How do I know that loving life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death I am not like a man who, having left home in his youth, has forgotten the way back?
Lady Li was the daughter of the border guard of Ai. When she was first taken captive and brought to the state of Jin, she wept until her tears drenched the collar of her robe. But later, when she went to live in the palace of the ruler, shared his couch with him, and ate the delicious meats of his table, she wondered why she had ever wept. How do I know that the dead do not wonder why they ever longed for life?
Chinese Taoist philosopher (c. 369–286 BC)
莊子 Zhūangzi (c. 369 BC – c. 286 BC), literally Master Zhuang, was a Chinese philosopher, who is supposed to have lived during the Warring States Period, corresponding to the Hundred Schools of Thought. His name is also transliterated as Zhuang Zi, Zhuang Zhou, Chuang Tzu, Chuang Tse. Chuang was his surname and Tse indicates master; so he would be referred to as Master Chuang. You will also see his name given as "Chuang Chou" or "Zhuang Zhu", this was his proper name, first and last, not an alternate spelling of "Chuang Tzu" or "Zhuangzi".
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Native Name:
莊子
•
庄子
Alternative Names:
Zhuang Zi
•
Chuang Tzŭ
•
Chuang Tzu
•
Chuangtzŭ
•
Chuangtzu
•
Chuang Chou
•
Master Zhuang
•
Tchouang-tse
•
Chuang-tzu
•
Chuang-tse
•
Zhuangzi
•
Zhuang zi
From Wikidata (CC0)
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For whatever we may define as a beam as opposed to a pillar, as a leper as opposed to the great beauty Xishi, or whatever might be from some perspective strange, grotesque, uncanny, or deceptive, there is a course that opens them into one another, connecting them to form a oneness. Their divisions are formations, their formations are destructions.
Man’s conscious understanding is puny, but it is all that it does not understand that allows it to understand what is meant by the Heavenly. To understand it as the Great Oneness, as the Great Dark, as the Great Eye, as the Great Equality, as the Great Scope, as the Great Dependable, as the Great Stability — that is to arrive at the utmost.