This essay is about Daoism with the philosopher Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi was a prominent Chinese philosopher who lived in the 4th century BC. He is considered the author of the ‘Zhuangzi’, one of the most important texts of Daoism. The Zhuangzi emphasises concepts such as spontaneity, naturalness and non-intervention (wu wei). Zhuangzi states that striving for harmony with the Tao and abandoning artificial social conventions are essential for a fulfilled life.

Taoism and Zhuangzi both stress the importance of following the natural order of the world, striving for inner peace and letting go of the pursuit of material wealth and social status. These aspects bear some resemblance to the principles of Stoicism, a philosophical school in ancient Greece, which also focused on inner peace, acceptance of destiny and finding harmony with the natural order of the universe.

You-ing

A central concept in the Zhuan gzi is you-ing, also translated as wandering. Wandering has several translations and is used in different contexts. In this essay, I will describe wandering as a way of living spontaneously and freely and becoming detached from the conventions and constraints of everyday life. Also, how wandering is central to following the Dao, where we should live life as it goes and follow its flow, as well as accepting disappointment as well as the peaks. I will examine how the concept of wandering can reflect on our activities in daily life and how we can learn from it. In doing so, I will look at my own personal experiences that came to mind while reading the Zhuangzi and how I learned from them or how I think others can gain new insights. Here, I will focus on a world dominated by planning and control and how this gets in the way of spontaneous and free living. In addition, living in a performance society and how this makes it harder for us to deal with misfortune. The Zhuangzi has taught me to approach this from a different perspective.

Happy Fish

Zhuangzi begins his book with the mythical fish named Khun transforming into the mythical bird named Phen. There are two aspects in this first passage that are indicative of the rest of the Zhuangzi (Zyporin, 2009, p. 3). Namely, the fish and the bird reflect the idea of wandering, in which both the fish and the bird are not spatially or temporarily framed to a beginning and an end.  The second aspect is wuhua, translated as the transformation of all things. This is explained as the idea that nature is constantly changing and we should be able to be in fluency with the natural transformations of the world. The idea is to understand the world in its changing nature, because when we neglect to do this, we limit ourselves in possibilities and this results in a state where our minds have already been made up. Therefore, we should not have fixed ideas about how we should live. Ultimately, these are important aspects which are needed to go with the flow of the Dao, on which the Zhuangzi relies.

Wandering

Wandering in the Zhuangzi is thus described as aimlessly wandering and uses the swimming fish as an example of this. A fish wanders aimlessly and does not plan before leaving from point A to B. The fish just goes with the flow and sees where it lands. Moeller also mentions the example of shopping. And here is not meant shopping in which we go to the shop to buy something, but rather wandering around in the shopping streets (Moeller, 2015, p. 251). Another example from my own experience, is when I go to Rome, a city I have been to several times. However, I do not know my way around here, but that is precisely why it is enjoyable to get lost, because you can end up at the Colosseum by chance, for example. Therefore, I do not make a plan before entering the city of Rome, I just see where I end up. It is the spontaneity in life that has always made me happy, as plans and control can often disappoint you and make you lose the sense of freedom. Another aspect in this is that we do not look for the known, like mapping out all the sightseeing’s, but rather let the unknown come at us.

Why always stick to the plan? 

In today’s society, we are always planning our actions and want to be in control of them. For instance, I experience that people around me live by their agenda and go through their weeks based on what is written on there. I am not just referring to work and school activities here, but also social activities. Social activities are often followed up as if they were an obligation. In addition, in this society focused on planning and control, it is often not desirable to go ahead with your own plan nonetheless. After all, this will go against the expectation’s others have of you. According to the Zhuangzi, we need to detach ourselves from these social conventions. While I think it is impossible to live without social conventions, I believe it can teach us to be more flexible with them in some cases. For instance, Zhuangzi argues that social conventions are not absolute but relativistic, they vary from person to person. In addition, it can be misleading to think that sticking to your plans is the “right” thing to do. After all, this is relative to the person. Therefore, letting go of social convention may actually cause you to go after your own freedom, rather than the expectations of others.

The passage of Zhuangzi and Hui Shi wandering aimlessly and telling stories to each other reminded me of letting go of thinking in terms of goals with preconceived plans. As Moeller calls it, the social and physical engagement in a spontaneous and playful way, whereas the communication does not lead to any end or conclusion but is intrinsically valuable and meaningful. This reminds me of a ” Daoistsic action” I had performed on a summer day. I had invited all my friends, without having a plan for what we were going to do. When everyone was there, everyone started asking what the plan was, some even started to get restless. I said there was no plan and we had to come up with suggestions ourselves. In the end, we played games and by chance managed to rent a boat to cruise through the canals. It was a day with no purpose or plan, but everyone ended up letting it go and surrendered spontaneity. This reminded me of the idea that gathering together does not always have to have a reason or that it must lead to something. It is the meeting between friends that is already valuable in itself.

Don’t aim for completeness

Besides the premediated world we live in, we also live in a performance society. In which all performance is measured and labelled “good” or “bad”. As the Zhuangzi more often recalls, this contradiction is not something we should hold onto. We should thus be able to accept both the good and the bad. This idea can teach us to manage disappointments better. For instance, I used to be very concerned with performing at school and had a strong urge to do well. I constantly set goals for myself and often got disappointed when I did not achieve my goals. Indeed, not achieving your goal is often seen as a bad thing. The Zhuangzi teaches us that we should not be busy chasing success or completion. However, I do not interpret this as the idea that we should let go of everything we are doing and stop pursuing goals in our lives. The way I interpret it is in line with the following quote by Wittgenstein.

“But the essential thing was that the things should proceed from one subject to another in a natural order and without breaks. After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into such a whole, I realized that I should never succeed.” (Wittgenstein, 1953, p. 7)

Wittgenstein describes in this piece how philosophizing is sometimes also a form of aimlessly wandering in which we are encouraged to travel through different thoughts, eventually the thoughts fly criss-cross every direction. From this, according to Moeller, we can see that we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that everything is supposed to follow logically in sequence and that this is how we achieve our goals and get things done (Moeller, 2015, pp. 257-258). In reality, on the other hand, just like Wittgenstein says, events go criss-cross. As Wittgenstein states, perhaps the intention is never to complete your success. I interpret this in a way that life is a great learning process and unsuccessful attempts are part of it. These are bad moments, but moments we learn from in order to see the greater picture in the end. When faced with disappointment, we should not take it too personally and doubt ourselves as a person. Rather, see it as a learning process, where the failure of a goal is not the end, but the beginning of a new goal. Thus, the process will always be able to continue. This in turn corresponds to the idea that we should be in fluency with the things that happen.      

Ultimately, I do not want to argue that we should all live in a state of wandering. After all, wandering should not serve as a goal. Still, I believe I can safely say from the examples and my own experiences that wandering can give us new insights into everyday life. Therefore, it teaches us that we should not always think in terms of goals, with a beginning and an end, but as a learning process that will continue continuously. It also teaches us to be more flexible with social conventions. After all, these conventions are relative to a person, and so a person is able to make his own plan in spontaneity and freedom without following up to expectations of society. 

References

Moeller, H. (2015) “Rambling without Destination: On Daoist “You-ing” in the World.” In Zhuangzi and the Happy Fish, edited by Roger T. Ames and Takahiro Nakajima, pp. 248-259.

Wittgenstein, L. (1953) Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe Oxford: Basil Blackwell, p. 7

Ziporyn, B. (2009) Zhuangzi: The essential writings with selections from Traditional commentaries. Hackett Publishing Company