Zhuangzi took Laozi's ideas and made them stranger, funnier, more radical. Where the Dao De Jing is spare and gnomic, the Zhuangzi is full of talking animals, monstrous trees, and sudden shifts in perspective. He taught that the distinctions we take for granted (right and wrong, life and death, self and other) are products of a limited viewpoint. The sage wanders freely because he has stopped insisting the world match his categories. He was offered a position as prime minister and declined, saying he would rather drag his tail in the mud like a turtle.
Born in the state of Song. Almost nothing about his life is certain. He held a minor government post and seems to have preferred poverty to politics.
Words
“Once Zhuang Zhou dreamt he was a butterfly. A butterfly flitting about. He did not know he was Zhuang Zhou.”