Your life has a limit, but knowledge has none. If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger. If you understand this and still strive for knowledge, you will be in danger for certain! If you do good, stay away from fame. If you do evil, stay away from punishments. Follow the middle; go by what is constant and you can stay in one piece, keep yourself alive, look after your parents, and live out your years. 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.

Since Laozi, the Daoists have always rejected action (为) and championed non-action – active actions are ineffective and would cause harm, while non-action is in accordance with the Way. As per the interpretation of Guo Xiang, the collector of the Zhuangzi, to follow nature is ‘non-action,’ while all artificial/civil desires and changes belong to ‘action.’ ‘Confucius’ opposes Yan Hui’s original plan because he believes that Yan Hui has not yet understood the Way and is motivated by fame and glory – all his policies, plans, and teachings are actions that can achieve nothing. eyes and ears.” Each time we apply some natural, empirically guided interpretation in practice, we participate in Confucius said, “ Men do not mirror themselves in running water—they mirror themselves in still water. Only what is still can still the stillness of other things. Of those that receive life from the earth, the pine and cypress alone are best—they stay as green as ever in winter or summer.Study the old and internal to find the Way; do not copy the old without understanding as circumstances have changed. (shoe & path analogy) My interpretation: history doesn’t repeat itself but human nature does. After the collapse of the Han dynasty in AD 207 and the subsequent chaos of the Three Kingdoms period, both the Zhuangzi and Zhuang Zhou began to rise in popularity and acclaim. [9] The 3rd century AD poets Ruan Ji and Xi Kang, both members of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, were ardent Zhuangzi admirers, [40] and one of Ruan's essays, entitled "Discourse on Summing Up the Zhuangzi" ( 達莊論; Dá Zhuāng lùn), is still extant. [15] This period saw Confucianism temporarily surpassed by a revival of Daoism and old divination texts, such as the Classic of Changes, and many early medieval Chinese poets, artists, and calligraphers were deeply influenced by the Zhuangzi. [40] Daoism and Buddhism [ edit ] Many Zhuangzi fragments dating from the early Tang dynasty were discovered among the Dunhuang manuscripts in the early 20th century by the expeditions of Hungarian-British explorer Aurel Stein and French Sinologist Paul Pelliot. [13] They collectively form about twelve chapters of Guo Xiang's version of the Zhuangzi, and are preserved mostly at the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. [14]

Zhuangzi's wife died. When Huizi went to convey his condolences, he found Zhuangzi sitting with his legs sprawled out, pounding on a tub and singing. "You lived with her, she brought up your children and grew old," said Huizi. "It should be enough simply not to weep at her death. But pounding on a tub and singing—this is going too far, isn't it?" Fung Yu-lan (1933), Chuang Tzu, a New Selected Translation with an Exposition on the Philosophy of Kuo Hsiang, Shanghai: Shang wu.

Works by Burton Watson

Mind-nourishment!” said Big Concealment. “ You have only to rest in inaction, and things will transform themselves. Smash your form and body, spit out hearing and eyesight, forget you are a thing among other things, and you may join in great unity with the deep and boundless. Undo the mind, slough off spirit, be blank and soulless, and the ten thousand things one by one will return to the root—return to the root and not know why. Dark and undifferentiated chaos—to the end of life, none will depart from it. But if you try to know it, you have already departed from it. Do not ask what its name is; do not try to observe its form. Things will live naturally and of themselves.”

Having read multiple ancient philosophical works, I found Taoism, Stoicism and Zen Buddhism to most resonate with me. Zen Buddhism feels like a modern offspring of Taoism, which it to a certain degree is, while Taoism and Stoicism share practical advice to deal with whatever life throws at you (Stoicism is a lot more straightforward about it, though). He who practices the Way does less every day, does less and goes on doing less until he reaches the point where he does nothing; does nothing and yet there is nothing that is not done.

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Puett, Michael (2001). "Philosophy and Literature in Early China". In Mair, Victor H. (ed.). The Columbia History of Chinese Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 70–85. ISBN 0-231-10984-9. Victor H. Mair (1994), Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu, New York: Bantam Books; republished (1997), Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Graham, A. C. (1981). Chuang-tzu, The Seven Inner Chapters and Other Writings From the Book Chuang-tzu. London: George Allen and Unwin. ISBN 0-04-299013-0.