The Way Of Chuang Tzu [Paperback]

Here is an example of this writing, "When Knowledge Went North":

"Knowledge wandered north
Looking for Tao, over the Dark Sea
And up the Invisible Mountain.
There on the mountain he met
Nondoing, the Speechless One" ...

Another example, "In My End is My Beginning":
"But he who obeys Nature returns through Form and
Formless to the Living,
And in the Living
Joins the unbegun Beginnning" ...

If the reader enjoys deep thinking and feeling, contemplating life in all its myriad aspects then this book is highly recommended. Erika Borsos (erikab93)

There is only one way in which Merton is more qualified than Chuang's other interpreters: he, like Chuang, was a serious, long-time contemplative, a person who spent hours a day at meditation and prayer. But this qualification seems to me to have trumped all others. Merton and Chuang were brothers: no matter that they were two millenia and half a world apart. Somewhere right now they are walking together at a river's edge, watching the fish leap.

"I know the joy of fishes
In the river
Through my own joy, as I go walking
Along the same river"

My students, by the way -- rather to my surprise -- loved this book as much as I did.

His appeal is not so much to the intellect as to the imagination, and he chose as a vehicle for his philosophical insights, not tedious and lengthy abstract treatises, but brief and witty anecdotes and dialogues and tales. His humor, sophistication, literary genius, and philosophical insights found their perfect expression in his brilliant fragments, and once having read them you never forget them.

Not much is known about Chuang Tzu, other than that he seems to have lived around the time of King Hui of Liang (370-319 B.C.). The received text of his book, which is sometimes referred to as 'the Chuang Tzu' (CT), is made up of thirty-three Chapters. Most scholars seem to feel that the CT is a composite text, and that only the first seven - the Inner Chapters - plus a few bits from the others are Chuang Tzu's own work, the remainder being by his followers.

Among the better known of his translators, all of them excellent, are Arthur Waley, Lin Yutang, and Burton Watson, though only the latter translated the complete text. An abridged version of Watson's complete translation was later made available for those who only want to read the Inner Chapters. All three of these scholars were Sinologists and had direct access to Chuang Tzu's stylistically brilliant though somewhat difficult Chinese.

In contrast to the linguistic expertise of Waley, Lin Yutang, and Watson, Thomas Merton frankly admits to having no Chinese at all. He has, however, soaked himself in all the best translations, and he tells us that his "free interpretive renderings of characteristic passages [were] the result of five years of reading, study, annotation, and meditation." His readings, then, are to be understood, not as direct translations, but as "ventures in personal and spiritual interpretation" (page 9).

If we consider that Merton was a bit of a literary genius himself, we won't be surprised by Burton Watson's comment on his readings. In the Introduction to his 'Complete Works of Chuang Tzu,' he tells us that: "[Merton's readings] give a fine sense of the liveliness and poetry of Chuang Tzu's style, and are actually almost as close to the original as the translations upon which they are based" (page 28).

'The Way of Chuang Tzu' is a small book of just 160 pages. After a 'Note to the Reader' and a 17-page 'Study of Chuang Tzu,' sixty-two readings follow. Most of them have been set out as verse, and many are illustrated with marvelous Chinese drawings. The book was first printed in 1965, and the fact that it is still in print tells us that it has been working for many readers. It certainly worked for me, as it's a book I'd never part with and often return to. I'm pretty sure it will work for you too.