While previous chapters explored how to live wisely amid worldly hardship, Zhi Bei You (知北游, Knowledge Roams North) turns to a core metaphysical question: What is the Dao, and how can we truly know it? The full text contains eleven short fables. This article unpacks three key episodes.
Important premise for Daoist thought: The Dao cannot be fully captured by words or intellectual reasoning. True understanding comes not from thinking harder, but from quiet inner alignment.
Knowing vs. not‑knowing
A figure named Knowledge (Zhi 知) travelled north. He came to the banks of Yuan Water and climbed Hidden Mound Hill, where he met Wu Wei Wei (无为谓).
Knowledge asked three questions:
- “What thoughts and reflections will let me know the Dao?”
- “What dwelling and conduct will let me abide in the Dao?”
- “What path and method will let me attain the Dao?”
He asked three times, yet Wu Wei Wei gave no reply. It was not that he refused to answer – he simply did not know how to answer.
Receiving no reply, Knowledge returned south of White Water and climbed Fox Gateway Hill. There he found Kuang Qu (狂屈). He repeated the same three questions.
Kuang Qu said: “Ah, I know the answers. I was about to tell you.” But as he prepared to speak, he forgot what he wanted to say.
Still without an answer, Knowledge went to the imperial palace and consulted the Yellow Emperor.
The Yellow Emperor replied:
“Have no thoughts or reflections, then you will know the Dao. Dwell in no fixed posture, follow no set conduct, then you will abide in the Dao. Follow no particular path, seek no particular way, then you will attain the Dao.”
Knowledge said: “You and I understand this. Wu Wei Wei and Kuang Qu do not. Who is right?”
The Yellow Emperor answered:
“Wu Wei Wei is the one who truly embodies it. Kuang Qu comes close. You and I still remain far from it.
Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know. Therefore the sage practices teaching‑without‑words.
The Dao cannot be reached by pursuit; Virtue cannot be attained by striving. Benevolence can be enacted; Righteousness can be corrupted; Ritual is built upon pretence.
Hence the saying: When the Dao is lost, then Virtue arises; when Virtue is lost, then Benevolence arises; when Benevolence is lost, then Righteousness arises; when Righteousness is lost, then Ritual arises.Ritual is but the ornate surface of the Dao, and the beginning of chaos.
Now that we have become entangled among things, returning back to the root is difficult. Only the Great Person can do this with ease.
Birth belongs to the same stream as death; death is the beginning of birth. Who can trace their thread? Human life is the gathering of qi (vital energy). Gathered, there is life; scattered, there is death. If birth and death are of one kind, why should we grieve? All things are one. What we admire we call “marvellous‑spirit”; what we detest we call “rotting‑foul”. Rotting‑foul transforms into marvellous‑spirit; marvellous‑spirit transforms back into rotting‑foul. Hence: All under heaven is but one single qi (vital energy). That is why the sage values this Oneness.”
Knowledge said: “I questioned Wu Wei Wei and he gave no reply – not out of refusal, but because he knew not how to reply. I questioned Kuang Qu; he wished to speak but forgot. Now you understand everything. Why do you say we remain far from the Dao?”
The Yellow Emperor said:
“Wu Wei Wei is true to the Dao precisely because he does‑not‑know. Kuang Qu comes close because he forgets. You and I stay distant precisely because we know and we speak.”
When Kuang Qu heard these words, he judged that the Yellow Emperor truly understood discourse on the Dao.
Postscript: Heaven‑and‑Earth possess great beauty yet do not speak
“Heaven and Earth hold great beauty but do not speak. The four seasons possess clear patterns but do not debate. The ten‑thousand things possess inherent principles but do not explain them. The sage traces the beauty of Heaven and Earth and comprehends the principles of all things. Therefore the Ultimate Person practises non‑action; the Great Sage does not contrive. This means modelling oneself upon Heaven and Earth.”
The Dao’s subtle spirit participates in endless transformation. All things live and die, take shape or dissolve, yet their source remains unseen. Vast as the six directions are, nothing lies outside it. Tiny as an autumn hair‑tip is, it depends upon it to gain form. All things rise and sink, never staying unchanged. Yin‑yang and the four seasons follow their order. Dim‑seeming as if absent, yet truly present; formless yet divine in power. All creatures are nurtured by it without realising. This is called the Root; from it one may observe Heaven.
Key take‑aways:
- Intellectual knowing and verbal explanation keep you separated from the Dao.
- Four spiritual stances in this parable:
1. Knowledge (Zhi): uses deliberate thinking to chase the Dao – farthest away.
2. Yellow Emperor: can articulate the Dao in words, yet still trapped inside conceptual “knowing”.
3. Kuang Qu: inwardly grasps it, yet forgets when speech is needed – draws near.
4. Wu Wei Wei: no conceptual knowing at all; silent, unresponsive – truly united with the Dao.
- All‑under‑heaven is one qi. Life‑death, beauty‑ugliness are shifting transformations of the same vital energy.
Confucius asks La Dan about the Ultimate Dao
Confucius visited La Dan: ”Today we have leisure. May I ask about the Ultimate Dao?”
La Dan said:
“Purify yourself with fasting. Scour your mind, wash and cleanse your spirit, cast away your clever knowledge. The Dao is deep and hard to describe. Let me sketch its outline.
Bright manifest things emerge from the dark hidden; patterned form emerges from the formless. Spirit‑energy comes forth from the Dao; bodily form comes forth from spirit‑energy. All beings generate one another through form. Creatures with nine openings are born from wombs; those with eight openings hatch from eggs.
It comes leaving no trace; it departs with no boundary. No gate, no dwelling‑place; it spreads out boundless in all directions. Who aligns with it gains strong limbs, clear thought, sharp eyes and ears. Their spirit does not labour; they respond to all things without fixed rules. Heaven could not be high without it; Earth could not be broad; sun‑moon could not run their course; all things could not flourish. Is this not the Dao?
Wide learning does not guarantee true insight; sharp debate does not guarantee wisdom. The sage abandons such pursuits. What cannot be increased by adding to it, nor diminished by taking from it – this is what the sage preserves. Deep like the ocean, lofty, circling endlessly. It sustains all things without exhaustion. The “Dao” valued by worldly gentlemen lies merely on the outside! All creatures draw sustenance from it and it never runs dry. That is the true Dao.
There is a being between heaven and earth, neither yin nor yang, temporarily taking human shape, destined to return to its origin. Seen from the source, life is but the condensation of vital‑energy. Long life and short life differ hardly at all – merely a fleeting moment. Why debate the right‑and‑wrong of Yao and Jie?
Fruits have their natural order; human relationships are complex yet also follow sequence. The sage meets circumstances without resisting them; passes through them without clinging. To harmonise and respond is Virtue; to respond spontaneously without bias is the Dao. This is how emperors and kings arose.
Human life between heaven and earth is like a white horse glimpsed through a crack in a wall – gone in an instant. All things burst forth; all things fade away. We are born by transformation, we die by transformation. Beasts grieve this; human beings sorrow over it. Yet death means loosening Heaven’s wrapping, casting off Heaven’s sheath. Soul‑spirit departs; the body follows. This is the Great Return.
Transition from formless‑to‑formed and formed‑to‑formless is something ordinary people talk about. But those who draw near to the Dao do not argue. Those who argue have not drawn near. What is plainly visible is not the true Dao. Eloquent speech is worse than silence. The Dao cannot be heard; better to close the senses. This is called the Great Attainment.”
Key take‑aways:
- The Dao is the inexhaustible source of all being. Intellectual erudition and argument do not grant access to it.
- From the perspective of the Dao, human lifespans and moral disputes are fleeting. Birth and death are natural cycles of return.
- Those who truly realise the Dao do not argue about it. Words fall short.
Dong Guo Zi asks Zhuangzi: Where is the Dao?
Dong Guo Zi asked Zhuangzi: ”Where may the Dao be found?”
Zhuangzi replied: ”There is nowhere it is not.”
Dong Guo Zi pressed: ”You must give me a concrete location.”
Zhuangzi: ”It is among ants and crickets.”
Dong Guo Zi: ”How can it dwell in something so lowly?”
Zhuangzi: ”It dwells among tiny weeds.”
Dong Guo Zi: ”Even lower!”
Zhuangzi: ”It dwells within tiles and broken bricks.”
Dong Guo Zi: ”Still worse!”
Zhuangzi: ”It dwells within excrement and urine.”
Dong Guo Zi fell silent.
Zhuangzi explained:
“Sir, your question missed the essential point. Recall how the market inspector judges the fatness of pigs: the further down you press, the better you know their condition (each‑lower, each‑truer). Do not insist on one single spot. No thing escapes the Dao. The Ultimate Dao is like this, and likewise great sayings about it. ’All‑pervading’, ‘everywhere’, ‘complete’ – different names for one single reality.
Let us wander together in the Palace‑of‑Nothing‑Whatever, unite our perspectives and know boundlessness. Let us practise non‑action: calm, distant‑clear, harmonised‑and‑leisurely. Our will becomes empty; we go without knowing where we arrive; return without knowing where we stop. Wandering in vast open space, great wisdom enters and knows no end.
That‑which‑gives‑things‑being has no boundary alongside things. Boundaries exist only in the things themselves. Boundlessness dwells within bounded things. When we speak of fullness and waning, decay and growth, beginning and end, gathering and scattering: those transformations belong to things. The Dao itself has no fullness or waning, no decay or growth, no beginning‑end, no gathering‑scattering.”
Key take‑aways:
- The Dao is not some remote, exalted place far above ordinary reality. It permeates even lowly, unglamorous, physical things.
- To demand a specific location misfires: boundaries and categories are human mental constructs. The Dao transcends all distinctions of high/low, pure/impure. We encounter it not by locating it intellectually, but through quiet, open‑minded immersion amid changing reality.
Closing Thoughts
Three core themes run through Zhi Bei You:
1. The limits of words and intellect: You cannot reason or talk your way into the Dao. Realisation comes in silent alignment, not argument. Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.
2. Qi (vital energy) and oneness: Birth‑death, beauty‑ugliness are transformations of a single universal qi. From the viewpoint of the Dao, many human worries lose their weight.
3. The Dao is omnipresent: It inhabits humble as well as noble phenomena. Do not seek it only in lofty places. It dwells within ordinary, messy reality itself.
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