The Complete Works of Zhuangzi (Translations from the Asian Classics)

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Mair, Victor H. (2000). "The Zhuangzi and its Impact". In Kohn, Livia (ed.). Daoism Handbook. Leiden: Brill. pp.30–52. ISBN 978-90-04-11208-7. Having read multiple ancient philosophical works, I found Taoism, Stoicism and Zen Buddhism to most resonate with me. Zen Buddhism feels like a modern offspring of Taoism, which it to a certain degree is, while Taoism and Stoicism share practical advice to deal with whatever life throws at you (Stoicism is a lot more straightforward about it, though). Where there is acceptability, there must be unacceptability; where there is unacceptability, there must be acceptability. Where there is recognition of right, there must be recognition of wrong; where there is recognition of wrong, there must be recognition of right. Therefore the sage does not proceed in such a way but illuminates all in the light of Heaven. The proposals put forward by the Confucians, the Mohists , and the Legalists, to name some of the principal schools of philosophy, all are different but all are based on the same kind of commonsense approach to the problem, and all seek concrete social, political, and ethical reforms to solve it. Kwek, Dorothy HB. "Critique of imperial reason: Lessons from the Zhuangzi." Dao 18 (2019): 411-433.

The complete works of Zhuangzi | Semantic Scholar The complete works of Zhuangzi | Semantic Scholar

Little understanding cannot come up to great understanding; the short-lived cannot come up to the long-lived. How do I know this is so? The morning mushroom knows nothing of twilight and dawn; the summer cicada knows nothing of spring and autumn. They are the short-lived. The man who has freed himself from conventional standards of judgment can no longer be made to suffer. Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”Goldin, Paul R. (2001). "The Thirteen Classics". In Mair, Victor H. (ed.). The Columbia History of Chinese Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 86-96. ISBN 0-231-10984-9. Confucius said, “Make your will one! Don’t listen with your ears, listen with your mind. No, don’t listen with your mind, but listen with your spirit. Note, first, that Butcher Ding’s activity is cutting – dividing something into parts. While he is mastering his guiding dao, he perceives the ox already cut up. He comes to see the places he should cut as already existing spaces and fissures in the ox. The ox thus seems a perfect metaphor for our coming to see the world as divided into the “natural kinds.” We internalize a language that serves some purpose. When we master a guiding dao, we seek to execute it in a real situation. Doing so requires finding distinctions in nature to match the concepts in the instructions. While acting, we do not have time to read the map; we see ourselves as reading the world. natural processes grounded in the temporally shifting distributions of 氣 qi physical stuff that yields path-like guidance structures for living things.

The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu translated by Burton Watson The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu translated by Burton Watson

Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but spirit is empty and waits for all things. The Way gathers in emptiness alone. Emptiness is the fasting of the mind.”He who knows he is a fool is not the biggest fool; he who knows he is confused is not in the worst confusion. The ten-thousand thing-kinds are ultimately alike and ultimately different. Call this the great similarity-difference.

The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, translated by Burton Watson The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, translated by Burton Watson

The True Man of ancient times slept without dreaming and woke without care; he ate without savoring; and his breath came from deep inside. The True Man breathes with his heels; the mass of men breathe with their throats. Crushed and bound down, they gasp out their words as though they were retching. Deep in their passions and desires, they are shallow in the workings of Heaven. I cannot tell if what the world considers ‘happiness’ is happiness or not. All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction. All the while they claim to be just on the point of attaining happiness.” Berkson, M. (1996) Language: The guest of reality – Zhuangzi and Derrida on language, reality, and skillfulness. In P. Kjellberg, & P. J. Ivanhoe (Eds.), Essays on skepticism, relativism, and ethics in the Zhuangzi (pp. 97–126). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. In Zhuangzi’s 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. The Complete Works Of Chuang Tzu, translated by Burton Watson, archived from the original on 1 January 2004In a notoriously obscure passage, one of his characters is even skeptical about skepticism. However, he does not base this on the familiar Western concept of belief, i.e. he does not ask how he knows that he does not know. Zhuangzi’s skepticism centers on the distinctions underlying words. He wonders if we know if we have distinguished correctly between “knowing” and “ignorance.” The Zhuangzi vigorously opposes formal government, which Zhuangzi seems to have felt was problematic at its foundation "because of the opposition between man and nature." [34] The text tries to show that "as soon as government intervenes in natural affairs, it destroys all possibility of genuine happiness." [35] It is unclear if Zhuangzi's positions amounted to a form of anarchism, as the political references in the Zhuangzi are more concerned with what government should not do, rather than what kind of government should exist. [34]