Zhuangzi: Only by letting go of entanglements can we get away with it

The King of Wei gave Huishi the seeds of the gourd, and after Huishi planted the gourd, he found that the gourd was not strong enough for water, and it was too big to make a scoop, and it was of little use. So he complained to Zhuangzi, and Zhuangzi told Huishi that he didn't know how to use "big", and if such a big gourd was put into the rivers and lakes, then naturally he would not worry that it was too big to be useful.

This dialogue, which is not strictly a story, is often understood as "the same thing used in different places, and its effect is very different." Treat things, take the initiative to explore the law, with the eyes of good at discovery to explore the greatest value of things, so as to make better use of it. Such a popular interpretation, rough looking very reasonable, but if you think about it carefully, it is inevitably superficial. This story comes from "The Getaway", the main theme of "The Getaway" is that all things have "to wait", no matter what Kunpeng depends on, to be truly idle is to be as undependent as a saint. Since this dialogue between Zhuangzi and Huishi is in The Getaway, its purpose should not be to argue how people should discover the laws of things, let alone how to use them.

It is no accident that many people understand Zhuangzi's response to Huishi as how things should be used. Because Zhuangzi told Huishi that some people in the Song Kingdom were good at making hand cream, his family had been rinsing silk for generations, and his hands were easy to crack, so he developed a hand cream. A merchant heard about it and bought them the secret recipe for hand cream. They sold it to him at a very cheap price. As a result, this merchant gave the secret recipe of hand cream to the king of Wu, so that the Wu army won a complete victory with both hands intact when attacking the Yue kingdom in winter, which gave the merchant a lot of rewards. Then Zhuangzi advised Hui Shi to use different methods to make good use of the big gourd. Such a context makes it easy to think that Zhuangzi is suggesting that Huishi should look at the problem from a different perspective, and will have different views on things, so that he can make the best use of things.

However, such a Zhuangzi who pays attention to the best use of things is still a dashing Taoist ancestor? Shouldn't Taoist thought give people the feeling of detachment: that is, whether it is useful or not, it doesn't matter? Doesn't a Zhuangzi who emphasizes how to use something look more like a management talent from a business school? If Zhuangzi thinks that the businessman who made his fortune by reselling the secret recipe of hand cream is a representative of successful idleness, then isn't he affirming that money is the only criterion for success? According to the calm and idyllic Taoists in people's minds, the Song people happily rinsed silk and were satisfied with the secret recipe of selling hand cream cheaply, is not it a contented and happy attitude worth learning?

So many consecutive questions can probably make people understand that understanding Zhuangzi's words to Huishi as how to better understand the value of utensils and use them rationally to seek benefits will make Zhuangzi a complete layman. So, how can this conversation be understood? In fact, when Zhuangzi says it, he is nothing more than talking about the principle that things are interdependent. The Song people wanted to rinse the silk wool, and the hands were easy to crack, so they needed hand cream, and the hand cream existed because of their needs. Merchants who were good at doing business relied on the simplicity of the Song people and the belligerence of the Wu kingdom to make their mark. The State of Wu relied on the Song hand cream and shrewd merchants to win the battle against the Yue Kingdom. Similarly, the big gourd is also dependent. It needs a larger environment to be able to reflect its value.

Huishi's mistake was that he thought that the big gourd didn't need anything to exist. Except for the saints, the most human beings, and the gods, everything else in the world is dependent on and cannot be truly idle, which is the center of the repeated emphasis of "The Getaway", and to understand this dialogue in "The Getaway", of course, it is necessary to put it in this ideological background.

Those who feel like Huishi that "big" must be good are mostly very painful when queuing up in the canteen to buy vegetables, and when it is their turn, asking the canteen master for a chicken leg, they always feel that the piece in other people's bowls is bigger than their own. In the eyes of many people, it always seems that the big is better than the small. The house is big and nice, the TV is big and the car is big. Therefore, when the dragon and the dove in "The Getaway" happily flutter among the trees, see dapeng flying over and laugh at it for flying so high and suspicious of pretending to be cool, almost everyone will automatically stand on the side of dapeng and feel that the knowledge of these two small insects and birds is too shallow to understand Dapeng's ambition to soar in the sky.

Zhuangzi further guided everyone in "The Getaway" that it is enough to bring a sandwich for a day outing, and to go out for a few days to bring a lot of food. In this era when almost everyone thinks that travel is a big hobby, everyone will instinctively despise those who go to the door to see the sea as tourists who have arrived in the Maldives, and think that it is called traveling when they go abroad for half a month. Immediately after, Zhuangzi said that "small knowledge is not as big as big knowledge, small years are not as big as big years", fungi may not live for a day, and some big trees can live for thousands of years, which makes people feel even more that "small" will naturally make people's vision limited, and "big" is the direction we should pursue. Didn't the peasant hero named Chen Sheng also say that "The Birds of The Birds Know the Aspirations of the Birds"?

However, if we do move in this direction, we are embarking on a "road of no return" in thought: because "big" has no end. Everything in this world is not the largest, only the bigger, and those trees that can live for thousands of years are still "little knowledge" in front of the trees that have lived for tens of thousands of years, which is the so-called "knowledge is also endless". Human life, on the other hand, is limited, and using a limited life to pursue infinite "knowledge" will not have any good results in Zhuangzi's view.

Therefore, it seems that we do not necessarily need to pursue big. The reason is very simple, a small fish is very comfortable to swim in the pond, while a larger fish will live in the river, and the larger fish may need to be in the sea to turn around freely. If you put a big fish in a small pond, it will not be able to turn around or even die.

Similarly, large birds need strong winds to fly, and without wind they are not as comfortable as slugs and doves. In the process of constantly making oneself "bigger", a person must also constantly seek a larger external space, and it is this dependence that makes it impossible for people to escape. The degree to which the big fish depend on the sea may not be much different from the dependence of the small fish on the pond. So while the birds are happily playing in the bushes, dapeng is trying to spread its wings, and who is happier in comparison?

Knowing this truth, you will not blindly want a "big" chicken leg in the canteen. The larger chicken leg takes more time to digest, while the smaller one is less likely to take up the stomach. Eat as big a chicken leg as big as you have, which is probably the first step towards leisure.

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