Tianjun (天钧)
Tianjun 天钧, 'Heaven's wheel' — the Zhuangzi's image for where the sage rests: not choosing between this and that, but letting both go their way on the turning rim.
The term
天钧 (tiānjūn) — 天, heaven; 钧, the potter’s wheel (also read 均, evenness, balance). The term appears in the Qiwulun’s closing move, immediately after the three-in-the-morning fable:
“The sage therefore harmonizes the rights and wrongs and rests on Heaven’s wheel — this is called letting both go.” (是以圣人和之以是非，而休乎天钧，是之谓两行。)
Why the term matters
- The wheel, not the scale. The potter’s wheel balances by turning: whatever rests on the rim is carried around, and the center stays still. The image is chosen against the scale’s either/or — the sage does not adjudicate between 是 and 非 (this is right / that is right) but 和之, harmonizes them, and then rests (休). The resting is the practice-word: the three-in-the-morning keeper rests on the wheel, not on a verdict.
- 两行 — both go. The term’s companion definition: 两行, “the two both proceed.” The site records the pair together because the passage defines one by the other — resting on Heaven’s wheel is letting both go. The xu concept page keeps the family’s negative discipline (emptiness as the refusal to fill), and 天钧 is the positive image of the same refusal: the refusal to be the one who decides, pictured as a rotation one rides.
- It closes the fable’s argument. The three-in-the-morning keeper fed the monkeys three in the morning, four in the evening — or four and three; the substance was unchanged, only the mood reversed. The passage’s own gloss (preserved in the teaching editions and quoted on the story page) is that names and realities were never harmed, and anger and joy were used — and the sage’s resting on the wheel is the same move raised to principle. The term is thus the chapter’s last word on this and that — the whole debate machinery dissolved into a rim.
Usage notes
The term stays in pinyin with the gloss “Heaven’s wheel”; the site notes the graphic family 钧/均 (wheel/evenness) without choosing between the readings, and keeps the pair 天钧–两行 as one definition, per the passage’s own grammar.
Sources
- Zhuangzi ch. 2 (Qiwulun, inner chapter): '是以圣人和之以是非，而休乎天钧，是之谓两行。' Verified against the Wikisource full text and teaching editions, as documented on the three-in-the-morning story page (the passage immediately follows the three-in-the-morning fable)