WHO IN HEAVEN’S NAME ARE WE?: A Certain Approach to Goldin’s “A Mind-Body Problem” in the Zhuangzi
“‘Without that there is no I, without I there is nothing to be taken’” (Perkins)
“‘Without an Other is no Self, without Self no choosing one thing rather than another’” (Graham 51).
I chose to open my presentation on the ‘mind-body problem’ with this quotation for a perhaps obvious reason, it contains the phrase “without Self”, “without I”. Although the absence of ipseity is made mention here, it is not the quotation’s main theme, and should not be taken as such. Rather, as its context makes claim, the theme is the judgments placed upon the world, choosing one thing at the expense of another. In other words, the ‘I’ forces one to choose one thing over another and thus obscuring the infinity of potential choices open to one.
I wonder whether Paul Rakita Goldin approached the Zhuangzi with his ‘I’ when he wrote ‘A Mind-Body Problem in the Zhuangzi?’. And if in this approach, he saw something with his ‘I’ that is either not in the text itself or is only a partial aspect of it. Be that as it may, let us be as charitable to Goldin as possible and see what unfolds from here.
Despite the weaknesses of the arguments with Goldin’s essay—especially his discussion an afterlife consciousness, see Goldin’s discussion of the text “Zhi le” (Goldin 230-31, Graham 124-25), yet in the Zhuangzi it is explicitly stated “when the body dissolves the heart dissolves with it” (Graham 51)—Goldin does, nevertheless, bring our attention to an important theme: “The very suggestion of a mind-body dichotomy has attained the status of a taboo” (Goldin 232), in all Chinese philosophy. Let us, for the sake of argument, keep a pious eye toward this taboo, while keeping in mind Goldin’s arguments for transgressing the taboo.
Goldin does emphasize a passage that is worthy of investigation; he uses the story of Master Yü becoming ill (found in Graham 87-88), to illustrate the mind-body problem. Here the material substance is affected while the heart-mind is unaffected, although the energies [qì] of Yin and Yang of Yü’s body were awry, “His heart was at ease” (Graham 88). Goldin takes this narrative as a demonstration that “the author presupposes a disembodied mental power…that can continue to function despite massive corporeal decay” (Goldin 228). Before turning to particular passages of the Zhuangzi, let us look to one more passage from Goldin, the context is Yü proclaiming it does not bother him if his “spirit” were to become a horse, “Whatever this ‘spirit’ refers to, it cannot be a designation for the mental faculty that remains unperturbed in the face of terrifying transformations of matter…” (228-29) [my emphasis]. What Goldin translates here as “spirit” and what Graham translates as “daemonic” is shén. I wish to return to shén in just a moment, and in so doing attempt to understand “terrifying transformations” of which Goldin makes mention. What are we to make of this story? Certainly, there seems to be something odd here, everything is made of qì and yet the heart and body seem to be separate. Goldin argues that the heart-mind ‘see’ something that while embodied it cannot, “It seems as though the author presupposes a disembodied mental power within Ziyu [Yü] that can continue to function despite massive corporeal decay” (ibid). In other words, the heart can be at ease because it ‘perceives’ something beyond the present pain.
To help us break with Goldin’s very persuasive argument of the body’s qì not affecting the heart-mind, let us turn to the Daodejing, chapter 55. “One who embodies the fullness of efficacy [de] is like an infant …if the heart directs the qì, this is called: “‘forcing’.” An infant is a ‘pre-lingual’ being, a being with the inability to make distinction between ‘that’s it, that’s not,’ between self and other. One must participate in the fasting of the heart. One must empty one’s heart of distinction of “that’s it, that’s not,” which limits ones potential for understand the uniqueness of entities. To quote again from Graham, “Listening stops at the ear, the heart at what tallies with thought. As for ‘energy’ [qì] it is the tenuous which waits to be roused by other things. Only the Way accumulates the tenuous. The attenuating is the fasting of the heart” (68). The heart only knows things which already fit into its view of the way the world works. But when only abstains from making judgments with the heart that which is questionable arises to the foreground. New possibilities arise. The most profound possibility for Zhuangzi seems to be that all is transforming, everything is the myriad of things, as the four masters say to one another “which of us knows that the living and the dead, the surviving and the lost, are all one body?” (Graham 87), or in other words, as we have discussed in class, letting the uniqueness of each thing arise in its singularity. Even if one’s qì is all awry, the heart should not direct it but rather empty itself allowing the qì to run its course in its transformations. If a Daoist sage is to ‘return’ to a ‘pre-lingual’ state and if the hearts of the four masters were already empty/open (making no judgments) contemplating the possibility of such “terrifying transformations,” it is fairly clear that once the transformation does actually occur, if they are ‘masters’, their hearts would not force a judgment upon the situation once it does arise. The heart would not direct the qì of the body, making no judgments of it, but have already having achieved a ‘pre-lingual’ state of judgment, they let the Way accumulate in the questionable and vague.
To orient ourselves differently than Goldin, let us turn to the beginning of the story of Master Yü falling ill. It opens, Four men, Masters Ssŭ, Yü, Li, and Lai, were talking together. “Which of us is able to think of nothingness of the head, of life as the spine, of death as the rump? Which of us knows that the living and the dead, the surviving and the lost, are all one body? He shall be my friend.” The four men looked at each other and smiled, and none was reluctant in his heart. So they all became friends (Graham 87-88). Two aspects of this beginning should grab our attention. The first, their mind-hearts, even in the face of “terrifying transformations,” found no ‘evil’ loathing of it in their hearts. Perhaps using Kjellberb’s translation is of some help, “There was no resistance in their hearts…,” their hearts remained open, or perhaps we should say were already empty. The second aspect I would like to draw our attention to, and ask more questions than to come to a conclusion, is that, since the parable opens as an inquiry about transformations, it seems not so much to be concerned with the actual “terrifying transformations” of the body, but of the possibility of these transformations and it is this that brings them into community; also, the kinship between the four is founded upon nonverbal communication, with a wink and a smile. (See also the story on pages 89-90 of Graham for a very similar opening to a very similar parable.)
Let us turn to the following quotation, “The utmost man is daemonic [shén]…death and life alter nothing in himself…” (Graham 58). The masters are daemonic, in this way. We must ask, then, “What is it to be shén”? One place for us to consider is found on page 69 of Graham’s translation, “If the channels inward through eyes and ears are cleared, and you expel knowledge from your heart, the ghostly and daemonic [shén] will come to dwell in you, not to mention all that is human! This is to transform with the myriad things.” The daemonic individual forces no judgments upon the world because of the indwelling of shén. The shén, then, could be interpreted to be in line with Goldin’s argument—there is some transcendent source independent of the body. The cook Ding story shows us that the shén comes to dwell within him (Graham 63-64). It seems shén comes from Heaven, a “timeless Never-never-land” (Goldin 231). This could allow Goldin to sidestep the emptying of the heart as purely physical, pointing to the above passages and suggest some shén as a mind living “on in some mysteriously timeless and immaterial place” (Goldin 231). In other words, the ‘pre-lingual’ state is ‘pre-lingual’ precisely because it is beyond time and space. So, our question is, how can one learn from the ‘Ancestor’ about the world and oneself, such that “‘Without an Other is no Self, without Self no choosing one thing rather than another’,” does not result in a transcendent Self or Other?
The Inner Chapters 5 is filled with anecdotes of individuals who have physical deformities but whose heart qì is not only undisturbed but seem to have great efficacy [de]—referring to chapter 55 of the Daodejing. Whence does this efficacy [de] come? For example, Wang T’ai, the man with the chopped foot, does not say a word and teaches nothing and yet “they go to him empty and come away full” (77). Among the stories about the ‘freaks’ it is asked often “what are they?” These individuals because of their deformities (one could say transformations) are tenuous, questionable, and vague as to their standing in society. Even beyond the ‘freaks’, Tzŭ-kung returns to Confucius, after witnessing three masters singing and playing the zither along side the corpse of their dear friend, asking “What men are these?” (Graham 89) [emphasis added]. Confucius replies, They are the sort that roams beyond the guideline…Self-forgetful right down to the liver and the gall, leaving behind their own ears and eyes, they turn start and end back to front, and know no beginning-point or standard. Not only does a certain aware give the individual a superabundance of efficacy [de] but the very fact of being daemonic. In the anecdote concerning Uglyface T’o, Duke Ai of Lu asks Confucius of him “What man was he?” This question is asked because T’o never spoke a word someone else had not and despite his ugly appearance women clamored just to be his concubine, and moreover his uniqueness seems to have given him such efficacy [de], that animals copulated just from his presence.
To further illustrate the character of shén, Kung-wen Hsüan who saw the Commander of the Right asks, “‘What man is this? Why is he so singular? Is it from Heaven or from man?’” [my emphasis], to which it is replied, “‘It is from Heaven, not from man. When Heaven engenders something it causes it to be unique; the guise which is from man assimilates us to each other” (Graham 64). Here, I want to stress that these individuals are daemonic not due to a transcendent power, but insofar as they are unique/singularities, out of place, questionable and tenuous, the very thing the Way accumulates. Moreover, in the Outer Chapters, Ch’ing makes a bell-stand that, when finished, all were amazed “as though it were daemonic, ghostly,” and of which Ch’ing says, “So I join what is Heaven to what is Heaven’s. Would this be the reason why the instrument seems daemonic” (Graham 135). Since Goldin admits that it would be odd to say that the Chinese believed inanimate objects to have souls, the daemonic coming from Heaven must refer to a thing’s overwhelming oddness, as if it comes from an excessive source, but certainly not from a transcendent source, a “timeless Never-never-land.”
I would now, finally, like to turn our attention to the second aspect of the beginning of the meeting of the four masters, i.e., the possibility of these “terrifying transformations” (something becoming ‘deformed’) and the nonverbal communion into which the four enter. The recognition of a thing’s uniqueness break one’s ability to make heart-mind judgments of it. It astonishes, amazes, and perhaps we could say dumfounds those who look upon it, emptying the heart, forcing it to fast, of all preconceived notions. If one takes this uniqueness with regard to oneself, one must understand that one is of Heaven, one is part of the myriad of things, “all is one body.” Each individual is a unique, singular, awe-inspiring entity that while having its place in the Way is odd in that it is always transforming, allowing for an inability to make a firm judgment about it. Thus, contemplating the possibility of “terrifying transformations” would strike one as utterly unique, as that which astonishes and dumfounds. If one understands oneself in a daemonic fashion one understands “‘Simultaneously with being alive one dies’, and simultaneously with dying one is alive” (Graham 52); the dichotomy cannot be resolved to which the opening chapter of the Daodejing speaks. As such there are no words, i.e., no judgments to be made. Hence, all the masters can do is simply glance and smile at one another in an inexpressible recognition of the overwhelming, inexpressible, singularity of all things, including themselves. It seems that this awareness of the unutterable unique compels them to become friends.