"Free and unfettered", in Zhuangzi, refers to the greatest spiritual freedom that people reach beyond the limitations of secular concepts and their values. "Swimming" does not mean physical swimming, but more importantly, spiritual swimming. After the physical bondage is lifted, you can naturally travel around the world. Wandering is the spiritual realm of independence and absolute freedom above everything else. In Zhuangzi's view, the best way to achieve this state is to "stay in the heart" and "sit and forget", both of which embody a kind of spiritual freedom, a kind of spiritual freedom of harmony between man and nature.
The full text can be divided into three parts. The first part is the main body of the whole article from the beginning to the "unknown sage". By comparing many examples that can't be "carefree", it shows that to truly achieve the realm of freedom, we must be "self-centered", "reactive" and "nameless".
The second part, from "Yao made the world submit" to "suddenly lost the world", further expounds that "no self" is the only way to get rid of all kinds of bondage and dependence. As long as you really forget yourself and everything, you can reach the realm of freedom. Only "no self" is the person with the highest spiritual realm.
The third part, from Keiko Calling Zhuangzi Yue to the end, discusses what is really useful and what is useless, which shows that we should not be stuck by things, but make useless useful, and further expresses our life purport of opposing active participation in social activities and pursuing leisure travel without any constraints.
The main content of Zhuangzi's carefree travel thought is to achieve the spiritual realm of "doing something" and "doing everything". Zhuangzi used many fables to express the connotation of carefree travel in "Happy Travel", exposing the secular "should be" performance. First of all, Zhuangzi pointed out that big ships can only sail by the depth of accumulated water, while Dapeng can only soar by "repairing the wind", so they are all "waiting for others".
For another example, Zhuangzi thinks that Song's thought still stays in the realm of "deciding inside and outside, debating honor and disgrace", and has not completely surpassed the dispute between "deciding inside and outside" and "debating honor and disgrace", but is indifferent to this debate, so it is not a real "thinks lightly". Zhuangzi criticized the secular waiting, put forward the ideal realm of pursuing waiting, and also pointed out the specific ways from waiting to waiting. These are: "No one has himself", "God is useless" and "Saint is nameless".
In "Happy Travel", Zhuangzi expounded his views on "uselessness" and "great use" in two dialogues with Keiko on how to treat the use of "great mystery" and "big tree". Keiko said to Zhuangzi: Wang Wei has brought me a great seed. My tree has grown into five stone heads to hold water slurry, but its firmness cannot be bootstrapped. If you think it's useless, there's no place to put it, or it's too big, I'll slap it for being useless. "
Zhuangzi was inspired by the story: there were good people in the Song Dynasty who didn't want to be turtle medicine, and the world took it as a matter. When the guests hear it, please buy its square hundred gold. Zhuangzi said to Keiko, "This son has five stones. Why not worry that it will float in the rivers and lakes, and worry that it is too big for you? Then the master will still have a generous heart and a husband! " ! Zhuangzi told Keiko how to "skillfully use" the "five stones" and suggested that he could tie the big gourd into a waist boat and use it to float on the rivers and lakes, which is a free "carefree" realm.
It can be seen that Zhuangzi attached great importance to the intrinsic use value of things. "Useless" is the external value of things, and "use" is the internal value of things. Only when it is useless can it be of great use. From the point of view of carefree travel, people should pay attention to the intrinsic life value and self-value, and skillfully use "useless use" to realize self-value.
Extended data:
The conception of "Happy Travel" adopts the writing technique of visual literary thinking, and uses a lot of simple fables, myths and dialogues, with rich and colorful styles. Imagination gallops like a fine horse in the universe, absorbing interesting themes related to the central idea of expression, and vividly propagating the author's thoughts of despising high officials and being generous, clinging to the emperor's kindness and generosity, denying reality, and pursuing absolute freedom without self, reactive power and namelessness.
It profoundly exposed the hypocrisy of the rulers to win over talents with meritorious service, which had a positive impact on the development of prose in later generations. In Happy Wandering, full of vitality and reverie, the author's artistic style attracted a large number of readers, making the work a famous masterpiece in ancient Chinese fable theory.
The characteristics of Zhuangzi's works are exquisite conception, good at combining imagination with reality, good at combining dialogue with explanation, good at combining satire with analysis, which makes people read and think, and makes them memorable. The article arranges three parts around "Happy Travel": metaphor, explanation and expression.
In this metaphor, neither Peng nor Ba knows how to fly with the wind, which shows their arrogance and complacency. Turning to the second part, political high-ranking officials and dignitaries show their talents in a mediocre way, like small and poor birds. Finally, they point out that only by being open-minded and asking for nothing can they achieve the realm of self-lessness, reactive power and nameless freedom and nothingness.
References:
(Baidu Encyclopedia: Xiaoyao Tour)