This page is part of my exploration of Taoism.
This work defies the dreary but prevalent notion that the serious is the important, that the playful is the inconsequential, and above all that we are under some obligation to draw conclusions about ourselves and our world, and then stick to them.—Brook Ziporyn
The central theme of the Zhuangzi may be summed up in a single word: freedom. Essentially, all the philosophers of ancient China addressed themselves to the same problem: how is man to live in a world dominated by chaos, suffering, and absurdity? … The proposals put forward by the Confucians, the Mohists, and the Legalists, to name some of the principal schools of philosophy, all are different but all are based on the same kind of commonsense approach to the problem, and all seek concrete social, political, and ethical reforms to solve it. Zhuangzi’s answer, however, the answer of one branch of the Daoist school, is radically different from these and is grounded on a wholly different type of thinking. It is the answer of a mystic, and in attempting to describe it here in clear and concrete language, I shall undoubtedly be doing violence to its essentially mystic and indescribable nature. Zhuangzi’s answer to the question is: free yourself from the world.—Burton Watson
Translation and commentary:
This page is part of my exploration of Taoism.
2024-09-30
By Val Delane
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0