Generally speaking, when we talk about the book "Zhuangzi", we pay more attention to its literary achievements, such as Mr. Lu Xun's evaluation of "Zhuangzi":
Its text is open to the ocean, the manners are all square, and the works of the sons of the late Zhou Dynasty can not be the first.
This evaluation is of course very good, and it is often quoted.
However, after all, the article is only a small way, a formal thing, and the road that Zhuangzi realized is the fundamental, which is what we should pay attention to the most.
So, what is Zhuangzi's "avenue"?
Earlier I had an article saying that the Analects were about the "way of cooperation" and the "Tao Te Ching" was about the "way of awakening", so if I wanted to give a summary of the book "Zhuangzi", I think the most appropriate one should be the "way of evolution".
"Evolution", this is what Zhuangzi has been saying, a bit of a surprise isn't it?
Without understanding this, it is difficult for you to read Zhuangzi.
You will feel that "Zhuangzi" is a good article, it is very painful to read, but it is completely incompatible with real life, and it is very painful to live.
Originally, a small "lacquer garden official", so poor that he often did not have rice to cook at home, but he talked about leisure and ease all day long. I would like to ask you, who will really live as Zhuangzi said? And how can human society develop as Zhuangzi said?
In fact, when we read "Zhuangzi", we must first understand one point:
Zhuangzi is not talking about life, it is life; it is not development, but evolution.
Insight into the true meaning of life, that is, "awakening", is the main theme of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. Zhuangzi inherited Lao Tzu, who believed that after the "awakening", human beings needed to "evolve".
One could argue that humans have not been "evolving"?
We know this, we know that, we have this, we have that.
Yes, the knowledge we have, the things we have, are unimaginable to the ancients. But what about humanity itself? What about the state of human consciousness?
Have we surrendered to the brain that keeps talking to itself and causing trouble?
Have we eliminated the completely unnecessary suffering that accounts for more than 95%?
Have we transcended the time-bound dimension and truly lived in the present moment?
This is personally, and then in terms of human beings as a whole: in those past eras, people looked forward in vain to the Ming Emperor, to the prosperous world, and to the way of governing the country provided by the saints, but they still could not escape the cycle of "one rule and one chaos", nor could they escape the strange circle of "prosperity, the suffering of the people; death, and suffering of the people".
Is this really a historical necessity?
Today, the unsolved questions in the world, the long-standing disputes between human beings, make us inevitably ask: More than two thousand years since the zhuangzi era, has human beings really evolved as a species? Have we become more "advanced"?
The answer is "no"!
Of course, Zhuangzi's concern about "evolution" does not happen outside, but within us, the only place we can fully control.
The biological evolution of Darwin's research may take hundreds of millions of years, and the evolution of human consciousness does not take that long, as long as you really read Zhuangzi, this process has already begun.
And now is the best opportunity for the evolution of human consciousness.
The evolution of consciousness can go hand in hand with external development, and the good changes that occur in the same dimension are "development"; and the transformation of consciousness to a higher dimension is "evolution".
Zhuangzi opens the story of "Kunhua Peng", do you think he is saying something else?
Please continue reading "Zhuangzi Getaway" No. 2: The Transformation of Kunpeng