ZHUANGZI

Zhuangzi was the most significant of China’s early interpreters of Daoism.

In spite of his importance, details of Zhuangzi’s life, apart from the many anecdotes about him in the Zhuangzi itself, are unknown. The biographical sketch by the “Grand Historian” of the Han dynasty, Sima Qian (died c. 87 BCE), indicates that Zhuangzi was a native of the state of Meng, that his personal name was Zhou, and that he was a minor official at Qiyuan in his home state.

PHILOSOPHY

Zhuangzi is best known through the book that bears his name, the Zhuangzi, also known as Nanhua zhenjing (“The Pure Classic of Nanhua”). It is composed of 33 chapters, and evidence suggests that there may have been as many as 53 chapters in copies of the book circulated in the 4th century. It is generally agreed that the first seven chapters, the “inner books,” are for the most part from the hand of Zhuangzi himself, whereas the “outer books” (chapters 8–22) and the miscellany (chapters 23–33) are largely the product of his later followers.

Zhuangzi taught that what can be known or said of the Dao is not the Dao. It has neither initial beginning nor final end, nor limitations or demarcations. Life is the ongoing transformation of the Dao, in which there is no better or worse, no good or evil. Things should be allowed to follow their own course, and men should not value one situation over another. A truly virtuous man is free from the bondage of circumstance, personal attachments, tradition, and the need to reform his world. Zhuangzi declined an offer to be prime minister of the state of Chu because he did not want the entanglements of a court career.

The relativity of all experience is in constant tension in the Zhuangzi with the unity of all things. When asked where the Dao was, Zhuangzi replied that it was everywhere. When pushed to be more specific, he declared that it was in ants and, still lower, in weeds and potsherds; furthermore, it was also in excrement and urine. This forceful statement of the omnipresence of the Dao had its parallels in later Chinese Buddhism, in which a similar figure of speech was used to describe the ever-present Buddha (Buddhist scholars, especially those of the Chan [Zen] school, also drew heavily on Zhuangzi’s works). Zhuangzi was par excellence the philosopher of the unattached man who is at one with the Dao.