Transcreating Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu) 1:2

Here is Burton Watson’s translation of the end of Chapter 1, followed by four other translations of the final paragraph, and my own transcreation of that paragraph utilizing those five translations in total.

Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu, "I have a big tree of the kind men call shu. Its trunk is too gnarled and bumpy to apply a measuring line to, its branches too bent and twisty to match up to a compass or square. You could stand it by the road and no carpenter would look at it twice. Your words, too, are big and useless, and so everyone alike spurns them!"

Chuang Tzu said, "Maybe you've never seen a wildcat or a weasel. It crouches down and hides, watching for something to come along. It leaps and races east and west, not hesitating to go high or low-until it falls into the trap and dies in the net. Then again there's the yak, big as a cloud covering the sky. It certainly knows how to be big, though it doesn't know how to catch rats.

Now you have this big tree and you're distressed because it's useless. Why don't you plant it in Not-Even-Anything Village, or the field of Broad-and-Boundless, relax and do nothing by its side, or lie down for a free and easy sleep under it? Axes will never shorten its life, nothing can ever harm it. If there's no use for it, how can it come to grief or pain?"

~Z (tr-Burton Watson)

Now you, sir, have a big tree and are bothered by its uselessness. Why don't you plant it in Never-never Land with its wide, open spaces? There you can roam in nonaction by its side and sleep carefreely beneath it. Your StinkyQuassia's life will not be cut short by axes, nor will anything else harm it. Being useless, how could it ever come to grief

~Z (tr-Victor Mair)

So for your big tree. No use?
Then plant it in the wasteland
In emptiness.
Walk idly around,
Rest under its shadow;
No axe or bill prepares its end.
No one will ever cut it down.

Useless? You should worry!

~Z (tr-Thomas Merton)

You, on the other hand, have this big tree, and you worry that it’s useless. Why not plant it in our homeland of not-even-anything, the vast wilds of open nowhere? Then you could loaf and wander there, doing lots of nothing there at its side, and take yourself a nap, far-flung and unfettered, there beneath it. It will never be cut down by ax or saw. Nothing will harm it. Since it has nothing for which it can be used, what could entrap or afflict it?”

~Z (tr-Brook Ziproryn)

Now you've got this huge tree, and you agonize over how useless it is.  Why not plant it in a village where there's nothing at all, a land where emptiness stretches away forever?  Then you could be no one drifting lazily beside it, roam boundless and free as you doze in its shade. It won't die young from the axe. Nothing will harm it. If you have no use, you have no grief.

~Z (tr-David Hinton)

So this big tree is just being there and you worry it’s useless. Why not stand it in that allotment of naught within this vast field of nowhere? Here, you do nothing but wander at ease in its shade while dreaming far and carefree within it. No thought of an axe may cut it—nor anything otherwise harm it. And since it has no use, no sorrow nor suffering shall befall it.

~Zhuangzi (tr-Son Rivers)

Transcreating Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu) 1:1

It is difficult to transcreate Zhuangzi because the stories are so intricate, but I’d like to try my hand at certain sentences of note. This is the first.


The first sections of the first inner chapter tell many stories of space and time but the tenth section ends with this sentence which is their summary of sorts (four translations follow):

"Therefore I say, the Perfect Man has no self; the Holy Man has no merit; the Sage has no fame."
~Z (tr-Burton Watson)"

"Therefore, it is said that the ultimate man has no self, the spiritual person has no accomplishment, and the sage has no name.”
~Z (tr-Victor Mair)

"Thus I say, the Consummate Person has no fixed identity, the Spirit Man has no particular merit, the Sage has no one name."
~Z (tr-Brook Ziporyn)

"Hence the saying: The realized remain selfless. The sacred remain meritless. The enlightened remain nameless."
~Z (tr-David Hinton) 

My transcreation is such:

Therefore it is said the fundamental is without identity, the spiritual is without value, the wise is without a word.
~Z (tr-Son Rivers)

Talking Wu Wei

Surrender is not mandatory, but neither is pain, which is the Yang
to the Yin on the great axis of wu wei, which both polar qualities envelop.

It's neither surrender nor pain if it's non-doing. Wu wei is neither
nihilistic nor Sisyphean. Ahab loved his sailboat as a young man.

He felt as if the winds and currents were guiding him to where
he had to be, so Ahab could be Ahab, and thus to be a rudder—

not as to volitionally steer the boat (as if), but to find the better
way between the word and deep blue sea. Self-awareness.

But surrender sounds like giving something up instead of letting
go as Dogen, and his dropping body-mind, like wu wei.

The Sisyphean pain of overdoing—like making progress, continuous
improvement, and biggest and best—is not non-doing, nor wu-wei.

This wu wei isn't even wu wei.
And that wu wei is wei wu wei.

Talking Water

There’s a fountain in the middle of a lake so grand that most on shore believe the lake to be a surplus puddle formed from just the fountain's overspray.

In the university on the lake, a professor and a scientist agree that consciousness is just a product of the brain. Although the scientist has failed to prove it, the poor professor has abiding faith it shall be proven on some magic day.

There’s a fool who swims the length of the lake each day. To her, it doesn't matter if the lake is this or that because there's nothing else but water water everywhere and not a cause to think.

Talking Butterflies

Singularity is not a theory. One is one, period. Anything other is one's projection only. One takes one stand in what one is. And one is my divine imagination, call it self-awareness. For I am that imagining I am, or really, absolute awareness.

Let me tell it like God's story. Within my most omnipotent self is naturally self-awareness. And this self-awareness is like a process to the seventh process of this story relative to self-awareness. Process is another word for mind. And self-awareness is a quality of pure awareness if the absolute contained an imperfection.

In other words, divine imagination isn't magic thinking, which is closer to the truth than western scientific rabbit holes in search of singularity in further subdivision, please excuse my other words, but more like Zhuangzi's Seven Inner Chapters.

There is a bird of paradise whose wings are clothed in diamond feathers like mirrors reflecting a sea of lightning far beyond the bang of thunder always crashing on this lovely land of waves and waves and waves.

Talking Frogs

Senses are to body as differentiation is to mind as attention is the amplification of awareness in the bodymind continuum. But awareness is to nothing other as pure awareness is to the big unknown. And attention is another name for being.

Being is the only pure knowledge. The now is the now is the now. And to know the now is to know myself is self-awareness. Like a frog is just an early sign of the omnipotent unknown.

So attention is embodiment of pure awareness as winter melting into spring-time voices. Inattention, on the other hand, is like a mid-summer night's dream. And autumn is like deconstructing every sense and differentiation.

I am saying this in winter but the sun is getting higher in the sky. And soon shall come the revelations of some very public frogs. The sound of water is this heavenly apocalyptic conscious knowledge of oneself. Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh.

Talking Nothing but Divine Imagination

Says I to I, there's only I. How public like my universe, how private like my heart? Says I to I in my response, this understanding is ineluctable. In going further, added I, I see we're through the gates of synchronicity, I further see. Enlightment is nothing other, I reply. As if there is a question when it comes to being and I laugh like some immense Shakespearian joke.

After deconstruction of conditioning, it takes some time before the air completely clears. And in such clarity, one finds I am the light and everything else is mere projection. And the revelator says that one returns to light to know the light is my intent to know myself.

The law of three requires this part three, although I need to work the math while talking this part three—the magnet of desire in such duality of me, returning to the stirring of I Am, and three is Self-awareness.

Written on this half moon of the blue moon, manifesting as a supermoon, I strike a chord myself the fool not looking at the finger soon becomes the moon, or is Intent no more than just the dreaming of a fool.

Western superstition or science, eastern herbs, divine imagination—what is the law of three in this dominion? Moreover, self-awareness is divine imagination.

Talking Love

Anything but love is complex. Yes, love is not complex but one may think it so.

It takes my daughter's birth for me to know that love is far beyond a thought and is in fact completely unbelievable.

In other words, love is what I am, she is, and being that a person is a thought believed, and so conditioned to forget what one is truly,

love is just a thought until I see it isn't. And such is therapy condensed—understanding love is not a thought and I am not a person.

Bhakti and Jnani is the one true science. Blue moon, a crescent moon is setting in my picture window

visible in spaces where no branch is pitch as night. And so I see the sky is clear tonight, my love.

Imagine Miming Shakespeare

This so-called reality
is just an idea
electro-magnetizing
consciousness—
the wheel kills the ground.
Imagine miming Shakespeare.
Time is just the concept
of a god believed—
premonitions, revelations,
and synchronicities are
Shiva's deconstructions.

In the Paradox of Self-Inquiry

Maybe the mind is a tool
dividing
the holistic ground
into a violence of questions,

resulting in some Zhuangzi identities
of this or that belief—
consciousness is the unquestionably holistic
breaking the tool

in the paradox of self-inquiry.

There is nothing wrong with the sun
or anything beneath it.
It's just pure awareness being self-aware,
Jacob.

As the process and its work procedures
are not the finished product—
so my reflection is not
the mirror nor its manufacturing.