The Tao That Pervades All Things, Even a Blade of Grass
Pressed to say exactly where the Tao is located, Zhuangzi answers with a series of deliberately unglamorous examples to break down the question itself.
Master Dongguo asks Zhuangzi where the thing called Tao actually exists, and Zhuangzi answers, there is no place it does not exist. Pressed to be specific, he gives four answers in descending order of dignity: it is in the ant, then in the grass, a common and unremarkable weed, then in tiles and shards, and finally, to Dongguo's evident discomfort, in excrement and urine. Each answer is deliberately more debased than the last, and Zhuangzi never lets Dongguo settle on a respectable location, forcing the question itself to collapse — if Tao is genuinely present everywhere, asking where it "really" is already assumes a hierarchy the concept doesn't support. The chapter, "Knowledge Wanders North," uses the exchange to make one of Zhuangzi's clearest statements that the Tao is not a rarefied substance located in special places or elevated beings, but is coextensive with everything that exists, however ordinary or unclean by conventional standards.
It is in the ant, in the grass, in the tile, in excrement.
Chapter 22 belongs to the 'outer chapters,' generally considered later additions than the seven inner chapters, though this passage is among the most frequently cited in the whole book.
Zhuangzi