He urges us to remove our mind from the extremes of passion and come in tune with the stillness of the Tao, which is at the pivot of all being, the pivot around which all opposites converge. The most significant themes of the Chuang Tzu are: What is the Tao and where can we find it? How can we live in harmony with the Tao? He advocates an attitude of wu-wei, the principle of non-action or non-doing, acting without effort or desire, acting without attachment to the results, but simply going with the flow of nature. It was mainly due to the influence of Chuang Tzu that Ch’an Buddhism, usually called by its Japanese name Zen Buddhism, evolved in China from Indian Buddhism. His anecdotes are paradoxical, humorous, or may even seem nonsensical, but have the power to turn the reader’s mind towards truths beyond ordinary logic, culminating in an “aha” moment of self-realization. The Chuang Tzu tells short anecdotes about animals, characters of Chinese legend and history, even his contemporaries. Working from various translations by others, Merton expressed them in his own words yet, according to Burton Watson, a noted scholar of Chinese mystical literature, Merton’s versions remained “almost as close to the original as the translations upon which they are based.”
For both mystics, the Tao is the ultimate abstract source or root of the entire creation – the motive power that underlies everything and to which all must return.Ī short collection of the most accessible and provocative writings from the Chuang Tzu was created by Thomas Merton, the late Jesuit priest, entitled The Way of Chuang Tzu. The writings attributed to Chuang Tzu – traditionally referred to as ‘the Chuang Tzu’ – reveal a perspective similar to that of Lao-Tzu’s mystic teachings of the Tao (the Way). Publisher: New York: New Directions, 2010.Ĭhuang Tzu was a Chinese mystic who is believed to have lived in the third and fourth century BCE, and was probably a contemporary of the legendary mystic Lao-Tzu, author of the Tao Te Ching.
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