Chuang-tzu: To become a companion of Nature (Chan)

Chuang Tzu [Chuang-tzu, Zhuangzi, ca. 369-286 BCE] has always fascinated the Chinese mind. He takes his readers to undreamed of lands and stimulates them through conversations of the shadow, the skeleton, and the north wind. His freshness of insight and broadness of vision are in themselves inspiring. He seems to transcend the mundane world, yet he is always in the very depth of daily life. He is quietistic, yet for him life moves on like a galloping horse. He is mystical, but at the same time he follows reason as the leading light.

All this is a direct product of his concept of Nature. To him, Nature is not only spontaneity but nature in the state of constant flux and incessant transformation. This is the universal process that binds all things into one, equalizing all things and all opinions. The pure man makes this oneness his eternal abode, in which he becomes a "companion" of Nature and does not attempt to interfere with it by imposing the way of man on it. His goal is absolute spiritual emancipation and peace, to be achieved through knowing the capacity and limitations of one's own nature, nourishing it, and adapting it to the universal process of transformation. He abandons selfishness of all descriptions, be it fame, wealth, bias, or subjectivity. Having attained enlightenment through the light of Nature, he moves in the realm of "great knowledge" and "profound virtue". Thus he is free. (from The Mystical Way of Chuang Tzu, in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, by Wing-tsit Chan, 1969, Princeton 1973)