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Its In The Way That You Use It December 23, 2008 @ 12:36 p.m.
From the Collections of Chuang-tzu, modified from the translations of Thomas Cleary:
Hui-tzu said to Chauang-tzu, "The king of Wei gave me seeds of a giant gourd. I planted them and got a huge gourd. If I had filled it with water, it would not have been strong enough to be lifted, and if I had split it for a dipper it would have been too shallow to hold anything. It was certainly enormous, but I considered it useless and smashed it."
Chuang-tzu replied, "You are certainly inept when it comes to employing the great. There were people of Sung who were skilled at making a balm that prevented their hands from chapping; for generations they had worked as cotton bleachers. A traveler who had heard about this asked to buy the formula, offering a hundred pieces of gold.
"The clan of bleachers got together to discuss what to do. They said, 'We have been cotton bleachers for generations, earning no more than a few pieces of gold. Now we have a chance to make a hundred pieces of gold in one day. Let's give him the formula.'
"So the traveler got the formula for the balm. He used it to gain the pleasure of the king of Wu, who made him a general. Then when the men of Wu fought the men of Yueh in a battle on the water in winter, the men of Wu [who had the balm to prevent chapping] routed the men of Yueh. Now the king of Wu rewarded the man who had brought the balm formula by entitling him as lord of his own domain.
"In either case, the ability to prevent chapping was the same, but there was a difference in the way it was employed: one man used it to be entitled, the others were still cotton bleachers.
"Now suppose you have a huge gourd: why not make a coracle boat out of it and use it to sail on the rivers and lakes, instead of worrying about it being too shallow to hold anything? You are still confused, it seems."
Hui-tzu then said to Chuang-tzu, "I have a gigantic tree, but its trunk is too gnarled for the plumb line and its branches too twisted for the ruler: even if it were set in the middle of the road, carpenters would pay no attention to it. Now what you say is grandiose but useless, rejected by everyone alike."
Chuang-tzu replied, "Have you not seen a wildcat? It lowers itself close to the ground to watch for careless prey; it leaps this way and that, high and low, but then gets caught in a trap and dies. A yak, on the other hand, is enormous; it can do big things but cannot catch a rat. Now you have a huge tree and worry that it is useless: why not plant it in the vast plain of the homeland of Nothing Whatsoever, roaming in effortlessness by its side and sleeping in freedom beneath it? The reason it does not fall to the axe, and no one injures it, is that it cannot be exploited. So what's the trouble?"
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