The useless has its use

Prime Minister Huizi has been complaining to Zhuangzi about a gift of seeds from the king that have grown into gourds so large as to be good for nothing, and has just been upbraided by the philosopher for his tangled-up, overgrown mind: “fashion them into big floats to go drifting on rivers and lakes.” Huizi, who “really is clumsy at using big things” according to Zhuangzi, doubles down on the value of things or lack thereof:

“I have a big tree that people call a stink tree1. Its trunk is too gnarled and knotted to apply an ink line, its branches too curved and crooked to apply a compass or set square2. Were it growing right in the road, a carpenter wouldn’t give it a glance. Now your words are big and useless, rejected by everyone alike.”

Zhuangzi replies with an abstruse comparison of a wild cat, skilled at pouncing on rats until its leaping high and low lands it in a lethal trap, to a yak, able to outgrow any trap but unable to catch rats. Finally he comes to the point:

“Now you have a big tree and are troubled that it’s useless. Why not plant it in the land of nothing-at-all, in the wilds of vast emptiness, and hang out doing nothing by its side or meander about and fall asleep beneath it?
 Its life won’t be cut short by axes;
 Nothing will harm it.
 There being no use for it,
 How could any distress come to it?”

On another occasion, Huizi once again complains to Zhuangzi, “Your sayings are useless.” Zhuangzi replies:

“Only when someone understands the useless can you begin to speak with them of use. Heaven and earth are indeed broad and vast, but what a person uses is just enough to hold up their feet. Still, if we were to dig around their feet all the way down to the Yellow Springs, would the person still find the part they’re standing on useful?”

Huizi concedes, “It’d be useless”, to which Zhuangzi concludes, “So then that the useless has a use is indeed clear.”

Little is known of Zhuangzi’s life, except that he probably lived in the 4ᵗʰ century BCE as a minor official in the central Chinese state of Song, and he was thought to be the best friend of Huizi. Zhuangzi reportedly declined the honour of high office offered by the king, on the grounds that he knew of a sacred tortoise, dead for three thousand years, that the king kept in a shrine. He asked, “This tortoise, would it have preferred to die and have its bones honoured as a relic or to live and drag its tail in the mud?” The king and Prime Minister Huizi are lost to history; Zhuangzi’s timeless anecdotes and allegories have become foundational to the Taoist tradition, one of five officially recognised religions in the People’s Republic of China.

The quotations above come from the ancient compilation of texts that has borne the philosopher’s name Zhuangzi3 (also translated as Chuang Tzu4) since the 3ʳᵈ century BCE5, amongst which many chapters, or ‘books’, are deemed to bear the mark of his literary wit and skill.

• Ailanthus altissima, also called ‘tree of heaven’, and ‘cum tree’ for the distinctive smell of the pollen in flowers of the male plant.
• The carpenter’s craft in applying these tools-of-the-trade to uncut roundwood serves as a metaphor for moral cultivation.
• Fraser, C. (2024) Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings, translated by Chris Fraser. Oxford World Classics. The quotations are taken from Book 1: Freely Wandering About §1.5-1.6, Book 26: External Things §26.7, and Book 17: Autumn Waters §17.5.
• Watson, B. (1964, 1996) Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, translated by Burton Watson, pp. 28-30, pp. 136-137 and p. 109.
• For the original pre-modern Chinese, see the Chinese Text Project §1.6-1.7, §26.7 and §17.11.

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