Zhuangzi is a philosophical work in itself, but it is not a general philosophy. It discusses the problem of life, and it focuses on people, as well as their living conditions and freedom.
Therefore, this theory itself is deeply literary, a poetic philosophy, and even a philosophical poem.
Moreover, when Zhuangzi expressed his views on life, he did not take life as the object of scientific research, nor did he observe and analyze it calmly from the perspective of a bystander. Instead, he adopted a subjective and lyrical attitude to directly express his real experience of real life and his inner feelings about his life.
Therefore, Zhuangzi is a highly subjective and lyrical book.
The book contains many authors' profound life experiences, and describes Zhuangzi's experience, fate, humanity and unique spiritual world. There is such a passage in Zhuangzi's Journey to the North:
Zhuangzi is an affectionate writer, and his feelings of sadness and joy are very rich. In his works, I often feel his strong passion. His pain, sadness and anger often jump between the lines. For example, in Foreign Tales, there is such a story:
Zhuangzi told this story, of course, to satirize the supervisor, who was very stingy. He didn't want to lend food to Zhuangzi, so he took it out on people like him and satirized them.
However, this kind of anger is more sorrow for their poor living conditions. He is so poor that he can't even boil a pot. He asked others to borrow money, but they refused to lend it to him. His inner pain can be imagined.
In Zhuangzi's "Grandmaster", Zhuangzi wrote such a situation:
From Sang Zi's tragic singing, we can feel a poor man's questioning about the unequal fate. In fact, it is through such stories and songs that Zhuangzi expresses his inner grief. Zhuangzi himself is often too poor to open the pot, so some people say that the book "Zhuangzi" is his cry.
Zhuangzi not only shows the feelings of poor life, but also often shows Zhuangzi's spiritual world as a spiritual explorer.
Through his real feelings, he wrote about his anguish, pursuit, loneliness and sadness in his life journey.
This is not only a memory of friends, but also a sense of loneliness without confidants. My old friend died, and no one argued with him any more.
We know that Hui Shi and Zhuangzi have different views, and they often argue together. Although their views are different, Zhuangzi has such an opponent in real life. After all, during the debate, they all had their own ideas, and their ideas sparkled in the collision. This is also a bosom friend after all. When Hui Shi died, the world was even more desolate. As an outstanding thinker and spiritual explorer, Zhuangzi's thoughts were not understood by many people at that time, and he felt very lonely. Now that even friends like Hui Shi have passed away, he feels even more desolate and lonely in reality.
Therefore, the book Zhuangzi often shows the thoughts and feelings of this spiritual seeker, and shows his loneliness and loneliness in secular life.
So he also knows Zhuangzi very well. He regards Zhuangzi as a poet. The hometown of Zhuangzi mentioned here is the hometown of spirit and the spiritual paradise he pursues, that is, the realm of getting rid of secular bondage and gaining spiritual freedom.
Therefore, after reading Zhuangzi's works, people can feel a hero who is trying to find a spiritual home, and his spiritual world, and feel every beat of his lonely heart. This strong lyricism enabled Zhuangzi to achieve a harmonious blend of philosophy and poetry.
The blending of philosophy and poetry in Zhuangzi is also manifested in the description and praise of the ideal realm.
Its description makes people feel open-minded and independent. Zhuangzi enthusiastically eulogized the Supreme Avenue and described the scene of Tao in style, which was a kind of "swimming" and formed a poetic artistic realm. So this man of God is also the embodiment of Zhuangzi's life realm.
"Master of Health" is written about "knowing how to help cows", and the movements are handy and superb. Dance in the mulberry forest is a classic addition. Such a superb performance is the enlightenment realm that the author wants to praise. Zhuangzi himself is such a humanist. He pursues a life of "harmony with things" and "being one with the creator". This kind of life is essentially unfettered and has a strong artistic quality.
Zhuangzi often praises those who reach the Tao, praises the realm of the Tao, and praises the Avenue. These places are full of poetry, like poetic philosophical prose. His life is full of artistic features. He is not an official. He wandered between mountains and rivers, fished by water, walked in the mountains and lived freely.
He often observes and tastes life with artistic aesthetic vision and attitude, and is good at discovering poetry from it.
Standing on the Haoliang, he could feel that "it is a pleasure for fish to swim leisurely", which led to an interesting debate with Hui Shi. On his deathbed, he also said, "I take heaven and earth as coffins, the sun and the moon as a link, the stars as beads, and everything as a gift." "In the world, I feed on black kites. In the world, I feed on ants. It's too biased to take that and this. " Great discussion.
This kind of talk is broad-minded and romantic, colorful and timeless.
This feeling of the unity of things and me is called "materialization" by Zhuangzi. This is the highest realm of life pursued by Zhuangzi, and it is the embodiment of his attitude towards life, that is, "being connected with things like springs" and "being connected with the spirit of heaven and earth alone, without being arrogant to all things".
Melt yourself in all things, integrate with all things, and forget the poetic mood of things.
Imagination beyond the meaning of dust
Zhuangzi has always been famous for his fantastic imagination.
Liu Xizai in the Qing Dynasty said that Zhuangzi was good at "expressing his birthday and being metaphysical", and his works had the characteristics of "expressing the dust and producing a wonderful pen".
The first book, Happy Travel, showed the magnificent scene of Kun becoming Peng from the beginning:
The imagination is so strange that it almost surpasses the world. He shows the truth and true feelings of life with the help of absurd metaphysical forms, so there are grotesque artistic images and artistic realms in the book.
Zhuangzi borrowed a lot from ancient myths and legends, and at the same time borrowed the romantic spirit of myths to develop strange fantasies and imaginations. Some abstract things were also personified by Zhuangzi. For example, the gods on the ancient temple hill come from the records in Shan Hai Jing. He also borrowed the thinking mode of myth and used the romantic spirit of myth to expand his imagination.
For example, he also broke the boundaries between people and things, described everything in the world as adults, and gave them that kind of will and emotion. Birds can talk to each other, fish in the driveway can be angry with people, and even the skulls of the dead can be sad. Even trees can express their dreams to people. These things are described as adults.
Even some abstract things were personified by Zhuangzi, which made them interesting and attractive.
There are myths and legends from Chu in the south, and there are also many legends from the East China Sea and Qi in the works. These legends were all new at that time. Before Zhuangzi, few people in China's literature described the spectacular sight of the sea, while Zhuangzi's description of the sea was very vivid. It can be said that the strong sea breeze effectively shook off the wings of Zhuangzi's artistic imagination. The Dapeng at sea mentioned at the beginning has never appeared in other people's works, including Qu Yuan's Chu Ci.
Zhuangzi's peculiar imagination is related to his philosophical thinking and way of thinking. Zhuangzi advocated the unity of things. He often inspired people to break through the shackles of rigid thinking patterns, overcome "prejudice" and "ambition" and achieve absolute freedom in the spiritual realm.
He believes that the narrow range of people's life will limit their horizons, which will lead to the limitation of understanding. It's like a frog in a well. You can't talk to them about the sea. It doesn't know the vastness of the sea, and insects in summer can't talk about the ice and snow in winter.
Therefore, only by breaking through the narrow spiritual vision, emancipating the mind and examining everything in the world from a macro perspective can we achieve spiritual liberation and real freedom. "Autumn Water" was written from the beginning, when there was a flood in autumn. The story of Hebo. Poseidon's sentence is to discover the smallness of self from the perspective of the universe. Laugh at those smug, narcissistic and short-sighted opinions.
This is exactly a way of thinking advocated by Zhuang Zi. In this way of thinking, the book has a broad ideological realm.
Zhuangzi also looks at reality from a macro perspective.
Ze Yang and Wang Wei wanted to send troops to attack Qi, and Hui Shi invited Dai Jin to remonstrate. Dai Jin told Wang Wei a story:
Zhuangzi also advocated that the same thing should be viewed from many aspects and angles with various scales, instead of sticking to a fixed vision.
This bizarre imagination just reflects Zhuangzi's ideological logic. In order to break the mindset, Zhuangzi often breaks the conventional way of thinking, infers the unknown from the known, guesses others by himself, doubts the universality of common sense, and suggests the one-sidedness of subjective experience.
For example, it is ridiculous that some people with various physical disabilities have no necks and their shoulders are higher than their heads. However, it is with this mode of thinking that Zhuangzi thinks about problems. People think these people are deformed and ugly. This is by the standard of normal people. They are beautiful and used to normal people. But if they are so deformed, in addition, people think that these people are ugly from a physiological point of view. If people are judged by virtue instead of form, then human virtue may be the most perfect.
This broke people's mindset and produced strange effects.
Why did he put forward such a strange idea?
He just doubted the universality of common sense and revealed people's one-sided subjective experience. Everyone has never experienced death, and according to their own subjective imagination, death is painful, but who can think that death will be very happy?
Zhuangzi told people a story of dialogue with an empty skeleton in Happiness:
This story expresses Zhuangzi's understanding of the pain of life and his view on the integration of life and death.
However, it is precisely because of his special way of thinking that he can have such wonderful reverie, such fantastic imagination and such reason. Doubt common sense, people like life and hate death. Zhuangzi thinks this is all out of prejudice. Since no one alive has ever died, who can say that it will be painful after death?
Why can't you be happy after death? This is Zhuangzi's way of thinking.
In addition, Zhuangzi is also good at using reverse thinking, standing on the opposite side of traditional ideas and putting forward new ideas, despising all concrete things and relative values, and pursuing the highest realm and absolute value. For example, it is often mentioned in books that it is useless to argue without words. It is because of this rebellious thinking that he has a strange imagination. He denied the standards of the secular world and put forward higher standards.
For example, this story in Tian Zifang:
Zhuangzi's story is to tell people that the highest state is not disturbed by the external environment and indifferent to the great changes in the outside world. Compared with this spiritual realm, the archery of Lieyukou is simply not worth mentioning.
He pursues shooting instead of shooting, and he doesn't need a bow and arrow. His spirit has produced such great power. If the average person is in front of such an extreme person, I think he will be impressed and don't need to shoot arrows to conquer. With this rebellious thinking, Zhuangzi led people's thinking to the opposite of habit, resulting in unexpected whimsy. It produced an unusual and peculiar artistic realm.
The article "The World in Zhuangzi" said that Zhuangzi "takes absurd words, absurd words and endless words, and does not care about it when it comes to people."
It is Zhuangzi's mysterious philosophical thought and unconventional way of thinking that strongly activated his rich imagination and constituted the artistic characteristics of the book.
His remarks are broad, unlimited, unrestrained, free and carefree, which are the characteristics of his thoughts and his prose.