The Chinese Pleasure Book by Nylan Michael;

Author:Nylan, Michael;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zone Books
Published: 2021-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

Paired Scenes of Instruction: Woodworker Qing and Butcher Ding

Two rather lengthy episodes in the Zhuangzi sketch the wonders inherent in a person’s being “fully present” (zhi ren 至人) to mutually affecting and transformative experiences. It is hardly coincidental that the ideal protagonists of these two stories are skilled craftsmen of relatively low status. Evidently, the insights they derive from the practice of their craft do not depend upon hereditary privilege or remarkable erudition; instead, they rely upon a strong intuitive “feel” for other things and people and a patience described elsewhere as an ardent waiting upon the unfolding situation (see below).11 Such experiences hardly qualify as “transcendent,” there being no sign of the mystical, yet they do transport us to new insights. This quality of experience the Zhuangzi treats with awe, fully cognizant, on the one hand, of human limitations, but also of the human potential to partake of the sacred. So while people can never become truly spontaneous on the model of the cosmos, people can still manage, through the alternative applications of rigorous logic and of learning to let go, to untie a number of the knots that bind and chafe as they occupy their stations in life, high or low, and fulfill their social commitments. Welcome release ensues, but only through the radical deprogramming that permits the restoration of the vital qi 氣 flow.

The two stories bear testimony to Zhuangzi’s serene faith in the divine, but ineffable presences exerted within ordinary experience. Woodworker Qing outlines the extraordinary pleasures gained from being fully present to the sights around him. The more familiar Butcher Ding story describes his approaches to objects of interest, which require, for lack of better terms, a kind of withdrawal of the senses from certain things and a dramatic opening of those same percepts to others. On such foundations did Zhuangzi fashion his own distinctive views of the world, as well as of the processes that typically shape or distort people’s sense of reality. That ordinary habits and conventions prevent people from seeing clearly what is right before their very eyes is a continual theme in the Zhuangzi. It is in this context that I place Zhuangzi’s references to “balancing the faculties of the heart” (qixin 齊心, later [?] zhai xin 齋心)12 and “quieting the mind” (jing xin 靜心), that is, stepped withdrawals of attention from the perceptual overload that afflicts ordinary life and fragments awareness, then as now, so as to listen more attentively to the polyphonic structures of the world, perceiving the totality with a kind of clarity before responding with increased acuity and renewed purpose.

The less familiar story about Woodworker Qing, from the Outer Chapters, describes a protracted process, a deep form of engagement that might be alluded to, if not captured by the term “vision presence,” a receptivity to the divine:13

Woodworker Qing carved a piece of wood into a bell stand. When it was finished, all who saw it were awestruck, thinking it to be the work of the gods. When

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