Chuang Tzu: Mystic, Moralist, and Social ReformerZhuangzi
Religion
Chuang Tzu: Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer
Zhuangzi
Ethics -- China; Philosophy, Chinese
The Great Bear obtained it, and has never erred from its course. The
sun and moon obtained it, and have never ceased to revolve. K'an P'i
obtained it, and established the K'un-lun mountains.
The divinity of the sacred mountains here mentioned.
P'ing I obtained it, and rules over the streams. Chien Wu obtained it,
and dwells on Mount T'ai.
See ch. i.
The Yellow Emperor obtained it, and soared upon the clouds to heaven.
The most famous of China's legendary rulers (B.C. 2697). He is said
among other things to have invented wheeled vehicles, and generally
to have given a start to the civilisation of his people. Some of Lao
Tzŭ's sayings have been attributed to him; and by some he has been
regarded as the first promulgator of TAO.
Chuan Hsü obtained it, and dwells in the Dark Palace.
A legendary ruler (B.C. 2513), of whose Dark Palace nothing is known.
Yü Ch'iang obtained it, and fixed himself at the North Pole.
As its presiding genius.
Hsi Wang Mu obtained it, and settled at Shao Kuang; since when, no one
knows; until when, no one knows either.
A lady,--or a place, for accounts vary,--around whose name innumerable
legends have gathered.
P'êng Tsu obtained it, and lived from the time of Shun until the time
of the Five Princes.
From 2255 to the 7th century B.C. See ch. i.
Fu Yüeh obtained it, and as the Minister of Wu Ting
A monarch of the Yin dynasty, B.C. 1324.
got the empire under his control. And now, charioted upon one
constellation and drawn by another, he has been enrolled among the
stars of heaven.
* * * * *
Nan Po Tzŭ K'uei
Probably the individual mentioned in chs. ii. and iv.
said to Nü Yü,
By one authority said to be a woman.
"You are old, Sir, and yet your countenance is like that of a child.
How is this?"
Nü Yü replied, "I have learnt TAO."
"Could I get TAO by studying it?" asked the other.
"I fear not," said Nü Yü. "You are not the sort of man. There was Pu
Liang I. He had all the qualifications of a sage, but not TAO. Now I
had Tao, though none of the qualifications. But do you imagine that
much as I wished it I was able to teach TAO to him so that he should be
a perfect sage? Had it been so, then to teach TAO to one who has the
qualifications of a sage would be an easy matter. No, Sir. I imparted
as though withholding; and in three days, for him, this sublunary state
had ceased to exist.
With all its paltry distinctions of sovereign and subject, high and
low, good and bad, etc.
When he had attained to this, I withheld again; and in seven days more,
for him, the external world had ceased to be. And so again for another
nine days, when he became unconscious of his own existence. He became
first etherealised, next possessed of perfect wisdom, then without past
or present, and finally able to enter there where life and death are no
more,--where killing does not take away life, nor does prolongation of
life add to the duration of existence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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