Zhuangzi: The Butterfly Dream and Early Daoist Philosophy

Zhuangzi, or Master Zhuang, was a Chinese philosopher of the Warring States period, traditionally dated c. 369–286 BC. The book that bears his name, a collection of witty stories, dialogues and paradoxes, is with the Tao Te Ching one of the two founding classics of Daoism. Its most famous passage, the butterfly dream, has made Zhuangzi one of the best-known ancient Chinese thinkers outside China.

Life

Almost everything known about Zhuangzi’s life comes from a short biography by Sima Qian and from stories in the Zhuangzi itself. His personal name was Zhuang Zhou, and he came from Meng in the small state of Song, in the region of modern Shangqiu in Henan. Sima Qian says he once worked as a minor official in a lacquer-tree garden and was a contemporary of King Hui of Wei and King Xuan of Qi.

His dates are traditional estimates. The best-known anecdote says that a king of Chu, named by Sima Qian as King Wei, sent envoys to offer him the post of chief minister. In the version told in the Zhuangzi, he asked whether a sacred tortoise, kept in a box in the royal temple, would rather be dead and honoured or alive and dragging its tail in the mud. He preferred the mud, and sent the envoys away.

The book

The Zhuangzi in its present form has 33 chapters, arranged by the scholar Guo Xiang around AD 300 from a longer version of 52 chapters. They fall into three groups:

• Inner Chapters (1–7): generally regarded as closest to Zhuangzi’s own thought.
• Outer Chapters (8–22): writings by followers, some close to his style, others influenced by different schools.
• Miscellaneous Chapters (23–33): a mixed collection, including a survey of early Chinese thinkers in the final chapter.

The book is unusual for its humour, its fantastic characters, such as giant birds, talking trees and wise cripples, and its fondness for paradox. It often puts its arguments into the mouths of invented figures, including a playful version of Confucius.

Famous stories

In the butterfly dream, Zhuangzi dreams he is a butterfly and on waking cannot be sure whether he is a man who dreamed of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being a man. The story closes the second chapter, which argues that our distinctions between right and wrong, this and that, depend on the viewpoint we take.

In the story of Cook Ding, a butcher carves an ox so skilfully that his knife stays sharp for nineteen years, because he follows the natural joints instead of hacking. The lesson is that life goes best when one moves with the grain of things.

Zhuangzi’s friend and rival Hui Shi, a logician, appears in several debates. On a bridge over the Hao River, Zhuangzi remarks how happy the fish are, and Hui Shi asks how he can know what fish feel. When Zhuangzi’s wife died, Hui Shi found him drumming on a pot and singing; Zhuangzi explained that her death was part of the same natural change as the seasons.

Ideas

Zhuangzi shared with the Tao Te Ching the idea of the Dao, the Way, as the source and pattern of all things. But where the Tao Te Ching often advises rulers, Zhuangzi shows little interest in government. His concerns are personal freedom, the limits of language and logic, the usefulness of the seemingly useless, and calm acceptance of change, including death.

The use of the useless

A recurring theme in the book is the value of being “useless”. In one story a carpenter passes a huge sacred oak without a second glance, because its wood is good for nothing: boats made from it would sink and coffins would rot. That night the tree appears to him in a dream and explains that its uselessness is exactly what has let it live so long, while fruit trees and timber trees are cut down in their prime.

For Zhuangzi, the same was true of people. Those who make themselves valuable to rulers are used up, punished or killed, as many advisers of the Warring States period were. The sage keeps out of the way, avoids fame and lives out his natural span. This attitude helps explain his refusal of high office and his distance from the political schools of his day.

Legacy

In the 3rd and 4th centuries AD the Zhuangzi became central to Xuanxue, or “Neo-Daoism”, and Guo Xiang’s commentary shaped how it was read. In 742 the Tang emperor Xuanzong gave it the honorary title True Classic of Southern Florescence. Its spirit of spontaneity also influenced Chan (Zen) Buddhism, Chinese poetry and landscape painting. Translations by Herbert Giles (1889), Burton Watson (1968) and A. C. Graham (1981) brought it to Western readers.

Timeline

• c. 369 BC: Traditional date of Zhuangzi’s birth in the state of Song.
• c. 4th century BC: Zhuangzi teaches and debates with Hui Shi.
• c. 286 BC: Traditional date of his death.
• c. 94 BC: Sima Qian includes a short biography in the Shiji.
• c. AD 300: Guo Xiang edits the 33-chapter text used today.
• 742: Emperor Xuanzong of Tang honours the book as a “true classic”.

Why it matters

Zhuangzi gave Daoism its most playful and philosophically daring voice. His stories still invite readers to question fixed viewpoints and to find freedom in accepting change.