 
 
Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for
Lord
Wen-hui. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder,
every move of his
feet, every thrust of his knee — zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a
zing,
and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance
of
the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Ching-shou music.
“Ah, this is
marvelous!” said Lord
Wen-hui. “Imagine
skill
reaching such heights!”
 Cook Ting
laid down his
knife and replied, “What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond
skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was
the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole
ox. And now — now I go
at it by spirit (shen) and don’t look with my eyes. Perception
and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it
wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide
the
knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So
I
never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.
 “A good cook changes his knife once a
year — because
he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month — because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for
nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the
blade is as good
as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces
between
the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If
you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty
of
room — more than enough for
the
blade to play about in. That’s why after nineteen years the blade
of
my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.
“However,
whenever I
come
to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to
watch
out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly,
and
move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until — flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth
crumbling
to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all
around
me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off
the
knife and put it away.”
“Excellent!”
said Lord
Wen-hui. “I have heard the words of Cook Ting and learned how to care for life!” (The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 50-51; cf. Zhuangzi, Chapter 3)
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