Wu-Weifarer's Daoist Quotes, page 3

At the basis of Zhuangzi's world-view...lies the elimination of the rational, dividing intellect. Yet the process of elimination also begins with the intellect itself.  One must first become aware that not all is well with the way one thinks and feels.  Rational intellectual speculation about the human predicament and the critical questioning of one's personal identity are the starting point of Zhuangzi's quest, which soon leads to the mystical immersion in chaos and the ecstatic joy of free and easy wandering.  -- Livia Kohn, Early Chinese Mysticism

Deconstruction is ultimately a technique to show how each text undermines itself, betrays itself, and defeats its own attempts at conveying meaning... Derrida's picture is ultimately negative.  It subverts any attempt to get at reality, undermines all possible interpretations, and shows how any text unravels itself.  Derrida...provides no solution, believing that there is no solution to provide... Zhuangzi does not stop here... in having a positive picture... Zhuangzi departs radically from Derrida... Zhuangzi believes there is a way the world truly is and that we do have access to it if only we give up the usual methods of reason and language and rely on natural intuition.  Thus, there is more than just text; there is unmediated access to reality. -- Mark Berkson, "Language: The Guest of Reality"

Nothing is better than holding on to the uncarved block.  One who is wise may accordingly become a capable minister; one who is brave may accordingly be used in a military capacity; one who is clever may accordingly be assigned bureaucratic duties; and one who is strong may accordingly be charged with heavy responsibilities.  But the uncarved block, as such, all muddled together, has no such predilection and almost totally lacks existence.  Thus the text [Laozi] says, "none...can make it his servitor." --  Wang Bi, Commentary on the Tao Te Ching, tr. by Richard John Lynn

What is good for one creature in one situation may not be good for another in a different one... Zhuangzi is what may be described as a "soft relativist," believing that values vary depending on the individual and the situation, though he quite clearly rejects the "hard relativism" that states that what is good for people is whatever they think is good for them. -- Paul Kjellberg and Philip J. Ivanhoe, Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi

One's passions and appetites, [Chuang Tzu] explains, are not what one-cannot-help-but-be.  One's appetition differs from one's inborn nature... To discern one's "nature," the unique, basal nature that is tacitly but clearly there in all that one intends and feels, and then to bring all of the latter in line with the former, is an extremely important task of life... what Chuang Tzu called mind-fasting... Happiness is... unity between what cannot-be-helped and what one-cannot-help-but-be.  And one somehow knows it when one comes to that situation - where one is disturbed neither by sorrow nor by joy, but is just as one is, in sorrow or in joy. -- Kuang-ming Wu, Chuang Tzu

He stretches and bends along with things, Like an echo or a shadow. Even when looking down over a precipice, He does not lose what he holds on to... If one knows how to look upon himself as large and the world as small, he is close to dao... What I call "joy" is a person getting what is to be got within himself... -- Huainanzi, tr. by D.C. Lau and Roger T. Ames

If being wealthy is taken to mean having the means to satisfy one's every want, all but the very poor can become rich as though at a single stroke of a magician's wand simply by ceasing to want more than is really necessary for sustaining life! By being content with little and not giving a rap for what the neighbors think, one can attain a very large measure of freedom, shedding care and worry in a trice. -- John Blofield, Taoism

Given the Lao Tzu's rejection of any universal standard of morality, laws are regarded as being relative to the interests of those who would inflict them on society at large.  They are seen as the imposition of unnatural constraints on the spontaneous development of the many in order to serve the few in power.  As such, they are nothing short of "a form of aggression on the nature of man." With laws and regulations restricting the natural expression of the people, a tension develops between the oppressive directives of political authority and the people's impetus for natural development.  As the government introduces increasingly severe measures to cope with the tension, its action in turn leads to an increasingly strong reaction from the people... Thus all "active" measures to effect social order serve only to hasten its dissolution...the people... rise up to destroy the source of this tension... Since law is usually regarded as being based on some notion of universal morality, it follows that Chuang Tzu would reject such law as being both arbitrary and personally inhibiting... [Yet] there is more than a hint in these "Inner Chapters" that Chuang Tzu would recommend an expedient conformity to prevailing conditions and standards.  The "realizing person" (chen jen), while aware of the fundamental emptiness of politically imposed regulations, does not flagrantly violate these rules to purposely endanger himself... The attitudes of Lao Tzu and the "core" Chuang Tzu are generally consistent: both hold that law is one aspect of the sham called culture and, further, that is is contrary to the notion of wu-wei and inimical to the natural development of those residing within its jurisdiction. -- Roger T. Ames, The Art of Rulership

In order for psychotherapy to be constructively effective, there needs to be a modification of experience within the patient, in contrast to the modification of knowledge.  The difference I take to be this: Experience is more of a living transplant and knowledge an inventoried item... The transplant is part of the organism... The art of human influence rests largely on the art of transplantation, not necessarily that of education.  We are quite proficient in the imbedding of knowledge, but seem rather awkward in the transplanting of experience. --  R.G.H Siu, Ch'i: A Neo-Taoist Approach to Life

...only when all men have complete liberty, can they follow their spontaneous nature and so obtain happiness.  An advocate of complete liberty, however, must also be an advocate of complete equality.  For if in the relations of man with man and thing with thing, we once recognize that there are some cases in which "that" is better than "this"... then what is good must work toward reforming what is not good so as to make it also good. And then the doctrine of complete liberty falls to the ground.  Chuang Tzu... maintained that there is nothing in the world which is not good, and that there is no point of view which is not right.  In this lies a fundamental difference between Chuang Tzu's philosophy and Buddhism.  For Buddhism, on the contrary, maintains that there is nothing in the world which is good, and no point of view which is not false... The viewpoints of men...differ in as many ways as do the sounds produced by the wind roaring through the openings in the trees of the forest, as described in the first paragraph of Chuang Tzu's second chapter.  In the final analysis, which is right and which is wrong?... Let us regard the points of view in the world as we do the "changing sounds" or the chirps of young birds... No one ever wished to dispute about the sounds of the wind or the cries of birds, as to whether they are right or wrong.  Why, then, should we hold heated arguments only about the rightness or wrongness of men's words?  We should, in short, simply let them alone. -- Richard Gotshalk, The Beginnings of Philosoply in China

If we let the right and the wrong, the 'this' and the 'that' alone...without considering them to be right and wrong or this and that, no opposition will exist between them.  Therefore, "not to discriminate 'that' and 'this' as opposites is the very essence of Tao."  'This' and 'that' are both alternatively right and wrong... The Sage's attitude toward the alternating right and wrong of things, is simply to let them alone.  Therefore his attitude does not abolish the distinctions of right and wrong, but transcends them, an act which may be called "following two courses at once." -- Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy

Be they moral, intellectual, technical or even economical, all standards prove to be "tangles" to humanness, which is destroyed thereby... The fault lies in setting up a standard of what one ought to be... What destroys human autonomy... is "trying"... One can try to stop trying... This is merely a special form of trying to "help" what cannot be helped... One can simply give up and not try at all.  But this is muddy ineptitude, which is a sure invitation to disaster. ...it is important to free oneself from entanglements in trying-versus-not-trying... One must therefore "fast" oneself and "empty" all the internal disturbances...whereby one returns to a perceptive listening of "the piping of earth," that is, to the empirical self that has been for too long repressed and tyrannized. -- Kuang-ming Wu, Chuang Tzu

There is a way the world really is, a true reality, an underlying Dao.  While this cannot be accessed through words, it can be experienced by those who lose themselves in a skill, whose rational mind falls away to leave room for intuition.  It is in such states that, in a sense, the sage no longer acts; rather the Dao acts through the sage... Sages live in the world without getting caught up in it, just as Zhuangzi, the skillful user of language, uses language without getting caught up in it... in the world, but not of it; within language, but not its prisoner.  Zhuangzi's sages are not recluses or hermits; they remain in the world.  He does not, like Laozi, advocate any return to a primitive, rural utopia.  Such a view would be putting a value on one form of social organization over another, falsely believing one to be the cure for our illness.  The freedom that Zhuangzi advocates is an inner one. -- Mark Berkson, "Language: The Guest of Reality"

What lies ahead after death is as unknown as is what lies before birth.  At most it is evident that what makes up the creature has come in good measure from other things before us and will be integrated into other things after our passage.  Whether there is anything else, and if so, what, is unknown, and not in need of being known for life to have its meaning.  For that meaning is realized - or we fail of its realization - in the living of life itself. The meaning in question is realized in a life lived in unity with things and in community with human beings.  Yet the ultimate ground of this living unity - the Great Clod: the Creator of things - is received and acknowledged in the living connection with things only through a spiritual cognizance. -- Richard Gotshalk, The Beginnings of  Philosophy in China

References

Ames, Roger T.  The Art of Rulership: A Study of Ancient Chinese Political Thought. SUNY Press. 1994. Berkson, Mark.  "Language: The Guest of Reality--Zhuangzi and Derrida on Language, Reality, and Skillfulness," in Paul Kjellberg and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds., Essays on Skepticism, Relativism,  and Ethics in the Zhuangzi. SUNY Press.  1996. Blofield, John. Taoism: The Road to Immortality. Shambhala.  1985. Callahan, William A.  "Cook Ding's Life on This Whetstone: Contingency, Action, and Inertia in the Zhuangzi," in Roger T. Ames, ed., Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi. SUNY Press.  1998. Chang, Chung-yuan. Creativity and Taoism: A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art and Poetry.  Julian Press. 1963. Csikszentmihalyi, Mark, and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds., Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the  Laozi. SUNY Press. 1999. Fung Yu-lan.  A History of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. 1: The Period of the Philosophers. Princeton University Press. 1952. Girardot, N. J. Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism: The Theme of Chaos (hun-tun). University  of Calfornia Press. 1974. Gotshalk, Richard. The Beginnings of Philosophy in China.  University Press. 1999. Ivanhoe, Philip J.  "The Concept of de ("Virtue") in the Laozi," in Mark Csikszentmihalyi and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds., Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi.  SUNY Press. 1999. Jochim, Chris.  "Just Say No to 'No Self' in Zhuangzi," in Roger T. Ames, ed., Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi. SUNY Press.  1998. Jung, Carl G.  "Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower," in Collected Works, Vol. 13. Princeton University Press.  1967. Kjellberg, Paul, and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds., Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi.. SUNY Press. 1996. Kohn, Livia. Early Chinese Mysticism: Philosophy and Soteriology in the Taoist Tradition.           Princeton University Press. 1992. Lau, D. C. and Roger T. Ames, translators, Yuan Dao: Tracing Dao to Its Source.  Ballantine          Books. 1998. Liu Xiaogan.  "An Inquiry into the Core Value of Laozi's Philosophy," in Mark Csikszentmihalyi and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds., Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi. SUNY Press. 1999. Moore, Kathleen Dean. Holdfast. Lyons Press.  1999. Robinet, Isabelle.  "The Diverse Interpretations of the Laozi," in Mark Csikszentmihalyi and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds., Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi. SUNY Press. 1999. Siu, R.G.H.  Ch'i: A Neo-Taoist Approach to Life. Cambridge MIT Press. 1974. Tsai, Chih-chung, Zhuangzi Speaks: The Music of Nature.  Princeton University Press.  1992. Waley, Arthur.  Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China.  Stanford University Press. 1982. Wang Bi.  The Classic of the Way and Virtue, tr. Richard John Lynn.  Columbia University Press.  1999. Welch, Holmes.  Taoism. The Parting of the Way.  Beacon Press.  1957. Wong, Eva. Lieh-Tzu. A Taoist Guide to Practical Living. Shambhala. 1995. Wu, Kuang-ming. The Butterfly as Companion.  Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang Tzu.  SUNY Press.  1990. Wu, Kuang-ming. Chuang Tzu: World Philosopher at Play.  Crossroad and Scholars.  1982. Yates, Robin D. S. Five Lost Classics: Tao, Huanglao, and Yin-Yang in Han China. Ballantine Books.  1997. Zhang Longxi.  "Qian Zhongshu on Philosophical and Mystical Paradoxies in the Laozi," in Mark Csikszentmihalyi and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds., Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi. SUNY Press. 1999.

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