Sitting and Forgetting

Reading it step by step

Yesterday's fasting of the heart was about emptiness. Today: the way to make “emptiness” concrete is through forgetting. When people teach Zhuangzi, the fasting of the heart and sitting-and-forgetting usually go together.

This passage is quietly funny: a student turns up three times saying “I'm making progress,” the teacher twice says “not yet,” and the third time it's the teacher who gets a shock.

Let's take it in three steps.

First: the order of forgetting. First benevolence and righteousness, then rites and music, finally sitting and forgetting. Benevolence and righteousness are broad, abstract principles or ideals; rites and music are concrete rules of practice; sitting and forgetting aims at the self. Some scholars think rites should come first, but the order makes sense: for most people, forgetting ideals is easier than forgetting habits, and forgetting yourself is hardest of all.

Second: what exactly do you forget? Put simply, there are two steps. One: forget your body. Two: forget your cleverness. How tall are you? How much do you weigh? How old? What did you study? What do you understand? Forget all of it. What remains is “one with the great thoroughfare”: connected to everything. Drop the boundary of the self and you merge with all things. Merged, you have no preferences; transformed, you have no fixed ways. It's a bit like becoming a child again.

Third: Confucius's grace. At the end Confucius says, “Let me follow behind you.” A teacher of real generosity.

That's the end of Week 2. We began with the troubles of the world: the monkeys' moods, the mantis's arms, the endless chase for knowledge, the rotten rat and the tortoise shell. Today an answer appears. Not adding one more thing, but forgetting a little.

Forget a little, and your heart has room for everything.