‘The net of heaven is vast, vast…’ Rethinking a philosophy for youth work in the Anthropocene. #7 Wandering at Ease in the World

In the natural amphitheatre of the forest-ringed crater lake, the voices of the two old gentlemen on their early morning swim carried clearly across the still surface of the water. They were breaststroking leisurely across the lake, breathing easily, chatting comfortably. It looked so inviting that I delved in the car for my bathers and was soon floating, with the occasional desultory backstroke, in the gently enveloping water.

Eventually emerging from the lake, I made my way up the steps of the jetty and, turning around for my last view of the water, became aware of a small, delicate fish, no more than four centimetres long. Transparent, with black patterning running along its length. Watching it meander below me, occasionally picking at unseen tidbits in the shallows of the steps, it immediately brought to mind the tale of Zhuangzi, his friend Huizi, and The Happy Fish:

Zhuangzi and Huizi were strolling along the bridge over the Hao River. Zhuangzi said, “The minnows swim about so freely, following the openings wherever they take them. Such is the happiness of fish.”

Zhuangzi said, “Let’s go back to the starting point. You said, ‘Whence do you know the happiness of fish?’  Since your question was premised on your knowing that I know it, I must know it from right here, up above the Hao River.’ (Zhuangzi, chapter 17, translated Ziporyn)

This multi-layered story is one of the best known and most widely discussed in Daoist philosophy. The interpretations are many-fold, the philosophical questions contained in the few lines wide-ranging.  Here I’d like to pick up on some themes from the story that pertain to living well, and contentedly, in our (flawed) world.

The first concerns the question of happiness. Chapter 18 of the Zhuangzi, ‘Reaching Utmost Happiness’, sees Zhuangzi puzzling over people’s frantic pursuit of happiness, chasing after wealth, high rank, adulation – all the external trappings of success, while ‘what they despise are poverty, low status, early death, and others thinking ill of them.’  ‘The wealthy torture their bodies, frenzied by work, accumulating so much wealth that they are unable to use it all.’ ‘But this is a really foolish way to treat one’s own body’, he concludes. Moreover, the frantic pursuit of a long life means they spend their old age fearful of death.

Zhuangzi’s description and analysis more than 2300 years ago of people’s futile striving for happiness in frenzied activity and grasping after stuff rings very modern. By contrast, for both Zhuangzi and the fish, happiness is to be found when one is ‘you-ing’ in one’s proper element; in their ‘effortless action’ experiencing real happiness. Here the word ‘you’ (pronounced ‘yo’), a key term in the Zhuangzi, describes both the fish’s ‘drifting along’ and Zhuangzi’s ‘rambling about’ or ‘wandering at ease’. As philosopher Hans-Georg Moeller (2011) observes: ‘The perfect happiness of the fish or man is that they lose themselves in their respective element.’ And in losing themselves, being content within their element, they are experiencing the ultimate ‘happiness that is without happiness’.

Fish at Play in a Spring Stream (春波魚戲圖). Xugu (虛谷, 1823-1896), Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)

http://www.chinaonlinemuseum.com/painting-fish-xugu.ph

The old men in the lake are likewise convivially enjoying their swim, ‘you-ing’ where they will, happily at ease. They appear to ‘harness the flow of being’, leaving themselves open to what may manifest along their path in the water, embracing the ‘Radiance of Drift and Doubt’ (Ziporyn 2020:16).

‘Being in one’s element’. The Zhuangzi contains many examples of different creatures dependent on their particular element to flourish. These often serve to illustrate the validity of different perspectives, (and traps we fall into when we make assumptions based on our limited perspective). Diverse beings need different environments and nourishment, and view the world, variously, from their particular muddy pond (tapir), grassy meadow (cicada), or the underbrush (quail).

Take the Marquis of Lu, who found a seabird on the outskirts of his city, took it riding in his chariot, arranged a concert in its honour, and had a feast of chops prepared for it – and is then surprised to find the bird languish. Because he is out of his element.

‘If you want to nourish a bird with what nourishes a bird then you should let it roost in the deep forest, play among the banks and islands, float on the rivers and lakes, eat mudfish and minnows, follow the rest of the flock in flight and rest, and live in any way it chooses.’

Similarly, ‘fish live in water and thrive, but if men tried to live in water, they would die’ (Zhuangzichapter 18, translated Watson 2013).

Does this mean humans have no business swimming in bodies of water? On the contrary: another story in the Zhuangzi (chapter 19) illustrates the possibilities when a person is responsive to the environment they find themselves in. Confucius and his companions come across an old man who, they are afraid, is about to perish in the rapids of a river. However they observe him safely emerging downstream without coming to grief. When asked about his capacity to do this his response is a quintessential expression of wuwei, ‘effortless action’: ‘I go in with the currents and come out with the flow’. In other words, he is responsive to the conditions he encounters, ready to adjust his actions to his new element.

Being within one’s element doesn’t preclude ‘wandering far and unfettered’ and exploring beyond one’s boundaries.

Nor would Zhuangzi, who delights in the creative possibilities offered by the strange and the unexpected, be surprised by encountering other creatures who seem to defy expectations. Such is the wondrous strangeness of ‘All under Heaven.’

Knowing fish happiness

Zhuangzi’s sceptical friend Huizi asks him how he can know fish happiness, since he is not a fish. (A good part of the happiness evident here is in the friends’ pleasure in the play of ideas and perspectives). Zhuangzi’s ‘knowing’ lies in the continuity of the world he shares with the myriad things. Like the butterfly (see blog 6), Zhuangzi and the fish are separate and contained – individually distinct. But they are each ‘you-ing’ – drifting, flitting, rambling about, content in their element.

Zhuangzi ‘knows’ fish happiness because of his awareness that he is continuous with all things. And in embracing this continuity he is able to identify with the different, but shared, experience of fellow creatures, an ability that points to the value accorded to the imagination in Daoist understanding. AsKirill O. Thompson (2021) observes, ‘Zhuangzi’s awareness of fish happiness results from his openness and resonance, his rapport with the lively capering fish (which would have been evident to Huizi as well if he had not been so detached)’. This interconnectedness expands and enriches Zhuangzi’s world.

Wagging his tail in the mud

It is evident from the richness of examples throughout the Zhuangzi that a key ingredient for being able to live contentedly – you-ing in one’s environment – is to live one’s life unencumbered by imposed expectations (including, we might say, social pressures). This is exemplified in Zhuangzi’s  Wagging his tail in the mud.

Zhuangzi was once fishing beside the Pu River when two emissaries brought him a message from the King of Chu: “The king would like to trouble you with the control of his realm.” Zhuangzi, holding fast to his fishing pole, without so much as turning his head, said, “I have heard there is a sacred turtle in Chu, already dead for three thousand years, which the king keeps in a bamboo chest high in his shrine. Do you think this turtle would prefer to be dead and having his carcass exalted, or alive and dragging his tail through the mud?” The emissaries said, “Alive and dragging his tail through the mud.” Zhuangzi said, “Away with you then! I too will drag my tail through the mud!” (Chapter 17, translated Ziporyn 2020).

A good life allows for people to figure out and live their own values and priorities without the imposition of external expectations.

‘Those who forsake themselves for external things, who lose their inborn natures to convention – these are people who have turned themselves upside down.’  (chapter 16, Ziporyn).

An immediately recognisable example of this is the story of Nanrong Zhu (chapter 23), who went to seek guidance from Laozi.  Nanrong was taken aback when Laozi asked him ‘Why did you come with all this crowd of people?’ ‘Nanrong, astonished, turned to look behind him.’ As Burton (2013) explains,  ‘the ‘crowd of people’ was the ‘baggage of old ideas, the conventional concepts of right and wrong, good and bad, life and death, that he lugged around with him wherever he went.’

Living within the noise and the dust