Here is the
Zhuangzi “Tianxia” account of Shen Dao’s group:
For the general public, not cliques; changing and without selfishness; decisive but without any control; responsive to things without dividing in two. Not absorbed with reflection. Not calculating in knowing how. Not choosing among natural kinds and flowing along with them.
They took bonding all the natural kinds together as the key. They said, “tian[SUB]nature:sky[/SUB] constancies can cover but cannot sustain; Earthly cycles can sustain but cannot cover it. Great dao[SUB]guide[/SUB] can embrace it but cannot distinguish it.” We know the myriad natural kinds all have both that which is acceptable and that which is unacceptable. So they said, “If you select then you cannot be comprehensive, if you teach you cannot convey all of it. Dao[SUB]guide[/SUB] does not leave anything out.”
Hence Shen Dao “abandoned knowledge and discarded ‘self’.” He flowed with the inevitable and was indifferent to natural kinds … . He lived together with shi and fei, mixed acceptable and avoidable. He didn’t treat knowing and deliberation as guides, didn’t know front from back. He was indifferent to everything.
If he was pushed he went, if pulled he followed—like a leaf whirling in the stream, like a feather in a wind, like dust on a millstone. He was complete and distinguished (fei) nothing … . So he said, “reach for being like things without knowledge of what to do. Don’t use worthies and sages. Even a clod of earth cannot miss Dao.”
The worthy officials all laughed at him and said, “Shen Dao’s dao does not lead to the conduct of a living man but the tendency of a dead man. It is really very strange… .” (Zhuangzi Ch. 33)
Shen Dao’s conception of
great dao reminds us of the actual world among possible worlds—it is the actual history of the universe. Shen Dao avers that there is just one such total history—one actual past and one actual future. The actual is, obviously, natural so the great
dao (the natural pattern of behaviors, events and processes) requires no learning, no knowledge, no language or
shi-fei[SUB]this-not this[/SUB] distinctions. “Even a clod of earth cannot miss the great dao.” Shen Dao’s insight undermines all these guiding schemes that claim
tian[SUB]nature’s[/SUB] approval as justification. The crucial implication of his approach is that great
dao has no normative force. To say “follow great
dao[SUB]guide[/SUB]” is as trivial as “do what you actually will do.” When we think of
dao as the actual course of all nature, it is obvious we
will follow it.
