Zhuang Zhou Quotes

Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly. A butterfly fluttering happily around— was he revealing what he himself meant to be? He knew nothing of Zhou. All at once awakening, there suddenly he was — Zhou. But he didn't know if he was Zhou having dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhou. Between Zhou and the butterfly there must surely be some distinction. This is known at the transformation of things.

Why is it that the modern idea of productivity is so often a frame for what is actually the destruction of the natural productivity of an ecosystem? This sounds a lot like the paradox in Zhuang Zhou’s story, which more than anything is a joke about how narrow the concept of “usefulness” is. When the tree appears to the carpenter in his dream, it’s essentially asking him: Useful for what? Indeed, this is the same question I have when I give myself enough time to step back from the capitalist logic of how we currently understand productivity and success. Productivity that produces what? Successful in what way, and for whom? The happiest, most fulfilled moments of my life have been when I was completely aware of being alive, with all the hope, pain, and sorrow that that entails for any mortal being. In those moments, the idea of success as a teleological goal would have made no sense; the moments were ends in themselves, not steps on a ladder. I think people in Zhuang Zhou’s time knew the same feeling.

I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?

El Zhuangzi es el segundo texto fundamental del Taoísmo, atribuido a Zhuang Zhou (también conocido como Chuang-Tzu), un filósofo que vivió aproximadamente en el siglo IV a.C. A diferencia del Tao Te Ching, el Zhuangzi es más extenso y narrativo, compuesto por una serie de capítulos que incluyen fábulas, diálogos y anécdotas. El Zhuangzi se divide tradicionalmente en tres partes: Capítulos Internos: Los primeros siete capítulos que contienen las enseñanzas más centrales y filosóficas del texto. Capítulos Externos: Del capítulo 8 al 22, que expanden y desarrollan los temas introducidos en los capítulos internos. Capítulos Misceláneos: Del capítulo 23 al 33, que incluyen una variedad de historias y reflexiones adicionales. Principales Temas: Relatividad y Perspectiva: Zhuangzi destaca la naturaleza relativa de la verdad y la percepción, sugiriendo que todas las cosas son subjetivas y cambiantes. Libertad Espiritual: Promueve la liberación de las convenciones sociales y las preocupaciones mundanas para alcanzar una auténtica libertad del espíritu. Naturaleza y Espontaneidad: Alienta a vivir de acuerdo con la naturaleza y a actuar de manera espontánea, siguiendo el curso natural de las cosas. El Zhuangzi es conocido por sus vívidas fábulas y parábolas, que utilizan personajes imaginarios y situaciones fantásticas para ilustrar sus puntos filosóficos. Una de las historias más famosas es la del "sueño de la mariposa", donde Zhuangzi sueña que es una mariposa y, al despertar, no sabe si es un hombre que soñó ser una mariposa o una mariposa que sueña ser un hombre. Esta historia resalta la ambigüedad de la realidad y la percepción. Ambos textos, el Tao Te Ching y el Zhuangzi, han tenido una profunda influencia no solo en la filosofía y la religión china, sino también en la literatura, el arte y la cultura global. Sus enseñanzas sobre la armonía con la naturaleza, la importancia de la humildad y la simplicidad, y la búsqueda de la libertad espiritual continúan siendo importantes en la actualidad, ofreciendo una guía atemporal para quienes buscan una vida equilibrada y significativa.

To me, this sounds like a real-life version of a story—the title of which is often translated as “The Useless Tree”—from the Zhuangzi, a collection of writings attributed Zhuang Zhou, a fourth-century Chinese philosopher. The story is about a carpenter who sees a tree (in one version, a serrate oak, a similar-looking relative to our coast live oak) of impressive size and age. But the carpenter passes it right by, declaring it a “worthless tree” that has only gotten to be this old because its gnarled branches would not be good for timber. Soon afterward, the tree appears to him in a dream and asks, “Are you comparing me with those useful trees?” The tree points out to him that fruit trees and timber trees are regularly ravaged. Meanwhile, uselessness has been this tree’s strategy: “This is of great use to me. If I had been of some use, would I ever have grown this large?” The tree balks at the distinction between usefulness and worth, made by a man who only sees trees as potential timber: “What’s the point of this—things condemning things? You a worthless man about to die—how do you know I’m a worthless tree?”5 It’s easy for me to imagine these words being spoken by Old Survivor to the nineteenth-century loggers who casually passed it over, less than a century before we began realizing what we’d lost.

It’s important for me to link my critique of the attention economy to the promise of bioregional awareness because I believe that capitalism, colonialist thinking, loneliness, and an abusive stance toward the environment all coproduce one another. It’s also important because of the parallels between what the economy does to an ecological system and what the attention economy does to our attention. In both cases, there’s a tendency toward an aggressive monoculture, where those components that are seen as “not useful” and which cannot be appropriated (by loggers or by Facebook) are the first to go. Because it proceeds from a false understanding of life as atomized and optimizable, this view of usefulness fails to recognize the ecosystem as a living whole that in fact needs all of its parts to function. Just as practices like logging and large-scale farming decimate the land, an overemphasis on performance turns what was once a dense and thriving landscape of individual and communal thought into a Monsanto farm whose “production” slowly destroys the soil until nothing more can grow. As it extinguishes one species of thought after another, it hastens the erosion of attention. Why is it that the modern idea of productivity is so often a frame for what is actually the destruction of the natural productivity of an ecosystem? This sounds a lot like the paradox in Zhuang Zhou’s story, which more than anything is a joke about how narrow the concept of “usefulness” is. When the tree appears to the carpenter in his dream, it’s essentially asking him: Useful for what? Indeed, this is the same question I have when I give myself enough time to step back from the capitalist logic of how we currently understand productivity and success. Productivity that produces what? Successful in what way, and for whom? The happiest, most fulfilled moments of my life have been when I was completely aware of being alive, with all the hope, pain, and sorrow that that entails for any mortal being. In those moments, the idea of success as a teleological goal would have made no sense; the moments were ends in themselves, not steps on a ladder. I think people in Zhuang Zhou’s time knew the same feeling.

This formulation—the usefulness of uselessness—is typical of Zhuang Zhou, who often spoke in apparent contradictions and non sequiturs. But like his other statements, it’s not a paradox for the sake of being a paradox: rather, it’s merely an observation of a social world that is itself a paradox, defined by hypocrisy, ignorance, and illogic. In a society like that, a man attempting a humble and ethical life would certainly appear “backward”: for him, good would be bad, up would be down, productivity would be destruction, and indeed, uselessness would be useful.

To me, this sounds like a real-life version of a story—the title of which is often translated as “The Useless Tree”—from the Zhuangzi, a collection of writings attributed Zhuang Zhou, a fourth-century Chinese philosopher. The story is about a carpenter who sees a tree (in one version, a serrate oak, a similar-looking relative to our coast live oak) of impressive size and age. But the carpenter passes it right by, declaring it a “worthless tree” that has only gotten to be this old because its gnarled branches would not be good for timber. Soon afterward, the tree appears to him in a dream and asks, “Are you comparing me with those useful trees?” The tree points out to him that fruit trees and timber trees are regularly ravaged. Meanwhile, uselessness has been this tree’s strategy: “This is of great use to me. If I had been of some use, would I ever have grown this large?” The tree balks at the distinction between usefulness and worth, made by a man who only sees trees as potential timber: “What’s the point of this—things condemning things? You a worthless man about to die—how do you know I’m a worthless tree?”5 It’s easy for me to imagine these words being spoken by Old Survivor to the nineteenth-century loggers who casually passed it over, less than a century before

Emptiness is the fasting of the mind.” –Zhuang Zhou 4th century B.C.

Once upon a time, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting about happily, enjoying himself. He did not know that he was Zhou. Suddenly he awoke, and was palpably Zhou. He did not know whether he was Zhou, who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhou. Now, there must be a difference between Zhou and the butterfly. This is called the transformation of things.

You can't discuss the ocean with a well frog - he's limited by the space he lives in. You can't discuss ice with a summer insect - he's bound to a single season.