Zhuangzi lived 2300 years ago in the chaotic times of the Warring States. Very different to other thinkers of that time his philosophical aim was a life without any attachments(無爲). He tried to free all human beings from their boundaries made by t...
Zhuangzi lived 2300 years ago in the chaotic times of the Warring States. Very different to other thinkers of that time his philosophical aim was a life without any attachments(無爲). He tried to free all human beings from their boundaries made by time, space, life and death. He borrowed various literary devices to explain his philosophy. The fish kun(鯤) and the bird peng(鵬) symbolize free existence in a world without any boundaries. A useless tree shows how useful things can be that everybody thinks to be useless. In the butterfly dream Zhuangzi tells us how much we are attached to systems and reality. He emphasizes that the key to free existence without any boundaries is the transcendental will. In this paper I focused on the literary devices mentioned above and examined the transcendental will. I also analyzed the dao(道) and Zhuangzi`s way of mental training. He presents two ways of freeing the human being from his boundaries, one is called xinzhai(心齋: calming the mind) the other zuowang(坐忘: forgetting). Zhuangzi`s dao is neither metaphysical nor difficult to understand. His dao can be found in everyday life, in eating, drinking or sleeping. But his dao does not care for boundaries. It combines the bounded world with boundlessness. In this way Zhuangzi gives especially us today a key to a life worth living. He shows us how to get rid of all desires we are suffering from and leads us to real freedom.