To complicate things a little, the last assigned reading of the class was Chinese - a 1984 novella about "educated youth" sent to fell an ancient forest during the Cultural Revolution. It's full of Daoist resonances, but I didn't expect the class to pick up on them. I did half-hope some would look up "educated youth," though...
But it's also the day after the Thanksgiving break, so I thought it better not to count on students having finished the reading, and fashioned a handout of three passages from Zhuangzi relevant to the book but meaningful on their own, too. Their common theme - the gnarled old trees which survive because human beings see them as useless, and, from this, the limits of human concepts of usefulness.
The longest, from Zhuangzi ch 4, is a little novella of its own. Here's the whole section, translated by Brook Ziporyn, but the most telling part for a class called "Religion of Trees" is the final bit. Carpenter Stony and his apprentice have been pondering a big tree around which humans have built a shrine. (Or perhaps it's being "used as the altar for the spirits of the land.") The apprentice thinks it would make good timber, but Stony tells him he can see it's old wood is useless.
In a dream that night, however, the tree appears to Carpenter Stony, pities the "useful" trees humans work to death, wittily tells him it's been working on being useless for a long time ... I've finally managed it - and it is of great use to me, before challenging the capacity of a worthless man with one foot in the grave [to] know what is or isn't a worthless tree! Carpenter Stony awakens and recounts the dream to his apprentice, but the apprentice is nonplussed. If it's trying to be useless, he asks, what's it doing with a shrine around it?
Carpenter Stony said, "Hush! Don't talk like that! Those people came to it for refuge on their own initiative. In fact, the tree considers it a great disgrace to be surrounded by this uncomprehending crowd. If they hadn't made it a shrine, they could easily have gone the other way and started carving away at it. What it protects, what protects it, is not this crowd, but something totally different. To praise it for fulfilling its responsiblity in the role it happens to play - that would really be missing the point!"
I don't claim to know the point (worthless teacher!). But the image of a tree mortified by human devotions, though tolerating them as they're better than being cut down, may be enough to keep us from being overly sentimental. Full report on Wednesday!
