Zhuangzi

The King of Wei sends Huizi a gift — seeds for a gourd that grows to an impossible size. It can't hold water, can't be a ladle, can't do anything a gourd is supposed to do. Huizi smashes it. Zhuangzi is unimpressed by the smashing.

Once, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly — not a man dreaming of one, but a butterfly completely, happy and free, with no memory of being anyone else. Then he woke. The question that followed has been open ever since: which of them is dreaming now?

Prince Hui watches his cook carve an ox with such fluid precision that blade and bone seem to part by mutual agreement. The cook has been using the same knife for nineteen years. He explains why — and the prince concludes he has learned something about living.

A master carpenter walks past the most spectacular tree he has ever not-looked-at. His apprentice is mesmerized; his master is unmoved. That night, the tree visits the carpenter in a dream — and asks a question that cuts deeper than any adze: who, exactly, is the useless one here?

Confucius's prize student wants to march into a tyrant's court and save a kingdom with virtue and reason. Confucius tells him he'll be dead before lunch — then teaches him something no one can argue with: how to become empty enough that the world has nowhere to push back.

Zhuangzi and Huizi are walking on a bridge over the Hao River when Zhuangzi makes a remark about the fish below. Huizi takes exception — you are not a fish, he says, so how could you possibly know anything about fish happiness? What follows is one of the most famous short arguments in Chinese philosophy.

Zhuangzi's wife has just died. His old friend Huizi arrives to pay his respects and finds Zhuangzi sitting with his legs stretched wide, drumming on an earthen basin and singing. What follows is less a scene of mourning than a very short lesson in how to think about where everything comes from — and where it goes.