Chuang Tzu

Zhuangzi (trans. Herbert A. Giles) · 1889

4.8 · 9 ratings

About the book

The Tao Te Ching's laughing companion: butterflies dreaming they are philosophers, cooks whose knives never dull, and useless trees that outlive every useful one. Giles's translation made the great Taoist joker available in English, jokes intact.

Try the short course

Part 1 · The giant bird and the laughing quail. The first six slides, free.

The giant bird and the laughing quail

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Chuang Tzu does not ease you in. His book opens with a fish in the northern ocean, many thousand li in size, which turns into a bird whose wings darken the sky like clouds. Giles calls them the Leviathan and the Rukh, borrowing names from Western and Arabian legend; in Chinese they are the K'un and the P'êng.

At the right season the bird climbs a typhoon to ninety thousand li and flies south for six months.

Then, before you can settle into awe, Chuang Tzu pulls the view back. Looking down from that height, the bird sees the same endless blue that a mote of dust sees in a sunbeam. The biggest thing you can imagine is small from somewhere else, and the chapter has only just begun.

Inside the course

19 parts

Transcendental bliss: the giant bird and the sparrowsFree above
The useless tree, and the uses of uselessness
The identity of contraries
Chuang Tzu dreams he is a butterfly
The cook whose knife is never sharpened
Man among men: surviving crooked times
Evidence of virtue complete: the cripples and the sages
The great supreme
How to govern: mostly, don't
Joined toes, and horses' hoofs — civilisation as mutilation
Opening trunks: the sage as the robber's best servant
On letting alone, and the Tao of God
The circling sky, and the self-conceit of scholars
Autumn floods: the river meets the sea
The turtle who preferred the mud
Perfect happiness, and the death of Chuang Tzu's wife
The secret of life: the cicada-catcher and the swimmer
The mountain tree, and knowledge travelling north
The last chapters: Chuang Tzu on his own funeral

Questions

Is Chuang Tzu free to read in Astra Trainer?

Yes. The full book opens free in the app’s reader, in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Russian.

What is the short course?

19 short parts that walk through the book’s key ideas in slides, each with a quick quiz. The first six slides are free to try on this page.

Where do I get the app?

Astra Trainer is free on the App Store and Google Play. Chuang Tzu is waiting in the app’s library.