Finally finished Zhuangzi.
TBH, I'm not really sure what the point of this book was. It said a lot of clever things, and sometimes was funny. It might be summarized as, "you're not all that."
Well, I've now read the two main texts of #Daoism / #Taoism . What next? Maybe Huxley's "Perennial Philosophy," which I have here. Very dense writing, not like his other books.
It sounds like you got the lesson because this book review basically says “meh, it’s not all that.”
One of my favorite passages in this book is the story of the butterfly.
I forgot it 😅
But yeah, most of the stories are cute and I imagine them being acted out in a play
In short, it is about him waking up from a dream that he was a butterfly, only to turn around and essentially ask “how do I know I’m not a butterfly dreaming im a human?”
I think it’s a beautiful parable. One that addresses the nature of the self, and fundamentally questions the means at which we self identify.
I use 荘子 parables in my book often. There is a lot of wisdom in there.
