The Useless Tree

Hui Tzu said to Chuang:
I have a big tree,
The kind they call a "stinktree."
The trunk is so distorted,
so full of knots,
no one can get a straight plank
out of it. The branches are so crooked
you cannot cut them up
in any way that makes sense.

There it stands beside the road.
No carpenter will even look at it.

Such is your teaching-
big and useless.

Chuang Tzu replied:
Have you ever watched the wildcat
crouching, watching his prey-
this way it leaps, and that way,
high and low, and at last
lands in the trap.

But have you seen the yak?
Great as a thundercloud
he stands in his might.
Big? Sure.
He can't catch mice!

So for your big tree. No use?
Then plant it in the wasteland
in emptiness.
Walk idly around,
rest under its shadow;
no axe or bill prepares its end.
No one will ever cut it down.

Useless? You should worry!



I think the first two parables I posted were rather self-explanatory, but I'll go into this one a bit. The reason the wildcat lands in a trap is because it is so focused on catching its prey. It has been designed for only one thing, and trap avoidance isn't it. A Yak, on the other hand, is too powerful to trap, but for all its strength and might, it cannot catch a mouse. Chuang Tzu points out that Hui Tzu's tree is useless because Hui seeks to make it into something other than what it is. If Hui would simply appreciate the tree as it is, as a thing of beauty, a place of rest, a giver of shade, then he certainly wouldn't think it useless. Both the tree and Taoism are useless to Hui only because he cannot see how they are useful.