Not Competing with the World

Reading it step by step

Today we begin our third theme: bend outside, steady inside. The phrase comes from chapter 22: “The people of old changed on the outside but not within; people today change within but not on the outside.” The ancients went along with things outwardly and stayed constant inside. We tend to do the opposite: rigid on the outside, blown about within.

Today's line comes from “All Under Heaven,” the last chapter of the book, and it describes Zhuangzi himself. Let's take one sentence in three steps.

First: the mind can be high. Alone, he came and went with the spirit of heaven and earth. Zhuangzi's mind talked with heaven and earth. That's the altitude the great bird flew at on Day 1. A person's inner world can be vast, and there's no need to be modest about that.

Second: but the eyes don't look down. He did not look down on the ten thousand things. The easiest mistake for a high-minded person is contempt: “They wouldn't understand.” Zhuangzi doesn't do it. He talks with butchers, carpenters, fishermen and disabled men, and writes them as teachers. Being high isn't for looking down.

Third: no pressing on right and wrong, and so he lived among ordinary people. It isn't that right and wrong don't exist. It's that he doesn't use them to blame people or to win arguments. He went back into the crowd and lived an ordinary life: weaving sandals, fishing, bickering with Huizi. On the outside, like everyone; on the inside, always in touch with heaven and earth. That is bending outside and staying steady inside.

Think of the truly cultivated people you know. They usually don't make you feel small.

Mind with heaven and earth; feet on the ground among people.