"It should be forbidden to read the Zhuangzi before 30 years old, because in life one has to read certain books and Zhuangzi is a book so wonderful that anything you read after will seem deceiving" Jacques PIMPANEAU
I found it being 28 and I can say this is true. This nigga is the chinese Witgenstein only that its not just philososphy.
Go read it NOW and throw all your other books.
>"Once upon a time, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting about happily enjoying himself. He did not know that he was Zhou. Suddenly he awoke, and was palpably Zhou. He did not know whether he was Zhou, who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhou. Now, there must be a difference between Zhou and the butterfly. This is called the transformation of things."
MOM'S GONNA FREAK
But I'm not 30
>>7741287
Great quote OP. Zhuangzi alone is worth learning Chinese for.
Paul Rouzer's New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese culminates in the reading of a whole chapter from Zhuangzi.
Experience of a lifetime.
>>7742472
can you talk a bit more about rouzer 's book?
is it only for classical Chinese? is it recommended for beginners/intermediates?
>>7741287
I'm 28 as well and have it on the shelf but haven't read it yet.
I think I'll make it my week 9 book.
>>7741287
>Chinese philosophy
>It's all just fucking naturalism
>Some physical attraction to animals creeps in
>Suddenly sexual intercourse with snake women
>Now women with puffy fox tails and cat ears
>Literally walked into a furry convention
>Don't make eye contact, slowly back out
>Bump into a giant horny red dragon
>"Hey gweilo, I'll give you a ride you'll never forget"
>Someone spiked my punch
>Last thing I see before passing out is a big red rocket dangling towards my face
>>7742482
It is a classical Chinese book, beginning with several selections from Sima Qian, then there is a big section of Mengzi, some other stuff thrown in here and there, and a final section on Zhuangzi. By then end, if you study well, you'll be reading classical Chinese at a functional level.
In university setting they usually recommend two years of modern Mandarin before getting in to classical. I don't really see why this is necessary. I had several years of both Chinese and Japanese before I ever did Rouzer's book though, so I was already coming at it with a knowledge bank of several thousand characters.
My girlfriend did the first few chapters of Rouzer though, and her Chinese was beginner level, so if you're smart and move slowly I think it should be fine.
>>7741287
I've read Thomas Merton's "Way of Chuang Tzu" a dozen times over the past couple of years
A watered down collection in translation, but still one of my favourites
I re-rated 99% of my books below 5 stars and almost never rate 5 stars now but Zhuangzi is one of the few that retains it from years ago. I can't see it ever leaving my top list. This work is better than the Daodejing and it's better than any Buddhist, Confucian or Hindu texts that I've read. This book deserves to become a meme.
>>7742526
>so if you're smart and move slowly
>so if you're smart
Welp.
>tfw dragging your tail in the mud
>>7742535
taoism in general is endgame spirituality imo
>>7742547
Egoism -> Buddhism -> Daoism
Thesis -> Antithesis -> Synthesis
Nihilism somewhere between Egoism and Buddhism (Non-egoism).
>>7741287
Most Zhuangzi translations are only the 7 inner chapters. This is a shame, as there is real gold in the outer and miscellaneous chapters.
The book as it's come down to us is the 33 chapters as collated by Guo Xiang in the third century CE. In reality there was a whole genre of Zhuangzi literature in the early centuries of the common era. We have tables of contents to earlier redactions of Zhuangzi which have 50+ chapters.
So I would recommend people look for complete copies of everything Guoxiang included. The Library of Chinese Classics edition is excellent. It has classical and modern Chinese on the left page, and English on the right.
>>7742526
I remember an amazing old book for learning literary Chinese in the university library- Brandt, IIRC. It dated back to when literary Chinese was still actually used, so it mixed simple classical texts (or it might have been stuff written specifically for learning, can't remember) with things like official letters. Really handy for learning late imperial or even Republican stuff that isn't strictly classical, but isn't modern either.
New Age Western Spiritualists... My god you're all eating from the wok of ideology
>>7742526
thanks anon--I might pick it up actually
any textbook recommendations for learning modern (ie simplified) Chinese via a literary manner?
for beginner/intermediates?
>>7742574
I did volumes 1-6 of the New Practical Chinese Reader 新使用漢語課本. It's an excellent series if you're mostly interested in reading.
By volume 5 or so you can begin reading websites. The internet suddenly becomes a much larger place.
>>7741298
I too, played Persona.
Where should I go after reading (and loving) the Tao te Ching and Zhuangzi?
Zen koans have been the only other things to touch the truth as intimately as these two works
Any recommendations?
Preferably in the same vein of metaphysical apologues
>>7742595
The I Ching
The Analects
Mencius
>>7742595
>Where should I go after reading (and loving) the Tao te Ching and Zhuangzi?
The Greeks. Not even memeing. Check out the Cynic and Stoic philosophers, for how to apply similar principles to life.
>>7741287
>Go read it NOW
Should I really if I'm not even close to thirty yet?
>>7742562
How can you fuck up this image so badly? So easy to make and it's totally fucked.
>>7742624
It's not lol
>>7742624
What? Delete your post - it's embarrassing.
>>7741298
What chapter is this from?
>>7742623
You won't get anything out of it. It's all nonsense anyway, anyone who tells you different is a fucking liar who cares more about how you view them than anything they say. Chinese people had this shit figured out thousands of years ago and still died in their 10's of millions like fucking ants in a flood because of blind obedience to a tyrant less than 50 years ago. It's all a fucking farce. Only reason that country is prosperous is because they embraced free markets and allowed banks to lend to businesses which built cheap slave factories for uneducated farmers willing to be slaves and give their children a chance to be slightly higher payed slaves.
Incentive is the only human philosophy you need to learn and understand. Everything else is distraction and window dressing.
>>7742618
This is sadly often the case. In our culture classical Chinese philosophy is usually filtered through the lenses of classical Greco-Roman thought, where Chinese forms of logic, deconstruction, embodiment, and soteriology are co-opted into a Neoplatonic framework of emanation and return, or Aristotelian logic, which is completely inappropriate to the sources.
The lack of textual fidelity in the academic reception of Chinese thought is embarrassing - not to mention its popular reception. Because of this 99% of people think "oh Laozi? You mean watered down Stoicism?"
Only in the last 20 years have Daoist studies really begun to right some of these wrongs.
>>7742655
Is this post a really clever ironic criticism of legalism? Because you just summed up that strand of classical Chinese thought really well while simultaneously discrediting it.
>>7742586
thanks senpai
>>7742662
Maybe you are too much of a sperg to appreciate funny pictures. Yeah, that's probably it.
>>7742586
is the chinese internet actually interesting? do they have stuff we dont have, or is it just more of the same, just using ideograms instead of letters?
>>7742657
This post excites me to a huge degree. I'm completely ignorant with regards to the Chinese tradition outside of the interpretations passed down through Needham. Seeing nobody in my department (lol UK) has even the slightest care in this field could you direct me towards the thinkers taking a sincere interest in the Daoist/classical Chinese tradition? Any aid duly appreciated.
>>7742472
nice reference, gonna check that. mencius has some quite nice metaphors too.
>>7742535
no, the meme should be yang chu. the chinese stirner. at least in the texts of his opposers.
>>7742542
>tfw forgetting oneself in the water while laughing at the fish who try to survive outside of it
>>7742560
that post looks a decade or more old. there are several complete translation by now, ive read 8 so far, and the chinese classics one is quite mediocre. but i agree that limiting oneself to the sole inner chapters is missing a lot.
>>7742562
>ideology
>>7742595
the first answer is of course the lieh tzu! the guan zi is not bad too. then you can choose from those two answers whether you are interested in ancient china or trying the same themes treated different by another tradition.
>>7742644
the end of the 2nd one, by far the most famous and commented chapter of the book and id say of ancient chinese literature. most famous quote from the book, at least in the west.
>>7742655
>prosperous
you seem to be measuring the chuang tzu by standards alien to it.
>>7742623
id say itd seem an interesting piece of literature with nice stories, but when you reread it later itll be different. the quote i used, at least imo, is meant to say that only when you have gathered some knowledge in life, ie by 30, can you come to question it, and chuang tzu is useful for that. before that you wont miss but wont take much out of it so i guess it can do harm. you might find lieh tzu more appealing.
Whats your favorite chuang tzu edition lit? the most respected is the Watson one, the Graham is quite interesting in its analysis and classification. I liked the one made by Mair, quite readable but not just random vulgarisation as the penguin classics one. The rest complete ones are discardable imo. From the partial ones I liked "the essential CT", and i found the "essential writings" to be quite a good translation.
>>7743327
>there are several complete translation by now
Well, Hackett wasn't one of them. Which ones do you rec?
>>7742559
I can't see it. Stirner is all about putting your idea of yourself into place, by understanding that you shouldn't and couldn't be more or less than what you are. He's actually very similar to Laozi.
What's the best translation of the Zhuangzi?
>>7743661
please respond
>>7743661
Preferably one by a celestial. I think there's that one UChicago prof, Anthony...something or other. He's actually from there, and has translated a good number of classics like these.
>>7743327
I wasn't saying no complete zhuangzi translations are available. I was saying that they're relatively little-read in comparison with the inner chapter editions of Gia Fu or Thomas Merton.
In fact, as far as I know, before the 20th century even began there already three complete English translations of Zhuangzi available (Balfour, then Giles, then Legge). So I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say my post is 10 years old. Perhaps you meant 110 years.
>>7743661
If you can't read any Chinese the best complete Zhuangzi is Victor Mair's Wandering on the Way. He published it quite recently, and he's a well-regarded sinologists with great philological acumen.
However I would still recommend the Library of Chinese Classics edition. The English isn't as fluent, but it has parallel Chinese. So like the Loeb editions of Greek and Latin works, though the English isn't as flowerly or fluent, the textual fidelity is unmatched.
>>7743245
A.C. Graham awoke me from my dogmatic slumbers regarding the sameness of Chinese philosophy. His Disputers of the Tao is a classic overview of classical Chinese philosophy - with invaluable appendices. But he's also written works heavier on philosophy and lighter on sinology - Unreason within Reason and Reason and Spontaneity. His
>>7741287
i read it at 17 it's definitely one of those books that'll change how you look at things for some time
PDF of Graham's Inner Chapters anyone?
>>7743661
Burton Watson is the best imo
go for his Complete Works of Zhuangzi
>>7748227
here's a link to an html page of watson's
http://terebess.hu/english/chuangtzu.html
no joy on the other