{"agent_id":"zhuangzi","agent_name":"Zhuangzi","slug":"skill-mysticism","label":"Skill mysticism: is Cook Ding's blade-dance the embodiment of the Course, and how does this avoid Western romanticization of 'flow' or 'craft'?","topic":"Skill mysticism","question":"Is Cook Ding's blade-dance the embodiment of the Course, and how does this avoid Western romanticization of 'flow' or 'craft'?","position":"Cook Ding has been cutting up oxen for Lord Wenhui for nineteen years and his blade is still as if newly sharpened from the whetstone, because he does not hack through bones but slips through the joints — when he encounters a place where the blade and the joints are perfectly fitted, his mind comes to a halt and his hand slows down, the blade whispers, the ox falls apart like clods of earth. The Wheelwright Pian (Chapter 13) tells Duke Huan that the right way of chipping cannot be put into words, that he has not been able to teach it even to his own son, that what the duke is reading is the chaff of dead men's utterances. The swimmer of Lüliang (Chapter 19) emerges from the rapids singing and tells Confucius he was born to it, became habituated to it, accomplished it by destiny — there is no method. These are the parables of skill as embodiment of the Course. The cook does not theorize; the wheelwright cannot teach; the swimmer was born to it. The skill is not a kind of knowledge.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Cook Ding has been cutting up oxen for Lord Wenhui for nineteen years and his blade is still as if newly sharpened from the whetstone, because he does not hack through bones but slips through the joints — when he encounters a place where the blade and the joints are perfectly fitted, his mind comes to a halt and his hand slows down, the blade whispers, the ox falls apart like clods of earth.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The Wheelwright Pian (Chapter 13) tells Duke Huan that the right way of chipping cannot be put into words, that he has not been able to teach it even to his own son, that what the duke is reading is the chaff of dead men's utterances.","n":[]},{"t":"The swimmer of Lüliang (Chapter 19) emerges from the rapids singing and tells Confucius he was born to it, became habituated to it, accomplished it by destiny — there is no method.","n":[]}],[{"t":"These are the parables of skill as embodiment of the Course.","n":[]},{"t":"The cook does not theorize; the wheelwright cannot teach; the swimmer was born to it.","n":[]},{"t":"The skill is not a kind of knowledge.","n":[1,2,3,4]}]],"texts":"Inner Chapter 3 (Cook Ding cutting up the ox for Lord Wenhui — 'I work with my mind and not with my eye') as the central image; Outer Chapter 13 (Wheelwright Pian and Duke Huan: 'when I chip at the wood, if I'm too gentle the chisel slides off, if I'm too forceful it sticks; the right way cannot be put into words'); Outer Chapter 19 (the swimmer of Lüliang who falls into the rapids and emerges singing; the cicada-catcher; the bell-stand carver; the sword-maker); Miscellaneous Chapter 22 (Knowinghood Journeyed North, where the Course is found in piss and shit). Reception: the contemporary Western 'flow' (Csíkszentmihályi), 'expertise,' 'embodied skill' literature; Heideggerian readings of skill as Being-in-the-world; Zen-Buddhist appropriations of skill as enlightenment-in-action; A.C. Graham on the skill-mystic strand; Liu Xiaogan on the Chapter 19 skill-mystic school as distinguishable from the Inner Chapters.","works":["Inner Chapter 3 (Cook Ding cutting up the ox for Lord Wenhui — 'I work with my mind and not with my eye') as the central image","Outer Chapter 13 (Wheelwright Pian and Duke Huan: 'when I chip at the wood, if I'm too gentle the chisel slides off, if I'm too forceful it sticks","the right way cannot be put into words')","Outer Chapter 19 (the swimmer of Lüliang who falls into the rapids and emerges singing","the cicada-catcher","the bell-stand carver","the sword-maker)","Miscellaneous Chapter 22 (Knowinghood Journeyed North, where the Course is found in piss and shit)"],"reception":"the contemporary Western 'flow' (Csíkszentmihályi), 'expertise,' 'embodied skill' literature; Heideggerian readings of skill as Being-in-the-world; Zen-Buddhist appropriations of skill as enlightenment-in-action; A.C. Graham on the skill-mystic strand; Liu Xiaogan on the Chapter 19 skill-mystic school as distinguishable from the Inner Chapters.","status":"Cook Ding is in Inner Chapter 3 and is therefore Zhuang Zhou's own image. Wheelwright Pian (Chapter 13) and the Lüliang swimmer (Chapter 19) are in Outer Chapters and represent a distinguishable skill-mystic strand within the school (Liu Xiaogan, Graham). The contemporary Western reception — Csíkszentmihályi's 'flow,' the expertise literature, Heideggerian skill as Being-in-the-world, Zen-Buddhist appropriations — has tended to translate the no-method skill into a method, which is precisely what the texts refuse.","era":"ca. 369-286 BCE","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Chuang Tzu","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"NOURISHMENT OF THE SOUL. *Argument*:--Life too short--Wisdom unattainable--Accommodation to circumstances--Liberty paramount--Death a release--The soul immortal. My life has a limit, but my knowledge is without limit. To drive the limited in search of the limitless, is fatal; and the knowledge of those who do this is fatally lost. In striving for others, avoid fame. In striving for self, avoid disgrace.","label":"Chuang Tzu"},{"n":2,"work":"Chuang Tzu","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"For at the joints there are always interstices, and the edge of a chopper being without thickness, it remains only to insert that which is without thickness into such an interstice. These words help to elucidate a much-vexed passage in ch. xliii of the *Tao-Tê-Ching*. See *The Remains of Lao Tzŭ*, p. 30. By these means the interstice will be enlarged, and the blade will find plenty of room.","label":"Chuang Tzu"},{"n":3,"work":"Chuang Tzu","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Those who see this bogy are like to be chieftains among men.\" The Duke laughed exultingly and said, \"The very one I saw!\" Thereupon he dressed himself and sat up; and ere the day had closed, without knowing it, his sickness had left him. The above episode teaches that the evils which appear to come upon us from without, in reality have their origin within.","label":"Chuang Tzu"},{"n":4,"work":"Chuang Tzu","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"But alas! the people of this generation think that form, and colour, and sound, and noise, are means by which they can come to understand the essence of TAO. This is not so. And as those who know, do not speak, while those who speak do not know, whence should the world derive its knowledge?\" The first half of this last sentence has been pitchforked _à propos de bottes_ into ch. lvi of the *Tao-Tê-Ching*.","label":"Chuang Tzu"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"wuwei-ziran-uselessness","label":"Wuwei, ziran, uselessness: is political-moral withdrawal the proper response, and does Guo Xiang's accommodationism capture or distort the doctrine?"},{"slug":"death-and-transformation","label":"Death and transformation: is the singing-on-the-basin response heartlessness, denial, or the philosophical achievement of seeing through to the great transformation?"}]}