Three nuts in the morning and four in the evening, or four in the morning and three in the evening? Most of us would take the second. Zhuangzi's monkeys felt the same way, angry at the first deal and happy with the second, and the story is often told as a lesson in how easily they were fooled.

But Zhuangzi never calls the monkeys fools. Before any monkey appears, he defines "three in the morning" as wearing out your mind over "one" without seeing that they're already the same, and that definition reads as being about people. We read the monkeys less as the target than as a picture of something we do. That's our reading, not something the text announces, but it turns a lesson about monkeys into a question about us.

What Happens in the Story

The passage comes partway through Zhuangzi chapter 2, called Qíwùlùn in Chinese and titled "The Identity of Contraries" by Herbert Giles in his 1889 translation. A monkey keeper is handing out nuts. He says three in the morning and four in the evening, and the whole troop is angry. He says then four in the morning and three in the evening, and they are all pleased. The text adds a hinge line, 名實未虧 (míng shí wèi kuī), which says name and substance were undiminished while joy and anger were still put to use.

Here "name" means what a thing is called, and "substance" means what's actually there, so the line says nothing real changed and the feelings swung anyway. That's the whole exchange, a few lines long, and it leaves out a great deal. It gives no count of monkeys, no reason for the rationing, and no daily total. The daily total of seven is our arithmetic, though Cheng Xuanying, a Tang dynasty commentator, does the same sum in his note. Even the nut varies by source, since Giles renders it as chestnuts and Cheng glosses it as an acorn, so we say nuts and lose nothing.

The Definition Comes Before the Monkeys

Just before the keeper walks in, the text gives the phrase a definition. In our paraphrase, wearing out the mind over "one" while not knowing they're the same is called 朝三 (zhāo sān, "three in the morning"). Only then does it ask what three in the morning is, and the monkeys arrive as the answer. So the story illustrates the definition, and the definition doesn't summarize the story.

The definition has no stated subject, because Chinese doesn't require one, and no monkey appears in it. The line before it is built the same way, and we'd paraphrase it as "going along with it without knowing why it is so is called the Way." That line describes a person's condition, so we read the next one as another human condition. Both lines also end by naming what they describe, first the Way and then three in the morning. It's our reading of the grammar, but the commentators go the same direction.

Guo Xiang, who died around 312 CE, is credited with the edition of the Zhuangzi we still read and wrote notes on it. In our paraphrase, he asks whether someone who has truly arrived would toil his mind over "one" at all. Anyone who does, he says, can't be relied on and is no different from people who never held to oneness. He adds that this is the same as the monkeys' confusion, going along with what you like and calling it right. Cheng Xuanying calls the monkeys' swing from joy to anger foolish delusion (yúmí) and asks how people who labor to merge all things into one differ from the monkeys. Every line we give from Guo and Cheng is our paraphrase of their Chinese notes, not a published translation.

What exactly the toiling mind gets wrong is where readers split. Giles has it wearing out "one's intellect in an obstinate adherence to the individuality of things, not recognising the fact that all things are One." Guo and Cheng sound closer to someone who exhausts himself trying to force things into one. The hard phrase is wéi yī, roughly "making it one" or "holding to one," and the two readings pull in opposite directions, since one clings to the differences and the other strains to erase them. The safest thing to say is what they share, a mind spending effort on a comparison while missing that the two sides already match.

Why the Monkeys Got Angry, and What the Text Won't Say

The title of this post promises a why, and Zhuangzi never gives one. He reports the anger, then the pleasure, and moves on. Every explanation comes from a reader, and ours is that four in the morning puts food in your hands sooner. If you can't be sure the evening ration will come, taking the early one is a defensible bet. That's a guess about animals the text never describes, and if choosing under uncertainty is your real question, our post on how wu wei helps you navigate uncertainty is a better place to start.

The Liezi tells the story with more detail in its Yellow Emperor chapter. It's a later compilation whose date scholars dispute, so we treat it as a parallel and not as Zhuangzi's source, although Cheng quotes a version of it. Its keeper is a man of Song who loves his monkeys, cuts back on his own household to satisfy them, and runs short. Meaning to limit their food but fearing they'll stop obeying him, he deceives them first by asking whether three in the morning and four in the evening is enough, and they rise up angry. When he flips the offer they bow down glad, and the passage ends by saying a sage cages the crowd of fools with wit the way the keeper cages the monkeys.

So in the Liezi the keeper is a deliberate trickster with a real shortage, and the point lands on the monkeys and on the crowd. That's probably where the popular telling comes from, together with Cheng's foolish delusion, though that's our inference and we haven't traced it. The Zhuangzi is less clear about the keeper. Giles has him adapt: "The actual number of the chestnuts remained the same, but there was an adaptation to the likes and dislikes of those concerned." The Liezi has him deceive. We can't say which the Zhuangzi means, because the closing words of the hinge line, yīn shì, are hard to translate and Giles's "adaptation" reads them only one way.

The idiom drifted toward the trickster. Taiwan's Ministry of Education Revised Mandarin Dictionary says 朝三暮四 (zhāo sān mù sì) began with a keeper tricking monkeys with fruit, and it then came to mean deceiving people with tricks or being unsettled and fickle. Neither sense names the mind that toils over "one," which is what Zhuangzi's definition names. That's a fact about usage and not about the Zhuangzi, and it rests on one dictionary, not a survey of usage.

A Small Use for the Story (Our Reading)

Everything in this section is ours, because the story is about rations and we're borrowing it, not reporting it. When a comparison stings, the first useful question is whether the totals differ or only the order. Here's an invented example. Your manager says a bonus will come as 300 dollars in June and 400 in December, while a colleague hears 400 in June and 300 in December. Both add up to 700, and many of us would still call the second the better deal. Nothing in the amounts changed, so whatever resentment you feel is likely coming from the order.

That tells you the sting is about timing and not about the total. So the second question is what the order actually buys, whether that's cash sooner, less risk, or a month of not worrying, and whether you'd pay for it. If you would, the monkeys had a point and your anger was information. If you wouldn't, you're fighting over a name (the "morning" slot) while the substance sits there unchanged.

The same two questions fit a friend who seems ahead of you, since what you're seeing may be their order and not their total. If worry over a comparison keeps replaying after you've asked both questions, our broader post on Taoist wisdom for letting go of anxiety is a place to go next, though it isn't about comparison specifically. The eighth chapter of Eight Taoist Remedies, our paid guide, pairs this same story with a short practice.

Where the Story Stops Helping

The text is thinner than the popular retellings suggest. It never says why the monkeys were angry or whether the keeper meant well, and it never speaks to a reader as "you." Our claim that the story is about people rests on a missing subject and two commentators, which is decent evidence and still not the text saying so. The passage moves straight on to the sage who rests in tiān jūn, which we render "Heaven's evenness" and Cheng defines as the principle of natural evenness. Giles has the sage adapt to "the laws of Heaven" and calls that "following two courses at once," and neither he nor the text tells us what that looks like on payday.

The monkeys' totals matched by our arithmetic, but real comparisons often don't, and someone else may truly be getting more. When that's the case the story has nothing to say to you. That's the moment to trust the numbers and not the parable.

Sources

• Zhuangzi, chapter 2 (Qiwulun), the received text, from the Chinese Wikisource transcription. It's a transcription and not a critical edition.
• Guo Xiang (died around 312 CE), notes, and Cheng Xuanying (Tang dynasty), subcommentary, in the Nanhua zhenjing zhushu, juan 2, on Wikisource.
• Herbert A. Giles, Chuang Tzŭ: Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer (Bernard Quaritch, London, 1889), chapter 2, available on English Wikisource. Public domain.
• Liezi, chapter 2, the Yellow Emperor chapter (Huangdi pian), on Chinese Wikisource. The received Liezi is a later compilation.
• Taiwan Ministry of Education, Revised Mandarin Dictionary, entry for zhao san mu si.
• Guo Xiang, Cheng Xuanying and Liezi lines are our paraphrases of the Chinese, not quotations from a published English translation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "three in the morning" mean in the Zhuangzi?

It's a phrase the text defines as wearing out your mind over "one" without knowing that things are already the same. The monkey keeper's story follows as the illustration. In our reading, the phrase describes a mental habit of people, and the monkeys are a picture of it.

Why were the monkeys angry at three in the morning and four in the evening?

The Zhuangzi never says. It reports only that the whole troop was angry, then pleased when the order flipped. One reading, ours, is that four in the morning puts food in hand sooner, which is a sensible preference if the evening isn't certain. That's a guess, not something the text states.

What is the moral of the three in the morning story?

The text's own line is that name and substance were undiminished while joy and anger still swung. In our paraphrase, Guo Xiang and Cheng Xuanying compare anyone who toils over "one" to the monkeys. The popular moral, that the monkeys were fools, is common in retellings, and we haven't traced where it started, though the Liezi's ending and Cheng's note both lean that way.

What does zhāo sān mù sì mean?

It's the four-character idiom made from the story, literally "three in the morning, four in the evening." Taiwan's Ministry of Education Revised Mandarin Dictionary says it came to mean deceiving people with a trick, or being unsettled and fickle. Zhuangzi's own definition points instead at a mind that toils over "one."

Is the monkey story in the Zhuangzi or the Liezi?

Both. In the Zhuangzi it's in chapter 2, after a definition of the phrase. In the Liezi's Yellow Emperor chapter the keeper is running short and deceives the monkeys on purpose. The Liezi we have is a later compilation, so it's a parallel and not Zhuangzi's source.

Were the monkeys' nuts chestnuts or acorns?

The sources differ. The Chinese word is xù, which Herbert Giles renders as chestnuts in his 1889 translation, while the Tang dynasty commentator Cheng Xuanying glosses it as an acorn, a little like a chestnut but smaller. We say nuts because the story loses nothing either way.