◎ Chuang Tze
Pao Ding, a butcher, was ordered to kill an ox for King Hui of the State Liang. A sound would emit wherever he touched it with his hands, leaned on its shoulders, tread with its feet and support its knees. He sliced the ox very easily after inserting the knife, and the sound was pleasant to the ears. His movements were as beautiful as the Sang Lin dance in the Shang Dynasty, and the sound of cutting the meat was just as beautiful and moving as the Jing Shou music in the Yao era.
King Hui of Liang praised, “How have you developed such excellent skills?”
Putting down the knife, Pao Ding answered, “What I love is tao (meaning the rule in Chinese), which is even superior to this skill. When I became a butcher, what I saw was nothing but bulls. Three years later, what I saw was no longer just common bulls, but the gaps between their bones and the strike of tendons and vessels. Today, when I kill a bull, I don’t have to use my eyes, but just touch the bull with my heart and spirit, and its sensory organs and senses no longer function. I just kill the bulls with my hands through a mysterious intuition. I follow the natural physiological structure, and cut my knife on the gaps between bones to separate the meat from tendons and vessels naturally.
