It was out of curiosity that I picked up Zhuangzi and never let it go again. The words "Forget", "Loyalty" and "Ying Ning" are engraved in my heart and will never be erased. With the increasing reading time in Zhuangzi, I admire Zhuangzi, who is regarded as a real person in the South by later generations.
So I read a lot of information about Zhuangzi's evaluation by later generations. Among them, Zhuangzi himself is either a human being or a fairy. I can't verify whether it is true or not, but it makes me wonder what Zhuangzi is like in my eyes.
People's temperament will change with age. Zhuangzi is a human being, naturally, but there is an unchanging center in his life, and that is freedom.
In my opinion, Zhuangzi's tenure as a teenager was really spontaneous. He has an unparalleled love for nature and everything. His body and mind never seem to belong to the market, but only to Shan Ye.
As a teenager, Zhuangzi often lingered by the mountain stream, bathed in warm sunshine, looked at the sparkling water surface and met the gentle and supple spring breeze, feeling extremely comfortable and carefree. When he sees the fish in the water, he will sigh the happiness and freedom of the fish and naively ask you why you are so red. In my eyes, in my heart, young Zhuangzi is like this, so loving nature, and Ren Zhen is so free.
Zhuangzi didn't break the etiquette when he was young. Tired of being called a thief by the princes of the Central Plains, he left the Song State, left his hometown, and traveled to Chu and Yue in the south, looking for the ancient custom and ideal world in his heart that had no manners and was natural to all. In the sparsely populated Chu-Yue area, the simple folk customs made Zhuangzi forget the worldly troubles and integrate himself into the world and nature. Perhaps it was at that time that South China realized the realm of "forgetting".
"Zhong Ni suddenly said,' What is forgetting?' Yan Hui said:' You will be smart if you fall to pieces. If you lose your job and go to school, it will be just like Datong. It's called forgetting. ("Master Zhuangzi") "
According to Confucianism, it is time to make a difference in middle age, but Zhuangzi also became an official at this age, a lacquer garden official with a lot of oil and water. However, Zhuangzi himself doesn't seem to care about the benefits that the coating industry can bring. He doesn't take bribes. Whoever needs to draw Zhuangzi, give him a picture and never ask for it. Even if it may be used by some "lawless elements" for profit, Zhuangzi never cares. He just honestly does his own official and gets his due salary. He is just a means of being an official to make a living. Zhuangzi is human. Even though his spiritual world has reached a high level, in reality he is still a mortal, and mortals will starve, so Zhuangzi is an official. This reminds me of Tao Yuanming, a hermit who lived in Zhuangzi for thousands of years. He ended his career with an article "Back to Xi". What about Zhuangzi?
Although Zhuangzi became an official, he did not lose his original intention. He still wanted to be at ease, so Nanhua thought of "Xinzhai".
"If you have ambition, you will not listen with your ears, but listen with your heart. If you don't listen with your heart, but listen with your breath, your ears will stop at listening and your heart will stop at symbols. Angry people confuse the real with the fake. Only the Tao is empty, and the empty one is also fasting. "
But during the coup in the Song Dynasty, Zhuangzi thought of his own way of keeping in good health, which is the way to avoid disaster. Fang suddenly woke up, resigned and returned to his hometown.
Laozi and Zhuangzi are still at ease, never demanding anything. Although he has no wealth, he also lives comfortably. Even though the wind and rain in 2008 have made him see through a lot, he doesn't care about life and death.
Zhuangzi is not afraid of death, and even yearns for it. As early as when he was traveling in his youth, he would chat with skeletons on the roadside. The world after death is beautiful, without oppression and etiquette, and he is very comfortable. When his wife died, he sang to celebrate her completion of her life's mission and return to her original place. When Zhuangzi faced his own death, his disciples asked for a good funeral, but he refused. This is what he told his disciples.
"I take heaven and earth as coffins, the sun and the moon as walls, the stars as beads, and everything as food. If my burial utensils are not prepared for evil, why do you add this? "
His disciples were afraid that Zhuangzi would be eaten by birds, Zhuangzi said.
Zhuangzi in my eyes and Zhuangzi in my eyes.
"In this world, it is bird food, and in the next world, it is ant food. It is too biased to talk about this with each other. "
To die of natural causes is a beautiful state for Zhuangzi, and to die for Zhuangzi may be just a butterfly waking from a dream. That's why he was so calm and happy to leave. And through the ages, how many people can look at life and death like this? How many people "dream big and feel dead" like real people in South China?
From birth to death, Nanhua's carefree life has never changed. Whether traveling or being an official, his life in Zhuangzi is full of changes, but his carefree heart has never been lost. In those decades of ups and downs, he insisted on his original intention and did not integrate with the princes. He gave up the easy-to-get, the splendor, just to keep his heart, to keep the clear and spontaneous Ren Zhen.
In Zhuangzi's mind, his Tao is just like himself. It can be said that in me, Tao died.
Life is alive, but the word "free and unfettered" is not bound by etiquette and utility. "With the sun and the moon, with heaven and earth." His freedom is not only embodied in the world, but also transcends the world, life and death, heaven and earth.
This is Zhuang Zhou, a real person in my eyes, a carefree sage in the South.