The Mantis Stalks the Cicada
Zhuangzi, stalking a strange magpie with his slingshot, sees the chain he stands in — cicada, mantis, bird, himself, and the gamekeeper behind him — and drops the slingshot. The book's lesson in being the last link.
The story
Zhuangzi was wandering in the preserve at Diaoling when he saw a strange magpie come from the south — wings seven feet across, eyes an inch around — brush his forehead, and settle in a chestnut grove. “What bird is this?” he said. “Wings great but won’t travel; eyes huge but won’t see!” He hitched up his robe, crept forward, slingshot ready — and saw a cicada, just settled in lovely shade, having forgotten its body; a mantis, raising its arms to seize it, having forgotten its form in the gain; and the strange magpie, taking advantage of them both, having forgotten its truth in the profit.
Zhuangzi shuddered. “Ah — things are bound to each other, and the two kinds summon each other!” He dropped his slingshot and turned to run — and the gamekeeper chased him, shouting.
Back home, for three months he did not leave the house. His disciple Lin Ju asked why. Zhuangzi said: “I kept my form and forgot my self; I gazed into muddy water and lost myself in the clear pool. And I have heard the master say: enter a place, follow its customs. I wandered into Diaoling and forgot my self; the magpie brushed my forehead; it wandered into the grove and forgot its truth; and the chestnut grove’s keeper took me for a thief. That is why I do not go out.”
Framing: the chain, and the man at the end of it
- The forgetting chain. The passage is the book’s 忘 vocabulary in its failure mode: 忘其身 → 忘其形 → 忘其真 — three creatures, three forgettings, one chain. The cicada forgets itself in shade (comfort), the mantis in grasping (gain), the magpie in profit (advantage) — and Zhuangzi himself, stalking them, forgets his self under the magpie’s wings. The site’s zuowang concept page holds the term’s practice side (“sitting in oblivion” as the deliberate emptying); this page is the term’s warning side: forgetting is not automatically sacred — the whole animal kingdom does it, and it is how the food chain works. The deliberate forgetting and the automatic forgetting are two different verbs wearing one word.
- The observer observed. The fable’s one image the proverb lost: the man with the slingshot — the observer of the chain — is himself observed, by a gamekeeper who takes him for a poacher. The proverb 螳螂捕蝉，黄雀在后 (“the mantis stalks the cicada, the oriole is behind”) comes from the Han text Shuo yuan, not from this passage — the site double-registers both: the Zhuangzi’s chain (cicada-mantis-magpie-Zhuangzi-keeper, five links) is the earliest image, and the proverb’s “behind you” is this passage’s point made portable. What the proverb flattened into two links, the passage keeps at five: there is always another link, and you are it.
- The two chains of the book. The site’s kui-xian-chain page (ch. 17) holds the book’s other chain — the pity chain of the centipede and the wind, where every link runs by its own heaven-mechanism and the chain ends in the unanswerable. This passage is the chain’s dark twin: there, each link moves itself (天机); here, each link is moved by the next one’s blindness (相累, mutual entanglement). Two chains, two verbs — and the site cross-links them as the book’s complete map of how things are connected: self-running from below, mutually binding from behind.
- 三月不庭 — the book’s hero, rattled. Three months without leaving the house: the passage lets its own author be caught, shouted at, and shaken — 吾守形而忘身 (“I kept my form and forgot my self”) is Zhuangzi’s own confession, in the same 忘 grammar as the animals. The huzi-jixian page’s master who cannot be read is the ideal; this page is the practice: even the book’s hero is one link in the chain, and the day’s work is to notice the slingshot in your own hand — which he does, and drops it. The dropping is the teaching.
Why it belongs in this knowledge base
Because it is the book’s own warning about the site’s central practice word: the sitting pages teach forgetting-as-practice; this passage teaches that forgetting-as-automatic is the trap the practice exists to interrupt. The zuochi glossary (坐驰 — “sitting while galloping”) is the same warning inside the sitting posture; this page is the same warning inside the world.
Uncertainty preserved: an outer chapter passage (later stratum, declared per the layering rule); verified against the full text with variants (樊/野; 见利/见得) recorded; the proverb’s attribution is double-registered (Zhuangzi for the image, Shuo yuan for the two-link proverb); 三月不庭 read as “did not leave the courtyard for three months,” the standard reading.
The Diaoling magpie scene is told in The Magpie at Diaoling.
Sources
- Zhuangzi ch. 20 (Shanmu, outer chapter), the Diaoling passage, verified against the Wikisource full text (with the textual variants (fan/ye and jianli/jiande) noted) and a Sohu teaching commentary quoting the passage; the passage records the chain in full: cicada forgets its body in the shade, mantis forgets its form in the grab, magpie forgets its truth in the gain, and Zhuangzi forgets himself under the magpie's wings