Singing at the Corpse: The Friends of Sang Hu
Three friends who pledged to be together in not-being-together; when one dies, the other two weave songs and play the zither at his corpse — and Confucius, asked if this is ritual, answers with the river and the fish.
The story
Sang Hu, Meng Zifan, and Zi Qinzhang became friends, saying: “Who can be together in not-being-together, act for each other in not-acting? Who can climb the sky and roam the mist, sweeping the unbounded, forgetting each other in life and never reaching an end?” The three looked at one another, laughed, met in the heart without opposition — and became friends.
Not long after, Sang Hu died, still unburied. Confucius heard of it and sent Zigong to help with the rites. But one of the friends was arranging song-scales, the other playing the zither, and together they sang: “Oh, Sang Hu! Oh, Sang Hu! You have gone back to your truth — and we are still here being men!”
Zigong hurried up and said: “May I ask — is it ritual to sing before a corpse?”
The two looked at each other and laughed: “What would he know of the meaning of ritual?”
Zigong returned and told Confucius: “What sort of men are they? No practice, no cultivation, their bodies and bones put outside them — singing before the corpse, their faces unchanged. There is no name for them. What sort of men are they?”
Confucius said: “They are men who roam beyond the bounds; I am a man who roams within them. Within and without do not meet — and I sent you to mourn for them; I was crude. They are making themselves companions of the maker of things, roaming the single breath of heaven and earth. To them, life is a hanging wart, a dangling tumor; death is the bursting of the boil, the draining of the abscess. Men like that — how would they know where death or life, first or last, are to be found? Borrowed on different bodies, lodged in one body; their liver and gall forgotten, their ears and eyes dropped away; ending and beginning turning over, no thread to find; adrift, wandering beyond the dust and grime, free and easy in the work of non-acting. How could they fuss and flutter through the world’s rituals for other people’s eyes and ears?”
Zigong said: “Then which bound do you follow, Master?”
Confucius said: “I am one of Heaven’s punished. Even so, I will share this with you.”
Zigong said: “May I ask for its way?”
Confucius said: “Fish are made for each other in water; people are made for each other in the Way. For those made for water, dig a pool and their nurture is enough; for those made for the Way, be unoccupied and life settles itself. So it is said: fish forget each other in the rivers and lakes; people forget each other in the arts of the Way.”
Zigong said: “May I ask about the odd ones?”
“Heaven’s small man is the world’s gentleman; the world’s gentleman is Heaven’s small man.”
Framing: the chapter’s second funeral, and the book’s answer on grief and form
- The chapter runs the same scene twice. The four friends pledge on death (nothingness as head, life as spine, death as rump) and meet sickness; the three friends pledge on company (together in not-together) and meet death itself. The same seal — 相视而笑，莫逆于心 — opens both. The site keeps the two pages side by side: the book’s two funerals, one for a dying body, one for an unburied corpse.
- The singing is the argument. 嗟来桑户乎！而已反其真，而我犹为人猗 — “you have gone back to your truth, and we are still here being men!” The lament is the opposite of the crowd’s wailing in the Qin Shi passage: there, excess mourning was the punishment of fleeing Heaven; here, the singing mourns the survivors — the ones still holding human form — and praises the dead one’s return. 临尸而歌 is the tradition’s sharpest statement that grief is for the living’s condition, not the dead’s misfortune.
- Confucius is given the explanation. As in the Confucius-meets-Laozi scene, the book puts its own teaching in Confucius’s mouth — here with the self-description the tradition loves: 丘，天之戮民也, “I am one of Heaven’s punished.” The 游方之外/游方之内 distinction (beyond the bounds / within the bounds) is the chapter’s frame for the whole passage: the outsiders are not criticized; the insider confesses he was crude to send a mourner. And the outsiders’ own image of the body — 附赘县疣, a hanging wart — is the same 县 (hanging) the four friends use for 县解, release from the hanging: the body as a pendant, and death as its removal.
- The fish answer. 鱼相忘乎江湖，人相忘乎道术 — “fish forget each other in the rivers and lakes” — is the counter-image to the dry-spring passage’s 相濡以沫 (moistening each other with spit): the chapter 6 line is the plentiful version, the ch. 6’s wet world against ch. 14’s drought. The liang-wang glossary holds the 忘 family (相忘/两忘/坐忘) this passage feeds: forgetting as the form abundance takes. And the passage closes with the 畸人 definition — 畸于人而侔于天, “odd among men, matched with Heaven” — the outsiders’ own name for themselves.
Why it belongs in this knowledge base
Because it is the tradition’s second measured funeral, and the site’s grief pages now form a full set: three cries (ch. 3), drumming on the basin (ch. 18), and singing at the corpse (ch. 6) — three chapters, three funeral scenes, one teaching about the measure of mourning.
Uncertainty preserved: an inner chapter passage (earliest stratum), fully verified in three editions; the episode is fable (Sang Hu and his friends are not otherwise attested; Confucius appears as the book’s literary explainer, per the same device used throughout ch. 6); the passage’s closing 子桑 vignette (the rain, the wrapped rice, the song of 命) is the chapter’s third friends-scene and is noted but not retold here.
Sources
- Zhuangzi ch. 6 (Dazongshi, inner chapter), the Sang Hu passage, immediately following the four-friends passage. Verified against the Wikisource full text, the I-Kuan Tao classics edition (with.org), and a third teaching edition with translation (haitang.app), which agree throughout