A carpenter named Shih, who was on his way to Ch'i, came to Bent Shaft.  There he saw a chestnut-leaved oak that served as the local shrine.  The tree was so big that several thousand head of cattle could take shade beneath it and it was a hundred spans in circumference.  It was so tall that it surveyed the surrounding hills; only above eighty feet were there any branches shooting out from its trunk.  It had ten or more limbs from each of which you could make a boat.  Those who came to gaze upon it were as numerous as the crowds in a market.  The master carpenter paid no attention to it, but kept walking without slowing his pace a bit.  After his disciples had had their fill of gazing upon the great tree, they caught up with carpenter Shih and said, "Since we have taken up our axes to follow you, master, we have never seen such marvelous timber as this.  Why, sir, were you unwilling to look at it, but kept on walking without even slowing down?"
 
"Enough!  Don't talk about it!  It's defective wood.  A boat made from it would sink.  A coffin made from it would rot right away.  An implement made from it would break right away.  A door made from it would exude resin.  A pillar made from it would soon be grub-infested.  This tree is worthless.  There's nothing you can make from it.  That's why it could grow to be so old."
 
After the carpenter had returned to his own country, the shrine oak appeared to him in a dream, saying, "With what trees will you compare me?  Will you compare me with those that have fine-grained wood?  As for the hawthorn, the pear, the orange, the pomelo, and other fructiferous trees, once their fruits are ripe, they are torn off, and the trees are thereby abused.  The big branches are broken and the smaller branches are snapped.  These are trees that make their own lives miserable because of their abilities.  Therefore, they cannot finish out the years allotted to them by heaven but die midway.  They are trees that bring upon themselves the assaults of the worldly.  It's the same with all things.  But I have sought for a long time to be useless.  Now, on the verge of death, I have finally learned what uselessness really means and that it is of great use to me.  If, after all, I had been useful, would I have been able to grow so big?  Furthermore, you and I are both things, so why the deuce should you appraise another thing?  You're a defective person on the verge of death.  What do you know about 'defective wood'?"
 
When carpenter Shih awoke, he told the dream to his disciples.  "If the oak's intention is to be useless, then why does it serve as the local shrine?" they asked.
 
"Silence!  Don't say another word!  The oak is merely assuming the guise of a shrine to ward off the curses of those who do not understand it.  If it were not a shrine, it would still face the threat of being cut down.  Moreover, what the oak is preserving is different from the masses of other trees.  If we attempt to understand it on the basis of conventional morality, won't we be far from the point?"