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莊子送葬，過惠子之墓，顧謂從者曰：「郢人堊慢其鼻端若蠅翼，使匠石斲之。匠石運斤成風，聽而斲之，盡堊而鼻不傷，郢人立不失容。 宋元君聞之，召匠石曰：『嘗試為寡人為之。』 匠石曰：『臣則嘗能斲之。雖然，臣之質死久矣。』 自夫子之死也，吾無以為質矣，吾無與言之矣。」[a]
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Zhuangzi
was accompanying a funeral when he passed by Huizi’s grave. Turning to his
attendants, he said, “When the Plaster Monkey got a speck of mud on his nose no thicker than a fly’s wing, he would ask Carpenter Stone to slice it off. Carpenter
Stone would twirl his ax like the wind and chop away obediently, getting all
the mud and leaving the nose unharmed, while the plasterer stood there without
changing his expression. Lord Yuan of
Song heard about the trick and summoned Carpenter Stone. ‘Do it for Us!’ Carpenter Stone
replied, ‘I was able to do it, but the material I worked with died long ago.’ Since my own teacher died,” Zhuangzi continued, “I have been without material.
I have no one to talk to.” [1]
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[1] I read this story at my wife's funeral. It may simply be that there was no one else around as clever as Huizi, which would be a little odd since Huizi never seemed quite to "get it." Or it may reveal something important about Zhuangzi's own understanding of his philosophy, that he saw it as a complement to Huizi's project of saving the world through logic, and as not having application outside of that context. [a] CTP 24.06, HYZY 24/48-51.
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