The Complete Works of Zhuangzi

by Burton Watson (Translator)

Only by inhabiting Dao (the Way of Nature) and dwelling in its unity can humankind achieve true happiness and freedom, in both life and death. This is Daoist philosophy's central tenet, espoused by the person -- or group of people -- known as Zhuangzi (369?-286? B.C.E.) in a text by the same name. To be free, individuals must discard rigid distinctions between good and bad, right and wrong, and follow a course of action not motivated by gain or striving. When one ceases to judge events as good or bad, man-made suffering disappears and natural suffering is embraced as part of life.

Zhuangzi elucidates this mystical philosophy through humor, parable, and anecdote, deploying non sequitur and even nonsense to illuminate a truth beyond the boundaries of ordinary logic. Boldly imaginative and inventively worded, the "Zhuangzi" floats free of its historical period and society, addressing the spiritual nourishment of all people across time. One of the most justly celebrated texts of the Chinese tradition, the "Zhuangzi" is read by thousands of English-language scholars each year, yet only in the Wade-Giles romanization. Burton Watson's pinyin romanization brings the text in line with how Chinese scholars, and an increasing number of other scholars, read it.

Genres: Philosophy, China, Taoism, Religion, Classics, Nonfiction, Spirituality

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 351

About the author

Burton Watson was an American sinologist, translator, and writer renowned for his English translations of Chinese and Japanese literature. Over his prolific career, he brought classical works of poetry, philosophy, and history to a wider audience, earning numerous accolades, including the PEN Translation Prize and the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation.
Born in New Rochelle, New York, Watson served in the U.S. Navy during World War II before studying Chinese at Columbia University. He later moved to Japan, where he worked as a scholar and translator, remaining there for most of his life. His translations, influenced by Arthur Waley and Ezra Pound, emphasized clarity and poetic resonance. Among his most notable works are translations of The Analects of Confucius, Records of the Grand Historian, The Lotus Sutra, Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by Han Shan, and The Tale of the Heike.
Watson’s work played a crucial role in introducing Chinese and Japanese literary traditions to the English-speaking world, and his translations continue to be regarded as both scholarly and literary achievements.

Reviews

[Jonathan O'Neill · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐

”To be questioned about the Tao and to give an answer means that you don’t know the Tao. One who asks about the Tao has never understood anything about the Tao.” - No Beginning (aka. Zhuangzi)

“When it comes to comprehending the Tao I am about as significant as a fly in vinegar!” - Confucius (Zhuangzi claims)



Walking a frayed and weathered tightrope between transcendental enlightenment and radical idealistic fancy, many will find the works of Zhuangzi in ’The Book of Chuang Tzu’ to be unrealistic and impractical in our modern times (perhaps in Zhuangzi’s time [396 BCE – 286 BCE] as well), and in many ways I would agree, however, if you’ve an open mind and a good sense of humour, there is a lot to love about this particular Chinese Philosopher and his ideas.

Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu – I’ll mainly use Zhuangzi but it’s the same guy FYI) is the most significant of Daoism’s interpreters to have followed the enigmatic, and likely fictional, Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu’s ’Tao Te Ching’ and ‘The Book of Chuang Tzu’ are the 2 most important works in the Daoist canon and couldn’t be further separated by their stylistic approach.

Where the ‘Tao Te Ching’ is organised into brief chapters/passages containing short, poetic and often paradoxical statements that encourage contradictory interpretations, ‘The Chuang Tzu’ is a hilariously eccentric anthology of anecdotes and allegory, filled with vibrant personalities (both fictional and non) including but not limited to Emperors, Sages and “uptight Confucians”. Zhuangzi yo-yos back-and-forth between a tongue-in-cheek, mocking tone and endearing sincerity, but an iron wit and undeniable wisdom is evident regardless of the mood you find him in. This seems an odd thing to say about Zhuangzi, but he also offers lucidity to many of the ambiguous metaphysical concepts found in Lao Tzu’s work.

Zhuangzi is a dreamer, who baulks at convention and rejects the over-governance, ritual propriety, materialism and self-indulgent nature of the people so prevalent during his lifetime. He appeals, overwhelmingly, to my meek, but nevertheless existent, anti-authoritarian side, but more importantly, this work regularly gave me pause and corralled my feeble mind into a state of humbling introspection. It’s like being taken out of your body and examining yourself, and society, from an alien perspective, and realising the true absurdity of our current state of being.


Zhuangzi believed that in order to live by the Tao (extremely rough and hesitant translation: The Way of Heaven/True Virtue), we humans must only follow our innate nature which I take to mean our basic instincts or intuition. We should not seek knowledge, skill, fame, wealth, admiration or any other such external things and we should not strive to be good or bad, kind-hearted or righteous to meet standards of propriety and ritual set by the state or our peers. One should only act as one’s innate nature compels them to, taking the path of least resistance.

Against the State Cult of Confucianism and rejecting the, almost fascist, teachings of the Legalists and the Mohists, Zhuangzi’s teachings are directly opposed to the over-governance of the state and the pushing of moral standards and ritual practices on the people. His belief is that people, as a whole, are inherently good but when strict laws are put in place, to determine how one should behave, proper ritual protocols, what is good/bad, right/wrong etc. then, certainly, people will be righteous and kind, and display agreeable traits because that is the law, however, whether consciously or sub-consciously, they will resent doing so because their behaviour is being, if not enforced then at least, heavily scrutinised under the eye of the law. Over governance replaces virtue and unity with righteousness and compliance. “Ruling by decrees and grand plans [pollutes] the purity of nature and [destroys] simplicity”.

”take a monkey and dress it up to look like the Duke of Chou and the poor monkey will struggle and bite until he has got rid of the clothes.”



The “perfect sage” has destroyed Zhuangzi’s Utopia with their, often well-meaning but, clumsy attempts to improve and/or reform society. He’s had enough! And nobody’s safe. Least of all Confucius. I should mention that you’ll probably want to have read both the ‘Tao Te Ching’ and ‘The Analects of Confucius’ before leaping into this one. The ‘Tao’, because you’ll want to know the Primary source material that Chuang Tzu is interpreting and ‘The Analects’, because you’ll want to know exactly what Chuang Tzu is rebuking so very often. And boy does he rebuke. Chuang Tzu burns Confucius so hard on so many occasions, the hardest part was picking which example to give you, but this one pretty much sums up how he feels:

“You, Sir, try to distinguish the spheres of benevolence and righteousness, to explore the boundaries between agreement and disagreement, to study changes between rest and movement, to pontificate on giving and receiving, to order what is to be approved of and what disapproved of, to unify the limits of joy and anger, and yet you have barely escaped calamity [Twice exiled from the State of Lu]. If you were to be serious in your cultivation of your own self, careful to guard the truth and willing to allow others to be as they are, then you could have avoided such problems. However, here you are, unable to cultivate yourself yet determined to improve others. Are you not obsessed with external things?”

To add further insult, Confucius is regularly portrayed as a curious but inferior thinker than the cast of simple Taoists throughout the book. Often found to be in awe of them, realising the error of his ways and requesting to become a student of these wise eccentrics. At other times, he is the one to offer up the wisdoms of the Tao to his disciples. Lionel Giles interestingly suggests, in ‘Musings of a Chinese Mystic’, that Chuang Tzu was likely using Confucius’ fame and influence as a means of spreading his own philosophy. This would go against everything that Zhuangzi stands for but it isn’t completely out of the question and would only be one more inconsistency among many within the text.


Zhuangzi, believes that the acquisition of knowledge and the expanding of ideas only breeds argument and confusion and is detrimental to our well-being. People are unable to simply receive ideas from outside, they have a tendency to cling to them and view other’s ideas as automatically wrong if they don’t marry up to their own. This concept is radical to say the least and suggests an unrealistic wish to return to primitiveness, but taken in a less extreme sense, I think Chuang Tzu is just trying to suggest that we are focusing too much of our attention on petty external (human) issues and neglecting the internal (heavenly)

"if sages and wisdom were abandoned, great robbers would cease; destroy the jade and shatter the pearls, then petty thieves would not appear; burn the accounts and rip up the contracts, and the people will return to simplicity; break up the weights and the measures and the people will no longer argue; obliterate the laws of the world the sages have made, then the people can begin to be reasoned with."

I feel like Chuang Tzu would go into cardiac arrest if he were to see the state of the world, today. Rarely looking internally, we focus all of our attention on external trivialities. Black and white, east and west, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, good and bad, right and wrong, straight and gay; we argue and debate about race, gender, abortion, the legalisation of drugs, climate change and on and on and on and it’s a fire that’s perpetually stoked by a modern pandemic called outrage culture and self-conscious, self-aggrandizing social displays of false righteousness and virtue. Exactly what Zhuangzi said would happen when you Pidgeon-hole entire peoples and try to dictate what they should do and how they should act.


“Take care how you play with people’s hearts. People’s hearts should not be shoved down nor pushed up, for this yo-yoing up and down makes the heart either a prisoner or an avenging fury. It can be gentle and giving, moulding even the hard and sharp, or it can be sharp and pointed, tough enough to cut, carve or chisel. It can be as hot as a searing fire; it can be as cold as ice. So swift that in the nodding of one’s head it has twice roared over the four seas and beyond all boundaries. At rest, it is as deep as the abyss; when it is active, it is like a star in Heaven. It races beyond anything that seeks to bind it, for this is in truth the heart of humanity!”


Ultimately, like Confucius, I feel as significant as a fly in vinegar when it comes to comprehending the Tao and I have a feeling that even if I could grasp its true meaning, to follow it in our time would be all but an impossibility. Nevertheless, I’ve still found a lot of introspective value in reading these ancient Chinese texts and I look forward to reading just a couple more before moving onto the Western Canon. Mencius is next and he’s got some ground to make up after Zhuangzi tore Confucius a new one. I’m all in for the Confucionist vs. Taoist beef.

”Oh dear! I do so pity those who lose themselves. I also pity those who pity others. However, I also pity those who pity those who pity others, but that was long ago.”

[Paul Haspel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book that bears Chuang Tzu’s name was probably not all written by Chuang Tzu – chances are that it is something of a compilation, put together at least in part by a number of the great man’s disciples – but it is unquestionably Chuang Tzu’s book, and it is one of the seminal works of classical Chinese philosophy.

The name of Chuang Tzu might better be rendered as Zhuang Zhou, 莊子. But however one transliterates his name, he is one of the most important philosophers who ever lived. Living and writing in the 4th century B.C., amidst the instability and chaos of China's Warring States period, Chuang Tzu identified with the Taoist school of philosophy, as originally set forth by Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching.

The contrast between Taoist philosophy on the one hand, and that of Confucius on the other, is a stark one. Confucianism emphasizes reverence for all of the social institutions within which one lives, from family to empire; Taoist thinking, by contrast, emphasizes the importance of finding a path of one’s own, questioning social norms in order to find what may be wrong with them. 2,200 years before Rousseau, Taoist thinkers like Chuang Tzu were asking why humankind is born free but human beings are everywhere in chains.

A first-time reader of The Book of Chuang Tzu will no doubt be impressed with the sheer playfulness of much of the book. In one of the book’s most famous passages, Chuang Tzu uses the metaphor of a butterfly to pose complex philosophical questions about being and identity:

“Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt that I was a butterfly, flitting around and enjoying myself. I had no idea I was Chuang Tzu. Then suddenly I woke up and was Chuang Tzu again. But I could not tell, had I been Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I was now Chuang Tzu? However, there must be some sort of difference between Chuang Tzu and a butterfly! This is what we call the transformation of things.” (p. 20)

Here, one detects echoes of Platonic ideas regarding the potential unreliability of the evidence of the senses. Inspiring to reflect that in Greece and China, at about the same time in history, great thinkers were grappling with these same basic philosophical questions.

In contrast with the emphasis in Confucianism on how reverence for social institutions can help one to move up in the social hierarchy, to become a “gentleman” or a “great man” rather than a “small man,” the philosophy of the Tao encourages its practitioner to accept what happens in a spirit of serenity – in a manner similar to later Roman Stoic philosophers like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.

One story from The Book of Chuang Tzu illustrates this “go with the flow” principle particularly well. Chuang Tzu describes how Chin Shih, a follower of Lao Tzu, did not engage in formal mourning when Lao Tzu died, but rather simply issued three great shouts and then left. Asked for a reason for the absence of formal mourning, Chin Shih said, “When the Master came, it was because he was due to be born. When he died, it was entirely natural. If you are prepared to accept this and flow with it, then sorrow and joy cannot touch you. The ancient ones considered this the work of the gods who free us from bondage” (p. 24).

Confucius puts in a few appearances in The Book of Chuang Tzu, but usually as a bit of a foil – as when Confucius, appearing before a Taoist teacher named Lao Lai Tzu (not the Lao Tzu who wrote the Tao Te Ching), is promptly rebuked: “Confucius! Rid yourself of your pride and that smug look on your face and you could then become a nobleman” (p. 239). Lao Tai Tzu criticizes Confucius for overemphasizing human agency and the pursuit of material prosperity: “You insist that people should only be joyful in a way you prescribe” (p. 239).

Elsewhere in The Book of Chuang Tzu, Confucius, in dialogue with Lao Tzu (this time, the author of the Tao Te Ching), is told that his seventeen years of determined effort to find the Tao have been unavailing because “If the Tao could be served up, everyone would serve it up to their lords” (p. 122). This same idea regarding the search for the Tao is re-emphasized when the Taoist teacher Yen Kang Tiao says of the Tao that “You can look for it but it has no shape. You can listen for it, but it has no voice….To talk of the Tao is not to know the Tao” (pp. 194-95).

The Tao emerges as a vital, the vital, life principle – something that any true human being should seek to understand. Late in The Book of Chuang Tzu, Confucius – who, by this point in the book, fortunately seems to have learned something – tells his disciple Tzu Lu that “the Tao is that by which all the forms of life have life. All that lose it die. All that obtain it live. To struggle against it in practice is to face ruin. To flow with it is to succeed” (p. 286). One cannot strike out on a grand expedition to find the Tao; one can only try to make oneself ready to receive it.

The Tao, ultimately, seems to have something in common with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle – the idea that one can measure either the position or the velocity of a subatomic particle, but not both. The more that one tries to grab onto and "master" the Tao, the further one will be from the Tao. Devotion to things like money, fame, and power, for example, will make it impossible for one to find the Tao: “Someone who believes wealth is the most important thing cannot give up their income; someone who seeks pre-eminence cannot give up the hunt for fame; those who love power cannot hand it over to others. Those who cling to things like these are usually fearful” (p. 123). Finding the Tao seems to involve losing the things that most people in any society consider important.

I read The Book of Chuang Tzu while traveling in Hangzhou, China. Walking along the shore of the city’s beautiful West Lake, I imagined how Chinese people living through the turbulence of the Warring States period might have taken comfort from the words of Chuang Tzu, as the fortunes of the various warring states waxed and waned. This state or that state, a reader of Chuang Tzu might reflect, may rise or fall; but West Lake will remain: the beauty of the lake and its landscape and wildlife will abide. That philosophy of calm acceptance of what is, because it is, poses an existential challenge to all those would-be conquerors of worlds who are to be found in every society. Many people of modern times, trying ever harder to grab and hold onto an ever-larger piece of the proverbial pie, might benefit from considering Chuang Tzu’s advice: let go of what does not matter, in order to find what does.

[Eadweard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so quotable.

This is one of the best chinese texts I've ever read, and one of the most famous ones. It's probably the most fun to read too.

Zhuangzi (and the anonymous writers) talk about and poke fun at different philosophers and ideas of the time. He/they explain their philosophy through short stories and anecdotes, often featuring legendary chinese rulers and other characters.

Some of the most memorable passages have Confucious, probably the most praised philosopher and statesman in chinese history, being portrayed as an arrogant fool. Someone obsessed by rituals and meaningless things, he's too distracted acquiring knowledge and bossing people around, he clearly doesn't know the Way.

Burton Watson's notes are valuable for explaining and making clear certain sentences and passages in the work.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Understanding is not understanding” (302): such is Chaung Tzu’s flavour of scepticism. It goes far beyond Descartes’—to put them on the same spectrum would be like asking both Tom Cruise and a cucumber to audition for the same role. One might also say it goes far beyond what is healthy: when someone says a thing like, “It is dangerous to use any of your faculties” (222), it’s hard not to cry paranoia. Knowledge, to Chuang Tzu, seems to be by definition a deception.

And yet: it’s also hard to say that Chaung Tzu is deceiving himself. The question, “is it knowledge knowledge?” has never been asked in so clear headed (and so entertaining) a way: “Everything in the world knows how to seek for knowledge that they do not have, but do not know how to find what they already know... This is what causes such immense confusion” (80). So, Chuang Tzu is calling knowledge a succubus. But before we say that it's only because he's jealous she's teasing you and not himself, consider: could not it rather be that he sees so clearly the glorious thing she is tempting us away from?

Myself, I can't see it so clearly; but I can see that Chuang Tzu does--and that's why I love this book; even if you don't get "the Tao", you get to spend time with a great mind. “One whose inner being is fixed upon such greatness emits a Heavenly glow” (203), he writes. The glow is here. It overflows, spills over you: I could not read more than a few pages at a time before getting the sense that it was useless to read more. It's not like philosophy, in which a concept is grasped or not-grasped; this is a different beast. To read this book over the course of six months, keeping it always by my bedside for nights of insomnia and mornings of contemplation, has been one of the wilder experiences of my life.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely poetic stories exemplifying key Daoist concepts. Whereas the Tao Te Ching is pure symbolism and poetry, this is a collection of parables. That means its a lot more "concrete." As a result, it gets even more explicitly anarchist than Laozi at times, but it also gets even more explicitly bizarre (condemning listening to complex music for example). This has the famous Butterfly Dream parable in it, as well as the Turtle of Ch'u parable, which were both excellent. This is a good way for people to understand Daoism who can't handle the vagueness of the Tao Te Ching.

Laozi may be the old master, but Zhuangzi is the one I'd want to smoke with.

[Serhiy]

Не маю ні фаху, ні зухвалості щось писати й тим більше оцінювати «Джвандзи», лише трохи зупинюсь на перекладі.

Все, що про нього писали, правда: Вон Гак вдало архаїзував текст, наче той українською і був написаний. Він максимально локалізував текст: перекладені деякі імена й топоніми, назви титулів й мір довжини. Типово китайським поняттям підібрані українські відповідники: Де — Сила, Дао — Правда, Інь/Ян — Озиме/Яре — в передмові детально розібрані підстави вибору відповідника для кожного терміна. Якщо підсумувати слова перекладача: не треба боятись одомашнювати слова, треба боятись одомашнювати смисли.

Проте лишились незручні питання:

Чи достатньо п’ятирічного вишколу з класичної китайської в ордені Чог’є для фахового перекладу? Погугливши, мало що дізнався, крім скандалу з керівництвом ордена кілька років тому.

Чому науковою редакторкою була обрана мистецтвознавиця за фахом?

Чи знає українську росіянин Єгор Гребнев, чий відгук розміщений на задній обкладинці?

[Nick Klagge · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had built up this book so much in my mind, perhaps it was inevitable that I would be disappointed in it. I really wanted to like it. I've felt for a long time that I had some affinity with Daoist ideas--mostly from reading Dao De Jing, Smullyan's "The Tao is Silent," and Le Guin's "The Lathe of Heaven." I'm drawn to the attitude, similar to Hellenistic Skepticism, of withholding judgment on things going on around you, and I like the gentle but pronounced disdain for those things often held in esteem by the world--again something Daoism has in common with some Hellenistic philosophies. And, I had heard over and over that Zhuangzi was the earthier cousin of the gnomic Dao De Jing.

I'm sad to say that this whole book felt like a slog for me. I would have quit partway through if it weren't so widely seen as a classic. It's possible some of the blame is with the translation--it was hard for me to get a sense of what people thought of different translations, so I went for a safe choice with the Penguin edition. It's possible a different translator could do more to bring it alive for me. It's also very likely that some of the blame lies with me, and in particular, with my insistence on reading it cover-to-cover rather than keeping it around as something to dip into once in a while. But I also think some of the fault comes from the text itself. With a couple of rare exceptions, I didn't find the "stories" in it to be earthy or accessible--indeed, I'd hardly characterize them as stories at all. A typical passage just involves a dialog between two characters where some ideas of Daoism are touched upon. Of course a dialog can be a great literary form, but I found these pieces too fragmentary to really develop ideas. (Perhaps that is just a non-Daoist form of communication!) But at the same time, they weren't at all memorable parable-type stories. About a month after having finished the book, it's hard for me to remember many specific stories from it.

So, I don't know. Four stars for the ideas, but two stars for the style, maybe? The most memorable idea for me, which reappears often in slightly different forms, is the following. Things that are "useful", particularly exemplary individuals of a certain form, are the first to be destroyed, while weak or flawed individuals are more likely to be left alone. For example, a woodcutter going into a forest is likely to seek out the tallest, straightest tree and cut it down. So although we would commonly call this the "best" tree, it's certainly not best for the tree! At first the "moral" of this story might seem obvious, but I think it's actually pretty subtle and difficult to pin down, and therefore fruitful. For example, occasionally this story will be accompanied by a side comment that, actually, the "worst" instances are also likely to be destroyed (because they are wasting space or whatever)! So it's not as though there's some simple moral like "be a slacker." For me, these stories are meant to get the reader thinking critically about our concept of "usefulness," and what classes of things we do or don't apply it to. There's actually quite a bit of resonance with some of the ideas in Jemisin's "The Stone Sky," where she introduces but then subtly problematizes a civilization that is built around the channeling of biological energy, and the dichotomy of reverence and instrumentalization.

[Gijs Grob · Rating 4 out of 5]

De Zhuang Zi is een bonte verzameling geschriften uit de 4e tot 3e eeuw v. Chr. over de Tao. Deze Chinese filosofie is verre van eenduidig en de geschriften zijn zeer divers in hoe ze proberen te illustreren wat de tao nu eigenlijk is. Dit gebeurt veelal in mythen, parabels en dialogen tussen historische figuren als Confucius en allegorische personages, met tot de verbeelding sprekende namen als 'duisterman afwezig', 'niemendal' en 'tandeloos'. Vaak wordt geïllustreerd wat tao vooral niet is. Thema's als afkeer van macht en bemoeienis met andere levens, acceptatie van het lot, het nietige bestaan in het licht van het oneindig grote heelal en de volmaaktheid die ontstaat met meditatie komen veelal langs.

De Zhuang Zi staat echter niet op zichzelf, maar stoelt op oudere mythen en tradities en is ook een kritiek op oudere Chinese filosofieën, met name op die van de sofisten. Dit levert niet altijd begrijpelijke teksten op, maar Kristofer Schipper is een droomvertaler, die niet alleen de teksten heeft omgezet in helder Nederlands, maar de lezer ook duiding geeft waar nodig in een extreem uitgebreid notenapparaat, zonder ergens maar belerend of overinterpreterend te worden.

Niet alles in de Zhuang Zi is goud, maar op zijn best bevat deze Chinese bijbel van de tao krachtige verhaaltjes, mooie beelden, opvallend moderne denkbeelden, stof tot nadenken en een vrolijkere kijk op de absurdheid van het bestaan.

[Daniel Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zhuangzi deliberately makes himself very hard to pin down, but here are some of the things that struck me.

1. Zhuangzi is the Diogenes to Confucius' Aristotle, to use a slightly fatuous analogy. He disclaims ambition and self-aggrandizement, and systems in favour of proverbs, anecdotes and clever subversion.

2. Zhuangzi delights in paradox. This one of the greatest pleasures in reading the book.

3. Confucius and other 'sages' appear in stories at various points, filling the purpose of sympathetic characters. In Confucius' case, this oddly puts him in the position of making fun of his own philosophy, against which Zhuangzi is intent on inveighing.

4. I don't agree much with the philosophy/theology expressed in this book, in as much as it can be expressed at all. but I did enjoy it a lot anyway.

(Note that I appreciate that the 'Book of Zhuangzi/Chuang Tzu' is not the sole work of a man of that name, but I refer to a 'he' for convenience).

[Choonghwan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book of Chuang Tzu


He says what we hold dear for which we even commit our own life is often not Tao. Obsession with honor, wealth, power as well as knowledge blind our spiritual eyes to see true purpose and meaning of life.

Without intervention and supervision, spring follows winter. Day follows night. Flowers bloom. Form which every life springs up and through which we can peek what Tao is. In this sense, righteousness and benevolence, he warns, do more harm than good on balance: some disguises what they are actually doing in the name of righteousness; some ends up messing up with what might have been better otherwise. History is strewn thick with those evidences.

Once upon a time there was one silly man who was afraid of his shadow. Thus he ran as fast as he could to escape from it. He ran and ran until he could not run any longer, his death. How far are we different from him?

We have long been educated, cultured, doctrinated to have judgement and preference for whatever that can be dichotomied: light and darkness, good and evil, unsavory and delicious, poor and rich, low and high status .... the list can go on and on.

We live in Tao when we are benevolently negligent. We go astray when we are ignorantly well-intentioned.

[Tijmen Lansdaal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m immensely impressed with and endlessly entertained by this work of philosophy having the following features:

- Deep insights without abstraction to the point of obfuscation
- Playful strategy of exposition for the most part: answers to questions are paradoxes, both signifying that the answers are not straightforwardly given and provoking readers to do some work of their own
- Diverse writing styles to fall back on for the rest of it
- Funny & witty satire
- Imaginative parables
- Fable-like, rich array of characters and creatures with great names
- Humble, uncomplicated outlook

[Ben Smitthimedhin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?”

I really do appreciate Chuang Tzu. I think he’s underrated (when compared to Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching), especially because he has a better sense of humor. More importantly, Chuang Tzu masterfully depicts Daoism in both form and content. His prose is playful. His wit is charming. His satire of Confucianism and Legalism is not overly bitter. And he’s not as mystical as Lao Tzu, which makes his writing more accessible.

Still, I should’ve gone with the inner chapters, but my pride got the better of me and I opted for the complete works instead. Did I regret this decision? At times, especially when I was inundated with chapters and stories that even the commentators can’t comprehend.

[Russell Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm no scholar of East Asian or Chinese philosophy, though at one time I thought I would become such. What I did was become someone who has enough familiarity with Confucian thought, particular as it applies to social and political matters, to have been able to publish a couple of scholarly articles on the topic, do a few reviews of academic publications on the topic, and get invited to a few conferences in China. I'm lucky in all those regards, but my gaps of knowledge when it comes to the philosophical traditions I'm looking at remain large. And so it is that I've actually read the the writings attributed to Zhuangzi (or Chuang Tzu), one of the most important Daoist texts of all time. This fall, for three weeks, I was able to dive into those writings, in conjunction with a study group here at Friends University. It was a fascinating several hours, spread out over three meetings, in which we found ourselves trying to grasp, as best we could, Zhuanzhi's elusive descriptions of the Dao. It reminded me frequently of the writings of certain German romantic and hermeneutic thinkers, particularly Heidegger, who similarly gestured in at least some of his writings at the idea that being is a given thing, a revealed thing, but never in any sense a static or name-able thing, and thus struggled to work out how being relates to language, knowledge, and practice. There were many wonderful, challenging passages, which invited us to contemplate how the particular instance of things is, in itself, a revelation of the universal, whereas an attempt to define or situate oneself in relation to a (invariably static) universal can only lead one any from the Dao. Anyway, fun stuff--not something I'm ever going to become a scholar of, but something I'm very glad I read. Here's one passage worth remembering:

"The dao has no boundaries; speech has no fixed form. Because of this, there arose demarcations. Let me describe the demarcations. They are the rights and the left, discussions and theories, classifications and distinctions, and agreements and contentions. These are called the eight characteristics. What is beyond the world the sage sets aside with no discussion. What is within the world the sage discusses but forms no judgments....Where there is discussion for the people, there could be no discussion for the sage. How so? The sage keeps his views to himself whereas men generally display theirs in disputation. Hence we have the saying, 'Disputation is a sign of not seeing clearly'" (Book 2, "The Equality of All Things").

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chuang Tzu was, with Lao Tzu, one of the main thinkers of Taoism. If Lao Tzu left us the Tao Te Ching, a poetical collection of verses, beautiful but, honestly, at time quite difficult to fully get, Chuang Tzu deepen his philosophy by taking a completely different approach: gathering stories and anecdotes portraying a whole set of historical or fictional characters, so as to shape a funny, original, and subversive anthology. The Butterfly Dream, the metaphor of the frog trapped in a well... They are all in here!

Sure, scholars still quarrel in between themselves deciding which tales were actually written by him and which ones by his disciples. But who cares? They read as a whole, and their messages won't fail to strike a few chords.

He obviously defends the three golden treasures (humility, simplicity, compassion). He invites us to let go, guided by the Tao yet aware of everything that could threaten our internal peace and happiness. He, above all, goes even further; by rejecting those 'intellectualising' the Tao, these scholars of the Hundred Schools that he accuses of overcomplicating it all and so confusing us. Confucius, especially, gets his fare share of criticism! Chaung Tzu indeed had no patience for conventions and rituals, that he thoughts were killing off spontaneity and freedom.

Obviously, as an Ancient text it has its fair share of misguided outlook. For instance, he believed mankind to be born with the Skies and Earth, and so man to be naturally good and perfectly capable to live in full harmony with a supposed compassionate environment. Yet, it can also be strikingly insightful; as when he laughs at our arrogance in defining ourselves as the pinacle of Creation, mocking by the same token our constant and silly anthropocentrism when looking at the world. You get it: there are in here some lessons for everyone...

Radical, funny and sharp, these little stories surely are provocative. Here's a witty collection that deserves to be discovered!

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked the fact that I did not understand all of the arcane references. To me, that is proof of the authenticity of the translation. Unlike the Tao Te Ching, this work contains funny stories, and even moral admonishments. I bookmarked many passages which I will return to again and again in my feeble attempts to live my life in a manner that is in concord with nature.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the foundational texts of Chinese culture. Find me a man who has forgotten words, and I will have a word with him.

[Ihor Kolesnyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Класика. Це не зовсім філософія, і не зовсім релігія. Радше алхімічний текст, у якому даоси жартують із реальності, у якій живемо ми, звичайні люди.

[Yuliia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Прекрасний переклад!
Насправді досі читаю, а коли закінчу — піду по другому колу. Чудова книга, щоб пережити 2020.

[Oleksandr Fediienko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Микола Климчук порадив прочитати – я купив.
Почну з того, що твір – це жанрово зовсім не моє. Зізнаюся, я колись читав Новий Заповіт заради притч, навіть дещо з тих Книг після Євангелій, про які більшість не чула. Але щось осіло на дно, я поставив пташку і на цьому все. Так само буде й тут.
Але ж, крім оповідей, тут ще є параграфи, де викладаються якісь повчання, сухо, без розіграних сценок з давніми філософами чи правителями. І ось тут я виявився непідготованим. Попри розлоге вступне слово перекладача, примітки майже на кожній сторінці і відвідання зустрічі з перекладачем, десятки персонажів утворюють в моїй голові мішанину. Дійсно, «що більше слів, тим менше залишається глузду».
Колись мені дуже допомогла книга Клайва (того самого) Люїса «Відкинутий образ: Вступ до літератури Середньовіччя і Відродження». Раніше, читаючи про Середньовіччя, я сприймав усі відмінності з сучасністю просто як відмінності між культурами – такі самі, як існують і зараз. Проте ж тепер я розумію, що все значно серйозніше, – тодішній світогляд був цілковито відмінним від нашого. Так само – та й більше – з Давнім Китаєм. Я гадаю, варто було б видати вступну книгу про тогочасну філософію, а вже потім пропонувати твір, в якому вони займають свої кількадесят сторінок, до того ж, коли його автор(и) жартують з тебе, десь стверджуючи засади цих течій, а десь їх висміюючи, а ти не здатен збагнути, що вони роблять саме зараз.
Та я не впевнений, що взагалі слід розбиратися у всіх тонкощах давньокитайської філософії. Щось мені підказує, що книга саме про це: мудреці замінили Правду (дао) знанням. То чи є сенс дошукуватися істини в їхніх словах, переданих нам пізнішими тлумачами?

[Adrian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chuang Tzu (more correctly rendered as Zhuang Zi) is perhaps the second most important figure in Daoism after (the possibly Mythic) Lao Zi. The book of Chuang Tzu (henceforth referred to as Zhuang Zi) is a collection of anecdotes, stories, and analogies of Zhuang Zi's teachings on how to achieve the Tao, or the way.
The Tao, Dao, or Way is essentially the same concept as found in Tao Te Ching (or Dao De Jing) but is elaborated more so, and as such, is more accessible.
The origin and precise canonization of this book is unsure, as Zhuang Zi often refers to himself in the third person, and it makes reference to Confucius and Lao Zi, who appear in the stories, however more as metaphorical figures rather than some actual historical account.
The translation is very good and readable, the only defect is that it insists on using the outdated and phonetically inaccurate Wade-Giles Romanization system. This may not be such a defect for those in the West who are using the book purely for scholarly or personal reasons, however try speaking with any Wade-Giles word the way it is phonetically rendered to a Chinese person, and you will not be understood.
Essentially, Daoism is an ascetic philosophy (or religion, depending on one's definition) and this book (the second most important after Tao Te Ching) is perhaps a better introduction to Daoism, and lays out the essentially ascetic philosophy of personal contentment, adaptation and harmony.
By no means an easy read, and a book that needs revisiting, and re-examining, but a very good book for those who want to further understand Daoism, or Chinese thinking in general.
Note however that the Daoist school of thought is very different, and in many ways, at odds with the Legalist school of thought (Confucius, Mencius) and as such gives one a different view of Chinese philosophy than the over reaching and all encompassing Confucian societal structure. However, essential reading for those who wish to understand the more spiritual aspects of Chinese thought.

[Avid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Note: I'm not rating the Zhuangzi itself but focusing on this translation.

The largest irritation with this translation, was the translation of 道。 This was translated into English as "The Course". It seems the author attempts to change the trend of calling it The Way or simply Dao, however this was somewhat jarring for a reader that has already read other translations or Daoist material.

The author explains many of the decisions made when translating certain characters as different to those read, however some of them require chasing down other references, which are also in Chinese. It would be more interesting and useful to explain more directly why he agreed with them.

Translating any work of this style is a significant endeavour and so I don't like to give it only 3 stars. I would give it 5 for effort if I could but I feel it must have 3 for the end result.

[Brimate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm giving up on reading it for now... there are some gems of Taoist wisdom that are helpful for me to read, but much of the text is obscure, appears contradictory at times, and I can't make much sense out of it. I was excited to read it, as Chuang Tzu is seen as more radical than Lao Tzu, and it contains a variety of writing styles (stories, historical and cultural references, sarcasm and humour, making fun of Confucius) but I can't easily glean the wisdom from this translation of these enigmatic words to make it worth the slow read right now.

[Nadia Chervinska · Rating 5 out of 5]

Залишилася в захваті не стільки від книги (не дуже вмію в тонкощі давньокитайської філософії), скільки від майстерного перекладу Вон Гака. Він здійснив просто якийсь перекладацький подвиг, архаїзувавши текст так, наче той і було написано українською. Одним із основних понять — Де, Дао, Інь, Ян — він підібрав цілком логічні українські відповідники (чому цього ніхто не зробив раніше?), хай навіть вони спершу звучать дещо незвично. Цей переклад чудово ілюструє, що перекладачу потрібно не лише добре знати мову оригіналу, але й вміти майстерно вправлятися з мовою перекладу.

[Bruno Oliveira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt that I was a butterfly, flitting around and enjoying myself. I had no idea I was Chuang Tzu. Then suddenly I woke up and was Chuang Tzu again. But I could not tell, had I been Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming I was now Chuang Tzu ?

[Manny Furious · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm gonna keep this short: I love this book so much I'm tempted to learn Chinese just so I can better get the true words of Chuang Tzu.

Those of you who have it marked as "to read", get on with it already, it's more than well-worth your time.

[Natty Peterkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, but overall it says little the Tao Te Ching doesn't say better.

[Nguyễn Minh Hiếu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thư bất tận ngôn, ngôn bất tận ý
Trang Chu mộng điệp, điệp mộng Trang chu...

[Tom Meade · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Book of Chuang Tzu that can be reviewed is not the Eternal Chuang Tzu.

[Ian Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book might take you a step closer to understanding the Tao.
I first read The Book of Chuang Tzu in an earlier translation back in the 80s and found it weird, strange and compelling. That edition is now in a box in my storage unit and I haven’t seen it for years, so I bought this Penguin edition to remind myself of what Chinese wisdom is all about. I thought I need to know, given the importance of China as a major economic power in today’s world. Somewhere in the same storage unit I have a very old Penguin Classics edition of the Tao Te Ching usually ascribed to the legendary founder of Taoism, Lao Tzu. I see there is a more recent Penguin Classics translation of the Tao Te Ching, and I would advise the reader to tackle this before reading Chuang Tzu. Martin Palmer explains the relationship between the two in the introduction to Chuang Tzu. He also gives his take on whether Lao Tzu existed or not. Not, apparently. That is disappointing, as I have always liked the idea of Lao Tzu taking the proverbial out of Confucius. A few months ago I read Gore Vidal’s Creation, in which the narrator – a Persian traveller – meets Confucius, Lao Tzu, the Buddha and Socrates. This would have just about been possible if the traditional dates given for the life spans are correct. Surprisingly, Vidal clearly prefers Confucius to Lao Tzu, as human beings anyway. Surprising because I associate Confucius with things Vidal doesn’t usually like: authoritarianism, hierarchy, order, obedience, tradition. You can draw a straight line between Confucius, Mao Ze Dong and the current regime in Beijing. On the other hand, Lao Tzu seems to be more liberal, seditious, sceptical, playful, contrarian, mocking. And those traits are replicated in Chuang Tzu who often uses Confucius as a figure of fun, a philosopher who has a knack of getting it wrong. But then so do all the other philosophical schools mentioned in this book. They are all trying to find the Tao, but they just don’t get it.
Having said that, I’m not sure that I get it, although I’ve been trying to get it for nearly fifty years now. If you’re looking for a simple explanation of the Tao, you won’t find it in the introduction or in the body of this book. The translator sees Chuang Tzu’s philosophy as a development of shamanism set against the bureaucratic philosophies of Confucius and others. You could argue that their concern with order and good government is sensible and practical, whereas the Taoist injunction, “do nothing and all things will be done,” doesn’t seem to make any sense – until you think about it and realise that the more us humans do to disrupt the natural world, the more damage we do.
This translation is already 25 years old but is fresh and lively and as the blurb on the back says, it “conveys the passion and tone of Chuang Tzu’s writing”. I’d recommend it for anyone who wants to try to understand the Tao, or at least get some insight into an important aspect of Chinese culture.
I first read The Book of Chuang Tzu in an earlier translation back in the 80s and found it weird, strange and compelling. That edition is now in a box in my storage unit and I haven’t seen it for years, so I bought this Penguin edition to remind myself of what Chinese wisdom is all about. I thought I need to know, given the importance of China as a major economic power in today’s world. Somewhere in the same storage unit I have a very old Penguin Classics edition of the Tao Te Ching usually ascribed to the legendary founder of Taoism, Lao Tzu. I see there is a more recent Penguin Classics translation of the Tao Te Ching, and I would advise the reader to tackle this before reading Chuang Tzu. Martin Palmer explains the relationship between the two in the introduction to Chuang Tzu. He also gives his take on whether Lao Tzu existed or not. Not, apparently. That is disappointing, as I have always liked the idea of Lao Tzu taking the proverbial out of Confucius. A few months ago I read Gore Vidal’s Creation, in which the narrator – a Persian traveller – meets Confucius, Lao Tzu, the Buddha and Socrates. This would have just about been possible if the traditional dates given for the life spans are correct. Surprisingly, Vidal clearly prefers Confucius to Lao Tzu, as human beings anyway. Surprising because I associate Confucius with things Vidal doesn’t usually like: authoritarianism, hierarchy, order, obedience, tradition. You can draw a straight line between Confucius, Mao Ze Dong and the current regime in Beijing. On the other hand, Lao Tzu seems to be more liberal, seditious, sceptical, playful, contrarian, mocking. And those traits are replicated in Chuang Tzu who often uses Confucius as a figure of fun, a philosopher who has a knack of getting it wrong. But then so do all the other philosophical schools mentioned in this book. They are all trying to find the Tao, but they just don’t get it.
Having said that, I’m not sure that I get it, although I’ve been trying to get it for nearly fifty years now. If you’re looking for a simple explanation of the Tao, you won’t find it in the introduction or in the body of this book. The translator sees Chuang Tzu’s philosophy as a development of shamanism set against the bureaucratic philosophies of Confucius and others. You could argue that their concern with order and good government is sensible and practical, whereas the Taoist injunction, “do nothing and all things will be done,” doesn’t seem to make any sense – until you think about it and realise that the more us humans do to disrupt the natural world, the more damage we do.
This translation is already 25 years old but is fresh and lively and as the blurb on the back says, it “conveys the passion and tone of Chuang Tzu’s writing”. I’d recommend it for anyone who wants to try to understand the Tao, or at least get some insight into an important aspect of Chinese culture.

[Ad · Rating 5 out of 5]

The "Zhuangzi" has always been one of my favorite texts, thanks to the humor, the wild flights of fantasy, the imaginative stories and parables, the poetry of its language. And of course its philosophical stance, which is a combination of relativism and skepticism, bound together by an all-pervading holism. At the same time, it is one of the most influential works ever written in Chinese, both within the Chinese tradition (think of poets as Tao Yuanming, Su Dongpo, Yang Wanli etc, as well as Zen Buddhism) and Japan (Basho!).

The core of the Zhuangzi may be of slightly earlier date than the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching9 (around 270 BCE). These are the so-called Seven Inner Chapters usually ascribed to the historical Zhuangzi (about whom virtually nothing is known except that he lived in the last three quarters of the 4th century BCE). Besides that, the book contains writings by anonymous followers of Zhuangzi's school and others who were sympathetic to it (the Outer Chapters 8-22 and Miscellaneous Chapters 23-33).

The Zhuangzi shares the philosophy of the spontaneous changes of the universe, with which the sage should try to be in accordance, with the Daodejing. Zhuangzi considered the moral patterns of the Confucians and other philosophers as artificial constructs of humans. The universe operates according to spontaneous processes and therefore humans should act spontaneously as well (translator Burton Watson calls this freedom). However, humans have the tendency to make artificial distinctions, thus removing themselves from the spontaneous processes of the natural world.

The playful style and fictive anecdotes in the Zhuangzi have the purpose to help readers break out of their habitual and artificial distinctions. That is why we have Confucius renouncing ritual, or he Sage Kings giving up their positions.

The philosophers of ancient China faced the same problem: how to live in a world of chaos and suffering. While the Confucians and others came with concrete action plans, the mystic Zhuangzi said: free yourself from the world.

When a man named Nanrong Zhu came to visit Laozi, to ask for instruction, the Sage promptly asked: "Why did you come with all these people?" The man whirled around but there was nobody behind him. Of course Zhuangzi means here the baggage of old ideas, of conventional concepts of right and wrong that we all carry about. We must first discard these before we can be free. We human beings are the authors of our own suffering and bondage. Zhuangzi sums this up in the image of the leper woman, who "when she gives birth to a child in the deep of the night, rushes to fetch a torch and examine it, trembling with terror lest it look like herself" (Burton Watson, p. 4).

Zhuangzi tries to shock us out of our bondage by paradoxical anecdotes, nonsensical remarks and pseudo-logical discussions. Another deadly weapon he uses is humor - the very core of his style.

Zhuangzi is the philosopher of naturalness, of spontaneity. By just following nature, everything will be best. Applied to politics, this means the world will be ordered automatically, a spontaneous order without need for (too much) government.

In the same way, death is not to be feared as it is only one of the many natural transformations. Without believing in an afterlife, Zhuangzi just tells us to trust nature:

"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... [...] (When Huizi admonished him, Zhuangzi answered:) "You are wrong. When she first died, do you think I didn't grieve like anyone else? But I looked back to her beginning and the time before she was born. Not only the time before she was born, but the time before she had a body. Not only the time before she had a body, but the time before she had a spirit. In the midst of the jumble of wonder and mystery a change took place and she had a spirit. Another change and she had a body. Another change and she was born. Now there has been another change and she is dead. It is just like the progression of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter. Now she is going to lie down peacefully in a vast room..." [modified from Watson, p. 191-92]

The most famous story of the Zhuangzi is the "butterfly story" (here modified from the free Legge translation):

Once Zhuangzi dreamt that he was a butterfly, a butterfly flying about, enjoying itself. He did not know that he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he awoke, and was himself again, the veritable Zhuangzi. But he did not know whether he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt that he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming that he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be a some difference. This is called the Transformation of Things."

In China this epistemological story is so famous that it has become idiom ("Zhuang Zhou Meng Die").

The Zhuangzi is such a difficult text, also for Chinese, that you should do yourself the favor of selecting a translation by a specialist in Chinese. The best complete translation, in my view, is the one by Sinologist and prolific translator Burton Watson, published by Columbia University Press in 1968, which is still available (just as in the case of the Daodejing, there are some terrible "translations" on the market, made by non-specialists who have put their fantasy to work on the basis of older translations - even Penguin Books has "sinned" in this case).

See my blog at https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/.