenly become perfectly free and independent!”3

In light of these passages, what exactly does it mean to reflect all that happens our way and give sole reign to natural trueness? How do we become free through recognizing our complete dependence upon the dao? Isn’t freedom typically associated with a conscious manifestation of our will rather than a retraction to seemingly ‘mindless’ or unreflective activity? Such a conception of freedom will hopefully find answers in our thematic exploration of self, dependence, and flow experience in the Zhuangzi.

The first section of the essay titled, “Self’ will have four subsections. The first subsections deal with exegetical considerations in interpreting what the ‘self’ is in the Zhuangzi and will briefly address past conflations scholars have made in this regard. The second subsection takes a deeper look into the notions of ‘self in the Zhuangzi , namely through the usage of ‘shen # ‘ (“body” and “bodily self’) and

‘x in'lV (“heart” or “mind”), which will allow us to make evaluations on the negation of ‘wo ^c’ (a common first-person pronoun) and ‘ji B ’ (“self’) in the third subsection. Furthermore, it will be argued that in ‘forgetting’ one’s shen, one does not mortify or abandon the body but rather one forgets the body as a result of total engagement, i.e. a sort of all-encompassing flow experience of the world. The fourth subsection will bring to the table other relevant themes in our conception of self in the Zhuangzi that are significant for the latter sections.

In the second section titled, “Dependence and Action,” I will build on the conception of ‘self developed previously and explore its relation with dependence in the Zhuangzi through relevant anecdotes, connecting how this extends to action. Entailed in the second subsection will be the notions of ming and wuwei $SJ§, which play a significant role in characterizing our actions within a quasi-deterministic worldview and which vitally constitute Zhuangzian freedom.

3 Brook Ziporyn, “How Many Are the Ten Thousand Things and I? Relativism, Mysticism, and the Privileging of Oneness in the ‘Inner Chapters’”. Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi. (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2003), 40. Finally, the concluding section titled “Flow and Freedom” will combine the former two sections into a coherent picture of Zhuangzian freedom and will argue that ultimately, this is indicative of the notion in the Cook’s essay, namely ‘achieving freedom through complete dependence’. The first subsection will establish pertinent examples of flow in the Zhuangzi and how it is a pivotal characterization of the many sagely figures. The second and final subsection will elucidate the notion of freedom in regards to how it can achieved in a flow state, using the notion of ‘optimal experience’ which

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi sculpts in his book, Flow. It will be discussed how the freedom one gains ultimately coincides with the living both a meaningful and happy life, how one can roam in the infinite through a transforming world, and merge with the process of Heaven itself.

II. Self

A. Exegetical Considerations: Interpretive Conflations of ‘Self’

Before diving into passages of the Zhuangzi, to understand his conception of self, it is important to be cautious in our approach, as it can be easily ensnared in anachronistic interpretations of the concept

‘self. I will primarily be drawing from Chris Jochim’s innovative scholarship, “Just Say No to ‘No Self’ in Zhuangzi"* in which he acknowledges the tendency scholars have to draw from modem concepts of self in understanding the picture that Zhuangzi is portraying. In other words, we are prone to imposing the conception of self most familiar to us and our language upon ancient texts that we read, which consequently leads to a profound misunderstanding of the philosophical work itself. Such considerations will be vital to understanding what Zhuangzi means in the integral passages where one is instructed to

‘forget our self,’ that one is ‘selfless,’ or has ‘no self.

‘ Roger T Ames,ed., Wandering At Ease in the Zhuangzi. SUNY Press, (1998), 35-74. Jochim canvasses many avid scholars of the Zhuangzi who have fallen prey to this anachronistic trap, most notably those who advocate that there is a ‘true self that can be discovered behind other layers of self. Drawing from Thomas Ming’s remarkable scholarship in his essay, “Who Does the Sounding?

The Metaphysic of First-Person Pronouns in the Zhuangzi,'" we will label these Double-Reference (DR) interpretations. Under a Double-Reference view, it is assumed that the pronouns are both referential, but indicate that one thing or self is being discarded for another.5

To begin, Lao Siguang adopted such a view insofar as his interpretation rejected the ‘cognitive self’ and the ‘physical self,’ in favor of a self that transcended all material events and is immutable to change. In this way, Lao prefers a, “non-evaluative aesthetic appreciation of the world over the

‘cognitive’ approach to reality, which creates mental obstructions to the enjoyment of life.”6 Another scholar, Wu Yi, in his Xiaoyao de Zhuangzi advocates for a discovery of the ‘true self,’ insofar as the realization of having no self is one of the steps to this realization of a true self. He establishes that the act of forgetting the self is an approach via negativa to this realization, but such is overall characterized by a positive movement towards the revealing of a ‘true self’ ( K B ).7 Despite these being generally coherent interpretations of the Zhuangzi, textual evidence does not seem to support that there is any true self to be realized, as the genuine discarding of a ‘true self’ is not found in the .8 DR interpretations could possibly be a conflations of the Indian notion ‘atman’, Western notion of ‘soul’, or most notably, the notion of Buddha-nature ( rulaizangor underlying Pattern ( 91) upon

Zhuangzi’s works of philosophy.

Other misinterpretations derive from the Indian philosophical tradition, embodied in the conflation of self derived from the Chinese Buddhist tradition, i.e. the notion of ‘tathagatagarbha’

’Littlejohn, Ronnie, “Referring and Reporting: The Use of Selfing Language in the Zhuangzi,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 17, (2018), 547. 6 Jochim, Chris, “Just Say No to ‘No-Self’ in the Zhuangzi”. Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi, (SUNY Press, 1998), 41. 7 Jochim, “Just Say No to ‘No-Self in the Zhuangzi”, 41. 8 Jochim, 55. (sometimes translated as ‘Buddha-nature’) in Ch’an Buddhism. Liu Guangyi’s Zhuangxuezhong de chanqu advocates for this notion of shedding layers of false self in search of true self, in which similar to the view of Wu Yi, the self that is forgotten is a false self ( '§?$<,) in opposition to a different ‘true self’ (zhenwo K3£).9 Lastly, Chinese Zhuangzi scholar Wu Kuang-ming presents a similar interpretation, utilizing the distinction between the first person pronouns ‘wu’ and ‘wo’, in which ‘ ’ is generally in the subject position and ‘wo’ in the object position. He believes that the Zhuangzi makes an explicit distinction between one’s authentic transcendental cogito (‘wu’) and the identifiable, objective self (‘ ’), in which we must shed the latter for attainment of the former.10 In summary, Jochim states that these interpretations of self in the Zhuangzi are corrupted by superimposing the mind-body dualism onto philosophical bodies of thought in which such distinctions were uncarved. Due to the embeddedness of such fundamental, Cartesian dualisms in our contemporary understanding of our self, such also poses a hindrance in understanding any ancient thought, whether Chinese, Greek, or Indian. As a result and following in Thomas Ming’s footsteps, we can reject any DR interpretation as the proper way of understanding self in the Zhuangzi.

In a similar vein, because Burton Watson, Victor Mair, and A.C. Graham use the term ‘no-self’ or

“selfless” in their translation of the Zhuangzi, such provides another opening for anachronism, namely the superimposition of the Buddhist doctrine ‘ anatman’ or ‘no-self5 onto the Zhuangzi. This is exemplified in David Loy’s “Zhuangzi and Nagaijuna on the Truth of No Truths”, insofar that Loy believes Zhuangzi encourages followers to realize that one has no-self similar to Nagaijuna’s conception.

11 Although such conceptions may be relevant to a study of Ch’an Buddhism where elements of Daoism and Indian Buddhism are derivatively influential, imposing such a Buddhist doctrine onto the Zhuangzi is an act of conflation lacking the proper historical timeline of the traditions. Although it is apparent that

9 Jochim, 42. 10 Jochim, 42-43. 11 Jochim, 45. Buddhism and Daoism do have their similarities in regards to philosophical themes like x/n-cultivation

(cultivation of the heart-mind), it is hard to believe that the Buddha and Zhuangzi coincidentally articulated the exact same doctrine of ‘ anatman nearly’ 3000 km apart. As previously mentioned, Jochim want to nullify these misleading DR interpretations and adhere to conceptions of self solely found in

Chinese thought, which I agree retains the most exegetical integrity. Jochim specifically wants to address the negations put before reflexive pronouns in the Zhuangzi because clearly Zhuangzi had an intention in doing so, it is just one we tend to understand via our most immediate comprehensions of self.

As Ming and Littlejohn both propose, I believe the proper interpretation of the ‘I’ is a NR

(Non-Reference) interpretation, namely what the character Ziqi in the Zhuangzi refers to as ‘no-thing’. As

Ming declares, “... in such a losing or loosening of a linguistic scaffolding, there is the beginning of seeing the world aright, or as some claim, living in the Dao.” However, in agreement with Littlejohn, although the NR interpretation is correct, the “fingerprints of referentiality” lurk in Ming’s explication and also fall into problems by constructing “posited centers” with no content.12 As a solution, Littlejohn sharpens the distinction between ‘referring’ and ‘reporting’, insofar as when Ziqi claims he has lost himself, it is not him making a reference but rather a report.13 In this way, one does not have to confront the problem Ming does and yet can affirm that his interpretation is correct, which will be significant in both our understanding of self and language in the Zhuangzi as a whole.

B. Self as ‘Shen # ‘ and ‘Xin

fn his article, Jochim pinpoints the two main concepts of ‘self’ used by Zhuangzi, namely ‘shen

and ‘xin '(V. Xin >b is generally translated as one’s “heart-mind; feeling; intention; or core” while

12 Littlejohn, “Referring and Reporting: The Use of Selfing Language in the Zhuangzi,” 549. 13 Littlejohn, 552. shen # generally is translated as “body; person; or self’. As Jochim articulates in his textual survey, these are the most common terms used in explicating selfhood, as well as the nominalizing of ‘wo and fi

B ’ in passages that one should forget their ‘self’. In particular, shen is the pivot point where modem notions of self come into play, namely because one of the direct translations of shen is self. It is tempting to interpret shen as our ‘true self, but such an interpretation not only affirms semantic distinctions between spirit and body or inner and outer, but also accepts the DR interpretation which has been previously rejected.14 Thus, one can see the interpretive moves early scholars made on the Zhuangzi: superimposing shen to mean exactly what ‘self’ means in the Western philosophical tradition, and consequently interpreting wo and ji as corresponding to this understanding. This seems to be a possible root of anachronism in the Zhuangzi and thus may have mislead scholars of the text for decades.

To provide context, here are a couple places from the Inner Chapters where shen is found,

Our lives are limited, but knowledge is limitless. To pursue the limitless with the limited is dangerous. Such being the case, if one still goes after knowledge one’s life will definitely be in danger. In doing good, approach not fame; In doing bad, approach not punishment. Follow the central artery as conduit, and you can preserve your body, maintain your life, nourish your inmost viscera, and complete your allotted years.15

Once we have received our complete physical form, we remain conscious of it while we await extinction. In our strife and friction with other things, we gallop forward on our course unable to stop. Is this not sad? We toil our whole life without seeing any results. We deplete ourselves with wearisome labor, but don't know what it all adds up to. Isn't this lamentable? There are those who say that at least we are not dead, but what's the good of it? Our physical form decays and with it the mind likewise. May we not say that this is the most lamentable of all? Is human life really so deluded as this? Am I the only one who is so deluded? Are there some individuals who are not deluded?16

“Huizi said to Zhuangzi, "Can a man really be without feelings?" Zhuangzi: "Yes." Huizi: "But a man who has no feelings-how can you call him a man?" Zhuangzi: "The Way gave him a face; Heaven gave him a form - why can't you call him a man?"

14 Jochim, 48. 15 Watson, Burton, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, (Columbia University Press, 2013), 19. 16 Watson, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 9. Huizi: "But if you've already called him a man, how can he be without feelings?" Zhuangzi: "That's not what I mean by feelings. When I talk about having no feelings, I mean that a man doesn't allow likes or dislikes to get in and do him harm [nei shang qi shen He just lets things be the way they are and doesn't try to help life along." Huizi: "If he doesn't try to help life along, then how can he keep himself alive?" Zhuangzi: "The Way gave him a face; Heaven gave him a form. He doesn't let likes or dislikes get in and do him harm [shen\. You, now - you treat your spirit like an outsider. You wear out your energy, leaning on a tree and moaning, slumping at your desk and dozing - Heaven picked out a body for you and you use it to gibber about 'hard' and 'white'!"17

Although these are only a few of many passages where shen is mentioned, it is clear that preserving or cultivating our ‘body’ is generally favored, while allowing our shen to decay will subsequently result in decay of the mind and will prevent us from living out the years ordained by

Heaven. Specifically in regards to shen, Jochim points out that the Zhuangzi advocates for either cultivating it (xiu M), preserving or protecting it (bao or nourishing it (yang # ), while inversely, forgetting about or losing shen results in dire consequences.18 This is exemplified above in the first passage, where Cook Ding, who supposedly knows the secret for caring for life, advises Lord Wenhui to preserve the body, maintain life, and nourish internal viscera, which ultimately results in one being able to maximize the years allotted by Heaven. Furthermore, because Cook Ding’s shen and xin are well-balanced and are coextensive with things rather than cause friction, he is able to perfect the art of cutting oxen and maintain the sharpness of his knife, despite the many decades of being a butcher.

In addition to this, the third excerpt quoted above from the fifth Inner Chapter, “The Seal of

Virtue Complete” (Dechongfu reinforces the notion of caring for one’s shen, insofar as adhering to a fixed system of likes and dislikes can do harm to one’s heart-mind or self. Zhuangzi emphasizes the necessary limitedness of a perspective, insofar that no shi/fei (right/wrong) framework can achieve some

17 Watson, 40-41. 18 Jochim, 48. sort of universal or absolute status, i.e. has rigid priority over other perspectives. Thus those who do fix themselves to an inflexible framework, most notably the Confucians and Mohists disagreeing on partial and impartial care, subsequently are doing harm to themselves by “letting likes and dislikes get in.” Such matters will be further discussed in the oncoming sections, but in any case, it seems in all three excerpts from the Inner Chapters, shen is to be protected and losing track of one’s shen will certainly result in undesirable situations. Furthermore, our xinis to remain free from likes/dislikes, but this entails a preserved and clear mental state attained through meditative practices that cultivate prolonged concentration. In both cases, one can see that Zhuangzi actually cares deeply for the body/mind and to discard or abandon either shen ox xin, which is how many commentators have interpreted him, would be to gravely distort the coherence of caring for these with other Daoist principles. Although Zhuangzi does advocate explicitly for forgetting the self, it will be in a way that perhaps isn’t the most immediately intuited or understood.

One of these cohering principles is the emphasis on how uselessness reigns over usefulness because something that has no use will be more likely to live out the years allotted. This is specifically addressed in the fourth Inner Chapter, “In the Human Realm” ( A P a J t i t ) , in which Carpenter

Shi encounters an useless oak tree in Qi and initially criticises it due to its lack of utility and potential to produce quality products. However, the oak tree responds to him in a dream:

After Carpenter Shi had returned home, the oak tree appeared to him in a dream and said, “What are you comparing me with? Are you comparing me with those useful trees? The cherry apple, the pear, the orange, the citron, the rest of those fructiferous trees and shrubs—as soon as their fruit is ripe, they are tom apart and subjected to abuse. Their big limbs are broken off, their little limbs are yanked around. Their utility makes life miserable for them, and so they don’t get to finish out the years Heaven gave them, but are cut off in mid-journey. They bring it on themselves—the pulling and tearing of the common mob. And it’s the same way with all other things.

As for me, I’ve been trying a long time to be of no use, and though I almost died, I’ve finally got it. This is of great use to me.19

19 Watson, 30-31. In this passage, the oak tree is declaring how its uselessness is better than usefulness because ultimately, such allows the oak tree to live the full duration it was given by Heaven. Conversely, those trees that are labelled useful for humans have a miserable life, insofar as their lives are cut short and their inherent character (de '$$.) is unable to fully blossom. In this way, as Carpenter Shi remarks after his dream, uselessness provides a type of protection for the oak tree, not only from being cut down, but from being judged by anthropocentric standards of ‘useful’ or ‘useless’. Thus, uselessness coincides with virtuous character qua the Heavenly perspective, and the sagely figure as such, equally embodies such a virtue.

In regards to our discussion of self, it again seems then that uselessness does not necessarily entail degradation of the body but rather the opposite, namely the preservation and protection of the body. In the initial portrayal of the oak tree, it is not envisioned as a decrepit or mortified tree, rather it is “broad enough to shelter several thousand oxen.” and lowers above the hills.”20 The tree, because of its uselessness, has grown to an immense size and magnificent character, hence why the place appeared like a fair because of the abundance of sightseers.21 Similarly, the sagely character in the Zhuangzi is precisely one who preserves, nourishes, and protects not only his body but the inherent character of other things as well. In this way, he can not only maximize the years ordained to him by Heaven, but extend this reciprocally to the myriad things.

It would seem then that if Zhuangzi’s true intention of ‘forgetting’ the body was to abandon it in some fashion, then there would be a blatant contradiction between the themes of ‘living out one’s years’ and ‘forgetting the self’. Those who conflate Zhuangzi with some sort of ascetic who mortifies or is indifferent to shen or xin, would instantly find a lot of incoherence and fragmentation with other major

20 Watson, 30. 21 Watson, 30. themes in the text. My primary intention is to develop the most coherent picture of the Zhuangzi and at all costs, abandon any preconceived notions or modem concepts in our understanding and interpretation of the text. The following section will wrap up our analysis of self, in which we take a look at specifically where we are instructed to forget nominalized ‘wo' and ’ and how such should be understood via

Jochim’s pivotal evaluation of shen and xin.

C. On Forgetting ‘Wo and ‘Ji B‘

Continuing the first section, I think it is important to further provide textual evidence from the

Inner Chapters and analyze the passages that mention forgetting the self or that the sage has no-self in the

Zhuangzi. With our understanding of shen and xin relatively established, it is now worth investigating how this extends to forgetting wo and ji.The primary chapter that involves explication of forgetting the self is the pivotal ‘Qiwulun (On the Equalizing of Things) chapter, which begins with a dialogue between ‘Ziqi of South Wall and ’Yan Cheng Ziyou :

Ziqi of South Wall sat leaning on his armrest, staring up at the sky and breathing—vacant and far away, as though he lost his companion. Yan Cheng Ziyou, who was standing by his side in attendance, said, “What is this? Can you really make the body like a withered tree and the mind ( '(j) like dead ashes? The man leaning on the armrest now is not the one who leaned before!”22

The character ‘ ouH’ (companion) translates more accurately, ‘mate’ and Cook interprets it as,

“having lost his notion of individuality, and thus all sense of any distinction between “self and other”

(bishi Wfk). Burton Watson in his footnote, interprets this as either “[losing] his associates, his wife, or

22 Watson, 7. his own body,”23 in which I think the latter definition makes this passage the most insightful and coherent with the overall text. This also aligns with the subsequent statement Ziqi makes:

Ziqi said, “You do well to ask the question, Yan. Now I have lost myself [sang wo -ftfS]. Do you understand that? You hear the piping of men [ren lai A M ], but you haven’t heard the piping of Earth [di lai ffeM].. Or if you’ve heard the piping of Earth, you haven’t heard the piping of Heaven [Tian lai A M ].24

Ziqi refers to losing his ‘self5 ( sangwo HSi), as he forgets it in his detached state, peering at the

Heavens above. Now what does it exactly mean to ‘forget one’s self5? This could be interpreted as a statement supporting the Theravadan doctrine of ‘ anatm ’, in which Zhuangzi is appealing to the self as interdependent with the environment or perhaps that the ‘self’ is some sort of illusion that we must unattach from. However, as addressed above, imposing such Buddhist interpretations onto Zhuangzi are limiting at best, insofar as they draw concepts of Ch’an Buddhism and apply them to the more ancient school of Daoism. It is pivotal to recognize the cultural and conceptual contexts each was working within and the differing, foundational cosmologies and worldviews that influenced each respective tradition. So with other cohering themes of Daoism in mind, what exactly is Zhuangzi instructing the student to do in these passages?

Here it is vital to remember the conceptions of sagehood, namely taking Cook Ding as a human who understands and conveys the secret for caring for life. What characterizes Cook Ding most effectively is his mastery of cutting oxen, his agility and skill with his knives, and the effortlessness throughout his concentrated action.

Cook Ding was cutting up an ox for Lord Wenhui. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee - zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along

23 Watson, 7. 24 Watson, 8. with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Jingshou music.25

In this excerpt, Cook Ding is embroiled in a ‘flow experience,’ namely a sort of hyper-focused mental state, in which one is completely immersed in their activity and carries it out effectively, yet with a sort of effortlessness. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a prominent scholar who wrote extensively about flow experience, delineates it as a, “state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”26 As many previous scholars have defended, it is this type of mental state that Zhuangzi praises repeatedly, specifically how the sagely figure roams in the ‘boundless’ insofar as he is absolutely immersed in the activities he performs. Jochim, in the end of his article, also reaches this conclusion that this is precisely what characterizes sage figures in the Zhuangzi, whether it be Liezi, Cook Ding, or the

‘concentrated spirit’ of the Holy Man on Gushe Mountain.

We can begin to see the conceptual puzzle cohering together, namely the combination of forgetting oneself, ‘flow experience’ and preserving shen and xin. The general picture is this: cultivating our self and nourishing it allows us to maintain and prolong a more concentrated and focused mental state, which ultimately embodies the instruction of one to forget their self. In other words, forgetting the self is just the complete embrace of flow experience, insofar as you become so engaged with the world

and various activities that no separation arises between self and world. Furthermore, not only does such

constitute ‘virtue’ (de Hj) for the Zhuangzi and allows one to maximize their years given by Heaven, but ultimately provides the path to well-being for the human perspective. This is not to say that this type of

mental state is easy to cultivate or attain, as it supposedly took Cook Ding nearly nineteen years to master

his spirit in cutting oxen.

25 Watson, 19. 26 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), 4. Another pivotal passage that reinforces that the sagely person has ‘no-self’ is the concluding paragraphs of the Peng anecdote, in which we get our first characterization of the Daoist exemplar of virtue.

Master Lieh (Liezi) could ride the wind and go soaring around with cool and breezy skill, but after fifteen days he came back to earth. As far as the search for good fortune went, he didn’t fret and worry. He escaped the trouble of walking, but he still had to depend on something to get around. If he had only mounted on the truth of Heaven and Earth, ridden the changes of the six breaths, and thus wandered through the boundless, then what would he have had to depend on? Therefore I say, the Perfect Man has no self; the Holy Man has no merit; the Sage has no fame.27

This passage again indicates that the sagely figure has no ‘self1, a sort of mysterious figure who rides joyously through the infinite, completely merged with the dao. He is not bound by seeking accomplishments nor reputation, instead he joins the plethora of myriad things and sings his own original song that harmonizes with the rest. In this way, he can serve as a model for others insofar as he abandons these selfish desires in the process of forgetting himself, whether it be concerns for individual status or to maximize profit.

Now with these two vital excerpts above, we can begin to unpack what exactly is being conveyed in the negations of wo and ji. Jochim highlights the common phrases found throughout the text, namely wu ji (no-self), xu ji (emptying self), shi ji (losing self), qu ji (discarding self), wangji (forgetting self) and wu wo (no-I), sang wo (lose the I), and wang wo (forgetting the I). Interestingly enough, many of these phrases explicate that one who has forgotten wo or ji blends in with all other things, insofar as he is not above any other perspective of the myriad things.28 In other words, the ultimate person ( A) is one who joins the commonality and is a mediator and companion of Heaven and Earth, as opposed to

27 Watson, 3. 28 Jochim, 53. attempting to overcome them. As Jochim concludes, “... getting along with others as part of ‘wandering through the world’ is the important thing, not eradicating one’s ‘self’.”29

This is not to peel away all mystical elements in the Zhuangzi, namely the characterization of living one’s life in an all-encompassing flow experience. How is such a mental state possible being naturally reflective and self-aware creatures, insofar as extracting from our environment is a natural mechanism? This will be the topic of the final section of the essay. In any case, we can now do away with any notions of ‘no-self’ in the Zhuangzi, primarily because there is no genuine case of ‘wu wo anywhere in the text.30 As Jochim notes, although such a phrase does occur in one of the most famous passages, this does not indicate a negation of self, but rather the relativity of perspective.31 Furthermore, we do not have to force any of the puzzle pieces together but rather they cohere well, insofar in acknowledging that shen is to be nourished and preserved, which allows the capacity for enduring flow experience, a merging of self with the myriad things, and a cognizance of the limitedness of one’s perspective. This in turn constitutes the epitome of happiness and ultimately freedom for the Daoist exemplar, and is how one can

“give sole reign to true naturalness”, affirming the endowed nature given to us by Heaven. With the amount of textual evidence according with these ideas, we can finalize our conception of self through the themes of ceaseless transformation and emptiness of heart-mind.

D. Auxiliary Themes Regarding the Self: Ceaseless Transformation and Emptiness

In completing our enquiry into the Zhuangzian ‘self’, it is important to elucidate other

interlocking themes with shen and xin, namely the notions of ceaseless transformation and emptiness in

regards to the heart-mind. In Chapter 6, “The Great and Ancestral Teacher”, ( the

29 Jochim, 55. 30 Jochim, 55. 31 Jochim, 55. theme of forgetfulness and ceaseless transformation are mutually encountered as descriptors of the “True

Man”:

The True Man of ancient times knew nothing of loving life, knew nothing of hating death. He emerged without delight; he went back in without a fiiss. He came briskly, he went briskly, and that was all. He didn’t forget where he began; he didn’t try to find out where he would end. He received something and took pleasure in it; he forgot about it and handed it back again. This is what I call not using the mind to repel the Way. not using man to help out Heaven. This is what I call the True Man.32

This passage seems to emphasize the notion of ‘forgetting’ as ‘ceasing to think about’ in which the True Man seems only to involve with things he can get a handle upon. As regards to knowledge of metaphysical essences, ethical absolutist principles, and even finding validation for the claims he is making, it seems Zhuangzi encourages just forgetting about it, as we can only ever speculate about such high-flying matters. It should be noted that forgetting here is not a type of blissful ignorance but more so an acknowledgement that our perspective and language cannot overcome Heaven. Furthermore, due to the ceaseless transformation of the world, if the mind fixes itself upon an absolute principle like the utilitarian

“greatest good for the greatest number,” it is bound to create friction with the ever-moving Way and be vulnerable to counter-scenarios. Just as one adds wheels onto cart so it does not scratch the floor, so one must be open to constant transformation and take delight in our dynamic form to prevent cognitive

friction.

It is worth noting that many take ceaseless transformation or in Buddhist terminology,

‘impermanence’ in a negative light, i.e. that such is what creates suffering, as dukkha is self-perpetuating

and can only ever be temporarily satiated. Although time certainly can be unforgiving in some respects,

nevertheless it repeatedly presents lis with further opportunity to delight in our existence and

32 Watson, 43. self-cultivate, as such is the beauty of ever-recurring opportunity. Whether it’s embodied in Kierkegaard’s

‘atom of eternity,’ or the Buddhist concept “eternal now,” the fact that we continually have chances to cultivate our understanding and peace of mind, this is in fact a blessing. Inversely, if the world did not ceaselessly transform, such a static existence (if even able to be conceived) would in no case make for a better possible world. All in all, Zhuangzi fully embraces transformation as such is the nature of Heaven itself, and when death arrives on one’s doorstep, the body is simply handed back without a fuss.

The parable of four masters in Chapter 6 depicts the above explanation well:

All at once, Master Yu fell ill. Master Si went to ask how he was. “Amazing!” said Master Yu. “The creator is making me all crookedy like this! My back sticks up like a hunchback, and my vital organs are on top of me. My chin is hidden in my navel, my shoulders are above my head, and my pigtails point to the sky. It must be some dislocation of the yin and yang!”

Yet he seemed calm and unconcerned. Dragging himself haltingly to the well, he looked at his reflection and said, “My, my! So the Creator is making me all crookedy like this.”

“Do you resent it?” asked Master Si.

“Why no, what would I resent? If the process continues, perhaps in time he’ll transform my left arm into a rooster. In that case I’ll keep watch during the night. Or perhaps he’ll transform my right arm into a crossbow pellet, and I’ll shoot down an owl for roasting. Or perhaps in time he’ll transform my buttocks into cartwheels. Then with my spirit for a horse, I’ll climb up and go for a ride. What need will I ever have for a carriage again?”

“I received life because the time had come; I will lose it because the order of things passes on. Be content with this time and dwell in this order, and then neither sorrow nor joy can touch you. In ancient times this was called the ‘freeing of the bound’. There are those who cannot free themselves because they are bound by things. But nothing can ever win against Heaven—that’s the way it’s always been. What could I have to resent?”33

As the masters display above, even such ill-conceived changes as becoming sick are not to be resented but welcomed, as such is necessarily entailed in the process of life and death. Furthermore,

33 Watson, 47-49. clinging or being bound to life or death is what causes cogniti ve dissonance, as in the act of clinging to one leads to an aversion to the other. To make it more concrete, one who clings to life will be unprepared with the arrival of death, and one who clings to death and rewards in the afterlife will negate this life. It is only by having both an awareness and existential acceptance of life and death that one can subsequently take pleasures in all the ceaseless transformations that continually manifest. A passage from Michael

‘Puett’s “The Notion of Spirit in the Zhuangzi ’ phrases this nicely:

The Zhuangzi teaches one to accept the ceaseless flux of the world. Life and death are fated ( ifpf) That they have the regularity of day and night is a matter of Heaven (tian A ). If one hides one’s possessions (for example a boat), they may still be stolen. But if one hides all under Heaven in all under Heaven, then nothing will ever be lost. In other words, if one defines one’s gaze to include everything, then the disappearance of a single thing is not a problem. The same point holds for the human form: one would not mourn the loss of one’s form with death if one embraced the transformations of everything.34

This is a vital element of the self in the Zhuangzi, i.e. as something that is ceaselessly transforming without halt, being only one of the myriad pipes that constitute Heaven’s panpipe. Rather than looking at

aging from a self-centered view, if one sees the changes from the Heavenly perspective and keeps all in

view, one will be unbound from their passing away. In other words, your body was something given to

you by Heaven, do you not have to give things back which originally were not yours? Even today, Heaven

can never be overcome

It should be noted however, that this does not mean that one should adhere to the Heavenly

perspective in all cases but rather maintain a sort of double-vision of the multiplicity of perspectives.

When the Zhuangzi encourages one to reflect like a mirror or maintain an empty xin, this is to be able to

swap perspectives effortlessly and never become fixed to a particular one. As mentioned above, the decay

34 Michael Puett, ‘“Nothing Can Overcome Heaven’: The Notion of Spirit in the Zhuangzi,” Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 255. of the body and mind from the human perspective is a hard pill to swallow, but from the Heavenly perspective, one can see these bodily changes as a sort of intercourse with Heaven itself. This flip-flopping of perspectives is exactly the skill the Zhuangzian sage wields to streamline experience.

So why is ceaseless transformation an important aspect of the self in the ? The major implication of ceaseless transformation is how shen, as an instrument of the dao, is always ‘selfing’ as opposed to being a static entity. In other words, we do not have a self per se, but we self (as a verb, not a noun)35 Using the famous comment in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, the ‘I’ is not the name of the person, any more than the “here” is of a place.36 Similarly, such reflects Zhuangzi’s view on the limitedness of language itself, and why it can never penetrate to the essence of who we are or the infamous ‘things-in-themselves.’ In other words, because things are always apt to change, the static and simplistic nature of words are bound to lose their grip with the passage of time.

Furthering the metaphor above, pipes on the instrument are vacuous, in that one needs air to be blown into a pipe to produce a sound. However, what does it exactly mean that all forms are vacuous or empty? And if so, who is the True Master with no identity who is doing the blowing? Before dipping into this notion of ‘emptiness’ ( x t i 0 ) let’s put forth a couple passages where it appears.

Confucius said, "Make your will one! Don't listen with your ears, listen with your mind. No, don't listen with your mind, but listen with your spirit. Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but spirit is empty—and waits on all things. The Way gathers in emptiness alone. Emptiness (xu jjft) is the fasting of the mind."37

"It is easy to keep from walking; the hard thing is to walk without touching the ground. It is easy to cheat when you work for men, but hard to cheat when you work for Heaven. You have heard of flying with wings, but you have never heard of flying without wings. You have heard of the knowledge that knows, but you have never heard of the knowledge that does not know. Look into that closed room, the empty chamber where brightness is bom! Fortune and blessing gather where there is stillness. But if you do not keep still - this is what is called sitting but racing around. Let your ears and eyes communicate with what is inside, and put mind and knowledge on the

35 Littlejohn, 549. 36 Littlejohn, 550. 37 Watson, 25. outside. Then even gods and spirits will come to dwell, not to speak of men! This is the changing of the ten thousand things, the bond of Yu and Shun, the constant practice of Fu Xi and Ji Qu.How much more should it be a rule for lesser men!"38

Do not be an embodiment of fame; do not be a storehouse of schemes; do not be an undertaker of projects; do not be a proprietor of wisdom. Embody to the fullest what has no end and wander where there is no trail. Hold on to all that you have received from Heaven but do not think you have gotten anything. Be empty, that is all. The Perfect Man uses his mind like a mirror - going after nothing, welcoming nothing, responding but not storing. Therefore he can win out over things and not hurt himself.39

It seems that emptiness in many of these passages corresponds to the emptying of contents of one’s xin, that is keeping one’s heart-mind like an empty glass. However, it seems emptiness is not vital just in regards to emptying the mind but conceiving the self itself as such, a mere form among a myriad of forms that is given life by Heaven and empty of substance. This coincides with the notion above that one should, “Hold on to all that you have received from Heaven but do not think you have gotten anything.”

Thus emptying our heart-mind in a way reflects a very fundamental aspect of self in the Zhuangzi and the other myriad forms, a form that we claim as ‘mine’ but was obviously not a product of our choice. In other words, we had no say in the matter of being bom, we are thrown into existence with a certain body and a genetic diversity which gives us our own self-soness but yet much of this is not our own doing.

Furthermore, attempting to assert our own individuality or ‘I’-ness through selfish or forceful action is a helpless task and seen as an action against Heaven, attempting to disrupt the forces that we our indebted to for the capacity of action itself.

It is very important to note that ‘emptiness’ in the Zhuangzi is a different than the notion of emptiness in Buddhism, which arose through the opposition to a substantial self in early Hinduism and later became an ontological theory. Emptiness for Buddhism is an assertion of the non-substantiality of the self and all phenomena, insofar as they lack a particular essence or substance that makes them what

38 Watson, 25-26. 39 Watson, 59. they are. Although I do think there are some similarities between the Buddhist ‘emptiness’ and Daoist

‘emptiness’ which is later fused in Ch’an Buddhism, it is important to relegate each definition to its rightful historical context.

Cook states that emptiness and the vacuity inherent in forms for Zhuangzi should perhaps be understood not in relation to the notion of substance but rather in relation the death, in the fact that all things come to be and pass away necessarily. As he states,

Music is characterized by movement and rest and like a storm that suddenly appears in the skies above us, a musical performance would mean nothing without the quiet tranquility that both precedes its rise and follows its passing. Those who know how to listen to all of life’s activity from the point of view of its inevitable return to the pool of transformation from which it first sprang are those who have finally awakened to become aware of the fact that all of this was just one great dream.40

Emptiness should be more understood as the fact that nothing persists permanently and from the great perspective of death, we are a mere sack of flesh. This does not mean however that the self is an illusion, as perhaps an ascetic idealist would claim. Such a claim would be problematic because claiming that there either is a self or is not a self is a claim that we can neither indefinitely affirm nor deny.

Furthermore, such fixed claims seem to obscure the matter even more and only reinforce the inability of our language to know things essentially. Only through recognizing oneself as one of the myriad voices in a cacophony of sound without relegating a pedestal to any particular, can we find some sort of liberation.

In conclusion of this subsection and the first section as whole, we can now summarize our complete conception of self. Self in the Zhuangzi is constituted by shen and xin, in which shen should be preserved and nourished, while our xin should be kept empty of a fixed set of likes and dislikes.

Furthermore, our self is something that is always changing and empty of any individuality, insofar as it is never a static entity but always in motion, hence we do not have a self but self (as a verb). Conceiving

40 Cook, 75. oneself with these characteristics allows for the proper understanding of how we should forget our wo and ji, that is in a complete immersion with all things themselves in a sort of reciprocal motion. Ultimately, this opening of oneself to other perspectives and things provides the gateway to living optimally through flow experience, not only in activities but with cultivation, encompassing all experiences.

III. Dependence and Action

A. The Relation Between Self and Dependence

In developing my conception of freedom through flow experience, equally as important in the process is characterizing how action fits into the overall picture. One of the important concepts in the

Zhuangzi that tends to be little discussed by modem scholars is dependence and how the myriad things are reliant on both the dao as well as the surrounding environment itself. Dependence is never directly mentioned in any of the anecdotes, but much can be understood indirectly between the relation of the myriad things to the True Master or each individual panpipe to the wind that rouses sound forth.

To begin, the most notable passage that elucidates this relation is the description of the wind as it

streams through the hollows of a forest.

The Great Clod belches out breath and its name is wind. So long as it doesn't come forth, nothing happens. But when it does, then ten thousand hollows begin crying wildly. Can't you hear them, long drawn out? In the mountain forests that lash and sway, there are huge trees a hundred spans around with hollows and openings like noses, like mouths, like ears, like jugs, like cups, like mortars, like rifts, like rats. They roar like waves, whistle like arrows, screech, gasp, cry, wail, moan, and howl, those in the lead calling out yeee!, those behind calling out yuuu! In a gentle breeze they answer faintly, but in a full gale the chorus is gigantic. And when the fierce wind has passed on, then all the hollows are empty (xu Hit) again. Have you never seen the tossing and trembling that goes on?" Blowing on the ten thousand things in a different way, so that each can be itself—all take what they want for themselves, but who does the sounding?”41

Within this beautiful depiction of the blowing wind and howling trees is entailed the dependence between

Heaven and Earth, the panpipe and the exhaling breath, the dao and the myriad things. What is immediately salient is the fact that the latter entity depends on the former, insofar as trees could not produce sound without the wind and a panpipe without someone blowing into it. In a parallel case, we depend on Heaven itself to have a body and a voice, insofar as that ‘something’ rather than nothing is what gives the potential for our parents to give birth to us.

To clarify this further, it is worth including the anecdote of Peng, a towering and majestic bird that has wings 3,000 li in length, who travels vast distances and is an exemplar of ‘freedom’ for the

Zhuangzi. It is articulated in the first chapter, “Free and Easy Wandering” ( iE iliiS) how Peng who possess ‘great understanding’ (dazhi A£tl) cannot be understood by the cicada and dove, who have a

‘small understanding’ ( xiaozhi/.h£fl). But it should be noted that even for a bird the size of Peng, his ability to whirlwind through the air, dipping and soaring back up, still depends upon the wind itself, perhaps even to a larger extent then the small creatures which cannot leave the ground. Cook puts this point quite succinctly:

[Peng is] a great bird with lofty aspirations, and it seems is the very image of freedom as it soars across the ocean skies from one end of the world to the other. But then we are reminded that the Peng is not free at all. In fact precisely because of its sheer immensity it is subject to constraints creatures of ordinary size would never know. To support its vast wings in flight, it requires the strength of a great wind beneath them, and such a wind, moreover, though it may carry them for six months at a time, comes about once a year.42

41 Watson, 7-8. 42 Cook, 70. In essence, it seems there is an equivocation of something which possesses a greater understanding depends that much more upon the forces that provide it freedom. In other words, something that attains

‘great understanding’ acknowledges the forces it depends upon and weaves them accordingly. Inversely, attempting to overcome, ignore or discard such dependencies will result only in a fatal plummet to the ground below. The two explicit concepts of ming and entail this sort of counter-intuitive freedom, and such will be the concluding discussion of dependence and action in the following section.

B. On ‘Ming and ‘Wuwei M il’

Equally as important to the conception of self in portraying Zhuangzian freedom, is how we should act with such a ‘self’. Encouraged throughout the text are methods of action that are non-forceful, harmonizing, and never privilege one perspective over the other. I will be drawing primarily from William

Callahan’s “Cook Ding’s Life on the Whetstone: Contingency, Action and Inertia in the .” and

Alan Fox’s, “Reflex and Reflectivity: Wuwei MM in the Both are fine pieces of scholarship that attend to the crux of proper action and how to exactly understand the shimmering and elusive notions of ming and wuwei.

To begin, ming is generally translated as “bright” and “to illuminate”, which also in the context of the Zhuangzi can be understood as the ability to “interchange” and “intercommunicate”.43 In other words, it coincides with keeping our xin vacuous, and is the ability to interchange shi/fei judgements, displaying our unattachment from either side of the equation. Such is a liberating skill for the Zhuangzian sage, being able to integrate opposite sides of distinctions into mutual and complete wholes.

43 William Callahan,“Cook Ding’s Life on the Whetstone: Contingency, Action and Inertia in the Zhuangzi,” Wandering At Ease in the Zhuangzi (1998), 183. To make it more concrete, the anecdote of the monkeys in the Zhuangzi illuminates this ability to harmonize:

But to wear out your brain trying to make things into one without realizing that they are all the same—this is called “three in the morning.” What do I mean by “three in the morning”? When the monkey trainer was handing out acoms, he said, “You get three in the morning and four at night.” This made all the monkeys furious. “Well, then,” he said, “you get four in the morning and three at night.” The monkeys were all delighted. There was no change in the reality behind the words, and yet the monkeys responded with joy and anger. Let them, if they want to. So the sage harmonizes with both right and wrong and rests in Heaven the Equalizer. This is called walking two roads.44

In this passage, the monkey keeper is able to use ming by switching the amount of acoms given out in the morning and at night, making the monkeys happy and yet retaining the sum of seven acoms. As

Callahan says, “The monkey keeper is successful because he is not attached to either three or four nuts first; he can let both alternatives proceed and see which one works for the particular group of monkeys.”45

In encountering daily problems, having this flexible mindset allows one try new shi/fei judgements without trying to force one to work. A parallel case is when Zhuangzi scolds Hui Shi for his inflexibility in using the huge gourd given by King of Wei, smashing it to pieces instead of using as tub to float down a river.46 Having the ability to sit on the axis of the dao and take in the whole view rather than focus on a single thing is the virtue that Zhuangzi repeatedly is a proponent of.47

So how does ming relate to action in a less abstract way? It is the characteristic that most masters or experts of an activity, profession, or sport possess, namely the extrapolation off of principles or rules, using them only as a temporary lodging place. Envision a jazz drummer who has classical training yet relies heavily on improvisation—he relies on the key of the song, the tempo and rhythms of the other

44 Watson, 11. 45 Callahan, “Cook Ding’s Life on the Whetstone: Contingency, Action and Inertia in the Zhuangzi,” 185. 46 Watson, 6. 47 Callahan, 186-187. voices. What characterizes his expertise though is his ability to spontaneously respond to those other voices, to accent and embellish underlying rhythms and follow the dynamics throughout the song. Rules and principles are a basic foundation for the jazz musician but only that; it is his ability to listen and respond impromptu to the song that establishes his level of mastery. Similarly, how Cook Ding responds to each cut of oxen effortlessly symbolizes his expertise in the profession of being a butcher. Such is using ming and remaining on the axis of dao,listening intently and reciprocating accordingly.

Holding such a capacity to respond transitions well into the content of concept of wuwei.

Translated as “non-action” or “effortless action,” Fox in his literary analysis, concludes that the correct way to understand wuwei is equating it with the term xiaoyao iE®, a sort of “carefree meandering”.48 Not only is wuwei characterized as a way of action but as Kuang-ming Wu articulates, a “flexible attitude that best fits our disposition and the disposition of the situation in which we are at the moment.”49 In this way we don’t limit our perception of something to one narrow possibility, but keep in view the near infinite possibilities of what something could be.

Similar to ming, wuwei is characterized by its ability to not only be rule-following but having a knack for something, i.e. extending above the rigidity of rules as the jazz drummer does in an improvised piece. Similar to the axis of the dao, Fox uses the notion of daoshu, the ‘hinge of ’ as the fulcrum which is effortlessly swings from one to state to the opposite, and back again. For example, envision the hinge of a door—one that is properly oiled is able to switch from open to close without any obstruction or dissonant sound. Conversely, a rusted hinge may not fully switch from open to close and usually requires quite the effort to switch from one state to the other. This would characterize inappropriate and forceful

action, in which similar to the rusted hinge, would stick out, cause friction and frustration.50

48 Alan Fox, “Reflex and Reflectivity: Wuwei in the Zhuangzi,” Asian Philosophy 6, (1996), 210. 49 Fox, “Reflex and Reflectivity: Wuwei in the Zhuangzi,” 210. 50 Fox, 214. Now what exactly is the difference between wuwei and ? As is common in the Zhuangzi, there isn’t a hard distinction between the two, as both seem to refer to the same quality of action.

However, I would argue that ming seems to more refer to clarity of mind one should possess in interchanging shi/feijudgements and is deep connection with keeping one’s xin empty. is moreso that quality of action that is implicated from possessing ming, the effortless and spontaneous action that follows from this sort of heart-mind state. Utilizing the hinge of dao, ming would refer to how clean and lubricated the hinge is and wuwei would refer to its ability to swing from open to close. All in all, it should be noted that this is in no way a hard distinction between the two, as all distinctions in the

Zhuangzi necessarily are inextricable and interdependent with each other.

It should be noted that, as Fox does, the True Person (zhenren) is usually understood as mindless and purposeless, which seems like a more denigrated and obscured state than someone who is clear-minded.51 However, similar to the misinterpretations of preserving shen rather than being indifferent to it, being mindless is not so much walking in a fog but keeping one’s empty, so one can embrace ming and act effortlessly and spontaneously, i.e. wuwei. Such allows one to be balanced with the ceaseless flux of both the world and oneself, and ultimately allow for the ability to live optimally and with the least resistance possible. In conclusion of this section and foreshadowing the next, Fox puts how this relates to freedom in quite a clarified form:

Many interpreters will agree that the Zhuangzi is concerned with freedom. Since the idea of a “fit” implies a reciprocal interrelation between the various components of a situation, freedom in this sense is constituted by lack of constraints which might inhibit or impede natural response. Usually, these constraints take the form of the burden of convention, expection, or social artifice. Therefore freedom does not necessarily imply the freedom to whatever we want. One must acknowledge and accommodate the real inevitabilities and limitations one encounters. This is because one cannot force the “fit”, one must rather find it, which involves meeting the world at least halfway.52

51 Fox, 218. 52 Fox, 220. IV. Flow and Freedom

A. Flow Experience in the Zhuangzi

As mentioned briefly in the previous sections, one of the primary features that characterizes sagely figures in the Zhuangzi is their ability to merge with the activity that they are doing, a sort of prolonged concentration that results in a loss of self-awareness and effortlessness in performing actions.

This is labelled as concentrating one’s shen, i.e. focusing one’s spirit to “embrace the ten thousand things and roll them into one.”53 Although bits and pieces of Cook Ding’s anecdote have been articulated above, it is worth posting the full story, as it is the most apt depiction of flow experience in the text:

Cook Ding was cutting up an ox for Lord Wenhui. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee—zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Jingshou music.

“Ah, this is marvelous!” said Lord Wenhui. “Imagine skill reaching such heights!”

Cook Ding laid down his knife and replied, “What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now—now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop, and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.

“A good cook changes his knife once a year—because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month—because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room—more than enough for the blade to play about in. That’s why after nineteen years, the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.

53 Watson, 4. “However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until—flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.”

“Excellent!” said Lord Wenhui. “I have heard the words of Cook Ding and learned how to care for life!”54

Expounded as the “secret for caring for life,” such a portrayal of Cook Ding’s agile knifework seems to be a product of not only his continual mastery of the craft but the effortlessness and rhythmic tempo that accompanies his performance. Furthermore, his continual progression from seeing the ox with his senses to allowing his spirit to do the work is embodied by the loss of ‘I-ness’ between the world and himself, embracing being-in-the-world and opposing the separateness that syntactical structure seems to reinforce. All in all, such a focused mental state is something that he cultivated through repetitive practice and solving challenges, culminating in coalescence with the dao itself.

The above aspects of Cook Ding’s experience intertwine smoothly with Mihaly

Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of flow, namely his concept of ‘optimal experience’ developed in his book

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. To put it bluntly, ‘optimal experience’ is simply living one’s life in an all-encompassing flow experience that was mentioned in Section 1. Csikszentmihalyi’s primary claim in the text is that to attain any sort of happiness and well-being, it is not as simple as attaining material goods, societal status or living comfortably, but rather is a result of sublimating the quality of experience itself.55 In other words, happiness itself is something that must be wrestled and wrought through inner transformation, a sort of mastery of one’s own mental states analogous to the mastery of a musical instrument, sport, or vocational activity. Inversely, reaching mastery affirms that

such a tranquil mental state is not easy to cultivate nor is it solely based on a singular formula—as he

54 Watson, 19-20. 55 Csikszentmihalyi, 20. states, “Control over consciousness cannot be institutionalized. As soon as it becomes part of a set of social rules and norms, it ceases to be effective in the way it was originally intended to be.”56

Now how exactly does the ancient Chinese text of the Zhuangzi and the contemporary psychological notion of ‘optimal experience’ coincide? There are three crucial tenets that characterize both the sagely experience in communion with the dao and living through ‘optimal experience’: 1) disciplining attentional structures for prolonged concentration, 2) a loss of self in the immersion of things and, 3) having a flexible disposition in discovering solutions. Each of these constitute what the Zhuangzi advocates as possessing the secret for caring for life as well as what Csikszentmihalyi states are the qualities one requires to make life an all-encompassing flow experience.57 To be clear, it is hard to advocate that such is an exact equivocation, but the stark similarities of both cannot be ignored by future scholars of the Zhuangzi.

The first of these characteristics, namely being able to concentrate one’s attention is pivotal both for Cook Ding and the purveyor of optimal experience. Without this concentration, Cook Ding would be unable to maintain the sharpness of his blade, insofar as the preciseness of his cuts require the utmost attention to the oxen. Even though the above passage indicates that Ding uses his ‘spirit’ to cut the oxen, this should not be interpreted as mindless activity, but rather the most intense concentration into what he is doing. As is characteristic with masters of a craft, they perform high-level and cognitively-heavy tasks with the utmost ease, in which prolonged attention and concentration bridge this gap. Without possessing the attentional discipline, prolonged flow experience in any activity will always be disrupted.

In a parallel fashion, Csikszentmihalyi believes that disciplining one’s attention is vital to living

optimally and being able to prolong flow experience. A passage from the chapter, “Cheating Chaos” puts

this pointedly:

56 Csikszentmihalyi, 20. 57 Csikszentmihalyi, 203. People who know how to transform stress into enjoyable challenges spend very little time thinking about themselves. They are not expending all their energy trying to satisfy what they believe to be their needs or worrying about socially conditioned desires. Instead their attention is alert, constantly processing information from their surroundings. The focus is still set by the person’s goal, but it is open enough to notice and adapt to external events even if they are not directly relevant to what he wants to accomplish.58

Conversely, attentional disorders and stimulus overinclusion prevent flow because our mental energy is misguided, fluid, and erratic.59 A poignant example is that of the schizophrenic, who notices irrelevant stimuli and automatically processes that information, unable to keep voices or hallucinations out of consciousness.60 On a more shared level, excessive self-consciousness and constant worrying are a result of guiding one’s attention exorbitantly inward, allowing a flurry of anxieties to continually be the focus and ultimately perpetuate one’s worries. As Csikszentmihalyi discovered through the study of various psychological experiments, those who were capable of prolonging flow experience were those who had the ability to screen out stimulation in a variety of situations and only focused on what was relevant.61 Although both neurophysical advantages and childhood influences hold weight in defining one’s later attentional structures, such a skill is something that can be disciplined through active cultivation and application to everyday moments and activities62

Another critical element of both the Daoist exemplar and living optimally is what

Csikszentmihalyi calls ‘unselfconscious self-assurance’.63 Whether it be a polar explorer wandering the

Arctic alone or one in a concentration camp, the unifying characteristic was that they did not doubt their

58 Csikszentmihalyi, 204. 59 Csikszentmihalyi, 85. 60 Csikszentmihalyi, 84. 61 Csikszentmihalyi, 87. 62 Csikszentmihalyi, 93. 63 Csikszentmihalyi, 203. own resources would be sufficient to allow them to determine to their fate. More importantly however, many of these people curiously lacked egos, insofar as their mental energy was guided not so much towards themselves and dominating their environment but rather, harmonizing with it.64 In the following passage, Csikszentmihalyi highlights this seemingly paradoxical combination:

This attitude occurs when a person no longer sees himself in opposition to the environment, as an individual who insists that his goals, his intentions take precedence over everything else. Instead, he feels a part of whatever goes on around him, and tries to do his best within the system in which he must operate. Paradoxically, this sense of humility, the recognition that one’s goal may have to be subordinated to a greater entity, and that to succeed one may have to plan by a different set of rules from what one would prefer—is a hallmark of strong people.65

Such a description seems to fit well with the how Cook Ding envisions his work as part of the dao, affirming himself yet never feeling in opposition to the things around him. Similarly, Ziqi claiming he lost his ‘self also coincides with this notion, insofar as he is not making a claim that he doesn’t exist, but rather that there is no opposition to between ‘self’ and ‘other’ or ‘myriad things’ and ‘ ’. Furthermore, the claim that the sage has ‘no-self’ also falls into this category, insofar as he realizes that there lacks any separateness and instead, affirms the inextricable connectedness between self and object. Tying back to our exposition on what it means to ‘forget one’s self’ in the first section, it is undeniable that there exists similarities between the proper understanding of the phrase and Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of

‘unselfconscious self-assurance.’

The final tenet that links the optimal experience with instructions from the Zhuangzi is one’s ability to adapt to external conditions and discover new solutions. In other words, one who possesses the above-mentioned characteristic of ming and translates that into wuwei possesses this flexible mindset,

64 Csikszentmihalyi, 203. 65 Csikszentmihalyi, 203-04. insofar as they adapt to pressing external conditions and weave them effectively. Whether it be the monkey keeper who switches the distribution of nuts to maintain the happiness of the monkeys, the physically disabled who accepts their limitations as opportunities for enjoyment and greater self-complexity, or Cook Ding adapted to each new slab of oxen, flexibility is the key. Csikszentmihalyi commits a whole chapter to how in interviewing those personally struck with life-changing limitations such as blindness or paraplegia, many saw it in as a catalyst for opportunity and self-development after accepting their condition.66 All too often we get stuck in the ruts of genetic programming and social conditioning and our goals are constantly frustrated, but it is our response to external conditions that define the strength of the self. Having this ability to “interchange” and “intercommunicate,” which coincides with keeping our xin empty, is pivotal both for the seeker or optimal experience as well as the

Daoist exemplar.

To unite these three characteristics into a single example, Csikszentmihalyi uses the example of hurrying to the office one morning and the car won’t start when you turn the ignition. In many cases, a person will get frustrated and hit the wheel in anger, their attention fixed on all the bad outcomes that will occur when he or she does not show up for work. They may call AAA to take a look at the car or vent their anger in an online status that “today is already a terrible day.” Such a case occurs when one’s ego takes the front stage, they attempt to affirm rigid goals and fail to weave the concurring external conditions effectively.

In the case that one possessed the three characteristics above, one may realize that sometimes the car won’t work and will immediately adapt, whether that be calling a taxi, walking to the nearest public transportation or contacting the office about the situation. One’s attention is not so fixed on getting the car to work or bad consequences but immediately turns to other possibilities, as the goal to be fulfilled is to get to the office, which does not need to be by car. Additionally, similar to how the four masters in the

66 Csikszentmihalyi, 192-198. earlier parable take delight in external conditions causing change, one acknowledges the external conditions present and embraces one of the alternatives to getting to work. They don’t feel targeted by the world as they realize their inseparability with it, they simply acknowledge the conditions and weave them accordingly.

B. Forgetting to Freedom

After the long exposition about properly understanding how one ‘forgets their self’ in the

Zhuangzi, how this translates to action and ultimately Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of ‘optimal experience’ we can finally return to Scott Cook’s phrase of ‘freedom through complete dependency.” Such a contradictory statement may still seem a bit mysterious, but now we can connect all the dots with our various explications outlined above.

To summarize all previous discussions, our shen should be preserved and nourished for while never being discarded or abandoned, while our xin kept empty and only reflecting what’s immediately in front of us. Having a healthy body and heart-mind subsequently allows us to have longer enduring flow experiences, ultimately consummating in flow experience that pervades each and every moment. The three defining characteristics that are outlined by Csikszentmihalyi to do this includes disciplined and immersed attention, unselfconscious self-assurance, as well as have a flexible mental state to effectively respond to external conditions. Corresponding these traits with possessing ming and translating that into wuwei, one than is able to act not only virtuously and continually harmonize with Heaven in the Daoist context, but provide well-being and mental tranquility that is well-documented by psychologists today.

Although much of the psychological terminology affirms many uncarved distinctions that did not exist in

Zhuangzi’s day, the immediate similarities between both qualitative experiences are profound and enlightening. Now ultimately, how does this transform into an account of freedom? To be free for the

Zhuangzian sage is not merely possessing the capacity to do whatever one wants—its to merge oneself with not only the activities one performs but the functions of Heaven itself. Being free for the Zhuangzi is to affirm the conditions one immediately has around them and to use those conditions to reach a level mastery that is unmatched. Immediately salient is the depiction of Peng, the large bird who depends on that much more on the wind to fly and yet masters such conditions to flourish in the sky, whipping around in the heights of the azure nothingness. Analogously, Cook Ding takes the conditions around him and converts them into an art, cultivating autotelic experience simply through cutting oxen and skill with the knife. Ultimately, freedom is not only having the capacity to choose or do whatever one wants but it’s a conversion of the quality of experience itself, an inner transformation that makes even the most mundane moments, the most cherished.

Thus, freedom is not something attained by simply the expanding and building oneself up, but rather letting go of oneself and merging with all things. Csikszentmihalyi notes this in his four steps of self-identity: 1) one preserves the physical self and survival, comfort, and pleasure are tantamount, 2) self-expansion embraces the community and family values, 3) move towards reflective individualism, finding value in oneself 4) finally, a turning away from the self, back towards integration with other people and universal values. This final step corresponds with embracing the dao, when one merges their goal with a system larger than a person, whether that be a cause, an idea, or transcendental entity.67

Freedom is not so much creating out of nothing, but weaving conditions for further opportunities and not only having yourself in mind.

When we are instructed to forget, it is to embrace this final step of being part and parcel of the dao, to transform inner turmoil into a harmonized system, to take external challenges and convert them into newly present challenges. Not only that, but it is to find a sort of divinity in every fleeting moment, to

67 Csikszentmihalyi, 222. wield the wind as Peng does and enjoy experience until we must hand our body back. Only in completely merging with the dao and becoming fully dependent upon it will one come to realize the freedom that is present here and now, waiting to be fully embraced. In conclusion, Csikszentmihalyi concludes Flow with a wonderful quote that emphasizes our need for this ‘self’ re-integration:

But complexity consists of integration as well as differentiation. The task of the next decades and centuries is to realize this undeveloped component of the mind. Just as we have learned to separate ourselves from each other and from the environment, we now need to learn how to reunite ourselves with other entities around us without losing our hard-won individuality. The most promising faith for the future might be based on the realization that the entire universe is a system related by common laws and that it makes no sense to impose our dreams and desires on nature without taking them into account. Recognizing the limitations of human will, accepting a cooperative rather than a ruling role in the universe, we should feel the relief of the exile who is finally returning home. The problem of meaning will then be resolved as the individual’s purpose merges with the universal flow.68

68 Csikszentmihalyi, 240. References:

Callahan, William. “Cook Ding’s Life on the Whetstone: Contingency, Action and Inertia in the Zhuangzi.” Roger T. Ames, ed., Wandering At Ease in the Zhuangzi. Albany: SUNY Press, 1998.

Cook, Scott Bradley. “Harmony and Cacophony in the Panpipes of Heaven.” Scott Cook, ed., Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology o f Optimal Experience. (New York: Harper & Row, 1990).

Fox, Alan. “Reflex and Reflectivity: Wuwei in the Zhuangzi.” Asian Philosophy 6, (1996), 59-72.

Jochim, Chris. “Just Say No to ‘No-Self in the Zhuangzi.” Roger T. Ames, ed., Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi. Albany: SUNY Press, 1998.

Littlejohn, Ronnie. “Referring and Reporting: The Use of Selfing Language in the Zhuangzi.” Dao: A Journal o f Comparative Philosophy 17 (2018), 547-558.

Ming, Thomas. “Who Does the Sounding? The Metaphysics of the First-Person Pronoun in the Zhuangzi.” Dao: A Journal o f Comparative Philosophy 15 (2016), 57-79.

Puett, Michael. “‘Nothing Can Overcome Heaven’: The Notion of Spirit in the Zhuangzi.” Scott Cook, ed., Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses On the Zhuangzi. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.

Watson, Burton. The Complete Works o f Zhuangzi. Columbia University Press, 2013.

Ziporyn, Brook, “How Many Are the Ten Thousand Things and I? Relativism, Mysticism, and the Privileging of Oneness in the ‘Inner Chapters.’” Scott Cook, ed., Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on the Zhuangzi. Albany, State University of New York Press, 2003.