Everyone knew Zhuangzi was a genius.
The old empire had collapsed, and in its place arose countless little kingdoms feudal states. The people and rulers lived in fear of their neighbors, as states regularly swallowed one another in open warfare.
As horrible as this was for commoners and nobles alike, it was also a time of great opportunity. A hundred tiny states needed at least a hundred advisors, statesmen, generals, and strategists.
Into the vacuum stepped over a hundred different schools of thought. Each professing to have the answer: To statecraft, to conquest, to power. The Confucians were all about ritual, the Legalists about Draconian rule, the Mohists, utilitarian love. Even amongst the Taoists, there was a myriad of interpretations and points of debate.
So it’s no small feat that Zhuangzi (also known as “Chuang Tzu”) became widely recognized as unique. He wrote withering satires of the other schools, used allegories and parables that were flat-out impossible (such as the bird known as Roc whose wingspan was hundreds of miles wide), and enjoyed attributing quotes and deeds to Taoism’s founder, Lao Tzu, that he clearly never said or did.
The other great philosophers simply didn’t know how to respond to his ludicrous jibes, but they had to admit that he was one of the greats.
And so it was that the mighty King Wei of Chu sent recruiters to bring such an effective wit into his service. Like so many powerful politicians, Wei saw what the sage’s humor could do even if he didn’t know how to replicate it himself.
The messengers brought great gifts, promised untold wealth, and offered the man everlasting fame and glory. Zhuanzi’s response? He laughed.
“Think of the sacrificial ox,” he said. “Though it is fed on the best feed, showered with beautiful garlands, and lives a life of luxury compared to the other cattle. But when it comes time to enter the temple, does he not wish he were a useless pig allowed to live its days in the mud?”
Zhuangzi sent the king’s men away, determined never to take office or live under the strict rules of court.
Now, you might say that such a man deprived the world of his great talents. That he could have worked to bring peace to the land or helped to spare a great many lives in the wars that followed.
Many people during the hundreds of years that marked the Warring States period in which Zhuangzi lived felt the same way, and many lost their heads or watched the regimes they helped build fall to ruin. But Zhuangzi with his savant-like parables about useless trees and carefree butterflies, master butchers and lucky cripples, outlives them all in his work.
One of the first (and possibly only) humorist-philosophers, Zhuangzi definitely had the last laugh.
There are a great many translations of my favorite philosopher’s work. As I will no doubt be discussing him and his works again soon, I figured a good place to start is where I started, with Thomas Merton’s The Way of Chuang Tzu. Thanks as always for reading this far, may we all be as useless as the great Zhuangzi!
Apparently, he who wishes to "drag his tail in the mud" lives, while the king in the gilded palace loses his head!
Okay but did he die of old age or in battle