Musings of a Chinese Mystic: Selections from the Philosophy of Chuang Tzu

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If Lao Tzu then had revolted against the growing artificiality of life in his day, a return to nature must have seemed doubly imperative to his disciple Chuang Tzu, who flourished more than a couple of centuries later, when the bugbear of civilisation had steadily advanced. With chagrin he saw that Lao Tzu’s teaching had never obtained any firm hold on the masses, still less on the rulers of China, whereas the star of Confucius was unmistakably in the ascendant. Within his own recollection the propagation of Confucian ethics had received a moving impetus from Mencius, the second of China’s orthodox sages. Now Chuang Tzu was imbued to the core with the principles of pure Taoism, as handed down by Lao Tzu. He might more fitly be dubbed “the Tao-saturated man” than Spinoza “the God-intoxica

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