Master Liezi lived in the Zheng commons (Zhengpu) for forty years, and no one recognized him. The ruler, the ministers, and the high officials looked on him as one of the common people. When the state fell into famine, he prepared to move to Wei. His disciples said: “Master, you are going away with no date set for your return. We venture to make a request: what will you teach us before you go? Did you not hear the words of Huqiu Zilin?” Master Liezi laughed and said: “What did Master Hu ever say? Still, the master once spoke to Bohun Maoren, and I overheard it from the side; let me try to tell you. His words were: There is the born and the unborn, the changing and the unchanging. The unborn can give birth to the born; the unchanging can change the changing. What is born cannot help being born; what changes cannot help changing. Therefore there is constant birth and constant change. What is constantly born and constantly changing is at no time not being born and at no time not changing. So it is with yin and yang; so it is with the four seasons. The unborn seems to stand alone; the unchanging goes and returns. Going and returning, its bounds can never come to an end; seeming to stand alone, its way can never be exhausted. The Book of the Yellow Emperor says: ‘The valley spirit never dies; it is called the mysterious female. The gateway of the mysterious female is called the root of heaven and earth. Unbroken, it seems ever present; use it and it is never exhausted.’ Therefore what gives birth to things is not born, and what changes things does not change. They are born of themselves and change of themselves, take form of themselves and take color of themselves, grow wise of themselves and grow strong of themselves, wane of themselves and wax of themselves. To say that something makes them be born, change, take form and color, grow wise and strong, wane and wax, is wrong.”
Master Liezi said: “In ancient times the sages relied on yin and yang to govern heaven and earth. Now, if what has form is born from the formless, then from what were heaven and earth born? Therefore it is said: there was the Great Change (Taiyi), there was the Great Beginning (Taichu), there was the Great Origin (Taishi), and there was the Great Simplicity (Taisu). The Great Change is the state before qi appeared; the Great Beginning is the beginning of qi; the Great Origin is the beginning of form; the Great Simplicity is the beginning of substance. When qi, form, and substance were all present but not yet separated from one another, this was called the Undifferentiated (hunlun). The Undifferentiated means that the myriad things were blended together and not yet separated. Look at it and it cannot be seen; listen to it and it cannot be heard; follow it and it cannot be grasped; therefore it is called Change. Change has no form or boundary. Change transformed and became one; one transformed and became seven; seven transformed and became nine. Nine is the ultimate of transformation, and so it transforms again and becomes one. One is the beginning of the transformations of form. The clear and light rose up to become heaven; the turbid and heavy sank down to become earth; the qi of blended harmony became humankind. Thus heaven and earth contain essence, and the myriad things are transformed and born.”
Master Liezi said: “Heaven and earth do not accomplish everything; the sage is not capable of everything; the myriad things are not of use for everything. Thus it is heaven's office to give life and to cover, earth's office to give form and to bear up, the sage's office to teach and transform, and the office of things to do what they are suited for. So heaven has its shortcomings and earth its strengths, the sage has what he cannot do and things have what they can reach. Why is this? What gives life and covers cannot give form and bear up; what gives form and bears up cannot teach and transform; what teaches and transforms cannot go against what things are suited for; and what is fixed in its suitability does not leave its place. Therefore the way of heaven and earth is either yin or yang; the teaching of the sage is either benevolence or righteousness; the suitability of the myriad things is either soft or hard. All these follow what they are suited for and cannot leave their places. So there is the born, and there is what gives birth to the born; there is form, and what forms form; there is sound, and what sounds sound; there is color, and what colors color; there is flavor, and what flavors flavor. What the born gives birth to dies, but what gives birth to the born has never ended. What form forms is real, but what forms form has never existed. What sound sounds is heard, but what sounds sound has never issued forth. What color colors is manifest, but what colors color has never appeared. What flavor flavors is tasted, but what flavors flavor has never been presented. All of this is the office of non-action (wuwei). It can be yin and can be yang, can be soft and can be hard, can be short and can be long, can be round and can be square, can live and can die, can be hot and can be cool, can float and can sink, can be the note gong and can be the note shang, can emerge and can vanish, can be dark and can be yellow, can be sweet and can be bitter, can be rank and can be fragrant. It has no knowledge and no ability, and yet there is nothing it does not know and nothing it cannot do.”
Master Liezi went to Wei and ate by the roadside. His followers saw a skull a hundred years old. He pulled aside the weeds, pointed at it, and turning to his disciple Baifeng said: “Only he and I know that we have never been born and never died. Is he truly in misery? Am I truly in joy? The seeds of things have their germs. The frog becomes a quail. Given water, it becomes ji weed; at the margin of water and land, it becomes the moss called frog-and-oyster's robe. Growing on the hillsides, it becomes plantain (lingxi). When plantain gets dung, it becomes crowfoot (wuzu). The root of crowfoot becomes grubs, and its leaves become butterflies. Butterflies soon change into insects that live under the stove and look as though they had shed their skins; they are called quduo. After a thousand days quduo change into birds called ganyugu. The spittle of ganyugu becomes simi. Simi becomes the vinegar-eater yilu. The vinegar-eater yilu is born of the vinegar-eater huangkuang, and the vinegar-eater huangkuang is born of jiuyou. Jiuyou is born of maorui, and maorui is born of the firefly. Sheep's liver changes into digao; horse's blood becomes will-o'-the-wisps; human blood becomes wildfire. The sparrow hawk becomes the harrier, the harrier becomes the cuckoo, and the cuckoo in time becomes the sparrow hawk again. Swallows become clams; field mice become quails; rotten melons become fish; old leeks become amaranth; old ewes become monkeys; fish roe becomes insects. The beast of Mount Danyuan conceives by itself and gives birth; it is called the lei. The bird of the rivers and marshes conceives by gazing; it is called the yi. Creatures that are purely female are called dayao; those that are purely male are called zhifeng. A yearning man without a wife is stirred; a yearning woman without a husband conceives. Houji was born from a giant footprint; Yi Yin was born from a hollow mulberry tree. The juezhao insect is born from dampness. Vinegar flies are born from wine. The yangxi plant grows beside the bamboo that sends up no shoots; old bamboo produces the qingning insect, the qingning produces the cheng, the cheng produces the horse, and the horse produces man. Man in time goes back into the germs. The myriad things all come out of the germs, and all go back into the germs.”
The Book of the Yellow Emperor says: “When form moves, it produces not form but a shadow; when sound moves, it produces not sound but an echo; when nothingness moves, it produces not nothingness but being.” Form is what must come to an end. Do heaven and earth come to an end? They end together with me. Is the ending final? I do not know. The Tao ends in what originally had no beginning; it runs out in what originally had no duration. What has life returns to the unborn; what has form returns to the formless. The unborn is not what was originally unborn; the formless is not what was originally formless. What is born must by its principle come to an end. What ends cannot help ending, just as what is born cannot help being born. To wish to make one's life last forever and to put a stop to one's end is to be deluded about destiny. The spirit is heaven's share; the bones are earth's share. What belongs to heaven is clear and disperses; what belongs to earth is turbid and gathers. When the spirit leaves the body, each returns to its true state; therefore the dead are called gui, “ghosts.” Gui means “to return”: to return to one's true dwelling. The Yellow Emperor said: “When my spirit enters its gate and my bones go back to their root, what of me will still remain?”
From birth to the end, a person passes through four great changes: infancy, youth and prime, old age, and death. In infancy, the qi is concentrated and the will is unified—this is harmony at its utmost; things do not harm the infant, and no virtue can surpass this. In youth and prime, blood and qi surge and overflow, and desires and cares rise up and fill one; things assail one, and so one's virtue declines. In old age, desires and cares grow soft; the body is about to rest, and things no longer contend to come first. Though not as whole as infancy, compared with youth and prime it is far different. In death, one goes to rest and returns to the ultimate.
Confucius, traveling to Mount Tai, saw Rong Qiqi walking in the countryside of Cheng, dressed in a deerskin coat tied with a rope, playing the qin zither and singing. Confucius asked: “Sir, what is the reason for your joy?” He replied: “My joys are very many. Heaven gave birth to the myriad things, and among them only humans are honored; I have been able to become a human being—that is my first joy. Between men and women there is distinction: men are honored and women lowly, so to be a man is the more honored; I have been able to become a man—that is my second joy. Some people are born and never see the sun and moon, never leave their swaddling clothes; I have already lived to the age of ninety—that is my third joy. Poverty is the normal lot of a scholar; death is the end of every person. Abiding in the normal lot and coming to the end, what is there to worry about?” Confucius said: “Excellent! Here is one who knows how to be at ease with himself.”
Lin Lei was nearly a hundred years old. At the end of spring he still wore a fur coat, gleaning the leftover ears of grain in old fields, singing as he went along. Confucius, on his way to Wei, saw him from afar in the fields. Turning to his disciples, he said: “That old man is someone worth talking to. Go and question him.” Zigong asked to go. He met him at the end of a ridge between the fields, faced him, and sighed: “Sir, have you no regrets, that you go along singing and gleaning grain?” Lin Lei did not stop walking or stop singing. Zigong kept on pressing him, and at last he looked up and answered: “What should I regret?” Zigong said: “Sir, in your youth you did not work hard at your conduct, in your prime you did not strive to keep up with the times; in old age you have neither wife nor children, and the hour of your death is near. What joy do you have, that you go along gleaning grain and singing?” Lin Lei laughed and said: “The things that make me happy, everyone has; yet they take them as causes for worry. Because in my youth I did not work hard at my conduct and in my prime I did not strive to keep up with the times, I have been able to live this long. Because in old age I have neither wife nor children and the hour of my death is near, I am able to be this happy.” Zigong said: “Long life is what people desire; death is what people hate. You take death as a joy—why?” Lin Lei said: “Death and life are one going out and one coming back. So how do we know that one who dies here is not born there? Therefore I know that they are not the same. And how do I know that toiling and scurrying to hold on to life is not a delusion? And how do I know that my death now will not be better than my life before?” Zigong heard this but did not understand its meaning, and he went back and told the Master. The Master said: “I knew he was someone worth talking to, and so he was. But he has grasped it without grasping it fully.”
Zigong grew weary of study and said to Zhongni (Confucius): “I wish to have some rest.” Zhongni said: “In life there is no rest.” Zigong said: “Then is there no place where I, Ci, can rest?” Zhongni said: “There is. Look at the grave mounds: lofty, looming, heaped up, rounded like upturned cauldrons—then you will know where rest is.” Zigong said: “How great is death! The gentleman rests in it; the petty man is laid low by it.” Zhongni said: “Ci! You understand. People all know the joy of life but not its suffering; they know the weariness of old age but not its ease; they know the hatefulness of death but not its rest. Yanzi said: ‘How good it is that the ancients had death! The benevolent rest in it; the unbenevolent are laid low by it.’ Death is the frontier where virtue is tested. The ancients called the dead ‘those who have gone home.’ If the dead are called those who have gone home, then the living are travelers still on the road. To travel and not know how to return is to have lost one's home. When one person loses his home, the whole world condemns him; when the whole world loses its home, no one knows to condemn it. Suppose there is a man who leaves his native land, parts from his six kinds of kin, abandons the family livelihood, and wanders in the four directions without returning—what sort of man is he? The world will surely call him a wild and dissolute man. And suppose there is another who sets his heart on being esteemed by the world, prides himself on his skill and ability, cultivates fame and reputation, and flaunts himself before the world without knowing when to stop—what sort of man is he? The world will surely take him for a man of wisdom and strategy. Both of these have lost their way. Yet the world approves of the one and not of the other; only the sage knows what to approve and what to reject.”
Someone said to Master Liezi: “Why do you prize emptiness?” Liezi said: “Emptiness is not something to be prized.” Master Liezi said: “It is not a matter of names. Nothing is as good as stillness, nothing as good as emptiness. In stillness and emptiness, one finds one's proper dwelling; in taking and giving, one loses one's place. When things have been broken and ruined, and only afterward people come dancing about with benevolence and righteousness, they cannot restore them.”
Yu Xiong said: “Turning and revolving without end, heaven and earth shift imperceptibly—who is aware of it? Thus what things lose over there they gain over here, and what is completed here is diminished there. Losing and gaining, completing and diminishing, arise and perish together. Coming and going follow one upon another with no perceptible gap—who is aware of it? No qi advances all at once, and no form declines all at once; we are not aware of its completing, nor aware of its diminishing. It is just like a person from birth to old age: his looks and complexion, intelligence and bearing change with every day; his skin, nails, and hair grow and fall away as they grow—nothing stays unchanged from the time of infancy. The gaps cannot be perceived; one knows only after the change has arrived.”
In the state of Qi there was a man who worried that heaven and earth would collapse and fall and leave his body nowhere to lodge, so that he gave up sleeping and eating. There was another who worried about his worrying and went to enlighten him, saying: “Heaven is nothing but accumulated qi; there is no place without qi. You bend and stretch, breathe in and out, walk and stop all day long within heaven. Why worry that it will collapse and fall?” The man said: “If heaven really is accumulated qi, shouldn't the sun, moon, stars, and constellations fall?” The one enlightening him said: “The sun, moon, stars, and constellations are also just things within the accumulated qi that happen to shine. Even if they fell, they could not strike or injure anyone.” The man said: “And what if the earth breaks apart?” The enlightener said: “The earth is nothing but accumulated clods; it fills the four empty quarters, and there is no place without clods. You pace and tread and stamp, walk and stop all day long upon the earth. Why worry that it will break apart?” The man was relieved and overjoyed, and the one who enlightened him was relieved and overjoyed too. Changluzi heard of it and laughed, saying: “Rainbows, clouds and mists, wind and rain, the four seasons—these are accumulated qi that forms heaven. Mountains and peaks, rivers and seas, metal and stone, fire and wood—these are accumulated forms that make up earth. Knowing that it is accumulated qi and accumulated clods, how can one say it will not break apart? Heaven and earth are one tiny thing within empty space, yet the greatest of all that exists. That they are hard to end and hard to exhaust is certainly so; that they are hard to fathom and hard to know is certainly so. To worry about their breaking apart is truly far-fetched; but to say they will not break apart is not right either. Since heaven and earth cannot help breaking apart, in the end they will come to break apart. If one should meet the time of their breaking, how could one not worry?” Master Liezi heard this and laughed, saying: “Those who say heaven and earth will break apart are wrong, and those who say heaven and earth will not break apart are also wrong. Whether they will break apart or not is something I cannot know. Still, that is one view, and this is one view. Thus the living do not know death, and the dead do not know life; what comes does not know what goes, and what goes does not know what comes. Whether they break apart or not—why should I trouble my mind over it?”
Shun asked Zheng: “Can the Tao be obtained and possessed?” He replied: “Your body is not your own possession; how could you possess the Tao?” Shun said: “If my body is not my own, whose is it?” He said: “It is a form entrusted to you by heaven and earth. Your life is not your own; it is harmony entrusted to you by heaven and earth. Your nature and life are not your own; they are a course entrusted to you by heaven and earth. Your children and grandchildren are not your own; they are cast-off skins entrusted to you by heaven and earth. Therefore you walk without knowing where you are going, stay without knowing what you hold on to, and eat without knowing why. Heaven and earth are the vigorous, moving qi; how could any of it be obtained and possessed?”
The Guo family of Qi were very rich; the Xiang family of Song were very poor. Xiang went from Song to Qi to ask for their method. Guo told him: “I am good at stealing. When I first began to steal, in one year I had enough to live on, in two years I had plenty, and in three years I had a bumper harvest. From then on I gave to the whole neighborhood.” Xiang was overjoyed. He understood the words about stealing but not the way of stealing, so he climbed over walls and broke into houses, and there was nothing within reach of hand or eye that he did not take. Before long he was convicted on account of the loot, and even the property he had had before was confiscated. Xiang thought that Guo had deceived him, and went to complain. Guo said: “How did you steal?” Xiang described what he had done. Guo said: “Alas! Have you missed the way of stealing so badly? Now let me tell you. I have heard that heaven has its seasons and earth has its benefits. I steal the seasons and benefits of heaven and earth, the soaking moisture of cloud and rain, the produce and nurture of mountains and marshes, to grow my grain, raise my crops, build my walls, and put up my house. On land I steal birds and beasts; in the water I steal fish and turtles; there is nothing that is not stealing. Grain and crops, earth and timber, birds and beasts, fish and turtles are all produced by heaven—how could they be mine? Yet I steal from heaven and suffer no calamity. But gold and jade and treasures, grain and silk and goods are what people have gathered—how could they be what heaven gave? If you steal them and are convicted, whom can you blame?” Xiang was greatly confused, thinking that Guo was deceiving him a second time, and he went to Master Dongguo to ask him about it. Master Dongguo said: “Is not your very body stolen? You steal the harmony of yin and yang to complete your life and to carry your form—how much more are external things stolen! Truly, heaven and earth and the myriad things are not separate from one another; to claim them as one's own is always a delusion. Guo's stealing was the public way, so he suffered no calamity; your stealing was a private intent, so you were convicted. To have public and private is also stealing; to have neither public nor private is also stealing. To treat the public as public and the private as private is the virtue of heaven and earth. For one who knows the virtue of heaven and earth, who is a thief? And who is not a thief?”