Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi
running heart eye
Love of colors bewilders the eye and it fails to see right. Love of harmonies bewitches the ear, and it loses its true hearing. Love of perfumes fills the head with dizziness. Love of flavors ruins the taste. Desires unsettle the heart until the original nature runs amok. These five are enemies of true life. Yet these are what men of discernment claim to live for. They are not what I live for. If this is life, then pigeons in a cage have found happiness!
people division want
The Tao is in all things, in their divisions and their fullness. What I dislike about divisions is that they multiply, and what i dislike about multiplication is that it makes people want to hold fast to it. So people go out and forget to return, seeing little more than ghosts.
mirrors enlightenment attention
The enlightened attention rejects nothing nor welcomes anything-like a mirror it responds equally to all.
grateful opportunity ice
There may be difficulty at the moment, but I will not lose the Virtue that I possess. It is when the ice and snow are on them that we see the strength of the cypress and the pine. I am grateful for this trouble around me, because it gives me an opportunity to realize how fortunate I am.
men ideas purpose
The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of the word is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.
sage abiding portal
The Portal of God is nonexistence. All things sprang from nonexistence. Existence could not make existence existence. It must have proceeded from nonexistence, and nonexistence and nothing are one. Herein is the abiding place of the sage.
men water tolerance
Fish live in water. Men die in it.Nature is diverse, and not all tastes are the same.
heaven earth doe
Heaven does without doing through its purity, Earth does without doing through its calmness.
heart simplicity soul
He who does his work like a machine grows a heart like a machine and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. He who has lost his simplicity becomes unsure in the strivings of his soul.
joy form humans
To have a human form is a joyful thing.
lying men honor
Men honor what lies within the sphere of their knowledge, but do not realize how dependent they are on what lies beyond it.
eye envy vision
The eyes envy the mind.
struggle finding-yourself unity
Do not struggle. Go with the flow of things, and you will find yourself at one with the mysterious unity of the Universe.
butterfly
Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly...