Existential Psychology and the Way of the Tao

Meditations on the Writings of Zhuangzi

Mark C. Yang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781134877683
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In ancient China, a revered Taoist sage named Zhuangzi told many parables. In Existential Psychology and the Way of the Tao, a selection of these parables will be featured. Following each parable, an eminent existential psychologist will share a personal and scholarly reflection on the meaning and relevance of the parable for psychotherapy and contemporary life. The major tenets of Zhuangzi's philosophy are featured. Taoist concepts of emptiness, stillness, Wu Wei (i.e. intentional non-intentionality), epistemology, dreams and the nature of reality, character building in the midst of pain, meaning and the centrality of relationships, authenticity, self-care, the freedom that can come from one's willingness to confront death, spiritual freedom, and gradations of therapeutic care are topics highlighted in this book.

Part I
Emptiness, Stillness, and Wu Wei

1
The Useless Tree and the Empty Gourd

Mark C. Yang

Figure 1.1 Created by Dr. Richard Bargdill

The image and metaphor of the useless tree was of such importance for Zhuangzi that he wrote two different parables with it as the main symbol. Here are both parables:

The Useless Tree (Zhuangzi, Chapter 1)

Master Hui said to Master Chuang, “The King of Wei presented me with the seeds of a large gourd. I planted them and they grew to bear a fruit that could hold five bushels. I filled the gourd with liquid but its walls were not strong enough for me to pick it up. I split the gourd into ladles but their curvature was so slight they wouldn’t hold anything. Although the gourd was admittedly of huge capacity, I smashed it to bits because it was useless.”

“Sir,” said Master Chuang, “It’s you who were obtuse about utilizing its bigness. There was a man of Sung who was good at making an ointment for chapped hands. For generations, the family occupation had been to wash silk floss. A stranger who heard about the ointment offered him a hundred pieces of gold for the formula. The man of Sung gathered his clan together and said to them, ‘We have been washing silk floss for generations and have earned no more than a few pieces of gold. Now we’ll make a hundred pieces of gold in one morning if we sell the technique. Please let me give it to the stranger.’ After the stranger obtained the formula, he persuaded the King of Ngwa of its usefulness. Viet embarked on hostilities against Ngwa, so the King of Ngwa appointed the stranger to the command of his fleet. That winter, he fought a naval battle with the forces of Viet and totally defeated them (because his sailor’s hands didn’t get chapped). The king set aside a portion of land and enfeoffed¹ him there.

“The ability to prevent chapped hands was the same, but one person gained a fief with it while the other couldn’t even free himself from washing floss. This is because the uses to which the ointment was put were different. Now you, sir, had a five-bushel gourd. Why didn’t you think of tying it on your waist as a big buoy so that you could go floating on the lakes and rivers instead of worrying that it couldn’t hold anything because of its shallow curvature? This shows, sir, that you still have brambles for brains!”

Master Hui said to Master Chuang, “I have a big tree people call Stinky Quassia. Its great trunk is so gnarled and knotted that it cannot be measured with an inked line. Its small branches are so twisted and turned that neither compass nor L-Square can be applied to them. It stands next to the road, but carpenters pay no attention to it. Now sir, your words are just like my tree—big, useless, and heeded by no one.”

“Sir,” said Master Chuang, “are you the only one who hasn’t observed a wild cat or a weasel? Crouching down, it lies in wait for its prey. It leaps about east and west, avoiding neither high nor low, until it gets caught in a snare or dies in a net. Then there is the yak, big as the cloud suspended in the sky. It’s big, all right, but it can’t catch mice. Now you, sir, have a big tree and are bothered by its uselessness. Why don’t you plant it in the Never-never Land with its wide open spaces? There you can roam in non-action by its side and sleep carefreely beneath it. Your Stinky Quassia’s life will not be cut short by axes, nor will anything else harm it. Being useless, how could it ever come to grief?”

(Zhuangzi, 1998, pp. 7–9)

The Useless Tree II (Zhuangzi, Chapter 4)

A carpenter named Shih, who was on his way to Ch’i, came to Bent Shaft. There he saw a chestnut-leaved oak that served as the local shrine. The tree was so big that several thousand head of cattle could take a shade beneath it and it was a hundred spans in circumference. It was so tall that it surveyed the surrounding hills; only above eighty feet were there any branches shooting out from the trunk. It had ten or more limbs from each of which you could make a boat. Those who came to gaze upon it were as numerous as the crowds in a market. The master carpenter paid no attention to it, but kept walking without slowing his pace a bit. After his disciples had had their fill of gazing upon the great tree, they caught up with carpenter Shih and said, “Since we have taken up our axes to follow you, master, we have never seen such marvelous timber as this. Why sir, were you unwilling to look at it, but kept on walking without even slowing down?”

“Enough! Don’t talk about it! It’s defective wood. A boat made from it would sink. A coffin made from it would rot right away. An implement made from it would break right away. A door made from it would exude resin. A pillar made from it would soon be grub-infested. This tree is worthless. There’s nothing you can make from it. That’s why it could grow to be so old.”

After the carpenter had returned to his own country, the shrine oak appeared to him in a dream saying, “With what tree will you compare me? Will you compare me with those that have fine-grained wood? As for the hawthorn, the pear, the orange, the pomelo, and other fruitiferous trees, once their fruits are ripe, they are torn off, and the trees are thereby abused. The big branches are broken and the smaller branches are snapped. These are trees that make their own lives miserable because of their abilities. Therefore, they cannot finish out the years allotted to them because of the assaults of the worldly. It’s the same with all things. But I have sought for a long time to be useless. Now, on the verge of death, I have finally learned what uselessness really means and that it is of great use to me. If, after all, I had been useful, would I have been able to grow so big? Furthermore, you and I are both things, so why the deuce should you appraise another thing? You’re a defective person on the verge of death. What do you know about ‘defective wood?’”

When carpenter Shih awoke, he told the dream to his disciples. “If the oak’s intention is to be useless, then why does it serve as the local shrine?” they asked.

“Silence! Don’t say another word! The oak is merely assuming the guise of a shrine to ward off the curses of those who do not understand it. If it were not a shrine, it would still face the threat of being cut down. Moreover, what the oak is preserving is different from the masses of other trees. If we attempt to understand it on the basis of conventional morality, won’t we be far from the point?”

Sir Motley of Southune made an excursion to the Hillock of Shang. There he saw an unusual tree so big that a thousand four-horse chariots would be shaded by its leaves.

“Goodness! What tree is this?” asked Sir Motley. “It must have unusual timber.” Looking upward at the smaller branches, however, he saw that they were all twisted and unfit to be beams. Looking downward at the massive trunk, he saw that it was so gnarled as to be unfit for making coffins. If you lick one of its leaves, your mouth will develop ulcerous sores. If you smell its foliage, you fall into a drunken delirium that lasts for three days.

“This tree is truly worthless,” said Sir Motley, “and that is why it has grown so large. Ah! The spiritual man is also worthless like this.”

In the state of Sung, there is a placed called Chingshih where catalpas, arborvitae, and mulberry trees thrive. Those that are more than a hand’s breadth or two around are chopped down by people who are looking for tether posts for their monkeys. Those that are three or four spans in circumference are chopped down by people who are looking for lofty ridgepoles. Those that are seven or eight spans in circumference are chopped down by the families of aristocrats or wealthy merchants who are looking for coffin planks. Therefore, they do not live out the years allotted to them by heaven but die midway under the ax. This is the trouble brought about by having worth. Conversely, in carrying out an exorcistic sacrifice, one cannot present oxen with white foreheads, suckling pigs with upturned snouts, or people with hemorrhoids to the gods of the river. All of this is known by the magus-priests, who consider these creatures to be inauspicious. For the same reasons, the spiritual person considers them to be greatly auspicious.

(Zhuangzi, 1998, pp. 37–39)

*Permission to republish material has been granted by University of Hawai’i Press. Zhuangzi, (1998). Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu. (V. Mair, Trans.). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.

Tale of the Large Gourd

With the allegorical tale of the Large Gourd, Zhuangzi is warning us of systems and institutions that grow too big, and perhaps too fast, with walls that are not strong enough to carry what it’s meant to carry. This theme is addressed in the parable of The Sage and the Thief, Chapter 10 in the book Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi warns of the dangers of over-reliance upon systems and dogma and becoming enamored with the size of such systems and institutions. It would be foolish for us to equate utility with size. The important thing is to determine if the walls of the gourd are sufficiently proportionate to its size if we are to carry water, the source of life, or anything of substance within. Growing too big, too fast will render the gourd useless for carrying things of substance. The question becomes, the systems and institutions may be large, but are they carrying anything of substance? Do not mistake size for substance!

Utility of the Gourd

Instead, wisdom lies in recognizing the appropriate utility of the gourd. In regards to this, Zhuangzi shares the story of the secret ointment for preventing chapped hands. The secret lies not only in the ancient ointment formula but also in how the ointment is to be used. In psychotherapeutic practice, we should learn our techniques well, but it’s much more important that the techniques be properly applied at the right time. For “the ability to prevent chapped hands was the same, but one person gained a fief with it while the other couldn’t even free himself from washing floss” (Zhuangzi, 1998, p. 8). Here, Zhuangzi is reminding us that it is not only about the technique or the formula but how and when it is used. The proper use can set us free. With one’s sights set on temporary gain (a hundred pieces of gold), we will forever be stuck with minimal gain. Indeed Wampold (2010), in his meta-analysis of psychotherapeutic research in the past few decades, found that it is much more the within-group difference (difference amongst the therapists) rather than the between-group difference (difference between therapeutic orientations) that accounts for the efficacy of treatment. This suggests that how the therapy is practiced is much more important than which therapeutic orientation is employed. Similarly, James Bugental (1992) warned us about the limitation of therapeutic techniques as well:

Over the years I have acquired many aids to that search. And I have left beside the road many of those I acquired. Standardized tests, projective techniques, hypnosis, empty chair enactments, role-playing, guided fantasies, psychoactive substances—all useful, some occasionally used by me still, all limiting even as they were facilitative. They offered, each in its own way, intriguing, even valuable, glimpses of the people with whom I worked. Ultimately though, they made those persons into objects—objects of my study, objects of investigation, objects of the techniques themselves.

I have come to believe that all of these aids to the quest for the true subjectivity are still photographs of wild animals—or at their best, like seeing those animals in a zoo. They show the quarry but without the animating spirit, the action which is its most central, most meaningful characteristics.

(p. 120)

This is a lesson not only to be learned in psychology, but perhaps much more so in the competitive world of business. Which businessman would not crave a fief compared to one hundred pieces of gold? So many businessmen look for that secret formula, leading them to earn more than just a few pieces of gold. And some have succeeded. However, wise are the ones who are able to transform that formula into a revolution. This was accomplished by Steve Jobs and his team who took Toshiba’s “formula” of the 1.8 inch diameter portable hard disk and transformed it in ways unimaginable prior to his creation. In one aspect, the iPod was essentially a portable hard disk that Toshiba didn’t know what to do with. Interestingly, already on the market was the Nomad Jukebox from Singapore-based Creative Inc. This jukebox-on-the-go was based on the 2.5 inch portable hard disk made by Fujitsu. However, Jobs and his team saw something different. They created a “fief” around this hard disk and built a culture, a revolution, a way of life around a simple hard disk. Now many of us are thinking, why didn’t I think of it? So Zhuangzi reminds us that it’s about perspective. Whereas many see a large, hollow, useless gourd with weak walls to be smashed, the wise will “go with the flow” and recognize that its inherent utility lies in its emptiness where others see waste and uselessness.

Jobs understood the ways of the Tao and was famous for his Zen approach to design. Below are additional quotes from the iPod creation team members that substantiate Jobs’s surrendering himself to the ways of the Tao:

“Steve made some very interesting observations very early on about how this was about navigating content,” I’ve told The New York Times. “It was about being very focused and not trying to do too much with the device—which would have been its complication and, therefore, its demise. The enabling features aren’t obvious and evident, because the key was getting rid of stuff.”

I’ve told the Times that the key to the iPod wasn’t sudden flashes of genius, but the design process. His design group collaborated closely with manufacturers and engineers, constantly tweaking and refining the design. “It’s not serial,” he told the Times. “It’s not one person passing something on to the next.”

“Apple’s designers spend 10 percent of their time doing traditional industrial design: coming up with ideas, drawing, making ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Foreword
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Overview of the Book
• PART I Emptiness, Stillness, and Wu Wei
• PART II Knowledge and Epistemology
• PART III Miscellaneous Chapters
• PART IV Autumn Floods
• Index