3:05

老聃死，秦失弔之，三號而出。弟子曰：「非夫子之友邪？」

曰：「然。」「

然則弔焉若此，可乎？」

曰：「然。始也，吾以為其人也，而今非也。[2] 向吾入而弔焉，有老者哭之，如哭其子；少者哭之，如哭其母。彼其所以會之，必有不蘄言而言，不蘄哭而哭者。是遁天倍情，忘其所受，古者謂之遁天之刑。適來，夫子時也；適去，夫子順也。安時而處順，哀樂不能入也，古者謂是帝之縣解。」

When Lao Dan died, Qin Shi went to mourn him, cried three times, and left. [1] A student asked, “Weren’t you our teacher’s friend?”

"Yes.”

“Then is it okay for you to mourn him this way?”

“Yes. At first I took him for a person, but now no longer. [2] When I went in earlier, there were old ones crying as though for a child, and young ones as though for their mothers. The one who gathered them here did not want them to talk, but they talk. He did not want them to cry, but they cry. [3] He ran from nature, denied his essence, and forgot what he'd been given. [4] Hence he suffers what used to be called ‘the punishment for running from nature.’ [5] Our teacher came because it was time and left when it had passed. If you are content with the time and abide by the passing, there’s no room for sorrow or joy. This is what they used to call the lord's  'cutting down of a hanged man.’ [6]

[1] This is a very difficult story to read. The pronoun references are unclear, especially since Chinese does not distinguish between "him" and "them." Similarly, you can't always be sure who or what is the subject of the verbs. In this case, you can't tell if the subject of discussion is Laozi or the mourners at his funeral, or people in general. It is hard to believe that such thorough-going ambiguity isn't at least partially intentional. At this risk of too many notes, I will try to keep you apprised of the alternatives. 

[2] This could be about Laozi and mean either, "I used to take him for The Man but now no longer (because of the low caliber of mourners at his funeral)" or "I used to think of him as a (living) person but now no longer (because he is dead)." Or it could be about the fellow mourners, "At first I thought of them as (proper) people, but now no longer (because of the way they behaved)."

[3] Or "They say things they don't want to say and mourn when they don't want to mourn." They are insincere, as people at funerals often are.

[4] Or "They run from heaven, deny their essence, forget what the've been given."

[5] Or "they suffer." This same line appears in 8:12. It is also reminiscent of Confucius's description of himself as "punished by nature" in 6:06. Compare Analects 3.13: 獲罪於天，無所禱也。"When you commit a crime against nature/heaven, there is nowhere you can turn." 

[6] It is unclear to me whether Qin Shi is 

  1. criticizing the students students for not being as content with their teacher's departure as they were with his arrival;
  2. criticizing Laozi for failing to fly under the radar like the true sage of 1:03; 
  3. or bemoaning the tendency of people in general to resist the impermanent nature of existence. 

I suppose it could be all three if we assume that the desire for fame is an attempt to escape mortality.

The last line is gruesome. I don't think the "this" can refer to the behavior (either of Laozi or of the mourners) that he has been criticizing. I think it must refer to death, and his sentiment is in line with the three friends of 6:06 who "think of life as a hanging tumor and a dangling mole and of death as a lost wart or a bursting boil." In this case, according to Qin Shi, what we think of as life would be a hanging corpse and death would be its release. Is Is Qin Shi really speaking for Zhuangzi here? The difficulty may come from the desire (perhaps just my own) to classify characters either as sages or fools when, as often as not, they are people in a process of change. 

Later thought: I have entered a period of my life in which people more often die. Sometimes, one's spouse dies first, as was the case with Zhuangzi and with myself. When the second spouse dies, I reflect that, whatever else, they must have been grateful no longer to be separated. The point is that welcoming death need not be an indictment of life. I wouldn't go so far as to call it "the cutting down of a hanged man," but I do think of it as more like "getting back into bed."

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