VOLUME II, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 1
The Body's Reactions, Zhuangzi and the Piss and the Shit
For four chapters now, all the torment has come from the outside. Someone blocks you, you block someone. From this chapter on, torment turns in a second direction, one that runs deeper and is far more unexpected. It comes from within. And in this direction the one being tormented is you, and the one doing the tormenting is also you. This chapter takes it in three sections. This first one drives the whole thing down to its plainest, least arguable footing, the reactions of the body. And then it brings in Zhuangzi, and the single most startling line in all of Chinese thought, the Way is in the piss and the shit, to set the root. Today, in earnest, the body.
First, get the two directions clear. The four chapters behind us were torment in its first direction, from the outside. A little power pushed to the limit, with resentment and scorn behind it, coming down as the five forms, and the person at the counter left blocked. That is the visible torment, the five forms that hem a life in, each one of which brings a scene straight to mind. But torment has a second direction, from within. And this second direction, added up over a life, runs ten times more often than the first. Why so much more? Because the one doing this torment is you. You take some law that other people laid down, turn it around, and torment yourself with it all day long, binding yourself so tight you never come loose.
This law in the heart got its own treatment in the fifth volume of this set, the one on law. The written law out in the world is a man made thing. The law inside a person is that same man made thing, carried indoors and built one layer higher, and still man made. This chapter takes that position and flips it up out of the law and into the culture, and drives it down to the plainest place there is, into the reactions of the body. It is a place a great many people stay trapped in a whole life long, and never once see clearly.
Walk a day, from the eyes opening in the morning to lying down at night. All through that day the body is reacting on its own, without a pause. Breathing. The heartbeat. Sweat. Tears. A yawn. A hiccup. The gut rumbling. Needing the toilet. Wanting to laugh, wanting to cry, hunger, drowsiness. None of these did you decide on. The body runs them itself, as plain as the heartbeat, as natural as the breath.
And how many times in that one day, because of a law that says you should not do this in front of others, did you force one of these natural things back down? In a meeting, gas builds and wants out, but the law says you must not break wind in public, so you hold it. And for the next half hour the gas churns in your gut, you cannot sit still, and not one word of the meeting goes in. In front of strangers you are tired and a yawn comes, but the law says a yawn looks disrespectful, so you clamp it down, and your eyes sting and your face goes stiff and your whole mind is bent on not letting the yawn out. Grief comes and the tears rise, but the law says a grown person should not weep in front of others, a man least of all, so you clench your teeth and hold your eyes red and go on talking while you force the tears back, your body shaking, your face made to hold a smile. You need the toilet, but the law says getting up in the middle of a meeting looks unprofessional, and leaving the table in the middle of a meal with the boss looks clueless, so you hold it, your body wretched, unable to fix on anything, your face still nodding along.
Each of these reactions was born in you, as plain as breathing, as natural as the heartbeat. And every one of them is governed by a law that someone else laid down. These laws are not the law. No one gets hauled off by the police for breaking wind in an office. And yet their grip on a person is harder than the law's. The law you will dare to break. This law inside you, you dare not. Why not? Because the second you break it, before anyone else has judged you, you have already felt the shame yourself. No one has said a word, and you have already tormented yourself once through. Look into the lining of these laws and every one of them has the same sentence written on it. If I do this, people will look down on me. The fear of being looked down on. The fear of being scorned. The scorn of the poor from the third chapter, that gaze that comes down from above, remember it? The body's law, put plainly, is the fear of that gaze landing on you. And so, before anyone else can scorn you, you have already reined yourself in.
To speak of the body at its plainest, we have to bring in Zhuangzi. Two thousand three hundred years ago, in one of his dialogues, a man named Dongguo Zi put a question to him. This Way you speak of, where exactly is it? Zhuangzi said, there is nowhere it is not. Give me a definite place, said Dongguo Zi, and then I will believe you. It is in the ants, said Zhuangzi. How can it be somewhere so low? It is in the weeds. Lower still? It is in the tiles and the broken shards. Why do you keep going further down? And Zhuangzi said, it is in the piss and the shit.
Two thousand three hundred years ago, Zhuangzi took this to the root. The highest Way there is does not sit up in the sky, or in the temple hall, or in the lofty talk of the spirit. It is in the piss and the shit. In the plainest position the body has, in the one thing every single person does and no one is willing to bring up. Why would Zhuangzi insist on the piss and the shit, of all things? Because there is no plainer, no more naked showing of the law of position than that. The emperor has to shit, and so does the beggar. The professor breaks wind, and so does the man who cannot read. The sage hiccups, and so does everyone else. At the position of piss and shit, the whole three thousand year apparatus of high and low, refined and coarse, civilized and barbarous, cultured and crude, shows what it really is. Zhuangzi's the Way is in the piss and the shit means, at its core, the Way has no high and no low. Stand at the position of piss and shit and look, and between one person and another there is no higher and no lower, only one body that everybody shares.
Now turn Zhuangzi's line back onto tormenting yourself. Each time a person holds himself in because a law says you must not break wind in public, he is taking a law of high and low and tormenting himself with it. The root of that law is this sentence. If I break wind, I have dropped a rank, and people will think less of me. But Zhuangzi saw all the way through it two thousand three hundred years ago. At the position of piss and shit there is no dropping a rank at all, because everyone is exactly the same. A person takes this high and low law that others laid down and torments his own body with it, and sits there restless a dozen times a day, never free. At bottom, he has taken a law that others made and believed it real. He has taken the scorn from the third chapter and turned it around to aim at his own body.
So here is where this section leaves us. Torment has a second direction, from within, where the one tormented and the one tormenting are the same person, you. Its plainest footing is in the reactions of the body, breaking wind, hiccuping, weeping, yawning, needing the toilet, each natural reaction governed by a law that says you should not, in front of others. The lining of these laws is the fear of being looked down on, the fear of being scorned. They are not the law, but they grip harder than the law, because before anyone else judges you, you have tormented yourself first. Zhuangzi, the Way is in the piss and the shit, set the root two thousand three hundred years ago. The Way has no high and no low. Stand at the position of piss and shit, where every person is the same and there is nothing left to argue, and between people there is no higher and no lower. Torment your own body with a law of high and low, and at bottom you have taken someone else's law for the truth.
And that raises a larger claim. If culture can reach even the reactions of the body, then how deep does the force of culture actually go? The next section takes up the startling answer. The highest dimension of culture is not in the spirit. It is in the body. See you there.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.