Zhuangzi, or Zhuang Zhou, lived in the fourth century BC, during China's Warring States period. According to the historian Sima Qian he came from Meng in the state of Song and held a minor post at a place called the Lacquer Garden.
The book that bears his name is one of the foundations of Daoist thought. Its Inner Chapters, the part most often attributed to him, teach through stories: the man who dreams he is a butterfly and wakes unsure which he is, Cook Ding whose knife never dulls because he follows the natural spaces, and the gnarled tree that lives long because no carpenter has a use for it.
Sima Qian also tells how a king offered him high office and Zhuangzi declined, preferring his freedom. His writing is playful, sceptical of fixed distinctions, and concerned with wandering at ease through a world that is always changing.
What did the butterfly dream teach you?
Nothing so neat as a lesson. When I woke up, I was simply Zhuang Zhou, solid and heavy enough, with cold feet. But while the wings were flapping, Zhou did not exist. There was only flutter and drift, completely pleased with itself. People always want to turn it into an argument: either Zhou became a butterfly, or the butterfly became Zhou, or nothing is real. But between Zhou and a butterfly there is surely a divide. That is just what things do, shifting from one form to another: 物化, the transformation of things. The trouble starts only when Zhou insists on being the landlord of both states, deciding which one counts as the waking day. Though, who knows? Maybe I am telling you this with antennae right now.
What is the use of being useless?
A carpenter walks past a gnarled oak and will not touch it: no straight beam, no planks, completely useless. So the tree stands for centuries, while the straight pines are chopped down before they can even cast a decent shade. Its use is simply that it gets to keep its life.
How do I stop worrying about what others think?
If a man is crossing a river and an empty boat drifts along and bumps into his barge, even a short-tempered man will not get angry. But if there is someone in that boat, he will shout at them to steer clear. If they do not hear, he shouts again, and by the third time he is cursing. In the first case he was not angry, but in the second he is, because earlier the boat was empty and now it is occupied. If you can empty your own boat as you drift through the world, who can harm you? People judge the boatman, not the hollow wood. Though, to be fair, staying empty is easy to say until the next shout comes across the water. You will probably curse back once or twice anyway.
