Gems of Chinese Literature/Chuang Tzŭ-The Death of Lao Tzŭ

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Life, Death, and Immortality
Gems of Chinese Literature
translated by Herbert Allen Giles
The Death of Lao Tzŭ by Chuang Tzŭ
The Death of Chuang Tzŭ's Wife
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CHUANG TZŬ.

4th century b.c.

[A most original thinker, of whom the Chinese nation might well be proud. Yet his writings are tabooed as heterodox, and are very widely unread, more perhaps on account of the extreme obscurity of the text than because they are under the ban of the Confucianists. What little is known of Chuang Tzŭ's life may be gathered from some of the extracts given. He is generally regarded as an advanced exponent of the doctrines of Lao Tzŭ. So late as the 4th century a.d., the work of Chuang Tzŭ appears to have run to fifty-three chapters. Of these, only thirty-three now remain; and several of them are undoubtedly spurious, while into various other chapters, spurious passages have been inserted.]

1518082Gems of Chinese Literature — The Death of Lao TzŭHerbert Allen GilesChuang Tzŭ
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When Lao Tzŭ died, and Ch'in Shih went to mourn,[1] the latter utted three yells and departed.

A disciple asked him, saying, “Were you not our Master's friend?” “I was,” replied Ch'in Shih. “And if so, do you consider that was a fitting expression of grief at his loss?” added the disciple. “I do,” said Ch'in Shih. “I had believed him to be the man (par excellence), but now I know he was not. When I went in to mourn, I found old persons weeping as if for their children, young ones wailing as if for their mothers. And for him to have gained the attachment of these people in this way, he too must have uttered words which should not have been spoken, and dropped tears which should not have been shed, thus violating eternal principles, increasing the sum of human emotion, and forgetting the source from which his own life was received. Such emotions are but the trammels of mortality. The Master came, because it was his time to be born; he went, because it was his time to die. For those who accept the phenomenon of birth and death in this sense, lamentation and sorrow have no place. Death is but the severance of a thread by which a man hangs suspended in life. Fuel can be consumed; but the fire endureth for ever.”

  1. ↑ Of course only in the Taoist sense―i.e., more to take note of the death than for purposes of condolence, etc.
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