Nanhua Zhenren Zhuangzi is a fabler, he often puts many philosophies in the world into stories for interpretation, and the ending of each story is always thought-provoking. Flipping through these stories written by Zhuangzi, you will find that he has always been interested in the words "big" and "small". Because there is a gap in the field of vision between each other, there will always be a lot of right and wrong and misunderstandings. In order to explain what size is, Zhuangzi wrote three very well-known stories:
The full text of "Zhuangzi" begins with the first story - "Getaway". The protagonist of the story is a Dapeng that can spread its wings for nine days, in order to complete the transformation of Kunpeng and reach the realm of "90,000 miles of swaying upwards", it has not only experienced thousands of hardships, but also become a laughing stock in the mouths of many birds. The original text wrote: "I decided to fly, grab the elm fang and stop, the time will not come, but control the ground, ridicule it 90,000 miles and the south? "It means that the strength I muster with my whole body can only fly to the height of the top of the tree, and in the end I can't get rid of the control of the earth, so how can I fly to a height of 90,000 miles?
At this point in the story, we can already understand Zhuangzi's intention, he is using the size of the bird to illustrate that people are always accustomed to guessing the ambition of adults with the thinking of the ego, because there are limitations in cognition, so it is often not feasible to solve the principle of the other in this way.
Just as Taishang Daozu wrote in the fifth chapter of the Tao Te Ching, "Heaven and earth are unkind, and all things are used as dogs; The saint is not benevolent, and the people are the dogs", which was originally intended to explain the words of the great road for the public, but it has changed the taste in the understanding of later generations. Literally, Lao Tzu seems to be cursing the cruelty of heaven and earth and the unkindness of the rich, thinking that they treat the people of the world as pigs and dogs. After learning about Taoism, it is clear that the above is nothing more than a self-righteous misreading. Lao Tzu here means to express the fairness and justice of the Great Dao when biochemical all things, heaven and earth are the symbols of the supreme way, and they will not have a preference for and hate all things in the world because of their own selfish feelings. Those who can comprehend the principles of the Great Dao are called "saints" in Taoism, and the saint is behaving in accordance with the laws of the Great Dao, so he will not be partial to the people of the world because of his own selfish feelings. Heaven and earth and saints are both symbols of "greatness", how can the "smallness" of personal selfishness be guessed!
In order to further illustrate the problem of the small not being able to see the big, Zhuangzi also described the process of enlightenment that the small self can achieve through the mouth of Hebo in the chapter "Autumn Water". In other words, Hebo took advantage of the opportunity of the rising water to be complacent, so that he ignored everything in the world. It wasn't until the river flowed into the sea that I realized that what I once thought was so humble in front of the ocean. What Zhuangzi wants to tell us is that the big and the small need to be compared, and only by having a higher vision can we break out of the self-satisfaction of the small self and complete the transcendence of the existing life. In real life, there is no such thing as which is big or small, but only whether we can recognize our own limitations and shortcomings, which is the premise of Kun Huapeng.
In the evolution of nature, human beings have mastered the skills of thinking and have begun to actively reflect on the question of where they came from and where they are going. The Jewish adage that "God laughs when man thinks" is not to prevent human self-thinking, but to point out that the real ignorance of man lies in the fact that he has never been able to know everything from the perspective of himself. Dapeng doesn't care about the laughter of sparrows, nor does it care about the sighs of the world, just because from the height of its flight, everything is silent. Only by transcending oneself and freeing oneself from attachment to material things and attachment to oneself can we further stand on a higher cognitive level to see the world. Hebo's reflection on the original self is precisely the beginning of today's greatness. This is the first level of transcendence to be achieved in practice.
But what about after transcendence? If you just want to become big one-sidedly, then there is a bigger one after the big, where is the end? Becoming the supreme supreme in the world is not the pursuit of the Taoists. Although the story of Zhuangzi illustrates the difference in the size of all things in the world, it is not intended to encourage people to give up their small to become big, but to warn sentient beings not to think about the great deeds of others with the mind of the ego, and what is really worth thinking about is how to conform to their own way. No matter how big or small, if you can't recognize the beauty of the way of unity, you will still be trapped by the obsessive mind after all, and you will not be able to achieve true freedom.
Taoism believes that everything in heaven and earth (including human society) has its own operating law, so that everything belongs to its own law, which is the result of the Tao. When all things are in order, it is the way. The so-called "orderly" means that everything can be in its place, and each other will not do things that are overstepping, let alone guess and judge the behavior of others from their own perspective. Practitioners call this "delusion" a demonic obstacle. Each of us is in the midst of demonic obstacles, and even when delusions and desires arise in our hearts, it is often difficult for us to realize that we have transgressed our duties. Heaven and earth are ruthless and sexless, and they only follow the principles of yin and yang, the reversal of the extremes of things, and the necessity of cause and effect, and finally return the retribution generated by all things themselves to all things. Besides, it doesn't care about the arbitrary judgments of the world. Being able to get a stable heart in the midst of the chaos of the world is the embodiment of cultivation.
Although heaven and earth are "unkind", they are not ignorant of good and evil. When we often talk about good and evil, we are essentially thinking about the problem based on the cognition of human civilization. If we define the natural causal cycle of heaven and earth by the standard of good and evil in human society, this is to guess the way of heaven with humanity, and even try to replace the principles of heaven with human desires, which is bound to be undesirable. Man is only a part of nature, and trying to prescribe the laws of the whole by the parts has gone astray by generalizing the whole, and in the final analysis, it is still impossible to escape the category of small and large contrasts.
So, what if you do it, can you transcend the obsession with the realm of size and size? Zhuangzi told us the story of "Zi Fei Fish":
Zhuangzi and Huizi stood on the bridge and watched the fish frolic in the water, and Zhuangzi said that he could sense the happiness of the fish. Keiko questioned him, how can you know the happiness of fish if you are not a fish. Zhuangzi asked rhetorically, you are not me, how can you know that I don't know the happiness of fish? In this story, it doesn't matter whether the fish are happy or not, what really matters is that as a spectator from the shore, Zhuangzi has entered a state of unity with the nature in front of him. He doesn't need to think about the reality of who is big and who is small, but just uses his heart to appreciate all the situations and scenes he perceives. The true meaning of life is an realization, which is to connect the natural universe with the heaven and earth in the heart, so that the way of heaven and man and the way of self are one. If we can share sorrow and joy with all things, what else in the world can restrain physical and mental leisure?
Zhuangzi has already entered the Tao, but Hui Shi is still stubborn about right and wrong! And for you and me, who were born in the mortal world, although everyone aspires to become a transcendent Zhuangzi, in the end they will always become a Huizi full of obsessions. What's more, there are still many people who are difficult to reach the height of Keiko, but they still have to laugh at Zhuangzi's madness. If you just laugh at the big one, you can still forgive it, because there is no distinction between the big and small aspects of the Tao, and you can see the way of your own self and be content with your own duty, and this is the practice. On the contrary, if Yixin only thinks about others and does not know how to introspect himself, he will eventually turn himself into a character in the fable of Zhuangzi. Life is short for decades, and even I haven't lived to understand, which is really a great tragedy!