The Complete Works of Zhuangzi (Translations from the Asian Classics)

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Free and easy, he rested in inaction; plain and simple, it was not hard for him to live; bestowing nothing, he did not have to hand things out. It is because in the end, they are not sufficient to convey truth that “those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know. Its literary quality, imagination and creativity, and linguistic prowess were unprecedented in the period of its creation. But since we know so little about the life and identity of Zhuang Zhou or his connection with the book that bears his name, it is perhaps best not to seek too assiduously to establish a direct causal connection between the background and the philosophy.

The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu translated by Burton Watson The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu translated by Burton Watson

As early as the Song dynasty (960–1279), scholars have recognized that some parts of the book could not have been written by the historical Zhuangzi.Witty and imaginative, enriched by brilliant imagery, and making sportive use of both mythological and historical personages, this timeless classic is sure to appeal to anyone interested in Chinese religion and culture. Your master happened to come because it was his time, and he happened to leave because things follow along. Contrast with Taoism’s other core book, the Tao Te Ching: Zhuangzi, on the contrary, makes it the very core of his style, for he appears to have known that one good laugh would do more than ten pages of harangue to shake the reader’s confidence in the validity of his past assumptions.

The Complete Works of Zhuangzi | Columbia University Press

Unlike other ancient Chinese works, whose allegories were usually based on historical legends and proverbs, most Zhuangzi stories seem to have been invented by Zhuangzi himself. Outside of China and the traditional " Sinosphere", the Zhuangzi lags far behind the Tao Te Ching in general popularity, and is rarely known by non-scholars. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room—more than enough for the blade to play about in.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. It simply meant that Daoist writings were not accorded any official recognition as the basis for decisions on state and public affairs.