Chapter 85 Chapter 85 The Cultural Philosophy of "Empty"

If you want to be a Taiping official, you must understand the word "empty". What is empty? Once, Zhuangzi took his students on a trip, passing a place, and saw a big crooked tree, but the surrounding area was bare, and the ground was full of miserable stumps here and there.It turns out that all the trees here have been cut down, and there is only one tree left. So the student asked Zhuangzi: "Teacher, why did the fellers leave this tree alone?" Zhuangzi said with a smile: "Look at this tree carefully. You can see that it is crooked and knotted. What is the use of cutting down such a tree? You must know that the reason why the tree is cut down is because people want to build palaces. Houses, choose straight trees carefully, because straight trunks will be useful, and useful will be cut down, and the reason this tree survives is because it is useless.”

The students listened and nodded: "So, teacher, we should learn from this tree when we are alive. Don't be useful. Once you are useful to others, you will inevitably be cut down." Zhuangzi said: "That's right, the so-called man is innocent, but pregnant is guilty. People in this world attack and kill each other. Once you are useful to someone, you may be a threat to another person. For example, Confucius, he was traveling around the world. At that time, I received an invitation from the King of Song. The reason why the King of Song invited him was because the King wanted to use his teachings to suppress the forces that opposed the King in the country. This is what Confucius is for. To the King of Song He said that he was useful. But because of this, it aroused the hatred of Song Guo's opposition force Huan Kui. Hearing that Confucius was going to Song State, Huan Kui was furious, so he personally led people to intercept and kill him. Fortunately, Confucius escaped. Hurry up, otherwise, Confucius will inevitably suffer disaster because he is useful to others." Finally, Zhuangzi taught earnestly: "So you must remember that the safest thing is to be useless."

Then the teachers and students continued to move forward, and when they arrived at a farmer's house, the farmer treated the guests hospitablely, and wanted to kill a duck to entertain Zhuangzi's teachers and students.But which one to kill?The farmer couldn’t make up his mind. At this time, his wife suggested: “Kill the one that doesn’t lay eggs. If the duck doesn’t lay eggs, it’s useless. Why keep the useless duck? Of course, kill the duck and eat it.” The students saw Seeing this situation, I asked Zhuangzi: "Teacher, why is this duck killed?" Zhuangzi said: "Didn't you hear that? It's because the duck is useless. A duck is useless if it doesn't lay eggs. If it is useless, it will be killed. Not only ducks are like this, but people are also like this. In the past, Weiguo During the political turmoil, the crown prince competed with Lord Wei for the throne, drove the officials to the high platform, and first pulled a minister over and said, "This man knows wealth and is a useful person. He should not be killed, but should be kept." A minister was pulled over and said: "This man knows diplomacy, and he is also a useful person. He should not be killed." Another minister was pulled over and said: "This man is just a courtier, ignorant, incompetent, and useless. , kill him.' So, useless people will be killed, so you remember, being a human being, the way of survival lies in whether you have the value of existence. If you are useless to others, others Of course I won’t protect you, and it will be a matter of time before you are killed. So the way to survive is to be useful, and absolutely not to be useless.”

Hearing this, the students were all confused, and said: "Teacher, you just told us that being a man must not be useful, and you will be killed if you are useful. But now you say that you must not be useless, and you will be killed if you are useless." .Then should we be useful or useless?" Zhuangzi said: "Now you are close to Tao. Tao will only appear when your thoughts are in trouble. Now you know that you will be killed if you are useful, and you will be killed if you are useless. Then you should know that Tao is in Between usefulness and uselessness. Usefulness is one extreme, and uselessness is the other extreme. In life, doing things, and learning, the fear is to go to extremes. Once you go to extremes, you will lose the way and lose the possibility of turning back. You One thing must be grasped, there is a huge living space between the useful and the useless. You must carefully create the useless and the useful, and you live in the space constructed by the two, and the usefulness brings The dangers that come will not hurt you, and the disasters that are useless will not affect you, this is the essence of Tao."

This is the philosophy and skills of emptiness that we need to master. According to Buddhism, emptiness is form, and form is emptiness. Form here refers to everything between heaven and earth. Empty is not nothing, but should contain everything. The emptiness of being a man in the officialdom is that you seem to belong to one faction, but on closer inspection you belong to another camp. Both sides in conflict are proud of you as an ally.But no matter which faction loses power, when you pursue it, you will find that you do not belong to any faction, you only belong to yourself. The space for doing things in the officialdom means that your work can meet the requirements of one aspect and the other. You seem to be tailor-made for each requirement.But if something goes wrong in any aspect, you can't be held accountable no matter what. Your job is to only be responsible for your own position.

The emptiness of official official documents is your writing. If this explanation is correct, then the explanation is also correct. If there is a problem with one interpretation, then your writing can be classified as the one that has no problems.Your writing is not written to explain, but only to address the problem you address. From this, we can know that emptiness is the great wisdom of being a person, an official, doing things and writing.I'm not afraid that you can't reach this state, but I'm afraid that you don't know anything about it. Once you know where this state is, you will sharpen your mind and pursue it diligently until you are able to perform with ease and be good at dancing.