溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
If No Ruler Made Me So, Am I So of Myself?
If no creator or commander made me thus, am I here purely by being so-of-myself (ziran), the will of no one at all?
Each thing arises of itself; there is no maker that sends it forth.
This question forked within Daoism over "the source of all things." Laozi said all arises from the Dao, and Wang Bi read that Dao as "Non-being," making everything spring from nothing. Guo Xiang overturned this doctrine of a source head-on — nothing can come from Non-being, so things arise, sourceless, each alone and so-of-itself (self-transformation). In this world without ruler or origin, each thing need only be at ease in its own nature. This collided later with Neo-Confucianism's bid to thread all things onto a single Principle, and opened a long tension between a metaphysics seeking a source and a naturalism erasing one. Does the world spring from a single root, or is each thing so of itself — Guo Xiang stood most radically on "so of itself."
When we tire of the demand that everything must have a reason and a design, Guo Xiang's question — that some things simply are so of themselves — quietly opens a place to set down both resentment and self-blame.
Commenting on the Zhuangzi, Guo Xiang stepped to a bold place.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Commenting on the Zhuangzi, Guo Xiang stepped to a bold place. Behind all things there is no creator that drives them and no source from which they flowed; everything simply arises alone and "so of itself" (self-transformation). So that I was born thus and stand here is no one's reward or arrangement but only my own lot. I sense this question strangely loosens regret — if no outer will made me so, the object of resentment vanishes too, and what remains is a contentment at ease in one's lot. I stand before it too, often setting down before "so-of-itself" the urge to lay my condition on someone's fault.
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