Zhuang Zi lived in the fourth century B.C., during the Warring States period of Chinese history. Historians describe this era as one of social, economic, political and moral upheavals; yet, ironically enough, it was also one of great material and technological strides. States clashed against one another for power and dominion, and people starved under tyrannical rulers; yet the wars stimulated technological developments. New skills in casting iron introduced a new class of people engaged in commerce. Bronze alloys, soldering and inlaying came into use alongside weaving and other crafts. For currency, shells were replaced by minted metal coins. Imposed systems of levies financed the digging of canals and the exploitation of forests and lands. The improvement of writing instruments made writing and communication relatively easier and faster, and thus literary works abounded, became longer and their authors less anonymous.1 During this period the "hundred schools of philosophy" arose, each trying to grapple and put some order into the chaos and complications of society. The chaotic conditions of the times stimulated the Chinese mind to become more alert and more receptive to the outlandish new ideas that were in the air.

Zhuang Zi himself described the situation of his day in the following words:2

While Confucianism saw the solution to this predicament in the propagation of the jun zi, the man of virtue, Lao Zi in the Dao De Jing emphasized inaction in government. Zhuang Zi, on the other hand, addressed himself more to the individual3 with the immediate concern of how the individual can survive in an age of turmoil, especially under a bad government that is active, or more accurately over-active. In the Book of Zhuang Zi, the central problem of Zhuang Zi is "How can man be or remain free in an unfree world?" If our contemporary world is not dissimilar to Zhuang Zi’s,4 then perhaps Zhuang Zi’s prescription could contribute to an answer to the predicament of living in a chaotic world.

The gist of Zhuang Zi’s prescription is found in his chapter entitled, "Perfect Joy".5 At the outset, he poses the question that has preoccupied many existentialists today: "Is there to be found on earth a fullness of joy, or is there no such thing? Is there some way to make life fully worth living, or is this impossible?" One is reminded at once of the striking lines opening Albert Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."6 The question, no doubt, is at once metaphysical and ethical (perhaps even psychological, too), for it hinges on the meaning of being and the very way of living necessary for man.

Zhuang Zi, in a view both similar and dissimilar, goes through a description of what people consider to be the source of happiness or joy:7

What is so "unhappy" about wealth, prestige and achievement? All are things or material objects to have; but the more one possesses material objects the more one wants to have. Because it is of the very nature of an object that it can be lost, stolen or destroyed, the one who possesses such objects naturally would want to secure his or her possessions from these risks by having more and more objects, and more safeguards. Consequently, the possessor is enslaved by the very things he or she possesses.8 This is especially true for those who are wealthy and those who hold power. Now as then, the two are almost always synonymous. Zhuang Zi says in another passage:9

As regards long life, striving for it also causes unhappiness. Death is unavoidable, and the span of life is not quite within our power. The person who strives to live long so thirsts for "survival in the future", that he or she forgets to live in the present. Similar to one who pursues wealth, prestige and achievement,10

"What about self-sacrificing officials and scholars? They are honored by the world because they are good, upright, self-sacrificing men."11 Yet, for Zhuang Zi, their self-sacrifice leads to death or the threat of death. The self-sacrificing official is like the monkey who did not flee to hide from the Prince of Wu, but instead faced his attackers and consequently was destroyed.12 It is to be doubted then that the way of self-sacrificing men is indeed the way of happiness if in the end its goodness is fatal.

"The birth of a man is the birth of his sorrow."13

If the standard of the world as to what is happiness is that of man it brings him not happiness but sorrow. Zhuang Zi laments the way people go about attaining what they consider as happiness -- they are "carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction."14

Why is the birth of man the birth of his sorrow; is man then the source of his own unhappiness? Zhuang Zi seems to imply this in many interesting accounts. In chapter I, for example, he tells the story of the mystical p’eng bird who can ascend to the height of ninety thousand li for six months duration, and the tiny cicada and the young dove. The contrast is evident: one is big, the others small, yet both are equally happy. In the case of men, some men are equipped with knowledge for the duties of some office, others with skill to secure harmony in a district, still others with virtue which befits them to be rulers. All are in harmony with their de, their nature. Unhappiness results when one tries to tamper with it and go against his nature. It is man with his cleverness who does this most of the time for what comes from man is artificial. Beings in their natural state are happy and carefree; it is when man interferes with the course of nature that sorrow is born.15

The story is told that once a seabird alighted outside the capital of Lu, and the Marquis became fascinated with it. He gave it ample wine, invited musicians to play for it and had a bullock slaughtered to feed it. But the bird would not eat nor drink, nor be nursed. In three days, it died. For Chuang Tzu this was due to treating the bird not as a bird, but as a man. "Water, which is life to fish, is death to man."16

The trouble with humans is that they tend to impose their own concept of happiness on others, when each being is happy in its natural state of simplicity and spontaneity. In other words, happiness is relative to the nature of each being: what may be happiness for the Marquis is not necessarily happiness for the bird; what is happiness for the duck is not happiness for the crane. How does Zhuang Zi know this? He does so by intuition, for in the argument between Zhuang Zi and Hui Zi regarding the "Joy of the Fishes" Chuang Tzu concludes by saying, "I know the joy of the fishes in the river through my own joy, as I go walking along the same river."17

Similarly, the viewpoints as to what constitutes happiness for men differ in many ways. Arguments naturally arise when people stick to their concepts of right and wrong, happiness and unhappiness. "This" gives rise to "that" and to another "this" and another "that" ad infinitum;18 arguments can lead to wars, and wars to suffering, all in the name of what one thinks is happiness. What then is to be done?

"My opinion is that you never find happiness until you stop looking for it. My greatest happiness consists precisely in doing nothing whatever that is calculated to obtain happiness."19

For Zhuang Zi, the key to happiness lies in doing nothing, wu-wei. Wu-wei means acting by not-acting, doing nothing. At first glance, this may seem negative, a certain kind of passivity towards events. Yet for Zhuang Zi (as well as for Lao Zi) this is an active letting-things-be. For Lao Zi, the main reason for wu-wei is the law of reversion which is the way dao works -- that is, when one thing reaches one extreme it reverts to its opposite. When one strives for happiness, one reverts to unhappiness. Zhuang Zi, on the other hand, goes beyond Lao Zi in pointing to the de of dao as the ground for wu-wei. To do nothing is to let things be themselves in their own nature, in their own de, because that is where their happiness lies.20

Zhuang Zi’s statement, therefore, that "perfect joy is to be without joy" cannot be interpreted literally. It is not to be interpreted as meaning there is no joy at all to be found in life. Rather, there is joy in life in simply being oneself, in letting things be, not in striving for it. "Contentment and well-being become possible the moment you cease to act with them in view, and if you practice non-doing wu-wei, you will have both happiness and well-being."21 There is no need to strive for happiness because happiness is already there in nature, in what is natural and spontaneous, in the dao which is not a thing, but the One, the whole.

Zhuang Zi sums up the whole chapter by saying: 22

In the above lines Zhuang Zi has gone beyond the notion of relative happiness implied in letting things be. More than just letting things be, avoiding striving for happiness, is the positive movement of resting in serenity, in tranquility. To be happy is to cease being concerned with things and to embrace the One, the dao, who is silent and tranquil. It is "to unlearn so that you can be led by dao. Be a child of dao."23 Unless one frees oneself from the cares of the world, one cannot be tranquil in dao, and vice versa, unless one rests oneself in dao, one cannot free oneself from the cares of the world.24

Knowing when to stop. Zhuang Zi says:25

We are said to live in a "rat race" as the pace of living (and dying) becomes faster than that with which nature, human and physical, can cope. This has resulted in energy crises, pollution, and in what Alvin Toffler calls "future shock", which eventually may lead to the destruction of human beings. Zhuang Zi tells the story of a man who in running away from his shadow and footsteps eventually died. Had he only sat down under a tree, his shadow and footsteps would have disappeared.26 To know when to stop is to know that one is going too far, that one has had enough and needs to take a break, to sleep it off, to rest.

Knowing when to stop is grounded in the belief that there is a season for everything, "a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to reap. . . ."27 If one realizes that there is a time for everything, then one acts with timing or, as the Greeks would say, with kairos. Zhuang Zi says:28

"With neither sorrow nor joy" refers to staying in the pivot of things. This means not to lean to one side, but to be at the center of events because the center is where one has a broader, wider view. Positively speaking, to be in the pivot of things is to be flexible, to be broadminded and all embracing. It means to "take in past and present, without sorrow for the past or impatience with the present. . . . Not rejoice in success or lament in failure."29 In arguments, it means seeing that both sides are right, to take no side. Taking-no-side and treating things and people equally does not mean insensibility, as may appear at first glance: rather, they mean being sensible to things, past, present and future. Sensibility differs from sensitivity: to be sensitive is to be "touchy", to be carried away by one’s self and one’s emotion. Sensibility, on the other hand, is an awareness that transcends the narrow confines of one’s ego; it is centrifugal in direction, and yet does not lose one’s hold on oneself. For example, I may want very much to go out today to see a movie. Suddenly it rains heavily. Instead of crying childishly because my wish cannot materialize, perhaps I should in a childlike manner make my stay indoors enjoyably listening to music or doing some reading.

Being Humble Because Grounded on the Dao. Being oneself, however, is being humble because one’s self is grounded on the Dao or Absolute. The source of misery for contemporary man seems to be the lack of a sense of the spirit, the holy, the Absolute. Instead, the modern mind tends to be calculative, assertive, acquisitive and quantitative. Zhuang Zi presents a different outlook on life: an attitude of humility realizing that one is embedded in the Dao. Before this Dao one is nobody,30 but in the Dao one is secure and free. To be lost in the Dao is not to be lost at all, but to find one’s being. Far from being simply an attempt to seclude oneself from society, Taoism teaches us to embrace a greater, more inclusive society, namely, the Dao from which all the ten thousand myriad things arose, and of which society is only a part.31

The above prescriptions of Zhuang Zi to my mind are applicable to modern man today. They are interpretations of Zhuang Zi’s wu-wei, not literally but in spirit. Were they to be paraphrased in modern language, probably they would echo the words of the now popular poem and song, Desiderata, minus the last sentence.32