The Mind of the Perfected Is Like a Mirror (Zhuangzi, Yingdiwang)
Annotated translation of the mirror passage — 'it does not escort things out, does not welcome them in, responds and does not store' — the Zhuangzi's shortest account of the still mind, with its companion image from the Dechongfu chapter.
Chinese text
无为名尸，无为谋府；无为事任，无为知主。体尽无穷，而游无朕；尽其所受乎天，而无见得，亦虚而已。至人之用心若镜，不将不迎，应而不藏，故能胜物而不伤。
Pinyin
Wú wéi míng shī, wú wéi móu fǔ; wú wéi shì rèn, wú wéi zhī zhǔ. Tǐ jìn wúqióng, ér yóu wú zhèn; jìn qí suǒ shòu hū tiān, ér wú jiàn dé, yì xū éryǐ. Zhìrén zhī yòng xīn ruò jìng, bù jiāng bù yíng, yìng ér bù cáng, gù néng shèng wù ér bù shāng.
Literal rendering
Do not be a corpse of reputation, do not be a storehouse of schemes; do not be the steward of affairs, do not be the master of knowledge. Embody the inexhaustible to its full, and wander where there is no mark; draw fully on what is received from heaven, and have no sense of gain — that is emptiness, nothing more. The perfected person’s use of the mind is like a mirror: it does not escort things out, does not welcome them in, responds and does not store — and so it can meet all things and take no wound.
Term-by-term notes
- 至人 (zhìrén, “the perfected”): the chapter’s human ideal — the same figure who answers the “fasting of the mind” dialogue in ch. 4’s wider family. Not a superman: a person whose use of the mind has been restored to the mirror’s manner.
- 不将不迎 (bù jiāng bù yíng): the two verbs are directional — 将, to see something off; 迎, to go out and meet it. The mirror does neither: it does not chase the departing thing (no holding), and it does not run ahead of the arriving thing (no anticipation). The pair is the tradition’s precise negation of the mind’s two great motions — regret and dread — which the zuowang lineage inherits as the “neither pursuing nor resisting” of sitting.
- 应而不藏 (yìng ér bù cáng, “responds and does not store”): the line’s hinge. The mirror’s response is total — everything that arrives is reflected — and its storage is zero: the reflection ends with the arrival. The contrast is with the storehouse-mind (谋府, “house of schemes”) named one line earlier. Scholarly readings (Sun Mingjun, 2022) gloss the pair through the famous later idiom “don’t take it to heart” — 不往心里去 — and through Su Shi’s “forget the hustling” (忘却营营): meeting things without keeping them is the practical cash value of the image.
- 胜物而不伤 (shèng wù ér bù shāng): the notorious verb 胜 — “conquer,” “bear,” “meet successfully.” The mirror conquers by reflecting: because nothing is stored, nothing is left inside to be wounded. “Wound” here is the tradition’s exact word for what the seeing-light and breath-stopping problem pages track — the harm that comes from keeping.
The companion image: still water
The mirror’s twin is in ch. 5: “people do not look at themselves in flowing water but in still water — only the still can still the many stillnesses” (人莫鉴于流水而鉴于止水，唯止能止众止). Mirror and still water are one argument: reflection — accurate seeing, the mind’s basic instrument — requires stillness. The site keeps both images together because the jing concept page and the sitting protocol are, in effect, this passage operationalized.
Where this passage sits
Yingdiwang is the chapter of “the perfect ruler” — and its climax, three paragraphs later, is the Hundun story, the death-by-improvement fable. The mirror passage is the chapter’s positive pole: the four “do not be” prohibitions (reputation, schemes, affairs, knowledge), the wandering with no mark, and the mirror itself — the mind restored to reflecting, which is the Zhuangzi’s last word on the mind before the tradition divides into the filling and emptying lineages that both descend from this page.
Sources
- Zhuangzi ch. 7 (Yingdiwang): '至人之用心若镜，不将不迎，应而不藏，故能胜物而不伤.' Verified against the Wikisource full text
- Zhuangzi ch. 5 (Dechongfu): '人莫鉴于流水而鉴于止水，唯止能止众止' (the companion still-water image), as quoted in Sun Mingjun's scholarly essay (National Office for Philosophy and Social Science, 2022)