Chuang Tzu
Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer
Zhuangzi c. 300 BCE
Stories, dialogues, and playful arguments question familiar ideas about knowledge and how people should live. In one famous passage, a man dreams he is a butterfly, then wonders which life is the dream.
344 pages 6h 40m reading time
- One of the two founding books of Taoism (an old Chinese way of thinking about living in harmony with nature), next to the Tao Te Ching.
- Argues that words like right and wrong, useful and useless, depend on where you stand, so no single view sees the whole truth.
- Teaches that people live best by going along with the natural flow of things, like a skilled cook whose knife slides through meat without effort, instead of chasing fame, power, or rigid rules.
- Shaped Chan Buddhism in China, which became Zen in Japan, and its love of humor, paradox, and simple living runs through Zen teaching.
- Inspired centuries of Chinese poets and painters, and gave Chinese readers lasting sayings and images, such as the butterfly dream.
Many hands wrote it
Scholars think Zhuangzi wrote only the first seven chapters, and his followers added the rest over time.
Cut down by an editor
About six centuries later, an editor named Guo Xiang trimmed it from 52 chapters to the 33 we read today.
Honored by an emperor
In 742, a Tang dynasty emperor gave the book a grand new official name, "The True Book of Nanhua."
Reviewed by Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde reviewed this very translation in 1890 and praised its sharp attack on modern life.
Translated from Chinese by Herbert Allen Giles