Who was Chuang Tzu?

Chuang Tzu (Master Chuang) lived in ancient China sometime around 300 BC. His personal life is a mystery. All that we can really say about him is that he wrote one of the most entertaining and profound books ever written.

Let’s, then, begin with the philosophy he presents in his book.

He observes: I am not my body. I am not my thoughts. I am not my social position. I am awareness, this here-and-now field of consciousness in which all these here-and-now things exist. And I am energy—this felt sense of aliveness, these felt inclinations, urges, promptings—here-and-now engaging with the world.

Having awoken to his nature as here-and-now awareness-and-energy, he sees that nothing can harm him and that everything is a gift with which to play. He sees that to identify with wealth and social standing, or an agenda, or a young, healthy body would be to fail to see the majesty of nature here-and-now spread out before him.

Let’s turn to you.

You face difficulties. Perhaps the government, or your boss, or your neighbours are behaving badly, in ways you wish they were not? Perhaps your partner, or your child? Perhaps nature (a destructive storm; a harmful pathogen)? Perhaps your body, or your thoughts, or your emotions?

What to do?

Take up arms? Submit? Retreat to the hills?

Chuang Tzu answers: It is not what you do that matters, but how you do.

He says: Identify with awareness, get in touch with your energetic sense of engagement with things, and from that place—act. With grace and good humour. Like water flowing to fill a terrain.

These words of mine—identify with awareness, get in touch with your energetic sense of engagement with things—are abstract and so perhaps without meaning. Chuang Tzu’s philosophy is not. He illustrates his vision with grand metaphors and charming parables. For example, he represents your field of consciousness as a mythically large bird whose wings span to the horizon. Your chattering brain and proud ego present as a cicada and a pigeon. You’ll be invited to engage with things as if you are a noble charioteer whose chariot platform is the entire world and whose spirited team of horses the dynamic process of change itself. These images provide practical guidance. They have helped me to live a more engaged and playful life. Dear reader, there is every chance they can help you, too, to live a more engaged and playful life.

Given that New Age woo has an almost monopoly hold on the words ‘awareness’, ‘consciousness’, and ‘energy’, allow me to say that there is nothing woo about Chuang Tzu’s philosophy. If you love the clarity and intellectual rigour of the Stoics, and Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein, you will find yourself in good company with Chuang Tzu.

You may be wondering what someone from the ancient world could possibly offer us in our present predicament. We who face existential threats. The possibility of annihilation by nuclear bombs, an engineered pandemic, environmental collapse, artificial intelligence. True, Chuang Tzu did not face these threats. But he didface this:a world in which autocrats and their minions inflict unspeakable harm and annihilation on entire populations. Chuang Tzu, like us, lived in the shadows of existential dangers. The solution he found to the problems of life is as relevant today as it was millennia ago.

Well, so much for Chuang Tzu’s philosophy, as vague as this sketch is. Let’s now see if we can glimpse a little of the man himself.

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Writing in the early first century BC, the Grand Historian Su-ma Chien tells us that Chuang Tzu lived during the second half of the fourth century BC, was a native of Meng (a town in the Dukedom of Sung), and served as an official of some sort.

Scant as these morsels are, we should take them with a pinch of salt. For example, Su-ma Chien says that Chuang Tzu wrote The Old Fisherman, Robber Chih, and Rifling Trunks. Modern scholarship shows, convincingly, that he did not. And he writes a biography of the Taoist sage Lao Tzu that is pure fiction. (To take just one point: he thinks it plausible that Lao Tzu might have lived to be over two-hundred years old.) Biographical scholarship in first century BC China was not what it is today.

But let’s say that Chuang Tzu did serve as an official. This means he was a member of the gentry social class: a rung below the nobility, but above the merchants, tradesmen, and farmers. That doesn’t necessarily mean he was wealthy (the material circumstances of the gentry ranged from very wealthy to very poor), but it does mean he wasn’t labouring in the fields.

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There are several anecdotes about Chuang Tzu in the Chuang Tzu. (The Chuang Tzu is an anthology that includes Chuang Tzu’s book, but which is mostly comprised of stories and essays written by other people. See: How Chuang Tzu’s long-lost book was discovered and excavated.) We read that he’s friends with the philosopher and chief minister of Wei, Hui Tzu (Master Hui). He refuses an offer to be chief minister of Chu. He lives in poverty. He’s married and has children. But these accounts aren’t history, they’re stories. They’re like the tale that when the Buddha was born lotus petals blossomed. They’re like the parable of the thirteenth-century Persian, Nasrudin, who lost his keys in his bedroom but searched for them under a street lamp because the light was better there.

If you’re poor you’ll probably like hearing that Chuang Tzu, too, was poor. If you keep missing out on that promotion you might console yourself with the thought that Chuang Tzu refused high office. And if your kids are driving you mad you might find comfort in the thought that Chuang Tzu, too, had children. But what if you’re rich? What if you’ve been promoted to a high-up position? What if you don’t have children? Is Chuang Tzu against these life paths? No. He is neither for nor against them. His focus is elsewhere. Chuang Tzu doesn’t care what we do, his interest is in how we do.

Did Chuang Tzu actually know Hui Tzu? Did he actually live in poverty? Did he actually refuse an offer to be chief minister?

Did the historical Nasrudin actually lose his keys in his bedroom and then look for them under a street lamp?

Was Chuang Tzu tall? Short? Handsome? Ugly? If he married, was he happily married? Did he have a lover on the side? Perhaps he was gay? Perhaps a recluse?

We don’t know.

In one story he tells of a time he dreamt he was a butterfly (Chapter 2.9). When he woke from this dream he wondered, ‘Was the butterfly in Chou’s dream? Is Chou in the butterfly’s dream?’ (Chou is Chuang Tzu’s given name.) For Chuang Tzu, being Chou or the butterfly—and by extension, being married or single, a bum or a boss—is neither here nor there. What matters is being present with the circumstances in which you happen to find yourself. When he happened to be a butterfly, he was a butterfly. When things changed and he happened to be Chou, he was Chou. He identified with neither and was present with each.

It’s like fire and firewood (Chapter 3.6). As fire passes from log to log, awareness passes from moment to moment. Now a butterfly, now Chou. Now well-to-do, now a neglected bum. Now this log, now this log. As far as Chuang Tzu is concerned, he is not this or that log. He’s the fire, the that which is alight on now this log, now this log. He’s awareness, energetic presence, ever alight on what here-and-now is.

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So, there are two Chuang Tzus.

There’s Chuang Tzu the fire: the awareness, the energetic presence that alighted on now this log, now this log.

And there’s Chuang Tzu the log of firewood. Or more accurately, the man who was now this log, now this log.

This second Chuang Tzu is the historical Chuang Tzu. The man who lived almost two-and-a-half thousand years ago in ancient China. The man who wrote the stories you’ll read in this book. The man who may or may not have been poor. Who may or may not have been married. Who may or may not have had children.

We don’t know who this Chuang Tzu was. So let’s imagine him in each of these different circumstances. Now poor, now well-to-do. Now single, now married. Now tall, now short. And in each circumstance let’s see a man acting with humility, equanimity, and good humour.

That’s Chuang Tzu the firewood. What about Chuang Tzu the fire: the awareness, the energetic presence that alighted on now this log, now this log?

This Chuang Tzu exists here and now, waiting for you to meet him.

Jesus told his followers that if they split a piece of wood, or lifted up a stone, there he would be. Walt Whitman told his readers that if they ever wanted to find him, all they need do is look at the waves on the shore, or look under their boot-soles. And Chuang Tzu? What does he say? This:

A name constrains by treating a person as a log of firewood.
The fire that passes from log to log
knows not their exhaustion.

What do I hope you will say after reading this book? This:

It is in such places—
this split piece of wood,
beneath this lifted stone,
among these waves on the shore,
beneath my boot-soles,
this burning log—
it is here that I find Walt Whitman,
and Jesus,
and Chuang Tzu.

And not just them,
myself too.

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