There is a widely cited story of how Zhuangzi saw the relevance of mankind to other beings, which is also a famous polemic. One day Zhuangzi and Hui Shi were walking on a bridge across the Haohe River when Zhuangzi marveled: “See the fish swimming, the joy of this creature.” His companion asked: You are not fish, so how do you know the happiness of fish?” Zhuangzi replied: “You are not me, so how do you know that I don’t know the happiness of fish?” Hui Shi retorted: “I am not you, so of course I don’t know what you know. But you are certainly not a fish, so you definitely don’t know if the fish is happy.” The philosopher finally confronted his friend with, “Now let’s get back to the start of our conversation. First, I talked of the joy of fish. When you asked me how I knew, you actually had already admitted that I knew the fish were happy. I know this on the bridge over the Haohe River.” In this argument, Zhuangzi stresses there can be empathy and communication between people, and between people and other beings.

Another interesting story in Zhuangzi is about a chef butchering cattle carcasses. The king of State Wei was amazed by the slaughtering proficiency of a chef surnamed Ding, who could reduce the animal into a flat chunk in minutes with hide, meat and bone all precisely separated. The chef claimed he had used the same knife for his job for nearly 19 years, and it was still as sharp as a new one. The secret was to know the structure of cattle’s body well, including every joint between the tendons, muscles and bones. He therefore could run the thin edge of his knife in the carcass as if in a vacuum. The implication of this story is that the mundane world is like the complex body of a cattle, and a human being can go through it like the finest and sharpest edge that slices with the least effort. Similarly, one has to regard oneself as non-existent if one hopes to wander free and easy through social obstructions. This in essence is the no-self theory.

Zhuangzi also advocated a middle way between usefulness and uselessness. He noticed that trees of the best shape are the first to be felled. Those that don’t look so good are more likely to be overlooked by the lumbermen, and therefore live a long, natural life. On the other hand, there is the case of the wild goose; the ones that don’t make pleasant honking sounds are slaughtered for their meat.

Sit and Forget

For Zhuangzi, real freedom is “no reliance” (wu dai), i.e., totally depending on oneself and nothing else and thereby freeing oneself from the restrictions and obligations of the outer world. The way to realize “no reliance” is to close oneself off from all worldly concerns or in the philosopher’s words “sit and forget” (zuo wang). This is a state of nothingness, in which people empty their mind of their physical existence and handed-down knowledge, after which universal truths and greater wisdom are within reach.

In Zhuangzi’s opinion, the world was in continuous transformation, so all demarcation between one state/form and another, or solid distinctions between self and other, were false. He elaborates on this belief in the well known parable of the Butterfly Dream. One day Zhuangzi dreamt he had become one of these gay, fluttering insects. But when he woke up, he wondered whether he was Zhuangzi who dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly who dreamed of being Zhuangzi. Here the philosopher tries to illustrate the treacherous boundary between illusion and reality, as well as that between “me” and another’s existence. He hence suggests that to cope with the vicissitudes of life and to understand the intricate external world, one cannot see them in black and white or in a static, rigid manner.

Though shunning politics, Zhuangzi did coach the rulers of his time in wu wei, in non-action or acting without effort. He called for those in power to respect the nature of mankind, and to let nature follow its course. Change, he advised, should be gradually absorbed by people, and in silence, instead of being brought about by coercion. Heady and arbitrary interference did more harm than good, he counseled. As plants will flourish if raised in natural conditions, so a nation will achieve order and peace if it is let be.

WEN HAIMING is an associate professor at the School of Philosophy of Renmin University of China. He has a doctorate from the University of Hawaii and specializes in Chinese and Comparative Philosophy.