Taoist nature
Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Taoism are also known as the four major religions in China.
Among them, only Taoism is a religion born and raised purely in China, authentic made in China. The Taoists revered Lao Tzu as their founding ancestor and honored him as Taishang Laojun. It is also said that Lao Jun has four disciples, namely the four great Daoists, of which Nanhua Zhenren is the protagonist of this article, Zhuangzi.
Zhuangzi, originally called Zhuang Zhou, a Mongol of the Song Dynasty during the Warring States period, as for this "Mongolian" land, which place is it today, Henan Shangqiu and Anhui Mengcheng have been fighting for more than two thousand years, and there is still no result.
However, zhuangzi's birth and death year is not much disputed, he was born around 369 BC and died about 286 BC. If you do the math, Zhuangzi was born 182 years later than the Confucian leader Confucius (born 551 BC).
Here, it is necessary for the two old brothers to put together a chat, because they are originally a family. They had a common ancestor, the founding monarch of the Song Dynasty, Huizi, who was also the brother of King Huan. However, Zhuangzi's direct ancestor was the 11th monarch of the Song Dynasty, Song Daigong, while Confucius's direct ancestor was the 4th monarch of the Song Dynasty, song Gonggong.
Although Zhuangzi was talented and famous, he may have had a bad temper and did not mix well at that time. According to historical records, the largest official he ever served as was the small official of the Monty Lacquer Garden, that is, the administrator of the local lacquer tree plantation. Later, perhaps because of the wrong professionalism, he threw up his sleeves and resigned. From then on, Zhuangzi formed a vendetta against the officials, regarding his career as a grass and mustard, and whoever persuaded him to become an official scolded him. In the end, he was poor all his life, and he had to support his family by playing straw shoes or fishing.
Zhuangzi's greatest hobbies in life were two, the first was to write articles, the second was to debate, and his best friend was Huishi, who was also a great philosopher.
However, compared with Zhuangzi, who did not have a brain, Huishi's brain was much better, and he chose the road of becoming an official, and became more and more mixed, and finally became the prime minister of Liang Guo.
One day, Zhuangzi had a whim, wanted to find an old friend to talk about the past, and maybe no one had a fight with him for a long time, a little suffocated, so he went to Liang Guo to visit Huishi.
Unexpectedly, a little person told Huishi: "Zhuangzi came to LiangGuo and wanted to replace you as prime minister." So Huishi was very scared, and he searched the capital for three days and three nights without finding it. Huishi was spontaneously worried, but Zhuangzi sent it to the door by himself, and told him a story with a smile: "There is a bird in the south, its name is The Bird, do you know?" Taking off from the South China Sea to the North Sea, it is not the plane trees that do not perch, not the fruits of bamboo that do not eat, or the sweet spring water that is not drunk. At this moment the owl picked up a putrid mouse, the bird flew in front of it, and the owl looked up and let out a 'frightened' roar. Now you also want to use your beam phase to 'scare' me, right? ”
Zhuangzi's ability to insult people and boast is really high, comparing himself to a noble bird, comparing Huishi who covets the position of prime minister to an owl who covets rotten mice, cursing people around the bend, spicy and sharp, humorous image, and Huishi only has a red face and a thick neck. Cursing people without spitting dirty words is indeed the supreme realm of cursing people.
Zhuangzi and Huishi
Zhuangzi can be called an absolute fan of Lao Tzu, admiring the old predecessors of 200 years ago, but he is more negative than Lao Tzu's thoughts, advocating obscurantism that destroys all civilizations, and the ideal of life is the pursuit of absolute spiritual freedom and a complete escape from reality, that is, what he said in the famous "Getaway" is "no self to man, no merit to god and man, and no name to saints." "Until man forgets himself and becomes one with all things, he is the highest state of life; god and man have no intentional deeds, have no intention of seeking merit in the world, and secondly; saints have no intention of drawing fame and should do it again."
Needless to say, behind this extremely negative thought, there must be a strong dissatisfaction with the society at that time, believing that if Zhuangzi traveled thousands of miles away, he would surely be able to fill a train with one orty-eight carriages, and its representative complaint was: "The saint was born to be a great thief." "He directly pointed the spearhead at the great princes."
Zhuangzi developed Taoist doctrine and wrote more than 100,000 words, compiled as "Zhuangzi", also known as "South China True Classic", which exists today, 7 internal articles, 15 external articles, and 11 miscellaneous articles.
The book "Zhuangzi" has a particularly high artistic achievement, known as the crown of the prose of the pre-Qin Dynasty, its conception is dusty, the imagination is superior, the artistic conception is fantastic, and the literary style is arbitrary. In the selection of materials, Zhuangzi seems to be very fond of fables and myths, and smart people are good at this, both can use the style of laughter and anger to express depression in the chest, and it is difficult to be seated by the powerful, and there are many advantages in psychological venting and safety.
Its good text such as: There is a fish in the north, and its name is Kun. The size of the carp is unknown to thousands of miles; it is transformed into a bird, and its name is Peng. Peng's back, I don't know how many thousands of miles it is; it flies with anger, and its wings are like clouds hanging in the sky. It is the bird also, and the sea will migrate to the South Hell, the South Hell, and the Tenchi Also. This article is from "The Getaway", in which the Kunpeng, if it has a physical object, should be the largest creature ever recorded on Earth.
Another example: those who have a country in the left corner of the snail are known as the Touch Clan, and those who have a country in the right corner of the snail are known as the Barbarian Clan, and when they fight with the land, they serve tens of thousands of corpses, and there are five days in the north and then they rebel. Zhuangzi used this parable to despise the war between countries, which can be described as a childlike heart.
Getaway
Poets are mostly particularly sensitive, extremely good at capturing information from all things, and the most rebellious spirit, but also the most real discovery of good and evil, so that exaggerated imagination synaesthesia is so that the nerves are numb.
Zhuangzi can be described as a poet of the first generation, and also has the characteristics of mild schizophrenia that most poets have.
The king of Chu Wei paid a lot of money to hire him as a minister, but he ridiculed him as rat meat. His wife went before him, but he knocked on the pot and sang. In the dream itself into a butterfly, after waking up, it is confused, is the butterfly dream incarnated zhuang Zhou, or Zhuang Zhou meng incarnated butterfly?
In the eyes of the nervous Zhuangzi, even life and death are consistent, and in his view, death is just another form of survival. Life and death are both natural phenomena, just like the four o'clock of spring, summer, autumn and winter; the "birth" of man from nothing, and the change of man from existence to nothing, are also natural changes. This novel and aesthetic view of life and death has been expressed in many of Zhuangzi's articles. As he wrote in the famous article "Journey to the North of Zhi": The disciple who lives and dies, the beginning of death and life, who knows its history! The birth of man is also the gathering of qi; the gathering is life, and the dispersion is death. If I am a disciple of the dead and the living, what trouble shall I suffer! (Life is the same kind of death, death is the beginning of life, who knows their end!) The birth of man is the aggregation of qi, the aggregation of qi forms life, and the dispersion of qi is death. If death and life are of the same kind, then what am I worried about about death? ）
No one who is invincible has ever been incurable. This famous saying should be appropriate for Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi, who seems to be well-connected, must have experienced too much bitterness, poverty and later work, both ancient and modern. The ups and downs have created a generation of prophets.
The corrupt society of "those who steal the hook, and those who steal the country are princes" make him disdainful of being with them; the reality of "the princes and princes cannot be used" makes it impossible for him to show his ambitions. Since the human world is so filthy, "do not speak with Zhuang", how should Zhuangzi break the situation? I had to let go of my soul, soar in the world of fantasy, and seek spiritual liberation from forgetting reality.
Zhuangzi