Windfall from the Useless Tree
Thoughts apropos nothing
Introduction
Huizi said to Zhuangzi, “I have a huge tree which people call the Stink Tree. The trunk is swollen and gnarled, impossible to align with any level or ruler. The branches are twisted and bent, impossible to align to any T-square or carpenter’s arc. Even if it were growing right in the road, a carpenter would not give it so much as a second glance. And your words are similarly big but useless, which is why they are rejected by everyone who hears them.” Zhuangzi said, “Haven’t you ever seen a wildcat or weasel? It crouches low to await its prey, pounces now to the east and now to the west, leaping high and low. But this is exactly what lands it in a trap, and it ends up dying in the net. But take a yak: it is big like the clouds draped across the heavens. Now, that is something that is good at being big—but of course it cannot catch so much as a single mouse. You, on the other hand, have this big tree, and you worry that it’s useless. Why not plant it in our homeland of not-even-anything, the vast wilds of open nowhere? Then you could loaf and wander there, doing lots of nothing there at its side, and take yourself a nap, far-flung and unfettered, there beneath it. It will never be cut down by ax or saw. Nothing will harm it. Since it has nothing for which it can be used, what could entrap or afflict it?”
Zhuangzi – Chapter 1 – Wandering far and unfettered
This is a series of posts that began life on a Daoist forum – impromptu reflections on passages of the Zhuangzi penned while idling beneath the Useless Tree. Postcards from nowhere; thoughts apropos nothing.
Among those of a Daoish persuasion, the Laozi (Daodejing) gets a lot of attention, and rightly so – it isn’t the canonical ur-text of Daoism for nothing. But there are those with a taste for the peculiar, enchanted, cryptic weirdness of the Zhuangzi – a remarkable, strange and charming collection of tales, allegories, aphorisms and dialogues with a distinctly radical Daoist flavour. An ancient book unrivalled in its freshness, humour, and startling relevance for today.
You say you haven’t heard of Zhuangzi? Such good fortune! This very moment a shadowy doorway has unassumingly opened upon that labyrinthine branching of possible worlds that is your life. Pass within and you might find nothing of interest…or you may yet acquire an interest in nothing!
Warning: May contain traces of Usefulness.
(All quoted passages in this series are from: Ziporyn, B. (2009) Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings, Hackett)
1 – A dao is made by walking it
“Haven’t you heard about when Yuzi of Shouling tried to learn the gait of the people of Handan? Before he was able to master this local skill, he had forgotten his original gait and had to return home on his hands and knees”
Zhuangzi
Chapter 17 – Autumn Floods
We can learn a lot from others: a good recipe, how to change a tyre, differential calculus – the list goes on. But when it comes to such matters as Who (or What) am I? How should I live? What is Reality?, Zhuangzi suggests we’re on our own. Worse, in seeking ‘solutions’ to these questions by adopting or imitating another’s dao, we foreclose on the possibility of discovering our own unique, spontaneous responses. The world isn’t short of gurus offering us a prescription for what ails us (frequently for a sizeable fee). If we’re hoping Zhuangzi has ‘The Solution’ then we’re in for a disappointment.
Thank goodness!
2 – It is what it is
“Let yourself be carried along by things so that the mind wanders freely. Hand it all over to the unavoidable so as to nourish what is central within you. That is the most you can do. What need is there to deliberately seek any reward? The best thing is just to fulfill what’s mandated to you, your fate—to go be what you can’t help being. How could there be any difficulty to that?”
Zhuangzi – Chapter 4 – In the Human World
This one is deep, but glimpsed superficially, all too easily misunderstood.
Back in the ‘world of dust’, far from this great tree, I hear the phrase “it is what it is” frequently, often accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders and a tone of resignation. I think to myself: true enough…BUT I don’t remember that being one of the rallying cries of the suffragettes or the abolitionists. And I imagine it probably suits my boss pretty well if I utter these magic words after she has refused my request for a rise…again!
I don’t think Zhuangzi is counselling resignation or quietism over activism here. This perspective is way upstream from such distinctions and so encompasses both. The rage at injustice, and the energetic actions leading to change are also the mandated fate of those so inclined. The bird that I flip my boss as I quit is also mandated by fate.
So nothing escapes the mandate of fate? Where does that leave us then? Right here where we are. In any given moment, which is all we ever have, things cannot be other than as they are. If they could have been different, they would have been. So take the load off your shoulders and ‘hand it all over to the unavoidable’. Do you have another option?
3 – S’all good
“Lao Dan said, “Why don’t you simply let him [Confucius] see life and death as a single string, acceptable and unacceptable as a single thread, thus releasing him from his fetters? How would that be, do you think?”
Zhuangzi – Chapter 5 – Markers of full virtuosity
The autumn leaves on this old tree are starting to mellow beautifully. Back on the outskirts of town, on the road that supposedly leads somewhere, there is a church with one of those gaudy posters on display. This one reads:
“Life wins. Death has been defeated!”
That’s strange, I thought when I passed by, I didn’t know they were having a contest. As any ‘good’ Daoist will tell you (should you be fortunate enough to encounter one), there really is no opposition between these two since they are mutually constitutive of one another. Might just as well proclaim the victory of up over down, or outside over inside. As they say: good luck with that!
Later Zhuangzi says:
“Thus what makes my life something good is what makes my death something good; considering my life good is what makes me consider my death good.”
Chapter 6 – The Great Source as Teacher
Bit of a stretch. Unpalatable you say? Surely you didn’t think windfall from the Useless Tree would be tasty? It’s certainly a far cry from cults of immortality and their cinnabar elixirs. In the story, Confucius couldn’t go there – fate didn’t mandate it. Most likely you and I can’t either. But I think it’s worth chewing this one over for a while, the flavour might just grow on you.
4 – Techno-Logic
‘Where there are clever machines, there will necessarily be clever machinations, and where there are clever machinations, there will necessarily be mechanical hearts and minds.’ Once the mechanical heart is lodged in your breast, purity and simplicity are no longer complete in you. When purity and simplicity are no longer complete, the imponderable spirit and life in you will become unsettled. When the spirit and life in you are unsettled, the Dao cannot carry or be carried by them.’
Zhuangzi – Chapter 12 – Heaven and Earth
Out here in the ‘wilds of wide open nowhere’ we’re free from the incessant drone of the infernal combustion engine. Instead the gentle susurrus of the remaining golden leaves stirs our useless reflections. Thank goodness for the uselessness of this marvellous tree, who shall remain ever safe from the attentions of the chainsaw.
But as anyone who has tried to fell and log a tree with an axe will tell you, chainsaws sure can be useful. Few areas of human endeavour can rival the claim to Usefulness that technology makes. It has seemingly infiltrated and transformed almost every domain of human activity and shows few signs of slowing down. With it we can always do more, faster, easier. But as Zhuangzi’s remarkably prescient and insightful words warn – there are profound dangers involved in an uncritical embrace of mechanised technology. We hardly need reminding of the downsides. But I think what is most interesting about the passage is it’s insight into the progressive effect of such tech on our psyches, both individually and collectively.
Like the proverbial man with the hammer, perceiving only nails, we appear to be fully in the grip of techno mania, rapidly accelerating our clever project to map, measure, micromanage and manipulate every last corner of reality not least of all, humanity. In the process we are perhaps unwittingly rendering ourselves progressively more machine-like and thus alienated, subsumed into the nefarious workings of the almighty algorithm. This is just fine and dandy according to the tech prophets and profiteers. Boldly to the metaverse everyone! Zhuangzi has other ideas: ‘push off and leave me to drag my tail in the mud!’ he tells the emissaries of the king, in another tale when they approach similarly promising comfort at the expense of freedom. Is the metaverse or whatever artificial ‘utopia’ we surround ourselves with so different from the gilded cage of the courtier’s life that he so emphatically rejects?
While there is undeniably a Laozian primitivist streak evident in some chapters of the text, I’m not sure we necessarily need interpret Zhuangzi as urging us back to some sort of prelapsarian state, ditching our phones and taking the washing back to the river bank. Technology has tremendous value when it, like the ‘understanding consciousness’ of which it is a product, knows it’s limits. To know the limits is to know the simplicity and purity of spontaneous nature, of utter mystery, of uselessness which is the larger context for all activity and to which it must, ultimately, remain in service if we are to have any hope of surviving let alone flourishing.
5 – Walk and Chew Gum
“Once a monkey trainer was distributing chestnuts. He said, ‘I’ll give you three in the morning and four in the evening.’ The monkeys were furious. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you four in the morning and three in the evening.’ The monkeys were delighted. This change brought them no loss either in name or in fact, but in one case it brought anger and in another delight. He just went along with the ‘thisness,’ relying on the rightness of the present ‘this.’ Thus the Sage uses various rights and wrongs to harmonize with others, and yet remains at rest in the middle of Heaven the Potter’s Wheel. This is called Walking Two Roads.”
Zhuangzi – Chapter 2 – Equalising Assessments of Things
We don’t encounter many passers by in this neck of the woods (besides the occasional band of earth scanning gatherers of the psylocibe semilanceata – quite abundant here in the autumn). But during the warmer months one may stumble across the occasional spiritual guru with an eager band of devotees gathered around to hear ‘The Message’. Equipped with the regulation vase of flowers and far off gaze, the guru – after the extended silence precisely calibrated to elicit maximal awkward seat shuffling amongst the assembled faithful, will treat his listeners to such choice observations as “all is one”, “nothing is happening” and “everything is already perfect”. His audience nod and some chins are even stroked thoughtfully, but there is invariably at least one poor soul who maintains that cancer, billionaires and rising sea levels would appear to suggest otherwise. Our guru smiles indulgently at such touching naivete. He assures the questioner that perhaps he too was once troubled by such “seemingly real appearances” but once the “story of separation” or the “illusion of self” is seen through such questions are rendered meaningless. Strangely he seems surprisingly put out when his card reader doesn’t work out here in the wilderness and he has to make do with the handful of stray coins and fluff that a hasty search of back pockets and purses yields.
Wending their way back into town not much the wiser, the attendees find themselves once more within haranguing distance of the unholy collection of ideologues, preachers, middle managers and ‘influencers’ all pedalling their version of “everything is a complete mess – thanks to your failings (or of those Nasty People ‘over there’ who are spoiling everything for you) and its high time you did (x) to improve everything”, (x) being infinitely variable, frequently contradictory and often involving ‘purchases’.
What’s an exhausted seeker to do? Follow the guru to the heavenly realm and abide in the Absolute (translation: spiritual bypass, dissociation and possible nihilism) or remain lashed to the hamster wheel of striving and struggling without end? Zhuangzi suggests that where we find ourselves snagged on one of these polarities we might do worse than employ a little both/and thinking. The monkey trainer (aka ‘The Sage’) recognises both that 4+3 or 3+4 amounts to the same thing and that this is a meaningful difference from the monkey’s perspective. In other words the Sage can operate in the interplay of rights and wrongs, sickness and health, life and death, fully engaged in living while simultaneously ‘basking it all in the broad daylight of heaven’ – seeing the woods for the trees, remaining informed by a larger perspective. Neither pole wins out, both are held in creative tension.
Taking pity on his flock (and mindful of the nearby cashpoint) our guru suggests they take in a movie at the shabby arthouse by the roundabout. Wisely at this point a few fall behind and duck into the Travellers Rest for a few cold ones. The remainder soon regret their decision not to join them. The poignant, if too long story of tragic injustice isn’t marred so much by the painstaking opening of sweet wrappers in the quiet scenes, as by the contrasting reactions of our guru and some of his less stable acolytes. The former appears determined to puncture the mood by loudly explaining to anyone within earshot that all this ‘drama’ is merely so much projected light flickering on an inert screen, the latter become frequently overwhelmed by the pathos of the unfolding events – sobbing inconsolably when the protagonist finally expires and shouting abuse and hurling popcorn at the ‘baddies’.
As far as we can tell there are no monkey trainers in the rows behind but plenty of sagacity nonetheless. Once the disruptive party has been ushered out of the building the remaining cinephiles are quite capable of harmonising these opposing perspectives, suspending disbelief enough to engage fully with the ups and downs of the drama while retaining a background awareness of the artifice involved. Neither pole wins out, both are held in creative tension – two roads are walked simultaneously.
We needn’t be afraid of paradox here – our allergy to which likely reveals more about our minds than the nature of ‘Reality’, which for the Zhuangzian is likely mostly unknowable anyway. This is not a Truth claim but simply an invitation to explore a novel perspective and see if it can provide a more adaptive interface with the world – a very convenient and dare I say it ‘useful’ heuristic to keep handy in the back pocket – along with the stray coins, the fluff. . . and of course the Wrigley’s Peppermint.
6 – Tweet Talk
All day long we apply our minds to struggles against one thing or another—struggles unadorned or struggles concealed, but in either case tightly packed one after another without gap…shooting forth like an arrow from a bowstring: such is our presumption when we arbitrate right and wrong. Holding fast as if to sworn oaths: such is our defense of our victories. Worn away as if by autumn and winter: such is our daily dwindling, drowning us in our own activities, unable to turn back.
Zhuangzi – Chapter 2 – Qiwulun (Equalising Assessment of Things)
Mercifully out here in the ‘wilds of wide open nowhere’ the phone signal is non-existent, but back in town, that portion of The Great Cacophony laughably known as ‘social’ media, continues to drive the denizens ever closer toward something resembling Thomas Hobbes’s ‘war of all against all’. Just as there are more guns than people in the Great Mighty Superpower Nation, so there are seemingly more opinions than there are residents of our town. In short: it’s a powder keg. One or two town counsellors even mooted forming a ‘working group’ such is the extremity of the situation. Needless to say, their proposal was aggressively blocked by a rival faction.*
Prof. Janet Rust – Head of History up in the dreaming spires of the old polytechnic says it was “ever thus” and perhaps she has a point. Zhuangzi penned the above words nearly 2,500 years ago during a period of Chinese history known as the ‘Warring States’, and Yuan Hongdao (1568-1610) in his commentary on the same chapter, witheringly summarises the bleak situation thus:
“Between heaven and earth there is nothing that is free of rights and wrongs. The world is a city of rights and wrong. The body and mind are a house of rights and wrongs. Wisdom, stupidity, worthiness, and worthlessness are the fruits of rights and wrongs. All of history is a deserted battlefield of rights and wrongs. The people of the world drown and float in rights and wrongs, wrongs and rights, clinging to their rotting remnants, like fat insects dangling from the ends of branches”.
Yuan doesn’t mince words. Do we think he would be in the least surprised by Twitter?
The wunderkinder responsible for said ‘platform’ were too busy innovating to pay any mind to the likes of Yuan or Zhuangzi but the latter would surely have chuckled at ‘Twitter’ since later in Chapter 2 he says:
But human speech is not just a blowing of air. Speech has something of which it speaks, something it refers to.” Yes, but what it refers to is peculiarly unfixed. So is there really anything it refers to? Or has nothing ever been referred to? You take it to be different from the chirping of baby birds. But is there really any difference between them? Or is there no difference?
Zhuangzi – Chapter 2 – Qiwulun (Equalising Assessment of Things)
Zhuangzi isn’t coming down on either side. Of course there’s a perspective from which human speech or writing is different from the chirping of birds – that’s obvious – but given a little imagination and reflection it’s easy to see the (also obvious but obscured) sense in which it is just the same. Chicks cheep, humans compare each other with Hitler or issue death threats to anyone who disagrees with them. Making a little room for the latter perspective might take some of the heat/hate out of the former.
Prof. Rust wisely adds a caveat: unlike the warring princelings of ancient China, we’re sitting on an arsenal big enough to end human civilisation a hundred times over. Maybe a good time to get some perspective.
Far below, through the haze the town shimmers and glints. A strange hive extruded from the materials of the earth. Every inhabitant different in their multiple opinions, their value judgements; every inhabitant identical in having them.
*A spokesmen for said rival faction yesterday dismissed as “utterly ridiculous” suggestions that the group’s links to local tech ‘titan’ Newt Freke could conceivably have had any bearing on the matter.
7 – Dream On
Once Zhuang Zhou dreamt he was a butterfly, fluttering about joyfully just as a butterfly would. He followed his whims exactly as he liked and knew nothing about Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he awoke, and there he was, the startled Zhuang Zhou in the flesh. He did not know if Zhou had been dreaming he was a butterfly, or if a butterfly was now dreaming it was Zhou. Surely, Zhou and a butterfly count as two distinct identities! Such is what we call the transformation of one thing into another.
Zhuangzi – Chapter 2 – Equalising Assessment of Things
The pollen count in town this time of year is off the chart. But Barry Figgis (Acting Head of Philosophy at our town’s old polytechnic) is a trooper – he’s determined to finish this terms module: “Getting Real with Reality” even if his head feels like it’s been pumped full of Styrofoam. Possibly some stray pollen grains from The Useless Tree have wafted in on the warm westerly as ‘The Famous Butterfly Dream’ has made it into today’s lesson plan. The bored undergrads have never heard of it though, and they weren’t nearly as excited as Barry had hoped by the inclusion of what he felt sure would be an “edgy” discussion of the ‘meta-epistemology of The Matrix movies’. Suddenly feeling his age, Barry scours his mind in vain for an appropriate cultural reference that might induce the barest flicker of recognition on the faces of Generation TikTok now gazing blankly at him.
Taking stock (and a generous hit of nasal spray), Barry wisely opts to fall back on what he knows best: the classics. If a descent into Plato’s cave followed by a shimmy with Descartes evil demon can’t fire his students’ jaded imaginations, then he doesn’t know what will. Barry wouldn’t normally muddy the waters with ‘Eastern Philosophy’, regarding it as 99% woo. He hasn’t read any of course, but it’s popularity with new-age flakes and airheads clearly tells him all he needs to know. But Zhuangzi’s butterfly somehow managed to flutter through the net today. To be fair, it does bring some welcome poetic respite amid the turgid prose of ‘The Greats’, and if it ticks a few ‘cultural diversity’ boxes in the process then so much the better. Barry’s satisfied that the (mercifully pithy) text reflects much the same sceptical arguments as those advanced by Plato or Descartes: even a stopped clock must be right twice a day.
Being moderate to heavy weed smokers, most of our students haven’t encountered a dream in years, but they get the gist – dreams feel real; while dreaming the naive subject remains hopelessly ignorant of their ‘true’ condition, namely as a prone body snoring under the duvet: therefore, who’s to say we’re not dreaming up this very classroom? What manner of strange being might we really be; and under what cosmic duvet? The students look somewhat doubtful, feeling pretty sure they could do better than dream up THIS! But the point is taken, and a handful of girls even wistfully recall having had a similar insight once during a particularly heavy “bong sesh”. Barry’s torn between his flush of pedagogical pleasure and his faintly priggish disapproval…and with a shiver he sloughs off the memory of that white knuckle ride on the bathroom floor of the halls of residence back in ‘82 after Neil Bodger showed up with cookies. Halcyon days!
The insistent tone of the lunch bell has a restorative effect on the class that we might even describe as an ‘awakening’ and they shuffle hurriedly out of the classroom door like caffeinated penguins. Barry’s in no mood to let this dampen his warm glow of satisfaction at a lesson well taught. The cabbage white fluttering through the window as he had introduced the Zhuangzi text was the icing on the cake, a moment tarnished only by Maddison declaring solemnly that it was a ‘synchronicity’! Barry had bit his tongue, but he consoles himself with the delicious thought of posting some more of his devastating (and syllogistically valid) ripostes in the YouTube comments of his arch nemesis: local guru and spiritual entrepreneur Darren ‘Dazaji’ Spinks who prattles endlessly about synchronicities. *
Perhaps it’s for the best then that Barry remains quite oblivious to the irony that in chasing after Ultimate Reality, the reheated Neo-Platonism of the Wachowskis of which he is so enamoured has far more in common with Dazaji’s gnostic drivel than it does with ancient Chinese philosophy. In Barry’s defence, he’s only the latest in a procession of Western philosophers to miss the radicalism of Chinese thinkers in their hurry to dismiss it or colonise it to buttress received canonical wisdom.
Zhaungzi’s point is precisely that there is no way of determining any ‘true’ state of affairs here. Man dreaming butterfly; butterfly dreaming man are equally real and sufficient unto themselves. No transcendent or continuous identity (self, soul, ego, logos) binds these two. As “distinct identities” they forget each other and get on with “fluttering about joyfully” or being fully “in the flesh”. One isn’t in service to the other or to some greater hidden project that philosophical analysis or esoteric practice will finally uncover. Elsewhere in the chapter, Zhuangzi says “[W]hen I say you’re dreaming, I’m dreaming too.” All this is deeply unwelcome news to the Self in search of enlightenment, whether that be spiritual, philosophical, technological, scientific or any other of the myriad modalities for ‘improvement’ – the Useful. But its hugely freeing for those who know the value of Uselessness.
But uselessness is the last thing Barry wants to hear about right now. He already has Kevin Pincher OBE, his esteemed vice-chancellor breathing down his neck and waving charts under is nose that demonstrate how much better the STEM departments ‘performance indicators’ are looking, so this perspective has about as much chance as reaching his harried mind as the heavy aroma of weed now drifting on the summer breeze outside the Atrium has of registering on his poor congested nasal tract. Perhaps this too is for the best. **
*On his ‘popular’ YouTube channel, ill-advisedly called ‘A whiter shade of white’, Dazaji can frequently be found exhorting his subscribers to wake up from the ‘slumber of separation’ into a state of ‘Quantum Illumination’. Quite what this is or how it relates to his extended diatribes against 5G, The Great Reset, and ‘libtards’ remains a mystery.
** Mr Pincher OBE has remained tight lipped in response to those querying exactly which ‘performance indicators’ might justify his £700K salary.