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Chuang Tzu
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As to how the world came into being, Chuang-tzu contemplates this topic and poses his own view. He says: 'Heaven is blue because of its quietude, and Earth is tranquil because of its quietude. It is the interaction between Heaven and Earth that makes everything come into being . . . There are myriads of things that took shape by themselves.'(8) In other words, the interaction of Heaven and Earth makes the world exist, everything comes into being spontaneously.(9) Since everything existing comes into being spontaneously, Chuang-tzu maintains, 'everything existing has its origin in nature; nothing is not so, nothing is an exception'.(10) In the process of creation, Chuang-tzu contends that Heaven responds to the Earth through the interaction between Yin and Yang. It is stated in Chapter 21: 'Yin is extremely cold, Yang is extremely hot; Yin originated from Heaven, Yang originated from Earth; Yin descends and Yang ascends, and they interact harmoniously to bring everything into being.'(11) As Yin and Yang never cease motion from the opposite poles, Chuang-tzu maintains that: 'Everything emerges quickly and is always in motion and change.'(12) Seeing that everything is universally and constantly in motion, Chuang-tzu holds that everything is 'simultaneously living and dying, simultaneous affirmative and negative'.(13) There are positive and negative elements within everything, and the joint force of the two elements determines the process of development and change. In the process of development, the conversion of contradictory elements goes closely with the change of quality. When something is split, a new thing is formed, when something is built, some other thing must be destroyed.
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Chuang Tzu's wife died. When Hui Tzu went to convey his condolences, he found Chuang Tzu sitting with his legs sprawled out, pounding on a tub and singing. "You lived with her, she brought up your children and grew old," said Hui Tzu. "It should be enough simply not to weep at her death. But pounding on a tub and singing-this is going too far, isn't it?"
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When Chuang Tzu was about to die, his disciples began planning a splendid funeral. But he said, “I shall have heaven and earth for my coffin; the sun and moon will be the jade symbols hanging by my side; planets and constellations will shine as jewels all around me, and all beings will be present as mourners at the wake. What more is needed? Everything is amply taken care of!”
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Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu, "I have a big tree named ailanthus. Its trunk is too gnarled and bumpy to apply a measuring line to, its branches too bent and twisty to match up to a compass or square. You could stand it by the road and no carpenter would look at it twice. Your words, too, are big and useless, and so everyone alike spurns them!"
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Because Chuang Tzu envisioned reality as a holistic process of change, he argued that it could not be understood in the isolating terms of categorical thought. Such thinking, in his opinion, posited artificial or "man--made" (wei/way] "distinctions" [chih/ger] that made things appear as if they were distinct with fixed properties. on the basis of these apparent distinctions, people then assigned "names" to things and classified them into categories or "species." He felt such reductive thinking fractured our vision of reality (see the failure of discriminations p. 39) and left us unaware of its true "Heavenly" appearance. Seen in that aspect, nothing is ever more than a temporary phase of an unending, fluid process. Categorical distinctions and categories are ... but relative terms (see this and that p. 34, Jo's analysis p. 100, and the Oak's view p. 60) that have no ultimate meaning. This is an important point for Chuang Tzu, because it means that there are no absolutes and that nothing is determined or conditioned by any other thing.
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When Chuang Tzu was wandering in the park at Tiao-ling, he saw a strange bird which came from the south. Its wings were seven feet across. Its eyes were an inch in circumference. And it flew close past ChuangTzu's head to alight in a chestnut grove.
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