The Mountain Tree and the Goose
The useless tree lives out its years; the useless goose is killed for dinner. Asked which side he will take, Zhuang Zhou laughs: between timber and no-timber — and then leaves both.
The story
Zhuangzi walked in the mountains and saw a great tree, branches and leaves flourishing. The woodcutters stopped beside it and did not take it. Asked why, they said: “There’s nothing it can be used for.” Zhuangzi said: “This tree lives out its years because it is no timber.”
Coming down from the mountain, he lodged at an old friend’s house. The friend was pleased and told the servant boy to kill a goose and cook it. The boy asked: “One can honk, one cannot — which shall I kill?” The host said: “Kill the one that cannot honk.”
Next day the disciples asked Zhuangzi: “Yesterday the mountain tree lived out its years for being no timber; today the host’s goose died for being no timber. Where will you place yourself, Master?”
Zhuangzi laughed: “I would place myself between timber and no-timber. But between timber and no-timber — it looks like the place and it is not, so you are still not free of entanglement. Ride the Way and its power and wander, and it is different: no praise, no blame; now a dragon, now a snake, changing with the season, never committing to one course; now up, now down, taking harmony as the measure; wandering at the ancestor of the ten thousand things; treating things as things and not being treated as a thing by them — then how could anything entangle you?”
Framing: the double standard, and the exit from both sides
- The trap is the symmetry. Ch. 4’s scattered timber (the same 散木 logic, as Wang Nengxian’s exposition notes) survives because useless; here the goose dies for the same reason. The passage does not resolve the contradiction — it stages it as the unanswerable question the disciples actually ask: 先生将何处，where will you place yourself? The useless-gourd page carries the first half of the theme (uselessness as room); this page carries the second: uselessness is not a refuge either, because the standard of use is not yours.
- The laugh, and the between. 周将处乎材与不材之间 — the answer is famous precisely because it is given and withdrawn in the same breath: 似之而非也，故未免乎累, “it looks like the place and it is not; you are still entangled.” The site reads this as the book’s own meta-answer: any position chosen inside the dilemma (timber / no timber / between) is still hostage to the dilemma’s scale.
- The real answer is a change of axis. 乘道德而浮游 — riding the Way and its power — with its four marks: 无誉无訾 (no praise, no blame — the translation of ch. 22’s four 不自 in narrative form); 一龙一蛇，与时俱化 (now dragon, now snake — form follows season, not identity); 以和为量 (harmony as measure); and 物物而不物于物 (use things, don’t be used as a thing). The closing line the tradition keeps — 其唯道德之乡乎, “only the homeland of the Way and its power” — is the passage’s true destination: the between-place was never the goal.
- This is the survival chapter’s opening. Ch. 20 (Shanmu) is the book’s outer-chapter essay on living through danger, and this first scene sets its method: the ziran reading — changing with the season is not strategy but nature; the dragon and snake are both given forms, and the wanderer takes them as they come.
Why it belongs in this knowledge base
Because the site’s sitting guidance is built on exactly this refusal: the question “what posture is right” is the disciples’ question — 材与不材 between postures is still entanglement; the practice pages answer with the season-changing principle instead, one dragon-day, one snake-day, the same sitting.
Uncertainty preserved: an outer chapter passage (declared layer per the layering rule); the figures are fable; 雁 = domesticated goose per the scholarly note, kept as a translation decision; the bilibili-type popular readings (workplace survival tips) are not adopted — the site records the text, not self-help glosses.
The companion passage from the same chapter is The Song of the Yanshi Wind.
Sources
- Zhuangzi ch. 20 (Shanmu, outer chapter), the opening passage, verified against the full text carried in the scholarly exposition by Wang Nengxian (Sohu, 'Between timber and no-timber: Zhuangzi's philosophy of getting along') and the complete passage as reproduced on Xueqiu; the two agree word for word
- Wang Nengxian's exposition (Sohu): the goose is a domesticated goose (雁 here means 鹅), the double standard of 'useless,' and the tree scene as the reappearance of the san-mu (scattered timber) theme from ch. 4