Gems of Chinese Literature/Chuang Tzŭ-Life, Death, and Immortality
I.
FOUR men were conversing together, when the following resolution was suggested:―“Whosoever can make Inaction the head, Life the backbone, and Death the tail, of his existence,―that man shall be admitted to friendship with us.” The four looked at each other and smiled; and tacitly accepting the conditions, became friends forthwith.
By-and-by, one of them, named Tzŭ-yü, fell ill, and another Tzŭ-ssŭ, went to see him. “Verily God is great!” said the sick man. “See how he has doubled me up. My back is so hunched that my viscera are at the top of my body. My cheeks are level with my navel. My shoulders are higher than my neck. My hair grows up towards the sky. The whole economy of my organism is deranged. Nevertheless, my mental equilibrium is not disturbed.” So saying, he dragged himself painfully to a well, where he could see himself, and continued, “Alas, that God should have doubled me up like this!”
“Are you afraid?” asked Tzŭ-ssŭ. “I am not,” replied Tzŭ-yü. “What have I to fear? Ere long I shall be decomposed. My left shoulder may become a cock, and I shall herald the approach of morn. My right shoulder will become a cross-bow, and I shall be able to get broiled duck. My buttocks will become wheels; and with my soul for a horse, I shall be able to ride in my own chariot. I obtained life because is was my time; I am now parting with it in accordance with the same law. Content with the natural sequence of these states, joy and sorrow touch me not. I am simply, as the ancients expressed it, hanging in the air, unable to cut myself down, bound with the trammels of material existence. But man has ever given way before God: why then, should I be afraid?”
By-and-by, another of the four, named Tzŭ-lai, fell ill, and lay gasping for breath, while his family stood weeping around. The fourth friend, Tzŭ-li, went to see him. “Chut!” cried he to the wife and children; “begone! you balk his decomposition.” Then, leaning against the door, he said, “Verily God is great! I wonder what he will make of you now. I wonder whither you will be sent. Do you think he will make you into a rat's liver[1] or into the shoulders of a snake?”
“A son,” answer Tzŭ-lai, “must go whithersoever his parents bid him. Nature is no other than a man's parents. If she bid me die quickly, and I demur, then I am an unfilial son. She can do me no wrong. She gives me form here on earth; she gives me toil in manhood; she gives me repose in old age; she gives me rest in death. And she who is so kind an arbiter of my life, is necessarily the best arbiter of my death.
“Suppose that the boiling metal in a smelting-pot were to bubble up and say, ‘Make of me an Excalibur;’ I think the caster would reject that metal as uncanny. And if a sinner like myself were to say to God, ‘Make of me a man, make of me a man;’ I think he too would reject me as uncanny. The universe is the smelting-pot, and God is the caster. I shall go whithersoever I am sent, to wake unconscious of the past, as a man wakes from a dreamless sleep.”
II.
How do I know that love of life is not a delusion? How do I know that those who fear death are not mere lost lambs which cannot find their way back to the fold?
A daughter of the Governor of Ai, when first captured by the Chins, saturated her robe with tears; but afterwards, when she went into the prince's palace and lived with him on the fat of the land, she repented having wept. And how do I know that the dead do not now repent their former craving for life?
One man will dream of the banquet hour, but wake to lamentation and sorrow. Another will dream of lamentation and sorrow, but wake to enjoy himself in the hunting-field. While men are dreaming, they do not perceive that it is a dream. Some will even have a dream in a dream; and only when they awake do they know that it was all a dream. And so, only when the Great Awakening comes upon us, shall we know this life to be a great dream. Fools believe themselves to be awake now.[2]
III.
Chuang Tzŭ one day saw an empty skull, bleached, but still preserving its shape. Striking it with his riding-whip, he said, “Wert thou once some ambitious citizen whose inordinate yearnings brought him to this pass?―some statesman who plunged his country in ruin and perished in the fray?―some wretch who left behind him a legacy of shame?―some beggar who died in the pangs of hunger and cold? Or didst thou reach this state by the natural course of old age?”
When he had finished speaking, he took the skull, and placing it under his head as a pillow, went to sleep. In the night, he dreamt that the skull appeared to him and said, “You speak well, sir; but all you say has reference to the life of mortals, and to mortal troubles. In death there are none of these. Would you like to hear about death?”
Chuang Tzŭ having replied in the affirmative, the skull began:―“In death, there is no sovereign above, and no subject below. The workings of the four seasons are unknown. Our existences are bounded only by eternity. The happiness of a king among men cannot exceed that which we enjoy.”
Chuang Tzŭ, however, was not convinced, and said, “Were I to prevail upon God to allow your body to be born again, and your bones and flesh to be renewed, so that you could return to your parents, to your wife, and to the friends of your youth, would you be willing?”
At this, the skull opened its eyes wide and knitted its brows and said, “How should I cast aside happiness greater than that of a king, and mingle once again in the toils and troubles of mortality?”[3]
IV.
Life is a state which follows upon Death. Death is a state which precedes Life. Which of us understands the laws that govern their succession?
The life of man is the resultant of forces. The aggregation of those forces is life: their dispersion, death. If, then, Life and Death are but consecutive states of existence, what cause for sorrow have I?
And so it is that all things are but phases of unity. What men delight in is the spiritual essence of life. What they loathe is the material corruption of death. But this state of corruption gives place to that state of spirituality, and that state of spirituality gives place in turn to this state of corruption. Therefore, we may say that all in the universe is comprised in unity; and therefore the inspired among us have adopted unity as their criterion.
- ↑ The Chinese believe that a rat has no liver.
- ↑ “To any one who objects that all we see, hear, feel and taste, think and do, during our whole being, is but the series and deluding appearances of a long dream, and therefore our knowledge of anything be questioned; I must desire him to consider that, if all be a dream, then he doth but dream that makes the question.”―Locke.
- ↑ Reminding us strangely of Hamlet.