Chuang Tzu

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Chuang Tzu

• IAS 2540 / UGD 2270 History of Traditional
  Chinese Thought

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• Equalizing things (chi-wu)
• Heaven and earth co-exist with me all the
  myriad thing and I are one.
• Each thing has its distinct reason for being as
  it is each thing has its individual
  appropriateness. There are no things that are not
  so there are no things that are not
  appropriate. Ch.2 ChI-wu lun

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• This principle once established, all distinctions
  of things and the self, of noble and humble, then
  lose their absolute boundaries, and all the
  inequalities of things bring themselves into
  positions of relative equality and unity.
• Bigness? Smallness? Relative only!

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• When we understand that heaven and earth are but
  as tiny grains of rice, or that tip of a hair is
  as a hill or a mountain, then all the rankings
  and distinctions have become equal.
• Dust in the Wind.

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• When we recognize that east and west are relative
  opposites, and that neither can exist except in
  relation to the other, then their separate shares
  of achievement can be established.

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• According to Burton Watson, (Columbia University)
  (Chuang Tzu)
• the central theme of the Chuang Tzu 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 a world dominated by chaos,
  suffering, and absurdity? Nearly all of them
  answered with some concrete plan of action
  designed to reform the individual, to reform the
  individual, to reform society, and eventually to
  free the world from its ills.

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• Chuang Tzus answer, however, is radically
  different,..
• It is the answer of a mystic, ..
• Chuang Tzus answer to the question is free
  yourself from the world.
• It is the baggage of conventional values that
  man must first of all discard before he can be
  free!

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• Chuang Tzu saw the man-made ills of war, poverty,
  and injustice. Chuang Tzu saw the natural ills of
  disease and death. But Chuang Tzu believed that
  they were ills only because man recognized them
  as such. If man would once forsake his habit of
  labeling things good or bad, desirable or
  undesirable, then the man-made ills, will are the
  product of mans purposeful and value-ridden
  actions, would disappear and the natural ills
  that remain would no longer be seen as ills, but
  as an inevitable part of the course of life.

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• Thus, in Chuang Tzus eyes, man is the author of
  his own suffering and bondage, and all his fears
  spring from the web of values created by himself
  alone.
• Chuang Tzu employs every resource of rhetoric in
  his efforts to awaken the reader to the essential
  meaninglessness of conventional values and to
  free him from the bondage
• paradoxical anecdote/remark
• pseudo-logical discussion/debate
• humor

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• In Chuang Tzus view, the man who has freed
  himself from conventional standards of judgment
  can no longer be made to suffer, for he refuses
  to recognize poverty as any less desirable than
  affluence, to recognize death as any less
  desirable than life. He remains within society
  but refrains from acting out of the motives that
  lead ordinary men to struggle for wealth, fame,
  success, or safety.

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• He maintains a state that Chuang Tzu refers to as
  wu-wei or inaction, meaning by this term not a
  forced quietude, but a course of action that is
  not founded upon any purposeful motives of gain
  or striving. In such a state, all human actions
  become as mindless as those of the natural world.
• Man becomes one with Nature, or Heaven, and
  merges himself with Tao, or the Way, the
  underlying unity that embraces man, Nature, and
  all that is in the universe.

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• ?
• patience

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• Discussion
• What is
• Weak / strong?
• Coward / Brave?
• Cf. Christianity
• When a man hit you on the cheek, offer him the
  other cheek, too.
• Cf. Kenny Rogers,
• The Coward of the County

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• Discussion
• Desire
• Can desire be satisfied?
• To the Taoists, NO!
• The crave for desire is never-ending!
• Cf. D.H. Lawrences short-story
• the Rocking Horse Winner
• more is less
• less is more