Zhuangzi's Taoist Despair & the Need for Jesus
The Zhuangzi is, in my opinion, more insightful than either the Confucian Analects or the Tao Te Ching. The Zhuangzi presents a more complete system of thought. Its comprehensive worldview starts with a theory of knowledge and extrapolates consistent ethical principles from it. The book demonstrates many parallels with Christianity and hints at the desire for a messianic arbiter to save humanity from hopeless ignorance.
Among the book's major themes is the impossibility of human knowledge. The most famous passage is referred to as "the butterfly dream." Zhuangzi falls asleep and dreams of being a butterfly, but when he awakens, he is unsure whether he was Zhuangzi dreaming of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. "Only fools think that they are now awake and that they really know what is going on." Human knowledge is so limited that we usually cannot even discern whether we are dreaming or not. Are we living in base reality? Is this all a dream?
Our ignorance begins with the nature of reality but extends into everything else. The book recalls a Lady Li Chi who wept after being captured by an invading army, but she later became the king's concubine and her life greatly improved. She "repented of her tears." The storyteller concludes: "How do I know whether the dead now repent for their former clinging to life?" Our knowledge is so limited we cannot even direct our emotions or judge the desirability of death.
Pursuing knowledge is a bad idea: "Our life has a boundary but there is no boundary to knowledge. To use what has a boundary to pursue what is limitless is dangerous." Humans are so limited that any attempt to learn will only result in more confusion: "People all respect what they understand as knowledge, but they do not understand what their knowledge does not understand and so gain understanding." There are so many unknown unknowns that we cannot be sure that we actually know what we think we know. Trusting human knowledge is like a frog making conclusions about the sky based on what can be seen from the bottom of a well or a cicada predicting weather patterns based on its two-week summer lifespan. "What people know is as nothing to what they don't know."
Human knowledge is impossible because we cannot see into the first principles of reality. Several characters in the Zhuangzi are asked why seasons follow each other in succession and the cycle of birth and death continues, but no answer is given. The Tao is the furthest thing on the human horizon, and it is impossible to see anything beyond it.
The Zhuangzi's rejection of knowledge leads to several ethical conclusions. Among them is that humans have no real agency. This conclusion also appears in other Taoist texts like the Tao Te Ching which says the best kind of ruler is the one who does nothing: "Whoever does anything to the empire will ruin it." This may sound counter intuitive, but modern Chinese history seems to support it. The Chinese Communist Party's attempt to industrialize via central planning and avoid overpopulation via the one-child policy led to the mass starvation of tens of millions of people and China's ongoing catastrophic population decline. The use of knowledge to plan the nation's future ended in disaster. China's last several decades of development only began when it embraced a freer market after 1979.
Zhuangzi's also concludes that ambition is foolish. Status, fame, and wealth have nothing to do with the reality of worth and value. How could society know who to honor and who to despise if it does not have the knowledge to discern good from evil? An apparent act of heroism could inadvertently set off a chain reaction leading to civilizational collapse. Alternatively, a criminal act might lead to a long-term renewal of strength. Wealth may cause an armed robber to murder one's family. Poverty may inspire children to discipline themselves and develop fortitude. "Do not hanker for fame, do not make plans, do not try to do things, do not try to master knowledge… just be empty."
Zhuangzi discouraged the use of technology. "A great deal of knowledge is needed to make bows, crossbows, nets, arrows and so forth, but the result is that the birds fly higher in distress." Technology distorts the natural system despite appearing helpful. A wise old gardener in the book rejects the use of an innovative irrigation machine and says: "Where you have machines, then you get certain kinds of problems; where you get certain kinds of problems, then you find a heart warped by these problems." Modern tech-entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs are elevated as role models, but these innovators had no idea what they were unleashing on the world. They did not know the long-term effects of their work, and the verdict is still out on whether cell phones and other advanced technology have improved human life or led to widespread loneliness and addiction. Even books are attacked in the Zhuangzi as distorted imitations of experience and discipleship. In one story, a swordsmith tells a nobleman that books are almost worthless because the deeper subtleties of historical actors and teachers were unique to their time and place. The swordsmith could not learn his trade by reading a book about it. Books are just another technology removing humanity from an organic interaction with life and people. Technology is a human attempt to manipulate time and nature in pursuit of unnatural ambition.
Despite human ambition being obviously foolish, most people refuse to resign themselves to fate and flow with the Tao. Zhuangzi points out that "birth cannot be avoided, nor death be prevented." We did not choose to exist, we cannot control most of what happens to us, we cannot avoid death, and we lack true knowledge while alive. Human agency is an allusion. Virtue is accepting fate and aligning ourselves with the flow of the Tao.
Must we embrace such a hopeless state of resignation forever? Must we permanently give up on knowledge and meaning? There are hints in the Zhuangzi that something better is possible.
In one passage, Zhuangzi points out that even the winning side of a debate is usually wrong. He says: "It is clear that neither you, I nor anyone else can make decisions like this amongst ourselves. So should we wait for another?" The response is negative: "To wait for one voice to bring it all together is as pointless as waiting for no one… learn to grow old… forget about worrying about right and wrong. Plunge into the unknown and the endless and find your place there." According to Zhuangzi, there is no great arbiter of truth coming to save us. We must resign ourselves to grow old in ignorance.
Another exchange recorded in the Zhuangzi has Confucius bemoaning the fact that nobody knows why things happen: "The change and transformation of all forms of life goes on, but we do not know who sustains this change. How, therefore, can we know beginnings? How can we know ends? There is nothing else to do but wait." Confucius seems to hold out hope that some future event will change the state of human ignorance.
Laozi, in dialogue with Confucius, discusses the cycle of natural phenomenon and reincarnation. He says: "Maybe there is one who controls and ensures all this, but if so, then no one has seen any form or shape… Beginning and end follow each other inexorably and no one knows of any end to this. If this is not so, then who is the origin and guide?" Like the Hindus, trapped in a continuous cycle of events and rebirths, the ancient Chinese were resigned to an endless circle devoid of meaning. Like the Hindus, the Buddha's message of nirvana sounded like salvation to the Chinese who embraced it four hundred years after Zhuangzi.
Zhuangzi was right to conclude that humans are incapable of knowledge, but Christians believe he was wrong to think that no arbiter of truth would ever come. Jesus came from beyond the Tao, beyond the human horizon, to bring knowledge from the One who sustains and controls everything. Jesus is the guide Laozi despaired of finding. As Christians, we know the light has appeared, and we do not have to merely resign ourselves to growing old. Jesus is the truth for those who, like Zhuangzi, ask "what is truth?"
Interestingly, many of those who followed Zhuangzi's ideas could not simply grow old in ignorance. They decided to wait for an arbiter of truth, and messianic Taoism began prophesying about the emergence of a "Li Hong" who would set right both heaven and earth. Every civilization has sought a messiah, and our mission as Christians is to spread the good news that the messiah has arrived.
More on Chinese religion: [link]