Mair - 1:5

[Shidifen]

Mair - 1:5

Master Hui said to Master Chuang, "The King of Wei presented me with the seeds of a large gourd. I planted them and they grew to bear a fruit that could hold five bushels. I filled the gourd with liquid but its walls were not strong enough for me to pick it up. I split the gourd into ladles but their curvature was so slight they wouldn't hold anything. Although the gourd was admittedly of huge capacity, I smashed it to bits because it was useless."

"Sir; ' said Master Chuang, "it's you who were obtuse about utilizing its bigness. There was a man of Sung who was good at making an ointment for chapped hands. For generations, the family occupation had been to wash silk floss. A stranger who heard about the ointment offered him a hundred pieces of gold for the formula. The man of Sung gathered his clan together and said to them, 'We have been washing silk floss for generations and have earned no more than a few pieces of gold. Now we'll make a hundred pieces of gold in one morning if we sell the technique. Please let me give it to the stranger: After the stranger obtained the formula, he persuaded the King of Ngwa of its usefulness. Viet embarked on hostilities against Ngwa, so the King of Ngwa appointed the stranger to the command of his fleet. That winter, he fought a naval battle with the forces of Viet and totally defeated them [because his sailors ' hands didn' t get chapped]. The king set aside a portion of land and enfeoffed him there.

"The ability to prevent chapped hands was the same, but one person gained a fief with it while the other couldn't even free himself from washing floss. This is because the uses to which the ointment was put were different. Now you, sir, had a five-bushel gourd. Why didn't you think of tying it on your waist as a big buoy so that you could go floating on the lakes and rivers instead of worrying that it couldn't hold anything because of its shallow curvature? This shows, sir, that you still have brambles for brains!"

Master Hui said to Master Chuang, "I have a big tree people call Stinky Quassia. Its great trunk is so gnarled and knotted that it cannot be measured with an inked line. Its small branches are so twisted and turned that neither compass nor L-square can be applied to them. It stands next to the road, but carpenters pay no attention to it. Now, sir, your words are just like my tree - big, useless, and heeded by no one."

"Sir;" said Master Chuang, "are you the only one who hasn't observed a wild cat or a weasel? Crouching down, it lies in wait for its prey. It leaps about east and west, avoiding neither high , nor low, until it gets caught in a snare or dies in a net. Then there is the yak, big as the clouds suspended in the sky. It's big, all right, but it can't catch mice. Now you, sir, have a big tree and are bothered by its uselessness. Why don't you plant it in Nevernever Land with its wide, open spaces? There you can roam in nonaction by its side and sleep carefreely beneath it. Your Stinky Quassia's life will not be cut short by axes, nor will anything else harm it. Being useless, how could it ever come to grief"

[Marblehead]

Again, for me, the concept of "useful/useless".

[Daeluin]

And here we come to the implications of the web of values that are tied between scopes. As people continue nurturing their desire for more than they need, they become more clever, and begin to exploit those who are humble. Things may be utilized in many ways, and great rewards may come to those who are able to reposition resources. Following the nature of these developments, it is reasonable to believe that sticking to ANY way that involves something others value may lead to the eventual exploitation of that value at one's own expense, unless one is ever working to be smarter than everyone else.

 

So in order to avoid this game of exploitation, gain, loss, and the demand that one participate in an unsustainable competition, better for one to cultivate no discernible value to others at all, and then one may be free of this contrived and waring realm of humans governing humans, so that one may be free to continue following one's unconstricted dependence upon nothing but heaven and earth and all between.

[Shidifen]

Mair's notes -

19. Master Hui. A friend and favorite philosophical sparring partner of Chuang Tzu, Hui Tzu was an important figure in the School of Names.

20. Viet, Ngwa. In Modem Standard Mandarin, Ngwa is pronounced Wu and Viet is pronounced Yiieh.

21. defeated them. Because his men used the ointment to protect their hands from getting chapped in the cold, wet weather.