The story of "Zhuang Zhou dreamed of a butterfly" comes from "Zhuangzi·Neipian·Qiwulun": "In the past, Zhuang Zhou dreamed of a butterfly, a lifelike butterfly. Self-explanation is suitable for ambition! I don't know the Zhou Dynasty. Suddenly I wake up, then I wonder if Zhou's dream is a butterfly? Zhou and a butterfly must be different." The main idea is that one day, Zhuang Zhou dreamed that he became a butterfly. , feeling relaxed and contented, very happy, not knowing that he was Zhuang Zhou. After a while, he woke up from the dream and found that he was Zhuang Zhou lying on the bed. So he was confused: Did Zhuang Zhou dream and turned into a butterfly, or did the butterfly dream and turned into Zhuang Zhou?
The reason why Zhuangzi had such strange ideas was that he always had a philosophical thought of "equalizing all things", and this fable is a famous article that promotes his idea of ??equalizing all things. Zhuangzi has always believed that the boundaries between life and death, and between things and myself, are illusory and can be broken, and only after they are broken can people gain true happiness. In the eyes of ordinary people, waking is one state and dreaming is another state. The two are different. But in Zhuang Zhou's view, they are just a phenomenon, a form and a stage of the movement of "Tao". It is said that "things and I are endless, and things and I have no boundaries." This is actually the Taoist philosophical thought that "all things in the universe are essentially one".
Through the fable of "Dream Butterfly", Zhuangzi raised a philosophical question - how do people understand reality? If dreams were real enough, people would have no ability to know that they were dreaming. In fact, not only Zhuang Zhou, many people would occasionally have the idea that life is like a dream at a certain moment, but Zhuang Zhou vividly expressed this realization using fables. Li Bai wrote in "Fifty-Nine Ancient Style Poems": "Zhuang Zhou dreamed of butterflies, and the butterflies were Zhuang Zhou. The whole body changed, and everything was good and long-term. Now I know Penglai water, and it has become a clear and shallow stream again. The people who grow melons in Qingmen are in the east of the old days. Marquis of Ling. Wealth and honor are so great, what do you want from Yingying? "It means that life is like a butterfly's dream, unpredictable. The former Marquis of Dongling is now a melon grower outside the city. How can wealth be determined? Is it worth pursuing? It can be seen that Zhuang Zhou's idea is weird and weird, but it is not "highbrow". On the contrary, it has been praised by many people.
Zhuang Sheng’s Dream of Butterflies