The Wooden Rooster Passage (Zhuangzi ch. 19)
Ji Xingzi training a fighting cock through four stages until it stands 'like wood' — the complete passage in annotated translation: the forty-day subtraction of display, reflex, and belligerence.
The passage
纪渻子为王养斗鸡。十日而问：“鸡已乎？“曰：“未也，方虚憍而恃气。“十日又问，曰：“未也，犹应向景。“十日又问，曰：“未也，犹疾视而盛气。“十日又问，曰：“几矣。鸡虽有鸣者，已无变矣，望之似木鸡矣，其德全矣，异鸡无敢应者，反走矣。”
Annotated translation
Ji Xingzi was training a fighting cock for the king. After ten days the king asked, “Is the cock ready?” — “Not yet. He is still inflated with pride and leaning on his qi (虚憍而恃气): he performs his own strength; the puffing-up comes first, before anything real.”
Another ten days, and the king asked again. — “Not yet. He still answers to shadows and echoes (犹应向景): reacting to every movement and cry of other cocks — a pure reflex machine, all stimulus, no center.”
Another ten days, and the king asked again. — “Not yet. He still glances fiercely and brims with qi (犹疾视而盛气): the fighting intent itself is still in the eyes and the breath — the aggression hasn’t been released, only suppressed.”
Another ten days, and the king asked again. — “He is close now. Even when other cocks crow, nothing in him changes; looking at him, he seems made of wood (望之似木鸡). His de — his virtue, his complete power — is whole. No other cock will face him; they turn and run.”
Notes for the reader
- The unit is ten days. Forty days of subtraction, checked at fixed intervals — the passage is a training protocol in narrative form: four stages, each one the removal of a layer (display, reactivity, aggression), each verified by an outside observer.
- The closing paradox carries the teaching. The cock has become invincible by becoming nothing to fight — the same arithmetic as zuowang: subtract until only the whole remains, and the whole prevails. The word 德 (de) is used in its non-moral, power sense: integrity as unbroken wholeness, the site’s wuwei family.
- “Like wood” is the goal, not the insult. 木鸡 — the wooden cock — is the tradition’s image of achieved stillness, so famous that “standing like a wooden chicken” entered ordinary Chinese as praise for composure (and, later, mockery — the story’s two readings are both alive; this page keeps the Zhuangzi’s, where it is the summit).
- The same chapter, the other engine. This passage is the subtraction pole; the chapter’s cicada-catcher and Artisan Qing are the concentration pole. The Dazheng editorial maps how one chapter holds both.
Uncertainty preserved: parable from the outer chapters (the Zhuangzi’s middle stratum — see the compilation timeline); the “ten days” is narrative rhythm, not a prescription.
Sources
- Zhuangzi ch. 19 (Dasheng), 'Ji Xingzi trains a fighting cock' (纪渻子为王养斗鸡). Received text, double-source verified.