Your life has a limit, but knowledge has none.[1] If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger. If you understand this and still strive for knowledge, you will be in danger for certain! If you do good, stay away from fame. If you do evil, stay away from punishments. Follow the middle; go by what is constant and you can stay in one piece, keep yourself alive, look after your parents, and live out your years.

Cook Ding was cutting up an ox for Lord Wenhui.[2] At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee—zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Jingshou music.[3]

“Ah, this is marvelous!” said Lord Wenhui. “Imagine skill reaching such heights!”

Cook Ding laid down his knife and replied, “What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now—now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop, and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.

“A good cook changes his knife once a year—because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month—because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room—more than enough for the blade to play about in. That’s why after nineteen years, the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.

“However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until—flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.”[4]

“Excellent!” said Lord Wenhui. “I have heard the words of Cook Ding and learned how to care for life!”

When Gongwen Xuan saw the Commander of the Right,[5] he was startled and said, “What kind of man is this? How did he come to lose his foot? Was it Heaven? Or was it man?”

“It was Heaven, not man,” said the commander. “When Heaven gave me life, it saw to it that I would be one-footed. Men’s looks are given to them. So I know this was the work of Heaven and not of man. The swamp pheasant has to walk ten paces for one peck and a hundred paces for one drink, but it doesn’t want to be kept in a cage. Though you treat it like a king, its spirit won’t be content.”

When Lao Dan[6] died, Qin Shi went to mourn for him, but after giving three cries, he left the room.

“Weren’t you a friend of the Master?” asked Laozi’s disciples.

“Yes.”

“And you think it’s all right to mourn him this way?”

“Yes,” said Qin Shi. “At first I took him for a real man, but now I know he wasn’t. A little while ago, when I went in to mourn, I found old men weeping for him as though they were weeping for a son, and young men weeping for him as though they were weeping for a mother. To have gathered a group like that, he must have done something to make them talk about him, though he didn’t ask them to talk or make them weep for him, though he didn’t ask them to weep. This is to hide from Heaven, turn your back on the true state of affairs, and forget what you were born with. In the old days, this was called the crime of hiding from Heaven. Your master happened to come because it was his time, and he happened to leave because things follow along. If you are content with the time and willing to follow along, then grief and joy have no way to enter. In the old days, this was called being freed from the bonds of God.

“Though the grease burns out of the torch, the fire passes on, and no one knows where it ends.”[7]

1. The chapter is very brief and would appear to be mutilated.

2. Identified as King Hui of Wei, who appeared on p. 5.

3. The Mulberry Grove is identified as a rain dance from the time of King Tang of the Shang dynasty, and the Jingshou music, as part of a longer composition from the time of Yao.

4. Waley (Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China, p. 73) takes this whole paragraph to refer to the working methods of a mediocre carver and hence translates it very differently. There is a great deal to be said for his interpretation, but after much consideration I have decided to follow the traditional interpretation because it seems to me that the extreme care and caution that the cook uses when he comes to a difficult place is also a part of Zhuangzi’s “secret of caring for life.”

5. Probably the ex–Commander of the Right, as he has been punished by having one foot amputated, a common penalty in ancient China. It is mutilating punishments such as these that Zhuangzi has in mind when he talks about the need to “stay in one piece.”

6. Laozi, the reputed author of the Daodejing.

7. The first part of this last sentence is scarcely intelligible, and there are numerous suggestions for how it should be interpreted or emended. I follow Zhu Guiyao in reading “grease” instead of “finger.” For the sake of reference, I list some of the other possible interpretations as I understand them: “When the fingers complete the work of adding firewood, the fire passes on” (Guo Xiang); “Though the fingers are worn out gathering firewood, the fire passes on” (Yu Yue); “What we can point to are the fagots that have been consumed, but the fire is transmitted elsewhere” (Legge, Fukunaga).