Zhuangzi

    Zhuangzi

    Free and easy wandering on the Way

    Zhuangzi Leave things alone

    It is no easy task, and for this reason the philosophy of Zhuangzi, like most mystical philosophies, has seldom been fully understood and embraced in its pure form by more than a small minority.

    Zhuangzi
     
    Zhuangzi saw the same human sufferings that Lao Zi, Confucius, Mozi, and Mencius saw. He saw the man-made ills of war, poverty, and injustice. He saw the natural ills of disease and death. But he believed that they were ills only because man recognized them as such. If man would once forsake his habit of labeling things good or bad, desirable or undesirable, then the man-made ills, which are the product of man’s purposeful and value-ridden actions, would disappear, and the natural ills that remain would no longer be seen as ills but as an inevitable part of the course of life. Thus in Zhuangzi’s eyes, man is the author of his own suffering and bondage, and all his fears spring from the web of values created by himself alone. 

    It is no easy task, and for this reason the philosophy of Zhuangzi, like most mystical philosophies, has seldom been fully understood and embraced in its pure form by more than a small minority. Most of the philosophies of ancient China are addressed to the political or intellectual elite; Zhuangzi’s is addressed to the spiritual elite. Difficult though the task may be, however, Zhuangzi employs every resource of rhetoric in his efforts to awaken the reader to the essential meaninglessness of conventional values and to free him from their bondage. Finally, Zhuangzi uses throughout his writings that deadliest of weapons against all that is pompous, staid, and holy: humor.

    In Zhuangzi’s view, the man who has freed himself from conventional standards of judgment can no longer be made to suffer, for he refuses to recognize poverty as any less desirable than affluence, to recognize death as any less desirable than life. He does not in any literal sense withdraw and hide from the world—to do so would show that he still passed judgment on the world. He remains within society but refrains from acting out of the motives that lead ordinary men to struggle for wealth, fame, success, or safety. He maintains a state that Zhuangzi refers to as wuwei, or inaction, meaning by this term not a forced quietude but a course of action that is not founded on purposeful motives of gain or striving. In such a state, all human actions become as spontaneous and mindless as those of the natural world. Man becomes one with Nature, or Heaven, as Zhuangzi calls it, and merges himself with Dao, or the Way, the underlying unity that embraces man, Nature, and all that is in the universe.

    To describe this mindless, purposeless mode of life, Zhuangzi turns most often to the analogy of the artist or craftsman. The skilled woodcarver, the skilled butcher, the skilled swimmer does not ponder or ratiocinate on the course of action he should take; his skill has become so much a part of him that he merely acts instinctively and spontaneously and, without knowing why, achieves success. Again, Zhuangzi employs the metaphor of a totally free and purposeless journey, using the word you (to wander, or a wandering) to designate the way in which the enlightened man wanders through all of creation, enjoying its delights without ever becoming attached to any one part of it.

    He who has mastered the true nature of life does not labor over what life cannot do. He who has mastered the true nature of fate does not labor over what knowledge cannot change. He who wants to nourish his body must, first of all, turn to things. And yet it is possible to have more than enough things and for the body still to go un-nourished. He who has life must, first of all, see to it that it does not leave the body. And yet it is possible for life never to leave the body and still fail to be preserved. The coming of life cannot be fended off; its departure cannot be stopped. How pitiful the men of the world, who think that simply nourishing the body is enough to preserve life! Then why is what the world does worth doing? It may not be worth doing, and yet it cannot be left undone—this is unavoidable.

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