Zhuangzi: On Cockroaches

Zhuangzi’s Cockroach Theory: Cockroaches Have Existed for Hundreds of Millions of Years Without Needing Meaning, and the Same Goes for Humans
I. The Cockroach Theory
Cockroaches have existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years. What is the meaning of their lives? They do not need “meaning.” Or we could say that the “Dao,” the laws of nature, gives me, Mr. Cockroach, a meaning of my own; I follow nature’s course. Every cockroach is whole and at one with the Great Dao. How much more so a flower or a blade of grass, a bird or a butterfly, so beautiful and free that they enchant us—and how much more so a living, breathing human being.
Capitalism only wants to hire a pair of hands, but it has to hire a whole person. This is a contradiction of the age extending into the individual’s life.
People become preoccupied with “meaning” because they are tormented by the karmic obstructions of “meaninglessness,” just as people become preoccupied with “self-confidence” because they are tormented by “a lack of confidence and self-attack.”
There is a crucial point in the healing offered by existential psychology, Daoism, and Chan Buddhism: how to understand “unconditional existence,” “unconditional self-confidence,” “unconditional ease,” and “unconditional innate wholeness, the completeness of one’s original self, and the tranquility of one’s original self.” The “cockroach theory” offers an answer, from a perspective similar to “the Dao is in shit and piss.”
Most people, lost in karmic obstructions, seek outwardly and need “conditional self-confidence”: an elite university education, a successful startup, fame, wealth, power, and status. In other words, they believe that only people like Jack Ma, Lei Jun, and Steve Jobs are entitled to confidence and ease. But Lei Jun is not necessarily confident or at ease either; Steve Jobs also went through a process of growth and awakening; and Jack Ma’s situation hardly needs discussing. Given this, the petty bourgeois feel that they themselves—let alone anyone else—fall even further short.
II. Petty-Bourgeois Karmic Obstructions
Besides the classic question of “seeking outwardly versus searching within,” there is another crucial karmic obstruction: petty-bourgeois elitism, the “spiritual practitioner’s ego.” This means believing that “accomplishment in spiritual practice” is an “elite, exalted” state, which is still a form of “the exam ace’s mindset of striving.” (See my earlier articles, “The Birth of a New Ego: The Spiritual Practitioner’s Ego” and “Petty-Bourgeois Malaise.”)
This also leads people to mystify the “Dao” and “Chan,” making them seem lofty and grand. Chan Buddhism emphasizes that Huineng was “illiterate” and highlights his words, “Who would have thought that our own nature possesses innate wholeness?” It also teaches that “those of the lowest standing possess the highest wisdom”: the mind itself is Buddha; do not seek outwardly. Beginning with Mazu’s Chan, the emphasis on “ordinary life, with nothing to pursue, is Chan; Chan is everywhere” expresses something similar. (See my earlier article, “The Historical Development of the Concept of ‘Innate Wholeness’ in Chan Buddhism.”)
Zhuangzi, meanwhile, opposes elitism, first, and the doctrine of striving, second. (See my earlier articles, “The Similarities and Common Ground Between Zhuangzi and Marxism,” “Spiritual Practice Is a False Concept,” and “A Special Discussion of Striving: Stop Striving Now.”)
Zhuangzi was also close to working people. He was an “official at the lacquer garden”: a major intellectual, a member of the declining aristocracy, and a grassroots cadre in a state-owned enterprise. In the lacquer garden, he encountered ropes, saws, planes, and drills, as well as carpenters, carvers, lacquer workers, Cook Ding, and others. He was reeducated by working people and moved by their simplicity, sincerity, goodness, and beauty, which differed from the decadent old aristocrats, intellectuals, and even traditional Daoists he encountered. This further deepened his philosophical understanding of “alienation,” his criticism of being “enslaved by knowledge,” his insistence on “not wearing oneself out in servitude,” and his understanding of “the usefulness of the useless.”
The lower classes are more advanced; the upper classes are more alienated. That is why I wrote “The Similarities and Affinities Between Zhuangzi and Marxism.” I am not forcing these things together. Zhuangzi and Epicurus were close in both historical period and philosophical core, and Epicurus was precisely the subject of Marx’s doctoral dissertation. Qian Mu compared Zhuangzi with Epicurus, and Guo Moruo compared Zhuangzi with Spinoza. Surely those two count as more “elite” than I do. (See my earlier articles, “The Affinities and Similarities Between Zhuangzi’s Philosophy and Later Greek Philosophy—Epicurus, Stoicism, and Cynicism” and “Zhuangzi and Epicurus, Marx, Qian Mu, and Me.”)
III. Incompleteness and Wholeness
Zhuangzi often likes to make his points through examples of disabled people. A disabled person may be “incomplete” in terms of their body, “fate,” occupation, or even marriage, but that does not diminish the wholeness of their soul, happiness, joy, or mind. Their disability may even preserve their life (“the old frontier man gains a horse”), keep them from becoming alienated—as aristocrats become obsessed with office and power—and allow them to devote themselves peacefully to a craft. Take Li Mao, a son of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang: because of his disability, he escaped brutal political struggles and was granted the title Prince of Shou. This is Zhuangzi’s teaching: “Do not seek outwardly; recognize innate wholeness; rest content with the times and follow the course of things.”
IV. Innate Wholeness
When Huineng attained awakening, he exclaimed: “Who would have thought that our own nature possesses innate wholeness?”
From Zhuangzi’s perspective: who would have thought that cockroaches possess innate wholeness? Only then does the equal standing of all things come into view. Everyone unconditionally exists, is confident, natural, and whole, and possesses innate wholeness. Just like every baby, sleeping peacefully and smiling.
Look at ten thousand years of human history: it is the world that has “problems,” not humanity that lacks wholeness. Looking back ten thousand years from now, our present will still be an early stage of human civilization. Human beings struggle and slaughter one another within it; this does not mean there is something wrong with “humanity.” Historical materialism: helplessness and non-action. (See my earlier article, “An Individual’s Problems Are Often Humanity’s Problems.”)