Zhuangzi Speaks: The Music of Nature

by C. C. Tsai, Brian Bruya

Overview

During a period of political and social upheaval in China, the unconventional insights of the great Daoist Zhuangzi (369?-286? B.C.) pointed to a way of living naturally. Inspired by his fascination with the wisdom of this sage, the immensely popular Taiwanese cartoonist Tsai Chih Chung created a bestselling Chinese comic book. Tsai had his cartoon characters enact the key parables of Zhuangzi (pronounced jwawngdz), and he rendered Zhuangzi's most enlightening sayings into modern Chinese. Through Tsai's enthusiasm and skill, the earliest and core parts of the Zhuangzi were thus made accessible to millions of Chinese-speaking people with no other real chance of appreciating this major Daoist text. Translated into English by Brian Bruya, the comic book is now available to a Western audience. The classical Chinese text of the selections of the Zhuangzi is reproduced in the margins throughout. Evoked by the translation and the playful cartoons is the spontaneity that Zhuangzi favors as an attitude toward life: abandon presuppositions, intellectual debates, and ambitions, he suggests, and listen to the "music of nature." With the writings attributed to Laozi, the Zhuangzi contributed to an alternative philosophical ideal that matched Confucianism in its impact on Chinese culture. Over the centuries this classical Daoism influenced many aspects of Chinese life, including painting, literature, and the martial arts. It had a particularly strong effect on Chan Buddhism (Japanese Zen). For this book, Donald Munro has written an afterword that places Daoism and the Zhuangzi in historical and cultural context.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691008820
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	08/02/1992
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments
	Guide to Pronunciation
	Map
	The Summer Cicada and the Wonder Tortoise	5
	The Little Sparrow's Small Happiness	7
	Hui Shi's Giant Gourd	8
	The Song Family's Secret Formula	10
	The Useless Shu Tree	12
	The Tattooed Yue People	15
	The Music of the Earth	16
	Zhao Wen Quits the Zither	19
	Does Wang Ni Know?	20
	Is Xi Shi Really Beautiful?	22
	Li Ji's Tears	23
	Zhang Wuzi's Dream	24
	Shadows Talking	25
	The Dream of the Butterfly	26
	Three at Dawn and Four at Dusk	27
	Hui Shi Leans against a Tree	28
	The Cook Carves Up a Cow	29
	Passing on the Flame	31
	The Caged Pheasant	32
	Like A Mantis Stopping a Cart	33
	The Horse Lover	35
	The Earth Spirit's Tree	36
	A Tree's Natural Life Span	38
	The Freak	40
	Oil Burns Itself Out	41
	The Tiger Trainer	42
	Toeless Shu	43
	Nature the Superhero	44
	Forgetting the Dao	45
	Zi Sang Questions His Fate	46
	Digging a Canal in the Ocean Floor	47
	Are a Duck's Legs Too Short?	48
	The Lost Goat	49
	Bandits Have Principles, Too	50
	Good Wine, Bad Wine	52
	The Yellow Emperor Questions Guangcheng	53
	Nature's Friend	54
	The Old Wheelwright	55
	The Earth and the Sky	57
	Crows and Seagulls	58
	Confucius Sees a Dragon	59
	Don't Ring the Bull's Nose	60
	The Wind and the Snake	61
	Courage of the Sage	63
	The Frog in the Well	65
	Learning How to Walk in Handan	68
	A Crow Eating a Dead Rat	69
	You're Not a Fish	71
	Zhuangzi Dreams of a Skeleton	72
	Sea Birds Don't Like Music	74
	The Drunk Passenger	76
	Riding with the Dao	77
	The Sweet Water is Gone First	79
	Lin Hui Forsakes a Fortune	81
	Swallows Nest in the Eaves	82
	The Mantis Getting the Cicada	83
	Fan Was Never Destroyed	85
	Knowledge and the Dao	86
	Gengsang Forsakes Fame	88
	The Yellow Emperor and the Pasture Boy	89
	The Stone Mason and the Ying Man	91
	Two Nations on a Snail's Antennae	93
	Zhuangzi Borrows Grain	94
	The Turtle That Could Predict the Future	95
	Natural Use	97
	Catch the Fish, Discard the Trap	98
	Yang Zhu Studies the Dao	99
	Zi Gong's Snow-White Clothes	100
	The Bandit Speaks	102
	Zhuangzi's Three Swords	107
	Confucius in the Black Forest	114
	The Man Who Hated His Footprints	117
	The Man Who Hated His Shadow	118
	Like a Drifting Boat	119
	The Dragonslayer	120
	Shattering the Dragonpearl	122
	Don't Make Sacrifices	124
	Zhuangzi on His Deathbed	125
	Afterword	127