Encountering the Zhuangzi

Adaptability and Emptiness in the Story of Huzi, Jixian, and Liezi

Abstract

The Zhuangzi 莊子 often uses its multicoloured characters and imaginative stories to make its points. So much so that one of these characters is, I wish to argue, a stand-in for the text of the Zhuangzi itself. Huzi 壺子, when he meets Jixian 季咸 through the intermediary of his student Liezi 列子, exhibits the kind of emptiness that characterizes the text. This emptiness pertains to his ability to change forms as he wishes, for he is never fixed into one singular shape. He represents the adaptable and flexible behaviour which enables one to use specific schemes of valuation with parsimony, when they are adapted to the context, and never to remain fixed on one single such scheme. Jixian and Liezi are, in my interpretation, two readers of the text who come at it from different yet fixed angles. Their backgrounds and reactions while reading the text teach us the ways one can deal with that emptiness. One could try, like Jixian, to apply one’s own standards to the text, witness its resistance, and leave in frustration. Or one could, like Liezi, realize that the text’s emptiness is an invitation to leave the text behind and to discard fixed and single-minded valuation schemes. In the end, this cautionary tale aptly represents the text’s non-judgmental openness as well as its subtly subversive critique of the attitudes to learning and applying what one has learned prevalent in its time.