Crossing Currents: The Over-flowing/Flowing-over Soul in Zarathustra & Zhuangzi

David Jones*

I. T h e I m a g i n a l G r o u n d of W a t e r The highestqficacyis 9ke water, It is becausewaterbenqStseve{Tthing(wanwu) Yet viesto dwellinplaces loathed~ the crowd That it comesnearesttoproperwq-makdng. (Laozi: ch. 8)1 I f Nietzsche had ever opened the Zhuang~, he might have forsaken his quest to become the first tragic philosopher, at least in the way he envisioned the m o v e m e n t o f the will to life through the terror of the reevaluation ofaU values until becoming "onesdfthe eternal joy o f becoming, beyond all terror and pity--that joy which included even joy in destroying" (Nietzsche 1968a: What I Owe to the Ancients 5). Nietzsche looked to his Ancients for signs o f a predecessor o f this tra~cwisdom and even concedes, although later renounces his concession, that perhaps the eternal recurrence of the same "'might in the end have been taught already by Heraclitus" (Nietzsche 1969b: Birth of Tragedy 3). I f Nietzsche had ever entered the Zhuang~ text, he might have found an all-too-Chinese Heraclitus. In its first chapter, Nietzsche would have encountered a taste of his own type of perspectival philosophy beset with bestial images not so unlike his own. However, in the Zhuang~, unlike in his Zarathmtra, these beasts would change forms and become their Other: "In the North Ocean there is a fish, its name is the Kun; the Kun's girth measures who knows how many thousand miles. It changes into a bird, its name is the Peng; the Peng's back measures who knows h o w many thousand miles" (Zhuangzi 1981: 43). The very first undertaking in the Zhuang~ is * Associate Professor, Department of History and Philosophy, Kennesaw State University, 1000 Chastain Road, Kennesaw, GA: 30144-5591; email: djones@ksuweb.kennesaw.edu. Dao:AJournalofComparalive PhilosophyJune 2005, Vol. Iv, No. 2, pp. 235-251. 9 2005 by Global Scholarly Publications. All rights reserved. I Daodqing translations are from the Dao De ring: A PhilosophicalTranslation by Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall, Ballantine Books, New York, 2003. Translations from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Bqond Good and Evil, Ecce Homo, and Heraclitus (Markovich's numbering) are mine. Some Nietzsche translations are emended slightly. Zhuang~i translations are from Graham's Chuaug TZu: The Inner Chapters, with Romanizadon converted into hanyupingyin. I am grateful to Peter Groff for his helpful comments.

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to remove the reader's solid ground and replace this ground with a fluid buoyancy of a floating through. The ground of the Kun is the fluid, changeable sea and the Peng's is the flowing sky constantly transformed by light, wind, color, stars, and darkness, but a cicada and turtle dove laugh at this transformation. Only the Kun's location has changed; its vast size and the inherent limitations imposed by its massive girth remain with the Peng who has even transcended the earthly realm o f the sea by entering the celestial realm of sky. The cicada and turtle dove stop on an elm or sandalwood to rest and eat and ask: "What's all this about ninety thousand miles up when he travels south?" (Zhuangzi 1981: 44). Their small perspectives of self, reality, and world limit them too. The anecdotal discussions in '~-lhe Sorting Which Evens Things Out" chapter of the Zhuang~i are perhaps its best examples of perspectivism: "What is It is also Other, what is Other is also It. There they say ~fhat's it, that's not' from one point of view, here we say q~hat's it, that's not' from another point of view. Are there really It and Other? Or really no It and Other?" (Zhuangzi 1981: 53). Only from the perspective of an "It" is there "Other," but when one assumes the perspective of an "Other," this "Other" becomes an "It" and the "It" becomes "Other" ad infinitum. This going to and fro ad infinitum can quickly become a going to and fro ad nauseam if one is not psychologically prepared for the challenges of the "perspectival life." Even the zealous Zarathustra, the advocate of the circle, who has had his Grundpulled from under him in "The Convalescent" tells his most abysmal thought: "Hail to me! Come here! Give me your hand! Huh? Let go! Huhhuh! Nausea, nausea, nausea--woe unto me!" (Nietzsche 1968c: The Convalescent 1). For seven days Zarathustra rested and on the seventh he rose and his animals spoke thus to him: "O Zarathustra.... Step out of your cave!.... Like leavened dough you have been lying; your soul rose and swelled over its rims" (Nietzsche 1968: The Convalescent 2). As Zarathustra climbs from his cave, from his last remaining and confining perspective of self, and as his soul swells over its rims and rushes into the world, his animals say to him, "to those who think as we do, all things themselves are dancing" (Nietzsche 1968c: The Convalescent 2). All the "Its" and "Others" of the world are no longer static; now they dance as Zarathustra's animals do. The world itself becomes a dance of ineluctable forces of activity playing themselves out in individuated forms. For Zhuangzi, "where neither It nor Other finds its opposite is called the axis of the Way. When once the axis is found at the centre of the circle there is no limit to responding with either, on the one hand no limit to what is it, on the other no limit to what is not. Therefore... 'the best means is Illumination lining ~)~]"' (Zhuangzi 1981: 53). Nietzsche would be capable of understanding the shengren X, the Daoist sage, as one who has this clarity (ruing ~)~)of understanding, as one who places himsdf at the axis of dao JR, at the axis of the circle where there is no limit. At the axis of dao, the sage is the umbilicus ofyin g~ andyang ~, and da0 becomes the contextual field of the perspectival "It" and "Other." No longer do the values of rightness and wrongness exercise control in their domain; 2 rather they become only interpretations of the perspectives of right and wrong. As 2"Simultaneouslywith beingallowablesomethingbecomesunallowableand simultaneouslywith being unallowableit becomesallowable"(Zhuangzi1981:52).Concerningmorality,the Daoistpositionholds that oncesuchquestionsarise,the natturalbalanceflowofyin/yangalreadyhas beendisrupted.

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Nietzsche puts it: '~ are no moral phenomena at all, but only moral interpretations of phenomena" (Nietzsche 1968d: w However, as we begin to listen to the tenor of the apparent harmonious voices of Nietzsche and Zhuangzi, we begin to hear the first sounds of dissonance. The challenge for the Daoist sage is to forget morality. As XU You ~ tells Yierzi ~ :~ in 'The Teacher Who is The Ultimate Ancestor" chapter: 'qlaen what do you think you're doing here? When Yao has already branded your hide with Goodwill and Duty, and snipped off your nose with his 'that's it, that's not,' how are you going to roam that free and easy take-any-turn-you-please path?" (91). Morality for Zhuangzi is viewed as punishment, a snipping of the nose from the face, a branding of one's hide. Morality restricts one to an exclusively human perspective; it locks one into a single direction and prohibits the "rambling without destination" from one perspective to another. The "take-any-turn-you-please path" is the possibility of dao, the possibility of possibility, and the fluid way of the sage. This fluidity is illustrated in another anecdote in '~ Teacher Who is The Ultimate Ancestor" chapter. YAN Hui ~ said to Confucius:
"I make progress." "Where?" "I have forgotten about rites and music." "Satisfactory. But you still have far to go." Another day he saw Confucius again: "I make progress." "Where?" "I have forgotten about Goodwill and Duty." "Satisfactory. But you still have far to go." Another day he again saw Confucius: "I make progress." "Where?" "I just sit and forget." (Zhuangzi 1981: 92)

Confucius is taken aback and questions what he means. YAN Hui (who is Confucius' favorite disciple) explains that he lets organs and members drop away so that he may "go along with the universal thoroughfare." This universal thoroughfare is dao, the world's way. Confucius then entreats him to "Oblige me by accepting me as your disciple" (Zhuangzi 1981: 92). To go along with no memory of the good ~i @) and norms (ligR) is to eradicate the conscious rule of the heroic ego (daslch) and to be responsively natural (~ran ~,,). The 'T' as the czar of the psyche is always future or past oriented; its raison d'etre is to provide a ground for the continuity of the self through time and responsibility is the telos of this self. This ground and telos always establish themselves as that which is past and as that which will be, but cannot ground themselves in the present. This self is always in the "has-been" or the "yet-to-be" and can never find itself in the moment of the now. By giving itself to memory and projecting itself into the future, the ' T ' wills remembering as an activity that forces itself into viewing all fife as essential and substantial. Nietzsche would have understood Zhuangzi's active forgetting self. He also finds the joy and need of "active forgetting" when he writes regarding promises:
[that] this problem has been solved to a large extent must seem all the more remarkable to anyone who appreciates the strength of the opposing force, that of forgetfulness. Forgetting is... an active and in the strictest sense positive faculty of repression, that is responsible for the fact that what we experience and absorb enters our consciousness as little while we are digesting it.... The purpose of active forgetfulness.., is like a doorkeeper, a preserver of psychic order, repose, and etiquette:.., there could be no happiness, no cheerfulness, no hope, no pride, nopresent, without forgetfulness. (Nietzsche 1969a: Second Essay 1; see also Nietzsche 1968d: w

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Without this active force, there can be no present--the self is always forced to abide and subsist in a time that does not exist and this is the time o f morality and promises, the times o f futures and pasts; this is the time o f "It" and "Other." Only through active forgetting can the soul rise and swell over its brim into the present; and the soul can only do this when morality (theyiof the Confucians for Zhuangzi) has been forgotten and when we are reminded that existence is really not "an imperfect tense that never becomes present" (Nietzsche 1957: w YAN Hui's active forgetting is to will away the monarchy o f the " I " and is also given expression in the child's forgetting the camel's burdens o f tradition in " O n the Three Transformations" in Thus Spoke Zarathuslra. As Alphonso Lingis states: What... is... noble is the ability to forget: not merely toflrgive one's hurts and humiliations, one's impotencies, but what is more toforgetthem, to be able to pass over the past to welcome the rushes of what comes in the present. That is the secret power of the noble life: the life that arises innocent before each moment, each event, each person, as though the past had no claim and no law, as though all the ghosts and phantoms of the past dissipated before the light of the present. (Lingis: 54) The "life that arises innocent before each m o m e n t " is only attained when the control o f consciousness over the psyche is abdicated---only then can the psyche's natural "repose" enter the eternal succession o f becoming, "the light o f the present." T o reach this "repose" one must, like YAN Hui, let go o f one's conscious rule o f the soul: first to let go o f the rites (li~) and music [yue ~), that is, traditional value and inherited tradition from the Confucians, then to let go o f Goodwill and Duty, that is, morality ~yi~ ) , and finally to let the s d f slip away and be stretched out into and across the utter insubstantiality o f all that is, da0, or Abgrund. As the self slips away into the insubstantiality o f the world, it enters time for the first time and becomes a part o f time and its cyclical transformations; it enters the moment. By entering the moment, self becomes soul.

II. T h e E m p t y i n g Soul The eternal dimension o f the temporal was very much a project for Zhuangzi and Nietzsche. As the animals say to Zarathustra, who had just awakened on the seventh day from his dead sleep: All goes, All comes back; the wheel of being rolls eternally.All dies, All blooms on once more, eternallyruns the year of being. All breaks, All becomes joined anew;,eternallythe same house of being is built. All departs, All greet themselves again; eternally the ring of being remains true to itself. In each Now being begins; near each Here rolls the sphere There. The center is all over. Crooked is the path of eternity. (Nietzsche 1968c: The Convalescent 2) Nietzsche's decentered approach to the world's unfolding resonates with Zhuangzi's vision o f it and other and placing oneself at the axis o f da0, which is the fluid perspectival perspective that knows itself as a perspective amongst innumerable competing perspectives that are constitutive o f everything (wanwu gg@). It is the focused perspective, the perspective o f consciousness, the Apollonian over the Dionysian, that prohibits other competing perspectives thdr rightful claim to world, reality, and to life; it is the absolute dominance of the ego's con-

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scious ruling perspective over non-conscious forces that lays daim to their lineage. This is why Nietzsche presents us with a genealogy and not a critique---a genealogy gives us a genesis of the very forces at work in a critique; it allows us to re-view from the inside (see Deleuze: 87-89). The self's perspective of consciousness views the vista of world as it and other, as a world that has being; a world that awaits discovery by some externally related self. To allow this perspective principal control is not to be in-the-world in a lived sense, in a life-world, but is to be absent and without presence. Eternity becomes only that which can be thought, or remembered like the Platonic Ideas. Both the Daoists and Nietzsche know this Eternity to be a non-place, a republic to which to emigrate; they both realize morality is the necessary validation that leads one through the entrance to Plato's Good and the moral universe of the idealistic Confucians. This transcendence to the eternal is what Zarathustra and YAN Hui want to forget. They engage in active forgetting because their souls wish to empty into the world; they wish to give the Eternal back to the world, and to give eternity to rime. Forgetting self is fundamental for Nietzsche's project of Dionysian overflowing; "I love him whose soul is overfull, so that he forgets himself, and all things are in him: in this way all things come to be his going-under" (Nietzsche 1968c: Prologue 4). In "Prologue 1," we are told by the advocate of the circle, the advocate of life, that his "cup... wants to overflow, that the water may flow from it golden and carry everywhere the reflection of [the star's] delight [Wonne]. Behold, this cup wants to become empty again, and Zarathustra wants to become man again" (Nietzsche 1966: Prologue 1). Zarathustra's emptying is a learning how to "sit and forget" the self, but his emptying process requires an existential devotion to the horror and terror of the Angst experience, which is a necessary condition for the teacher of the eternal recurrence. Such an experience is all but missing in YAN Hui's forgetting. Although Nietzsche's Zarathustra will be challenged and be required to become his soul's "commander and legislator" by nurturing his Angst, this commandeering is tempered by his childlike reintegration into the world. This reintegration is a consequence of his emptying. His soul overflows its container with intoxicating bliss (Wonne).3 The word Wonne carries connotations of overflowing, intoxication, and bliss, which are not often brought out. To "carry everywhere the reflection of...intoxicating-overflowing-bliss" conjures oracles of earthly mythological images: the sun's fiery light flowing and melting beneath the horizon and, with it, time's passing away, mixing the two opposing forces of fire and water into an alchemical mead that arouses one to drink its honey-colored nectar until the cup is empty. To drink this Dionysian draught until one's interior buzzes with the amber-colored blood of the gods, until the viscera of the soul throbs with divine blood and induces inhuman convulsions, is Zarathustra's thirst, not YAN Hui's. Not until this cup is emptied can man transform into the child (F]oss) 4 of the 3 Wonnedoes mean "delight"(Kaufmann)but carriesstrongerfeelingsof joy,rapture, ecstasy,bfiss, to be enraptured, and to stand outside one's self. It is often used in compounds: Wonnebebend (tremblingwith delight), Wonnegef#hl(feefing bliss), Wonnetrunken (intoxicatedbliss), and Wonnefloss (colloquialfor a baby). 4 Flossalso means a float,buoy,raft and can mean flowingwater from the verbfliessen, to flow,run, melt, and pass away.The child of the '~ Transformations"anticipates the death of the man Zaxathustra as he is carriedinto the current of a surgingforth world.

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"Three Transformations" who is an "innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a play, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred 'Yes'." As "the sun is new each day'' for Heraclitus, the world is newly created each day for the child Zarathustra; but in order for Zarathustra to become a man again, he must become a child; he must will his katharsis and purge all that he holds onto in the depths of his soul. All must be retched from the soul's darkest crypt, even Zarathustra's last holding-on-to, his most abysmal thought, must too come up; this over-rich nectar of the gods leads him to the overman: "Up, abysmal thought, out of my depth! I am your cock and dawn, sleepy worm. Up! Up! My voice shall yet crow you awake! .... And once you are awake, you shall remain awake eternally,' (Nietzsche 1966: Convalescent 1). Zhuangzi's YAN Hui is also awakened, but there is no suffocating snake of suffering robbing him of his soul's breath. YAN Hui's awakening entails overcoming the suffering and frustration that stems from his bondage, attachment, and craving for a selfof"merit and fame." The Daoist sage's awakening is realized from the release of the anthropocentric perspective (hence the many references to biota in the Zhuang~), that is, from the perspective that impoverishes her style and fluidity by making her focus on a goal beyond the natural world.

III. Depth
Those of old who weregoodatfo~gingtheirwqy (dao)in the world.. Subtle and mysteffous, dark andpenelralin 6 Tbeirprofundi(y was bqond comprehension It is becausethq werebeyondcomprehension ..... [They are]so vast and vacant, h'ke a mountaingorge Those whoprize wqy-makaJgdo not seekfullness," It is only becausethq do not want to befull That they are ableto remainhidden and unfinished.

(Laozi:ch. 15) Nietzsche and Zhuangzi focus their attention on a central ontological problem, which is rooted in the psychological: how to get to the world of the here and now and how to become who we are. So far, it has been suggested that their solutions to this problematic are similar. At least that is the imaginal ground with respect to the themes of forgetting morality and self that are fomented by some form of an idealized good. However, the A n g s t apparent in Nietzsche's Zarathustra is missing in all Zhuangzi's characters. YAN Hui's matter of fact response does not display any of the existential crisis experienced by Zarathustra. The quality and style of reaching the here/now and becoming who we are seem to diverge as two streams after momentarily mixing their waters and then their ways. The difference in style is found in the texture and nature of their responses. To compare responses requires a short excursion into the theme of nothingness, which will reveal where they cross and flow in parting directions. An expression of the Daoist sense for nothingness is found in the Daodqing. Way-makingbeingempty[chon~zbong] You makeuse of it But do not fillit up. So abysmallydeep--

Jones: Crossing Currents It seems the predecessor of everythingthat is happening (wanwu) .... So cavernouslydeep-It only seems to persist I do not know whose progeny it is; It prefiguresthe ancestralgods. (Chapter4)

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Ames and Hall read chong~ "to surge up" as zhong ~ "empty" because o f the "processive and fluid character o f experience [that] predudes the possibility of either beginning or final closure by providing within it an ongoing space for self-renewal. Within the rhythms o f life, the swinging gateway opens and novelty emerges spontaneously to revitalize the world .... Whatever is most enduring is ultimately overtaken in the ceaseless transformation of things" (Laozi: ch. 83). It is through chong/@ongthat dao-maldng executes the chance necessity of the conditional reality o f the world where abiding permanence of substantiality is illusory. This emptiness is not conceived as the opposite of something---either something or nothing--because it is more ontological. Chong/zhongfrees objects o f the world from their rigid forms so their true characters disclose themselves; that is, chonglzhong is the essential reality o f nothingness, or emptiness. When the Daoist sage places himself at the umbilicus ofyin andyan,~ he too discloses his true nature, that is, nothing, because his atmnement (he ~) with the way of the world, with all that happens (wanwu g~N), is perfectly blended, allowing the sage to do "things noncoercively [wuwdN N]. And yet nothing goes undone" (Laozi: ch. 151). s The sage needs only to realize that his cup (his self) is already empty: '~ utmost man is selfless, The daemonlc man takes no credit for his deeds, The sage is nameless" (Graham: 45). The sage is the utmost and demonic man because: When the wide woodlands blaze they cannot sear him, when the Yellow River and the Han freeze they cannot chill him, when swift thunderbolts smash the mountains and whirlwinds shake the seas they cannot startle him. A man like that yokes the clouds to his chariot, rides the sun and moon and roams beyond the four seas;death and lifealter nothing in himself, still less the principles of benefit and harm! (Graham:58) When the self stops seeing itself as a relational condition in the world, it becomes an ego and "the seat o f delusion and suffering o f frustration and bondage" (Fingarette: 129). Likewise, Zarathustra's cup also needs to be emptied and the emptying process induces suffering, but his suffering is not the same as the sage's suffering o f attachment. Although there are numerous passages in the Zhuang,~that indicate the necessity o f disabusing oneself o f the delusional ego, they tend to strike a different tone from Zarathustra's. The response to the challenge outlined above is dissimilar to, and perhaps even incompatible with, Nietzsche's. Like the Daoists, Nietzsche too was aware o f the dangers of defining self as ego when he wrote that: % thought comes when "it" wishes, and not when I wish, so that it is a falsification o f the facts ...to say that the subject ' T ' is the condition o f the predicate "think." It thinks; but that this "it" is precisely the famous old "ego" is, to put it mildly, only a supposi5 Burton Watson, in his translation of the Zhuang~j,points out thatyin andyangare not separate categories,but are names for the same thing.

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tion, an assertion, and assuredly not an 'immediate certainty"' (Nietzsche 1966b: w The quest for certainty beginning with Plato was a reaction to the fear o f becoming. Hypothesized Being became life's pharmakmr--a cure for the deadly disease o f change, a cure for this deadly disease o f life. The microcosmic expression o f this fear was manifested in the development o f the ego. Such ego development belongs to a metaphysics o f Being~ "It is this [basic presupposition o f the metaphysics o f language or reason] which sees everywhere deed and doer; this which believes in will as cause in general; this which believes in the 'ego' [Ich], in the ego as being [Sein], in the ego as substance, and which projects its belief in the ego-substance [Ich/Substan~ on to all things - only thus does it create the concept 'thing"' (Nietzsche 1968a: Reason in Philosophy 5). Not only does Nietzsche deny this delusional ego as self, but even more radically, he denies the substantial self altogether along with the substantiality o f all named things. Throughout the history o f Chinese philosophy, philosophers would constantly need to "rectify names" (zhengmingiE~) to address these issues as well. Nietzsche does not conscript any "technical" terms such as "ego" for service--nor would the Chinese thinkers, given their philosophical orientation, need special terms for this reified self but simply uses the German word for "I." This choice indicates an even more radical move on his part because he denies the self as a being or the being of self. There is no self; the self is merely a fiction. What is left for him to affirm is the self as event, a struggle o f forces, a becoming, an innocence before each dawning moment where the "phantasms o f the past" pale in the flame o f the present. Up to this point the resonance between Nietzsche and Zhuangzi still resounds, but as we move deeper, their silences speak more audibly. Zarathustra's innocence before the dawning moment is not a childlike innocence of non-differentiation like Zhuangzi's YAN Hui; it is rather an innocence that has been informed by the lion's roar, a roar of force, of one force commanding and imposing its perspective on other forces within the soul's chaos. The roaring force of the lion is more than a heteronomous Nein to external dominating forces; it too is a "no" to the fictitious self constructed by those very external forces--a self that fails to see itself as external to itself until it can ultimately deny itself that hales the soul; the lion's roar is also a "no" to das Ich's control over the dominion of soul and its Dionysian play. Only with this "no" can we realize "our body is nothing but one social gathering of many souls" (Nietzsche 1968d: w This sense for a multiple soul is not without its Chinese counterpart. Chinese philosophers, especially Conlucius, make the point that we are the roles we live and that there is no self beyond these lived roles--even the dead ancestors remain alive as long as we remember them. Its overlapping relations of intimacy with others past, present, and in the future define this self (see Kasulis). At any given time, the self is a gathering of others. However for Nietzsche, as these forces gather and scatter, different and new souls are constantly being born, are constantly dying, and in the chaos a will emerges for more, for more power: "every living thing does everything it can not to preserve itself but to become more" and "what man wants, what every smallest part of a living organism wants, is an increase of power" (Nietzsche 1967: w w The willing that wills more is the primal potency beneath all foundations and forms; it is chaos and Nietzsche calls this groundless chaos will to power. The will to power is without ground (Abegruna); the will to power is an abyss, "a no-ground behind every ground"

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(Nietzsche 1968d: w The will to power is the potency or power (Mach o that is necessary to create (machen) things of existence; it is the force that forms world. However, this force must not be misconstrued as a unified force that makes other forces possible because this too would fall into the metaphysical trap---this was Nietzsche's complaint against the Atomists and the Daoists' warning to those more idealistic Confucians who held the universe to be a metaphysically moral one. The will to power is the possibility of power to create, to give birth to new forms that cry out for more. Each created form reveals its difference from other forms and affu~s the manifold existence of the "myriad things" (wanwu). As Nietzsche says, "Everything simple is imaginary, is not 'true.' But whatever is real, whatever is true, is neither one nor even reducible to one" (Nietzsche 1967: w This will to power is a diverse ground, a ground without ground. This groundless ground is the dance of Dionusos, "for one must still have chaos within oneself, to be capable of giving birth to a dancing star" (Nietzsche 1968c: Prologue 5). To see this deep star shine, Zarathustra must go under. Although Chinese philosophers had their own forces inyin,yang, and qi, the temper of the difference between Nietzsche and Zhuangzi's philosophy is disclosed in Zarathustra's willing and willing-hess to go-under and Zhuangzi's desire to stay afloat and move with da0's current, the balanced tension ofyin/yang and qi that flows through all things.

IV. Deeper Depth

You uill not ck'scover utmostvergeof the soul the evenif.youtravelits every path so de~ a logosit has Heraclitus Before he is able to empty his cup, his inherited encapsulated soul, and before he can resoul the desert of world long left dry, Zarathustra must go-under. Zarathustra's direction is always downward before moving outward. This is the terrain of his psychological and ontological topography. Zarathustra wishes to go down as far as he is capable because he must accept the Oracle's legacy of "Knowing Himself." The images in Also ~)rach Zarathustra are ones of depth: "Man's heart [Geraiith] is deep; his river [Str0ra] rushes in underground caves" (Nietzsche 1968c: On Little Old and Young Women 18); "I must descend [steigen] to the depth [Tiefi]: as you do in the evening, when you go behind the sea and still bring light to the underworld, you over-rich star!" (Nietzsche 1968c: Prologue 1); "I love him, whose soul is deep even in being wounded, and who of a small experience can perish: in this way he goes gladly over the bridge" (Nietzsche 1968c: Prologue 4); "Slow is the experience ofaU deep springs: long must they wait, until they know, what into their depth fell" (Nietzsche 1968c: On the Flies of the Market Place 12). There are many more. Zarathustra comes from his cave on the mountain's summit down to the village of men; this is his going-under (Untergang): "I want to descend," he tells his evening star. His going-under is a descent into a profound abyss; but first and foremost it is a descent into his own abyss and this quest into his abyss is his descent into the world of men. He knows that one must first crack one's own abyss

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to become the tragic philosopher before Dionysian depth is penetrated. Nietzsche places the word Tiefe (depth) into the mouth of Zarathustra in the above quote, but this word carries connotations that go beyond direction and location. In fact, the term has nothing to do with direction or location as indicated by stdgen. Steigen means to ascend, soar, go up, mount, climb, but in context can only mean to descend because it would make little literal sense to say that "I must ascend to the depth." However, this is precisely what Zarathustra tells his star. Zarathustra gives us a clue, a sign that tells us his quest has little to do with logic and its human made laws of contradiction, but has more to do with those mythological quests that are repeated again and again by his Greek forefathers such as Odysseus, Heraldes, and Theseus. Zarathustra knows that only gods and heroes can journey into the deq~, into the underworld. Zarathustra's descent into the deep gives him power (S~m), a strong current (S/r0m), and makes him flood (Slrom) like a torrent (S/r0m), which enables him to soar to the heights of gods and heroes. Zarathustra's river rushes and roars (rauschen) with the intoxication (Rausch) of the gods. Zarathustra's overcoming drowning in the Dionysian depths of his internal river is qualitatively different from the Swimmer in the Zhuang~ whose sole purpose is to stay afloat. Much of Also @rachZaralhuslrais Zarathustra's descent to the world of man and to his soul. As he explores the depth of soul, as he travels its every path, his soul responds as though a hydraulic ram and this hydraulic activity makes his cup overflow into the world---as he goes under he empties into and re-souls the world, a world left dry since the time of Thales' successors. 6 For the hydraulic system to begin its displacement of soul, Zarathustra must descend deep and roar into his underground caves; his spring is deep, and long must he wait until he finally realizes what fell into its most unfathomable depth. In his underground caves he finds his cast of characters: the Spirit of Gravity, the Dwarf, Soothsayer, Scholars, Priests, Tarantulas, the Spirit of Revenge, the Fire-hound, and so forth~all splinter characters of his multiple-psyche (see Parkes 1991:53-77 and Parkes 1994: ch. 9). However, he must wait long for the deepest, most profound and archaic fragment of his soul to be spewed forth~the fragment Zarathustra had glimpsed as a shade on his journey to the underworld through the eternally smoking, fire-spewing mountain not far from his blessed isles, where he learned that "the greatest events - - are not our loudest, but our stillest hour" (Nietzsche 1968c: On Great Events 18).

V. WatersDeep Water is an important image in the Zhuang~, but its feeling-tone has a much different tenor than the above images relating to Zarathustra. Water is always on its way in the Zbuang~; it is fluidity and motion that are emphasized, not the hidden secrets of the water's depth. The sage's authentic response to the challenge of water is to "get with the flow" of dao:

6 This hydrodynamic activity of #be~iessen(overflowing) and unte~geben crucial for Nietzsche. A cup is that wants to overflow must first go down. This Dionysian overflow is essential for the play of self-overcoming through going-over (ube~ehen)and unte~gebenin Nietzsche 1968c: Prologue 4.

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Confucius looked at the viewin Lti-liang.The waterfallhung down three hundred feet, it streamed foam for thirty miles, it was a place where fish and turtles and crocodilescould not swim,but he saw one fellowswimmingthere.He took him for someonein troublewho wanted to die, and sent a disciplealongthe bank to pull him up. But after a hundredpaces the man came out, and strolledunder the bank with his hair down his back, singingas he walked. Confuciustook the opportunityto questionhim. "I thoughtyou werea ghost, but now I see you closeup you'rea man. MayI ask whetheryou havea Wayto stayafloatin the water?" (Zhuangzi1981: 136) Although the "ghostly" swimmer dives from the heights of the waterfall into the depths of the pool, he does not stay under long; he comes up quickly and swims a couple hundred paces with the current. The swimmer wishes only to swim, to move with the world's current, and by swimming along the man is insubstantial in the world's non-differentiating flow; he moves effortlessly (wuwei ~) in his fractal connection with the world's becoming; he has disciplined himself "in order to be oneself the eternal joy of becoming'' (see Jones and Culliney). However, the swimmer of Lii-liang wishes not to stay under and enjoy the underground caves; he has no desire to journey to his or any other underworld; this is not his quest, nor his passion. Instead, he surfaces immediately and strolls along the banks and sings a song. In response to Confucius' question he replies: '~No, I have no Way. I began in what is native to me, grew up in what is natural to me, matured in what is destined for me. I enter with the inflow, and emerge with the outflow, follow the Way of the water and do not impose my selfishness upon it. This is how I stay afloat in it" (Zhuangzi 1981: 136). The shengren (sage) does go under with the swirls and eddies as he knifes through the depth, but seems little concerned with the psychological requirement displayed by Zarathustra because he immediately floats out with the outflows. The swirling undercurrents pose little interest. They do not tantalize him, nor do they cause him seasickness as they do for Zarathustra. There is no nausea of the swirling depths of soul. There is no quest into the underworld for the sage. The emphasis of this passage is to "follow the Way of the water" and to stay afloat. Following the way of the water is to be attuned to da0. As the Daodefingstates: "the highest efficacy is like water" (Chapter 8) and "Way-making (dao) is an easy-flowing stream, which can nan in any direction" (Chapter 34). Confucius was right to see the swimmer as a ghost because he is suspended in the zhong~ (emptiness) of all things and moving with its flow (chong~@),but does not see the swimmer's quest as mythological or psychological (like Zarathustra's). Being afloat on water is to be suspended in the chong/zhong of all things. The identity of the water is characterized by its nothingness--it has no form, but con-forms, it is always in motion and has no locus, it is always here, then there. The shengren's response to the challenge of water is to get with the flow--to become attuned to the nothingness of its becoming (zhong ~) and surging forth (chong}r This is not without parallel in Nietzsche since he too is an advocate of becoming: "affirmation of passing away and destroying,which is the determinant of a Diowsian philosophy, a Yes-saying to opposition and war, Becomin~ along with a radical refusal of the very concept of Being--therein under all circumstances it must be acknowledged that it is more kindred to me, than anything that has come till now" (Nietzsche 1965: The Birth of Tragedy 3). The Daoist sage's response, however, appears primarily ontological, that is, to borrow Heidegger's emphasis on the

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participation of human beings in the emergence of Being, and secondarily psychological. Nietzsche, on the other hand, is foremost psychological and then ontological. Again, Heidegger is helpful here: "Being as whole reveals itself asphysis... which here does not yet mean a particular sphere of beings but rather beings as such as a whole, specifically in the sense of emerging presence" (Heidegger: 129). For Nietzsche, who visited these realms long before Heidegger, to get to this "emerging presence" requires an obligatory Untergang. Not only is this going-under the process of Zarathustra's becoming, it is his necessary point of departure for his whole excursion into self-overcoming. Their preferences for departure indicate more clearly a major divergence in the currents of the two philosophies. Confucius asks the man what he meant by beginning with what is native, growing up with what is natural, and maturing with what is destiny and receives this response: "Having been born on dry land I am at home on dry land it's native to me. Having grown up in water I am at home in water it's natural to me. It is so without me knowing why it is so--it's destined for me" (Zhuangzi 1981: 136). For the Daoist sage not knowing and the acceptance of his fate is enough because his destiny is connected with da0; his destiny is the flowing of dao. The challenge for the shengr~nis to bring his body and soul (his nature) into the current of da0 and to respond naturally (~iran ~ , literally "being so of itself'). A different current, however, carries Nietzsche's amorfati. His current rushes as a torrent through a narrow canyon after early spring melt. One must love one's fate in order to become what one is, and the suffering and nausea of the deepest depths is a necessary condition for this becoming; fate brings chaos to soul as a necessary condition for the soul's subsequent bliss of overflowing into the world, of ensouling the world. Zarathustra, the prophet of the ([Tbermensch and eternal recurrence, can never be satisfied with an "it is so without me knowing why it is so" because to know is to suffer, and this suffering must be affirmed. It too must be a joy! "My formula for greatness in a human being is amorfati: that one willed nothing to be otherwise, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to suffer what is necessary...but to love it" (Nietzsche 1965: Why I Am So Clever? 10). The Obermensch must even love the chaos of his soul. He must love the suffering and nausea that the eternal return brings because it is necessary. Zarathustra's suffering must be known and cultivated; he will not be satisfied with the Swimmer of LiJ-liang's destiny. In Daoism, the joy is reunion with world through self-overcoming, the over-coming of it/other, but without Zarathustra's existential and psychologically driven need to deal with those wretched demons that need retching from the soul's depths. The overman needs to know and experience suffering and nausea because they are the requisite routes back into the world.

VI. Deep Suffering

It is by ck'sease healthispkasant (Heraclitus) that
As we have seen, suffering is less prominent in the Zhuangzi and is not central, or even crucial, to the Daoist project. For Zarathustra, however, he must wait long to

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discover what fell into his deepest spring; he must wait to find what has crawled into his throat and down to his soul as he lies sleeping--"Up, abysmal thought, out o f my depth!.... Let go!.... Nausea, nausea, nausea--woe unto me!" What will crawl from Zarathustra's soul will be both beautiful and disgusting. Once again, the animals' speech in 'q2ae Convalescent": Oh Zarathustra, thereupon the animals said, for those who think as we do, all things themselves are dancing: they come and reach out their hands and laugh and run away-~and come back. All goes, All comes back; the wheel of being rolls eternally.All dies, All blooms on once more, eternallyruns the year of being. All breaks, All becomes joined anew; eternally the same house of being is built All departs, All greet themselves again;eternallythe ring of being remains true to itself.In each Now being begins; near each Here rolls the sphere There. The center is all-over. Crooked is the path of eternity. (Nietzsche 1968c: The Convalescent 2) In this passage the exquisite nature o f the eternal return is portrayed. For one's self to be centered one must be with the world's center, which is everywhere; the soul must overflow into the world where the "center is all-over." Such a de-centered eternal world is also central in the Zhuang~ where de-centering the human perspective o f " I t / O t h e r " (animals do not share this dualistic perspective) is the first level o f disciplining for the sage. However, Zarathustra's snake is at hand (throat). Zarathustra's animals attempt to cheer him after a seven-day dead sleep in his underworld: "My abyss speaks, I have turned my final [let,4e depth [Tiefe] into ] light" (Nietzsche 1968c: The Convalescent 1). 7 Zarathustra's eagle has placed two sacrificial iambs at his feet, which have been robbed from lesser shepherds. His animals tell him to step out of his cave because the "world awaits [him] like a garden" and the "wind is playing with heavy fragrances" that wish to fickle his nostrils; but all is not roses in Zarathustra's Eden. He lovingly calls the animals o f his psyche politic "roguish-fools" (Schalks-Narren) and "barrel organs" (Drehorgeln), because he knows there is another side to the eternal return, a darker masked side. H e reminds them how "that monster crawled down [his] throat and choked [him] and how he bit off its head and vomited it out." This suffocation is his encounter with his authentic becoming; he must come to grips with his Angst if he is ever to accept the eternal return. Angst reveals this experience through its Latin root ango and Greek root agcho, which mean to press together, strangle, to choke, to occlude the soul (psuche o f its breath (psuchO. Zarathustra's final depth (letzte Tiefe), his most 3 deep-seated Angst has been brought to light. In spite o f the apparent affinities between Nietzsche and Zhuangzi, Zarathustra's final depth xxfill represent an abysmal divergence between the two traditions.

VII. "I Searched Myself" (Heraclitus)

Zarathustra must learn and is unconsciously driven to discover the disgusting nature o f his last monster. In the following paragraphs, Zarathustra apprises his ani7Not only does the German letztemean final, but it also has the connotations of deep, which further emphasizes the noun Tiefe. In "The Convalescent" Nietzsche wants to make a point about the relation of depth and suffering.

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mals o f the crudty of man who is "the cruelest animal" and finally realizes that it was "the great disgust with man" that had crawled into his throat and choked him. It is true that Zhuangzi too was disgusted with the smallness o f man and suggested there was "disillusion, not to say disgust, with human life as it is ordinarily lived" (Creel: 99) and that "the man who has freed himself from conventional standards o f judgment can no longer be made to suffer" (Zhuangzi 1964: 6). Even Confucius shares this disgust with the xiaoren d~),, the small person. However, for Zhuangzi, the suffering of disgust is to be overcome for it is merely illusion, not cultivated as it must be for Zarathustra, because for Zarathustra not only does the greatest man recur, but the smallest recurs as well. Zarathustra, the prophet o f the overman and the teacher of the eternal return, must now become a semiologist of suffering; he must become the hidden god o f Delphi, Dionusos, who "neither speaks nor keeps secret but reveals with a sign" (Heraclitus: Fragment 14) and offer the world a sign o f suffering so it too can know the necessity o f suffering: "The eternal return even o f the smallest!----~at was my disgust with all being-there! Alas, Nausea! Nausea! Nausea!" Yet his animals will not let him go, and say to him: Do not speak on, you convalescent!..,but go out there where the world awaits you like a garden. Go out to the roses and bees and dovecotes. But especiallyto the songbirds: that you may learn how to sing from them! Singingis for this same convalescent.... [M]akeyourself a lyre as it ought to be, a new lyre! For behold still, oh Zarathustra! For your new songs new lyres are necessary.Sing and overflow,oh Zarathustra, heal your soul with new songs: that you may carry your great fate,which has not yet been any man's fate! For your animalsknow well, oh Zarathustra, who you are and must become: behold, you are the teacher of the eternal return--, that is now your fate! CNietzsche1968c: The Convalescent2) T o fulfill his destiny, Zarathustra must love his fate; he must embrace the returning m o m e n t that has announced he is the teacher o f the eternal return, the teacher o f the eternal return o f the greatest and smallest, the greatest and smallest both within and without. His soul must be healed with thepharmakon--the cure and poison---of new songs, songs o f the child Zarathustra that will overflow (brause iiber) his soul's brim and become an exemplification o f his overflowing Dionysian intoxication. For Zarathustra, his choice is clear--either to live authentically or die. In the Zhuang~i, death is treated as just another event to be accepted as part o f the process, as seen especially in the sections on Zhuangzi's wife's death and the hollow skull (Chapter 18) and the story o f Gaptooth and WANG Ni (Chapter 2). But for Zarathustra there is a wrenching choice that must be affm'ned; he teaches that one should die at the right time: "Many die too late, and some die too early. The doctrine as yet sounds strange: 'Die at the right time!' Die at the right time: thus teaches Zarathustra" (Nietzsche 1968c: O n Free Death 21). Zarathustra, the teacher o f the overman and the eternal return also teaches death, or how to die authentically. In the penultimate passage o f 'q~he Convalescent," Zarathustra's animals speak for him as though they too are part o f his soul and proclaim the end o f Zarathustra's going-under, the end of his setting (Untergehen) and perishing (Untergehen), and the beginning o f his re-birth: "Loving and perishing [Untergehen],that has rhymed for eternities. The will to love that is also a will to death" (Nietzsche 1968c: O n the Immaculate Perception). There is no further province to be explored within; the cup, the container o f his soul, has been shattered and its insides emptied outside. Zarathustra's Untergehen is his passive

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nihilistic affm'nation, his lion's roar that creates the possibility of the active nihilistic affirmation of the Child's "yes." There is no negative affirmation of the Lion's roar in the Zhuangzi, but rather a positive affirmation navigating us back into the flow. The animals of Zarathustra's polycentric psyche refuse to perish at this time and speak thus:
And if you desired to die now, oh Zarathustta: behold, we also know, how you would speak there to thee:--but your animals entreat you, that you do not die yefl You would speak...without trembling...! - "Now I die and fade away...and in no time I am nothing. Souls are as mortal as bodies. But the knot of original-events [Ursachen], turns again, in which I am entwined [verschlungen],--it will create me again! I myself belong to the original-events of the eternal return. I come again, with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, and with this serpent [Scblange] - - n o t to a new life or a better life or a similar life: - - I come eternally again to this same and selfsame life, within the greatest and also the smallest, that I again teach the doctrine of eternal return of all things, - - - t h a t I speak again the word of great earth and of man's-noon, that I again to men proclaim the overman. (Nietzsche 1968c: "The Convalescent" 2)

Zarathustra's death is not a literal death; his going-under is like the fight of the setting sun that is brought to the underworld each night. The reciprocal relationship between life and death is established as an integral turning of all things in the becoming of the world, in the being of becoming. Zarathustra has aligned himself with the being of becoming and has become en-twined or (inter)woven into the multifarious fabric of the world. The Daoist sage is entwined in the knot of original-events by entering the axis of da0, or center of the cusp ofyin andyang. Yet the shengren's blending into the tapestry of life requires acceptance of the natural course of all things, not the affirmation of willing that this fife as now lived will repeat itself infinite times and that one must learn to die at the right time. The Daoist sage will return as well, but as a leaf, the tree, the insect.., because "death and life alter nothing in himself" (Zhuangzi 1981: 58). Zarathustra re-turns with his animals: the eagle of the sky and the serpent of the earth. The serpent, the creature closest to the earth that touches the earth with all areas of her under-body as she slithers toward her destination, is an ancient image of that wisdom. Zarathustra, the redeemer of the earth, needs to bite off the head of wisdom that removed soul from world with its love of the transcendent and metaphysical. The schlungenof verschlungenis vividly cognate with Schlange, serpent. Zarathustra is (re)threaded into the fabric of existence, but in order to be entwined in this eternal worldly web of forces, he must bite off his internal snake's head before his soul can finally flow out into the flowing of the world. The shengren'strip seems more benign; he has no internal monsters impeding his return back into the flow. Zarathustra's internal battle, however, leaves him bonded eternally to the primeval forces (Ursachen)in a different way. Zarathustra realizes this bond as the heaviest of all weights; his soul is now stretched back through time and allied with the forces that make life possible. Thus ends his going-under. Zhuangzi's characters, however, seem to know all of this without experiencing the suffering of the snake's head and the taste of its severed and disembodied wisdom. The shengn,n's journey lacks Zarathustra's turmoil; he seems to float effortlessly (wuwe/~ ~) to the center once he has realized his true nature, his "being just so of himsdf' (ziran t~). The terminus of their trips back into the world is the same, but Zarathustra and

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Zhuangzi's ways diverge and are driven by distinct currents. Zarathustra's animals finish their speech to Zarathustra and his internal dialogue is stilled. They wait for his response, but Zarathustra remains silent. He lies with his eyes dosed, but is not asleep "for he was then conversing with his soul." He tells his soul that there is no soul more loving, vast (umfangender)and voluminous (umJ'dngh'cheO and asks: '"Where would future and past be nearer together 8 than in you?" Zarathustra, the advocate of suffering, has now truly become the advocate of the drde--past and future find their eternal sense in the en-circling (umfangender) of the timeless rhythms of soul. Zarathustra concludes his conversation with his soul by imparting that he has now accorded his totality m her care. Zarathustra spoke thus:
O h my soul, now I gave you all and even my deepest [Letztes], and all my hands have become empty to you: - - that I commanded you m sing, behold, that was my deepestll That I commanded you to sing, speak now, speak: who of us has n o w - - t o r e m m thanks?--Better again still: sing to me, sing, oh my soul! And allow me m return thanks! - (Nietzsche 1968c: O n the Great Desiring 278)

There is Nothing in Daoism, just like this. - References

Creel, H.G. 1953. ChineseThought from Confudusto Mao Tsg-tung. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1962. Nietuche et laphilosophie. Trans. by Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia University Press. Fingarette, Herbert. 1979. 'Whe Problem of the Self in the Analects." Philosophy East-West29~2: 129-140. Heidegger, Martin. 1977. On the Essence of Truth. In Marlin Heidegg~ Basic Writings. Ed. by David Krdl. New York: Harper and Row. Jones, David, & John Culliney. 1999. "The Fractal Self and the Organization of Nature: The Daoist Sage and Chaos Theory." Zygon:JournalofSdence and Religion 4: 643-654. Kasulis, Thomas P. 2002. Intimacy or Integri[y: Philosophy and Cultural Difference. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Laozi. 2003. Daodejing:A PhilosophicalTranslation. Trans. by Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall. New York: Ballantine Books. Lingis, Alphonso. 1977. 'Tne Will to Power." In The New Nielzsche: Contemporat.y Styles ofInteqoretation.Ed. by David B. Allison. New York: Dell Publishing. Nietzsche. 1957. The UseandAbuse ofHistoty. Trans. by Adrian Collins. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing. 1965. Friedrich Nielzsche: Werke In DM Ba'nden. Edited by Karl Schlechta. Miinchen: Carl Hanser Verlag.
s Both of these German words are very close in meaning. Umfangenderalso has the sense of encircling, which plays very nicely with the thought o f the eternal return. Umf~'nglichadds a sense o f spatiality, size, and extension. This may hint at the closeness of space and time in Nietzsche's thought o f the eternal return.

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9 1966. Thus Spoke Zarathuslra. Trans. by Walter Kaufman. New York: Viking Press. 91966b. B~yondGood and Evil. New York: Vintage Books9 _ _ 1967. The Will to Power. Trans. by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Vintage Books. _ _ 1968a. Twilight of the Idols9 In Twilight of the Idols and The Anli-Christ. Trans. by R.J. HoUingdale.Baltimore: Penguin Books. _ _ 1968b. TheAnli-Christ. In Twih'ghtof the Idols and TheAnli-Christ. Trans. by R.J. Hollingdale. Baltimore: Penguin Books9 _ _ 1968c. Thus Spoke Zarathuslra. In Nielzsche Werke: Krilische Gesamtausgabe. Berlin: Walter de Gmyter & Co. _ _ 1968d. Beyond Good and Evil. In Nietzsche Werke: Krilische Gesamtausgabe. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co. 1969a. On the Genealogy. In On the GenealogyofMorals and Ecce Homo. Trans. by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books. 1969b. EcceHomo. In On the GenealogyofMorals and EcceHomo9Trans. by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books. Parkes, Graham. 1991. "Ordering the Psychic Polytic: Choices of Inner Regime for Plato and Nietzsche." The Journal of Nielzsche Studies 2: 53-77. 9 1994. Composingthe Soul." Reaches ofNielzsche's P(ychology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press9 Zhuangzi. 19649 The Complete Works ofChuang TZU. Trans. by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press. 91981. Chuang TZU:The Inner Chapters. Trans. by A.C. Graham9 London: George Allen & Unwin.
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