The hundreds of aphorisms that make up “The Book of Chuang Tzu” lend voice and character to the core of Taoist Philosophy.
In one of the many stories, fourth century BCE Taoist sage, Chuang Tzu, instructs a genius, Pu Liang Yi, in the ways of the sage. He expounded seven lessons for his pupil to master before he could attain perfection.
The seven lessons are the cornerstones of a Taoist philosophical practice, and are the foundations of the true sage.
Ignore The External
In chapter two of “The Book of Chuang Tzu,” Lao Tzu is credited as saying: “To struggle against both, the outside and inside influences, is more than even one who follows the Tao and its Virtue can control, so how much more difficult it is for one who is just starting out along the Tao?”
Chuang Tzu’s first lesson to Pu Liang Yi is to “ignore worldly matters.” To shut out matters of the world one is required to disengage mentally, cutting attachment to the things that pull and fix the mind. In order to ignore worldly matters, they must be put into order first. Ignoring is not absolving responsibility, but acting in accord with it.
Then Chuang Tzu posed the next challenge, “ignore external matters.” With mastery of the second lesson, the outside world is quieted. But ignoring is not forgetting, or simply not thinking of. To ignore the external, the sage does not see the difference between good and bad. The sage can ignore external matters because the events bear no qualities of “like” or “dislike.” This enables the mind to ignore external matters, by not being seized by the false nature of “good” an “bad.”
Ignore the Internal
Chuang Tzu’s next lesson to his genius pupil: “to observe your own being as irrelevant.” He stresses this point in the first chapter of “The Book of Chuang Tzu:” “The Perfect Man has no self.”
The sage acts without thinking of the self. Compassion is selfless, love is selfless, and wisdom is selfless. The self does not define or shape the true nature, the true nature is selfless, it is part of the One, of The Tao, and connected to all things though the shifting balances of yin and yang.
The next lesson Pu Liang Yi was presented was: “to see with true clarity.”
In Chapter twenty two of "The Book of Chaung Tzu," The Yellow Emperor is holding conversation with Knowledge, who informs the mystical Emperor that “all forms of life are one.”
Seeing the oneness of all things is seeing with true clarity. Seeing that all things arise and decline, and seeing that all things are guided by the balance of yin and yang is seeing with true clarity.
Knowledge goes on to say to the Yellow Emperor, “yet we regard some as beautiful, because they are spiritual and wonderful; others we count as ugly, because they are diseased and rotting. But the diseased and rotting can become the spiritual and wonderful, and the spiritual and wonderful can become the diseased and rotting.”
The Tao
After mastering “seeing with true clarity,” Chuang Tzu’s genius pupil is instructed to “see by the One.”
Chuang Tzu wants his pupil to see by the Tao. Not through it, and definitely not actually, see it. Chuang Tzu best expressed the conundrum: “So you should not look for the Tao in anything specific. There is nothing without it.”
Pu Liang Yi succeeded in seeing by the One, and Chung Tzu started the next lesson: “Ignore the past and present.”
“There is no past, there is no present. There is no beginning, and no ending,” Confucius is credited as saying in “The Book of Chuang Tzu.”
For time to pass, there would have to be a fixed point to pass. The present does not exist because the Tao has no fixed points for time to pass. There is no past because it is not fixed. There is no distance in The Tao for the mind to look back.
Pu Liang Yi transcended past and present, leaving him at the last of his master’s lessons; “Enter where there is neither death nor birth.”
A verse in “The Book of Chuang Tzu” addresses death and birth.
Human life begins with the original breath
When it comes together there is life,
When it is dispersed, there is death.
As death and life are together in all this,
which should be termed bad?
Chuang Tzu summarized: “This is known as Tranquility in Struggle. Tranquility in Struggle means perfection.”
Source:
Translated by Martin Palmer, with Elizabeth Breuilly, Chang Wai Ming, and Jay Ramsay, The Book of Chuang Tzu, Penguin Books, 2006
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