“It was Zhuangzi who took Laozi’s thought of wu into an antimetaphysical position: Dao, as metaphysical Reality or cosmological origin is simply nothing (wu), not nothingness as something primary or substantial, not Non-being as Being, but just is-not” (Ge Ling Shang – Liberation as Affirmation p 18).
As the Zhou dynasty fell into decline, undermined by the dukes seeking to expand their lands, especially during the Warring States period, an intense quest for a Way out of the turmoil led to a reification of the concept of the Dao into a metaphysical entity. The emergence of the One Hundred Schools must be understood not only as an inquiry into reality, but as a strategical undertaking to find what we would call the “Truth,” which in the Chinese view is viewed as a self-cultivation practice leading to a successful alignment with what amounts to a metaphysical entity. This, Ge Ling Shang, argues, is the concept of Dao one finds in the Daodejing, even though it is more radically described in Confucianism and Mohism.
For Zhuangzi it is fine to create one’s Dao in one’s own fashion, the problem is that each thinker believes he has possessed a truth that cannot be improved
Shang writes: “Most thinkers at the time were to present their own concepts of the Dao, such as Confucius’ Dao of ren, or human morality, and Mozi’s Dao of jianai or universal love. For Zhuangzi it was fine to create one’s Dao in one’s own fashion. The problem was that ‘[t]here are many who have studied the art of the Dao, and each believes he has possessed a truth that cannot be improved’ … They simply took what they thought of as the Dao itself and insisted on it as absolute and exclusive … From then on, the endless debate had taken place, ‘the world was in great disorder, the valuable and sacred became equivocal, the Dao and its virtue were no longer One, most in the world were obsessed by their one partial point’. Instead of the Dao itself, there were only opinions of Dao in this world, the opinions that segmented and distorted the harmonious unity of the world, the opinions that alienated human nature and thereby made life inauthentic and coercive… Hence, one of the crucial undertakings for Zhuangzi was to subvert or deconstruct the conventional or predominant ideas, especially Laozi’s metaphysical utterance, of the Dao.”
Guo Xiang (252-312), the editor of today’s version of the book of Zhuangzi, held that “there used to be a particular school of Zhuangzi, which produced the book of Zhuangzi and a special ‘learning of Zhuangzi’ distinctive from the teaching of Laozi.”
Shang agrees that “the two great founders of the Daoist tradition may look similar in various ways.” Doesn’t chapter 1 of the Daodejing assert that “the Way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way, the name that can be named is not the constant name” which is a rejection of the correspondence theory of language on which is based the concept of metaphysics in its original Greek definition? True, but all the chapters that follow present the Way as a collection of strategies to be used to reach success, which assumes that the Dao is one specific universal order of reality one needs to comply with. But, Shang points out that “there used to be a particular school of Zhuangzi, which produced the book of Zhuangzi and a special ‘learning of Zhuangzi’ distinctive from the teaching of Laozi. In the last chapter, Tianxia or ‘The World’ of the book of Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi is carefully separated from Laozi’s Dao as symbols of two different schools. In comparison with Laozi’s Dao as nonbeing, Zhuangzi’s Dao is described as ‘Obscure, boundless, and without pattern; changing and transforming without constancy. Is it birth or is it death? Is it is a virtue of heaven and earth? Is it where is the spirit goes? Never clear where to go, never decisive what to be? Even if all the ten-thousand-things things are counted, there is still no clue to locate it. These few words successfully bring out the uniqueness of Zhuangzi’s position on Dao’.”
Guo Xiang stated in his introduction that “Zhuangzi was on the top of all “hundreds schools” because he attained the ultimate Dao.” Shang also says that “Wang Fu-zhi (1619-1692), a philosopher in the Qing dynasty, was “one of the few who did not treat Zhuangzi as a follower of Laozi.” Wang said in his “Interpreting Zhuangzi”: ‘Zhuangzi’s teaching followed Laozi at the beginning; after his “morning enlightenment” (zaoche) and “seeing the self” (jiandu), he has realised that solitude and vicissitude are actually one, from which one is able to walk both ways (liangxing) smoothly without hindrance and he has created his own teaching which differs from Laozi.”“It is from the notion of liangxing, or walking both ways, instead of Laozi’s wu or nonbeing as the arbitrary origin of all beings, that Wang keenly sensed the major difference between the two masters.” Shang also notes Charles Wei-hsun Fu (1933-1996) as having further detected “the fundamental discrepancy between Laozi and Zhuangzi, especially from their perspective of the Dao.” He wrote that “Zhuangzi was in fact such a genius philosopher who, for the first time in the world history of thought, attained an ultimate recognition that the metaphysical and transmetaphysical [meanings of Dao] are actually two sides, which could be both separated and synthesised, of the same body. If, say, regular metaphysicians who are guilty of clinging to ‘Being’ and Laozi was guilty of attaching to ‘non-Being’ [wu], Zhuangzi could be seen as the first transmetaphysician who surpassed the duality of Being and Non-being by his notion of wu wu or no-nonbeing five hundred years before Nagarjuna was born in India.”
Zhuangzi’s deconstruction of the Dao as a metaphysical entity and his reconstruction of it as an affirmative liberation of the human spirit are both necessary “for the ultimate realisation of freedom” (xiaoyaoyou)
“In the Daodejing,” Shang explains, “Laozi seems to come up with the conviction that, notwithstanding how hesitant or ambiguous his words sound, there is an ultimate reality which is the root (gen), the base of origin (ben) of the apparent world.” In Chapter 14 Laozi presents the Dao as “the Invisible,” “the Inaudible,” and the “Intangible.” In other words, it is out of our reach as “the undifferentiated into One.” Shang explains that “This ‘One’ is not supposed to be told by any name because it is the Name of all names or constant Name. In other words, the Name that names all names cannot be named.” Laozi then says that “he was ‘forced to give a provisional name Dao’ as the Dao of all daos, or the constant Dao (changdao). Perceived by Laozi as the root or reality (ben) of the ten-thousand-things, Dao unfolds or manifests itself into things and thus creates the whole apparent world. For Laozi, Dao is logically and cosmologically the origin of all things or beings of the world.” In Chapter 42, it is said that “Dao produced (or produces) one, one produced two, two produced three, and three produced all things. This is often seen as a cosmological claim that Dao is at origin of a temporal process of cosmological creation such as from one to two and to three and so on. From one to many here means from the ideal root or innermost nature (essence) to many apparent things or beings.”
For Laozi, however, things cannot be produced from things themselves, so everything comes into existence from nothingness and ceases into nothingness
Shang continues: “As the origin and reality of things or beings, Dao cannot be one of them but is No-thing or Non-being (wu, 无). Everything comes into existence from nothingness and ceases into nothingness. So wu is the quality and nature of Dao that enables Dao to be the reality and origin of the world: nonbeing or nothingness produced being (you, 有), being has two energies (yin and yang or tian [天], heaven and di [地], earth), and finally ten-thousand-things were created. In this respect, wu is understood also as the final source or real dynamic which makes everything in the world happen. Dao is ziran, spontaneous and natural.” Chapter 25 says: “man follows earth, earth follows heaven, heaven follows Dao. Dao follows its spontaneous nature [ziran].”
“Laozi might have well been aware that any metaphysical explanation of the Dao is not Dao itself but only part of it … However Laozi couldn’t help talking about Dao metaphysically.”
Yet, Shang reminds us, “Laozi says at the very beginning of his Daodejing: “The Dao that can be daoed is not the eternal and constant Dao.” In other words, whatever words are able to convey when one speaks about the Dao is not the eternal and constant Dao.” So, Shang suggests, “Laozi might have well been aware that any metaphysical explanation of the Dao is not Dao itself but only part of it …Laozi might have discovered at the outset that metaphysics and cosmology were impossible means to know or attain Dao even if Dao was the reality or origin of the universe. However Laozi couldn’t help talking about Dao metaphysically. The whole work he wrote rested on the foundation of Dao as the metaphysical reality, universal principle, and cosmological origin of all things.”
Laozi also described the Dao as “nothingness” (wu) or non-being (wuyou). Didn’t this pre-empt any claim about the metaphysical or ontological concept of the Dao?
Shang says that “some scholars have tried to interpret this wu as his “trans-ontological” or “trans-metaphysical” breakthrough (Wu Kuang-ming, Charles Fu). But, Shang argues, Laozi instead “turned the Non-being/Dao into ‘something’ (not nothing) undefined and complete, coming into existence before Heaven and Earth” and “Mother of all things.” Chapter 25 is quite explicit:
There was something formed out of chaos,
That was born before Heaven and Earth.
Quiet and still! Pure and deep!
It stands on its own and doesn’t change.
It can be regarded as the mother of Heaven and Earth.
I do not yet know its name;
Were I forced to give it a name, I would call it “the Great.”
(Translation by Robert G Henricks)
To be sure, the same argument in Mahayana Buddhism has led scholars to contrast the equation of emptiness with an empty ground called a “me-ontology” “with an ‘an-ontology’ which takes a middle standpoint permitting a view encompassing being and non-being, affirmation and negation” (John W M Krummel commenting on Nishitani Keiji’s Religion and Nothingness). The latter – “an-ontology” – is regarded in Mahayana as the proper understanding of emptiness whereas the former – “me-ontology” is seen as an error which arose when Indian Mahayana Buddhism substituted a substratum of emptiness to the Brahmanical substratum of being.
“It was Zhuangzi who took Laozi’s thought of wu into an antimetaphysical position: Dao, as metaphysical Reality or cosmological origin is simply nothing (wu), not nothingness as something primary or substantial, not Non-being as Being, but just is-not.”
In fact, Shang also says that Charles Fu had argued that “Laozi did render the Dao as the metaphysical and cosmological meaning of Reality and Origin or Originator. This is why Laozi has often been called “the first Chinese metaphysician.” Though there was in Laozi no aiming at “certainty,” which is a tell-tale sign of a metaphysical drive in the West, he had “slipped into a trap: the un-daoable Dao was daoed, the No-thing became a thing, an ontological Being. He says “Dao is ‘something’ elusive and evasive. Evasive and elusive! Yet within it there is ‘image’. Elusive and evasive! Yet within it there is “something” nebulously complete in and by itself, which comes before Heaven and Earth (25/1). What is this ‘something’? … It is at this point that Zhuangzi departed from Laozi’s metaphysical interpretation of Dao. He did not force himself to deploy wu to pursue metaphysical and ontological presupposition, or to trace the origin of the cosmos as Laozi did. Rather, he first questioned and then denounced such presuppositions.”
Therefore, “It was Zhuangzi who took Laozi’s thought of wu into an antimetaphysical position: Dao, as metaphysical Reality or cosmological origin is simply nothing (wu), not nothingness as something primary or substantial, not Non-being as Being, but just is-not.”
In chapter 2 Qi wu lun (On regarding all things equal), Zhuangzi says: “There would be no self without the other; the other would not stand without the self. This comes close to the matter of fact. But no one knows what is behind all this. It would seem as though there is the True Master, yet no one finds a trace of it. We believe that it functions, yet see no forms of it in so far as it has no form but affection. The hundred joints, the nine openings, the six organs, all come together and exist here [as my body]. But which part should I feel closest to? I should delight in all parts, you say? But is there must be one I ought to favour more. If not, are they not all of them mere servants? But if they are all servants, then how can they keep order among themselves? It would seem as though there must be some True Lord among them. But whether I succeed in discovering the fact of it or not, it neither adds to nor detracts from the authenticity of them” (Watson, 38).
Shang comments: “What Zhuangzi has to say is that we are not able to know what or who or when originated is the world and ten-thousand-things, except a constant flow of becoming, change, or transformation of things.” It is clear that Zhuangzi does not believe that there is a True Master or a True Lord behind the changes we perceive in the world around us. The Yijing (Book of Changes) had already described the world as the interaction between yin and yang – a process – which China had received through a parallel tradition going back to pre-imperial times. So there was no need to seek any divine agency behind this dialectical process. For him knowing this would “neither adds nor detracts from” their reality at the level of our experience. In addition, Zhuangzi argues that we are not meant to seek know what is beyond what we see. He says “We are not entitled to name or appoint one of the things [to?] the True Master or True Lord? If we do, the only result is to make our mind fixated (chengxin) with certain idea or discourse of Dao instead of living with the true Dao.” Zhuangzi here echoes the warnings from Buddhists talking about layers of concepts superimposed on the world and concealing it from us, as well as those today who complain that our addiction to left brain thinking stands in the way of experiencing the world. Note, however, that Zhuangzi is going one step further by contrasting fixation on ideas and life as such, not just proper thinking.
Shang sums up: “The world worlds, things thing, being beings as such, all by themselves. Everything becomes, changes, transforms by its own wisdom, its own cause and its own will with no-thing else behind. This is what Zhuangzi meant by ziran, spontaneous nature, or simply self-so, thus-so.” The self-organising universe already understood two thousand years ago!
From this point, Zhuangzi advanced the notion of wu into a radical claim of wuwu, a double wu that deconstructs the entire metaphysical account
The issue that is causing confusion here is that of the end of wu (nothingness) and the beginning of you (being), “because in the course of nature there is no dividing point but ever flowing flux of mutation and transformation.” As Shang hinted at above “Zhuangzi does not force himself to deploy wu to pursue metaphysical and ontological presupposition, or to trace the origin of the cosmos as Laozi did.” Instead he negates wu itself into wuwu, the Non-Being of Non-Being. In Shang’s words: “Zhuangzi tries to go beyond the boundary of wu, creating his unique theory of wuwu. No-No-thing, which used to be called Non-being of Non-being. A passage in chapter 23 says: “There is life, there is death, there is a coming out, there is a going back in – yet in the coming out and going back there is no sign to trace. This is the Gate of Heaven. The Gate of Heaven is No-thing. This is the home in which a sage stores [his mind] (23/6).”
Shang explains further: “The Gate of Heaven (tianmen) refers metaphorically to the mysterious origin (Dao as Origin and Reality) from which everything comes forth and goes back in. This is Laozi’s idea of wu. For Zhuangzi it is not enough to designate Non-being as the Gate of Heaven. When Laozi says that Non-being ‘beings’ or produces ten-thousand-things, it is no longer No-thing but something else, which could be mysterious forces and divine beings (developed later by religious Daoism). In order to avoid such a dilemma, Zhuangzi goes further to point out that nonbeing itself is Non-being, No-thing itself is nothing, wu itself is wu (wuwu). From the new concept of wuwu, Zhuangzi intended to tell us, nonbeing is not the Being of beings, there is simply no Being in this world … do not try anything to make up a Being, such as an Originator, Lord Creator, etc., out of nonbeing.”
At first sight, we could misunderstand this as what Buddhism would call “annihilationism,” the opposite of eternalism, as the two extremes one must stay clear of in the Middle Way? But it is not, since Shang will soon shows that this is in fact the path to affirmation! He says that the issue here is “attachment to wu.” In Shang’s words, ”To be attached to or obsessed by wu, Zhuangzi has pointed out, would obstruct one’s view to see the world as a whole and block the way for one to attain ultimate enlightenment.” Again, Zen has a warning against being metaphorically holed up in a cave through attachment to emptiness. What this means, Shang asserts, is that “No-thing cannot be independent apart from the existence of things. Wuwu has reached a new state that transcends the opposition between no-thing and things, nonbeing and beings.The Gate of Heaven has opened up with no Gate; it is nowhere and everywhere. The world worlds, ‘it comes out from no base, it goes back in through no aperture; it is real yet has no spot to reside; it has duration yet neither beginning nor end’ (23/6). And this is the home in which the sage of Dao wants to abide, the real root Zhuangzi wants to return to.”
This is the message Zhuangzi tries to convey through the following story:“Guangyo (Brilliant) asked Wuyou (Non-being), “Sir, would you tell me if you are (you) or you are-not (wu)?” Wuyou didn’t answer. Guangyo stared intently at the other’s appearance – all was vacuity and blankness, all day long he looked without seeing, listened without hearing, touched without contacting. ‘This is perfect!’ Guangyo mumbled, ‘How could he reach such perfection? I can only conceive of the No-thing, but not of the No-no-thing. If one stays at the position of No-thing, he will never reach this kind of perfection’” (22/9).
Kyoto School philosophy Nishitani Keiji said likewise: “The double negation of things and self results in a restoration of both things and self on the field of emptiness, which could be called “the field of ‘be-ification’ or, in Nietzschean terms, the field of the Great Affirmation, where we can say Yes to all things.”
As a double negation, wuwu “embraces the self-negation and self-destruction, opening the way for a new perspective on the Dao. Shang breaks it down into four characteristics. “(1) Wuwu as a thoroughgoing negation leaves no room for any metaphysical, foundational, and substantial meditation on Dao, and dismisses attempts to think of Dao as a transcendental Being supposed to be external or above this world. (2) Wuwu is an ever open process of nature as ziran, a process with no beginning or end, no limit or boundary, no concept of right and wrong.” All that is left is a dynamic of changing and becoming. (3) Wuwu has completely overcome the duality between thing and No-thing or Being and Non-being, it is both you [being] and wu [nothingness], or neither you nor wu, it is a real affirmation of this existing world through negation of negation.” It has been compared to the mathematical formula “two negatives make a positive” and explained in Nietzsche as well as Zen with Nishitani’s concept of “self-overcoming” wherein one overcomes nihilism by embracing it. (4) As such a nonduality (wudai, or du), wuwu has dismissed the human or artificial distinction of the world into Dao (as reality, being, Lord) and things (as appearances, differences), truth and error, being and nonbeing, big and small, birth and death, etc. Everything gains equality and identity as One with Dao; everything becomes Dao. Dao, at the same time, becomes One with everything or ‘ten-thousand-things’ (manyness or differences). Finally, the destructive or deconstructive process of wuwu now ends with a constructive or reconstructive state of itself through which Zhuangzi enables himself to complete his unique and paramount perspective (jingjie): Dao throughs as One – (daotongweiyi 2/4). In other words, Dao is-not being or nonbeing or wuwu but throughs or tongs as One.”“Tongs,” meaning ‘throughness’, clearing or openness, and Shang’s concise formula ‘Dao throughs as One’ will be examined in more detail on the following page.
Sources:
Ge Ling Shang – Liberation as Affirmation: The Religiosity of Zhuangzi and Nietzsche (2006)
Nishitani Keiji – Religion and Nothingness (1961)
