VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 13, SECTION 2
The Slaveholder Is a Slave Too, the Master Position Is a Constraint Too
The last section stood up the twelve characters, and the four corollaries. This section lays down the deepest stroke of the whole semester. The one who lays the constraint, the one in the master position, is not therefore a free man. That master position is a constraint too. And often it is the heavier of the two, the one harder to lay down.
First, go back to that master who could not cook
Look once more at the room at the opening of this volume.
The master holds the slave’s deed. On the surface he is the winner, he is the master, all the good is his.
But he cannot cook.
His three meals are in the slave’s hand. His stomach is in the slave’s hand. His life is in the slave’s hand. He cannot let this slave go, for letting him go, he starves. He must guard against this slave, for a pinch of the wrong thing in the pot, and he is finished.
So look at how this master lives.
He watches the slave eat first, and only then dares eat himself. At night he cannot sleep sound, for fear the slave runs, fear the slave turns on him. He dares not fall out with the slave, dares not press him too hard, for press him past bearing, and it is his own life on the line.
Ask, is this master free.
He holds the deed of another. And he is held fast by that same person for whom he holds the deed.
The master position is a constraint too. And this constraint, he cannot lay down, cannot cast off, for the day he casts it off, he cannot feed himself.
Laozi said this long ago
More than two thousand years back, Laozi saw this thing clear through.
He left a line. Being favored is a fright, and being disgraced is a fright, the great trouble is the having of a self.
Turn the meaning of this line over slowly.
Ordinary people think being disgraced, being brought low, is the fright, and being favored, being lifted high, is the joy. Laozi says no. Being favored is a fright the same. To be lifted into a high seat is itself a thing that sets the heart trembling.
Why. Because you climbed up into that seat, and now you are in dread of falling from it. The higher the seat, the harder the fall, the deeper the dread. The favor is in another’s hand to give, and what another can give, another can take. So sitting in the favored seat, the heart never rests.
And the next line goes deeper. The great trouble is the having of a self.
The root of a man’s troubles is that he has this self, this body, this seat, this name, this pile of things he is in dread of losing. The more he has, the more he fears to lose, and the more he is bound.
Set this line beside that master who could not cook. He has a slave, has a deed, has an estate. And exactly because he has these, he cannot sleep the night through.
What he has, has him.
Zhuangzi carried it one step on
Zhuangzi, following Laozi, carried this line one step further.
In the chapter called Responding to Emperors and Kings, he left these words. Be not a corpse for name, be not a storehouse for scheming, be not a taker of charge for affairs, be not a lord for knowing.
Say it in plain speech.
Do not turn yourself into a thing hung up for a name. Do not turn yourself into a granary for storing schemes. Do not turn yourself into the one who shoulders all the affairs. Do not turn yourself into the master who lords it by his knowing.
What is Zhuangzi guarding against.
He is guarding against a man being nailed fast by the position he sits in. You sit in the seat of the name, and the name binds you. You sit in the seat of the master, and being master binds you. You sit in the seat of the one who knows most, and you can no longer step down.
Zhuangzi held up another word against this. No-self. Only when a man is not nailed to any one seat, not made rigid by any one position, is he truly at ease.
Hold this. This is the antidote the ancestors left, and the last section of this chapter will pick it up again. The master position is a seat, and a seat can nail a man fast.
The climbing man thinks he is going toward freedom
Now the layer that matters most in this section. Listen slowly.
People spend their whole lives climbing toward the master position. Working, competing, clawing upward, wishing to stand a rung higher, to lay a constraint on more people, to take a constraint from fewer.
He thinks, climb up, and I am free.
Look with the eye of this chapter, and it is not so.
Every rung he climbs is one more master position taken on, and every master position is one more constraint that cannot be laid down.
He was a common clerk, bound only by his own boss. He climbed to head a team, and now the whole team’s showing is bound onto his body. He climbed to head a company, and now the bread of eight hundred families is bound onto his body. At midnight he cannot sleep, for a wrong step of his, and eight hundred households have no rice.
Think back to that factory owner in the eleventh chapter. He is not the bad man either. He is driven along too, driven by the market, by profit, by the shareholders. His life, too, is held in the market’s hand.
He climbed to the master position, and the master position bound him the tighter.
Every rise, then, is a change from one slave position into another. Only the new position looks more handsome, and carries a higher price.
The higher a man climbs, the more positions he carries, the more ropes are tied to his body, and the fewer are the moments he can say no.
Gold and jade fill the hall, and none can keep them
Laozi left one more line, and set upon this section it is exact.
Gold and jade fill the hall, and none can keep them.
The gold and jade heaped up until they fill the whole hall, and there is no one who can keep them safe to the end.
Turn the meaning over.
You spent a life gathering things, gathering money, gathering seats, gathering people who take your constraint. You thought that once these were gathered, you would be secure, you would be free.
But the more you gather, the more you dread to lose. The full hall of gold and jade does not set you free, it turns you into the one guard who cannot leave his post, guarding it to his death.
Look ahead to the afterword of this semester, to that old woman guarding her money. She sat over a whole house of money and aches, and would not spend it, and let an illness that could be cured carry her off. Gold and jade filled her hall, and she could not keep them, and worse, she could not leave them.
The full hall of gold and jade was not her blessing. It was her post.
The most important turn of this section
So this section turns the twelve characters over, and reads the other face.
The one who lays the constraint is the master. True. But the master is bound, all the same, by the constraint he lays. The deed in his hand is a rope in his hand as well, its one end on the slave, its other end on his own wrist.
So there is, in this world, no position that is pure gain and no loss. There is no seat a man may climb into and from there lay constraints on all the world while taking none himself.
The higher the seat, the heavier the constraint on it.
This is why this volume, from the first page, curses no slaveholder. Not because what the slaveholder did was not cruel. But because he too is a man bound fast in a position, a man who cannot cook, dreading through the long night that the slave will run or the slave will turn.
Curse him, and you have understood nothing. Understand him, and you find the thing to be pitied is not one side. It is the whole structure, that nails every man onto his own several seats.
What this section set up, and the turn to the next
This section set up three things.
The first. The master position is a constraint too, and often the heavier one. The master who could not cook holds the deed and is held by the one whose deed he holds. What a man has, has him.
The second. The ancestors saw this long ago. Laozi, being favored is a fright, the great trouble is the having of a self, gold and jade fill the hall and none can keep them. Zhuangzi, be not a corpse for name, be not a lord for knowing, and against the nailing seat he set up no-self.
The third. The climbing man thinks he goes toward freedom, but every rise is a change from one slave position into another, only handsomer, dearer. There is no position of pure gain. The higher the seat, the heavier the constraint.
Then, twelve chapters and this deepest line are all laid down. It is time to walk the whole road once more, from the head, and drive the last stake of this semester. Why does that position, walked to its most refined layer, need no wicked man at all. And where does the road of next semester begin.
The next section, wei the more refined the harder to recognize, and the road of next semester.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
SECTION 3. Wei the More Refined the Harder to Recognize, and the Road of Next Semester