Zhuangzi and its fables
From chapter structure to wandering, perspectives and Cook Ding.
4 articles
Cook Ding Carves the Ox: Skill, Attention and Nourishing Life
Cook Ding carving an ox comes from the Zhuangzi chapter on nourishing life. A stage table, three knives compared, four steps at a hard place and a three-layer reading separate the text, tradition and modern borrowing.
DA-009Equalizing Things: How Different Perspectives Meet, and the Limits of Judging
Three kinds of piping, Wang Ni's three questions, "that" and "this", who can judge, three in the morning and the butterfly: where words and judgments reach their limit, and why that is not "anything goes".
DA-008Free and Easy Wandering: What the Great Bird and the Small Birds Argue About
Read the chapter in its own order, from the Peng and the small birds to Song Rongzi and Liezi: each laughs at the one below, and each still depends on something. Then the gourd and the tree.
DA-007The Zhuangzi: Inner, Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters, Mapped
A map of the 33 received chapters separates the inner, outer and miscellaneous sections, then uses "Autumn Floods" and "All Under Heaven" to show how the book speaks of Zhuang Zhou.
Read first: Daoist Thought and Religious Daoism: Sorting the Books, the Name and the Religion