Zhuangzi uses the term “uncarved block” once. This is to describe the “awakening” of the legendary sage Liezi:
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“At this Liezi finally realized that when it comes to Dao, he was clueless. So he returned home where he remained for three years, forgetting all convention—cooking for his wife and treating his pigs like honored guests—abandoning all ‘spiritual’ ambition, and allowing his carefully carved character to return to the uncarved block. Like a clod of earth, seemingly a chaos, he thus remained for the rest of his days” (7:18).
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“Chaos” (hundun), seen in the last sentence above, is Zhuangzi’s preferred term. However, before looking more closely at this we should consider his use of the idea of carving off from that block:
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“When something is carved off, something is left uncarved. When debate settles something, something else is left out. What’s left out is always the most important thing of all. What is it? The sage hides it in her embrace and does not divide it with words. Most people feel obliged to try and prove it to others, but this just leaves it left out once again” (2:42).
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Here we see the shift to an emphasis on “what is left out”, “the most important thing of all”. Words and the debaters that use them can come to conclusions, but unless they realize their grounding in the incoherence that renders them similarly ultimately incoherent they are abiding in self-deceiving fantasy. The sage, on the other hand, like Liezi, embraces the yin, her own rootedness in Mystery. We might call this the nameless Dao, but even this is a carving off if thought to somehow identify something. “I know not its name, so I call it ‘the Dao’” (Daodejing 25). This Dao, once spoken, is immediately forgotten; further discussion negates it. But this brings an end to our debate; and our difficulty in doing just that is a better lesson in Dao, than speaking of Dao could ever be.