In Thomas Merton’s The Parables of Chuang Tzu (1965), there is a rare chapter that evokes sympathy from the reader. It is “The Parable of the Hideous Man”:

When a hideous man becomes a father / And a son is born to him /

In the middle of the night / He trembles and lights a lamp / And runs to look in anguish/

On that child’s face / To see whom he resembles. (xii, 14)

One can almost picture the anguish, written all over the father’s face, as he takes a peep. One can only imagine the hideousness of the father, for he still waits for night to come before he dares to take a look. He overcomes his fatherly desire for the child and waits; while other fathers eagerly await the light of day to see their children better. Why, we may ask, is he anguished on who the child resembles? Two possible interpretations seem immediately obvious.

One, the father may have been afraid that the child doesn’t resemble him. There is the possibility that his wife bore the child of another man. It is an affirmation of his hideousness. Not even his wife could remain faithful to him. He wishes to be proven wrong. Two, the father may have been afraid that the child resembles him. He knows that to be ugly is to suffer much. He doesn’t want his child to be ugly like him, because he doesn’t want his child to suffer. He wishes that the child would be better looking. Would Chuang Tzu agree with these interpretations?

Chuang Tzu’s main concern is to show how happiness can be attained by man. Virtuousness (Te) is the key. To attain relative happiness, Chuang Tzu exhorts us to follow our unique natures (te). To attain absolute happiness, he exhorts us to transcend distinctions. Only those who can follow these two programs can be happy.

In the parable, the father is not happy with the situation. He has to wait for nightfall to get the courage to look at his son. And when he dares, it is only with anguish, with fear and trembling. He is not happy, according to Chuang Tzu, because he is hideous. But it is not his physical hideousness, but his moral hideousness that is the main source of his misery. Let me elaborate on that.

On the one hand, he has not accepted the laws of nature. He was miserable because he has not accepted his hideousness as part of his nature. He refused to accept that one’s nature cannot be changed. He was also miserable because he feared that the child resembles him. He refused to accept that an offspring naturally resembles its parents. His wish not to have a hideous child manifests a refusal to follow his unique nature. He has not yet become virtuous.

On the other hand, he has not yet transcended the distinctions between ugliness and beauty. He is partial to beauty. He likes beauty and hates ugliness. He hates his ugliness. He fears that his child will resemble him, and he will come to hate the child also. He has not yet become virtuous.

What this parable reveals to us, therefore, are the two ways in which we can understand hideousness. On the one hand, it is physical ugliness, that which is offensive to our physical sensibilities. Chuang Tzu accepts that it is there, but not as something we can do something with. On the other hand, there is a deeper form of hideousness that Chuang Tzu wants us to pay attention to, because we can still do something about it. Hideousness could also be that which is offensive to our moral sensibilities. The father in this parable is hideous in both senses of the word. He is not only physically ugly, but also morally ugly. He refuses to accept his physical hideousness as an aspect of nature, as natural to him. Moreover, he is hideous because he refuses to go beyond the aesthetic distinctions present in the spatio-temporal world. His desire for his child not to be hideous is to the point of denying the laws of nature. He is afraid to accept the fact of hideousness that characterizes him and his progeny. Thus, Chuang Tzu would consider him not as virtuous, but as hideous. Ω

Reference:

Merton, Thomas (1965). The way of Chuang Tzu. Abbey of Gethsemani.