When I forget my-self I fall into the world, I become its manifold of interdependent phenomena transforming into each other. What does mean for language and truth? Do they too become such a manifold?

The ignorance of truth and the truth of ignorance
　　 To realize that there are no things is not to float in a porridge where each spoonful is indistinguishable from the next; it is to store away in the Gate of Heaven which remains no-thing even as all things arise from it and transform into each other... If we replace "things" in the previous sentence with "words", what would that imply about language?

　　 According to Graham, grasping the Dao is a matter not of "knowing that" but of "knowing how," as shown by the many craftsmen Zhuangzi is fond of citing. This distinction is not as useful as one would hope, but it is useful to consider: what would "knowing how" with words be like? It is no coincidence that Zhuangzi himself provides one of the greatest examples, and not only for Chinese literature. Clearly there is a special art to this as well, which is not completely indifferent to logic and reasoning as we have come to understand them in the West, yet which is not to be completely identified with them. One of the delights of the Zhuangzi for Western readers is the way its polyvocal text disrupts our distinction between form and content, rhetoric and logic -- a bifurcation which may be not "natural" but an unfortunate legacy of the Western intellectual tradition.

　　 What is the knowing-how with words that Zhuangzi shows? "The Way has never had borders, saying has never had norms. It is by a 'That's it' which deems that a boundary is marked" (ch. 2, p. 57). A "That's it" which deems is speech that fixates things and becomes fixated itself, which Zhuangzi repeatedly contrasts with the more fluid "That's it" which goes by circumstances, speech which changes when circumstances change. The parallel here between things and words is so close that it is more than a parallel, for they reflect each other: our language fixates the world into things, and once they are fixated the words that fixate them are also fixated -- into "the truth". In contrast to the everyday world of rigidly differentiated objects, the Dao is not an otherworldly denial or transcendence of things, but their no-thingness which enables their interpenetration and incessant transformation into each other; in contrast to the everyday use of words which fixates things by fixating categories, the Dao does not involve an ineffable rejection of language as inevitably dualistic and delusive, but celebrates language such as we find in the Zhuangzi, a playfulness possible when we are no longer trapped by and in our own words. "Words exist because of meaning; once you've got the meaning you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?" Here we are delighted by the tension between needing to escape words that "deem", and the conclusion which delights in words that do not deem.

　　 Why do we cling to words that deem? As one would expect, here too the problem is self. "Saying is not blowing breath, saying says something; the only trouble is that what it says is never fixed" (ch. 2, p. 52). That's no trouble at all if we don't need to fixate on our words, but the problem is we do: the transformation of words, like the transformation of things, is terrifying to a necessarily insecure (because illusory) self that is always seeking to secure itself. How uncomfortable it is to realize that our opinion of something is wrong and needs to be changed; how much more anxious do I become when I start letting go of all my opinions about the world and, most of all, my opinions about myself -- to let-go of the self-image whereby my-self is fixated. If the self is that which needs to settle on "That's it" or "That's not", without such a self there is no need to dwell on one perch only:

What is It is also Other, what is Other is also It. There they say 'That's it, that's not' from one point of view, here we say 'That's it, that's not' from another point of view. Are there really It and Other? Or really no It and Other? Where neither It nor Other finds its opposite is called the axis of the Way. When once the axis is found at the center of the circle there is no limit to responding with either, on the one hand no limit to what is it, on the other no limit to what is not. (ch. 2, p. 53, my italics)

　　 "It is easy to keep from walking; the hard thing is to walk without touching the ground." (ch. 2, W58). And it is easy to keep from talking; the hard thing is to talk without needing to touch a ground. According to Graham's gloss, it is easy to withdraw from the world and live as a hermit, it is harder to remain above the world while living in it. Yet without a self we float quite easily, if its need to ground itself is what weighs us down.

　　 In place of our usual distinction between knowledge and ignorance, this yields a knowing that becomes indistinguishable from a kind of ignorance. "How do I know that what I call knowing is not ignorance? How do I know that what I call ignorance is not knowing?" (ch. 2, p. 58) What we usually consider knowing -- deeming that something "is this" -- can reveal our ignorance about the transforming nature of language and things. What is usually understood as ignorance -- not settling finally on "It's this" or "It's that" -- can reflect our insight into that nature. If "we have the axis on which things turn, and to start from have that which is other than ourselves, then our unraveling will resemble failing to unravel, our knowing will resemble ignorance" (ch 2, 63). This "ignorance" of the sage allows her to play with truths freely insofar as she feels no need to fixate herself by fixating on any particular one.