? The pre-Qin period was a period of social unrest and people's suffering. Although we are far away from that period, after thousands of years of civilization development, we seem to have increased a lot of knowledge and wisdom than people at that time, but we are closer to the pre-Qin wise men in the wild period and have a more thorough understanding of life and death. During that period, the melee and cruel punishment of various countries made philosophers have their own opinions and thoughts on the life and death of people and everything. Among the pre-Qin philosophers, Zhuangzi was a special existence. He is a civilian, and he doesn't want to be an official, perhaps out of despair of the ruler. He lives in poverty, but he is not ashamed, and has the quality of Confucian "gentleman poverty". While the philosophers were eager to recommend their ideas to the king, Zhuangzi's ideological focus was on the people, which was also due to the relationship between Zhuangzi and the lower class civilians. Zhuangzi's works are also very different from other philosophers. Some directly express their thoughts about people and countries, while Zhuangzi expresses them through fables. Some fables clearly describe a certain truth, but they also express Zhuangzi's own mentality and thoughts. Zhuangzi is the most talked about life and death among the works of pre-Qin philosophers. In the book, Zhuangzi's philosophy is told through fables and arguments, and we can get a glimpse of Zhuangzi's view of life and death in these narrative arguments. "Zhuangzi" tells the story of Dapeng at the beginning. "Peng moved to Nanming, and the water hammer went three thousand miles. The climber went to Wan Li for nine days and went to rest in June." Dapeng is huge and has a long flight time. The Dapeng here is beyond time and space. I think Zhuangzi is here not only to explain the difference in size between Dapeng, Xun and Snow Pigeon. The broad-mindedness that Dapeng soars, criss-crosses the world and travels in all directions is exactly what Zhuangzi wants to pursue and practice. Zhuangzi faced life and death with such a vision and mind, so in the book Zhuangzi, we can see some special views different from other philosophers. Because Zhuangzi longs for freedom, he has a broad-minded mind different from others when dealing with the concept of life and death. There are many stories and words about life and death and time in Zhuangzi, such as "all one's life" in Master of Health, "neither birth nor death" in Emperor Tai Shang, "changing the day to the moon" in Tian Zifang, "fleeting" in Knowing the North, and "day plan" in Geng Sangchu. I think Zhuangzi's outlook on life and death can be divided into three categories. The first category is the stage of "not afraid of life, not afraid of death" to understand and accept life and death. At this stage, Zhuangzi regards life and death as two equal aspects, and thinks that man is a part of nature, and life and death are inevitable, so there is no need to worry about fear. The second category is the stage of "Fang Sheng Fang Si, Fang Si Fang Sheng". People don't need to be afraid of life and death, because life and death are one, and life and death are two processes that can be transformed into each other. This process takes "Qi" as the medium, and Yin and Yang converge into adults, and people die into Yin and Yang, which is endless. The third category is the "beyond life and death" stage. Man and everything are one, and there is no difference between life and death in the initial stage of the formation of everything. After gaining the Tao, they will have the realm of "the unity of things and me", so life and death will lose their meaning, which is the real transcendence of life and death. When Zhuangzi made these statements, he always mentioned the concept of "Tao", which is the link that runs through Zhuangzi's view of life and death.

1. Not afraid of life and death

? As for "life", it can be seen that Zhuangzi attached importance to life. For the living, Zhuangzi gave suggestions on "nourishing the spirit" and "saving life". In Deliberately, Zhuangzi proposed that "endless work is harmful and intensive use is tiring. The nature of water is clear without mixing, flat without moving, closed without flowing and unclear, which is also the image of Tiande. Therefore, it is clear but not miscellaneous, static and unchanging, and doing nothing. This is also the way to cultivate the spirit. " Human nature, like spirit and water, needs calm maintenance to achieve the best state. Regarding the concept of "life-saving", Zhuangzi wrote in "Master of Health Preservation" that "goodness has no near name, and evil has no near punishment. Du Yuan believes that classics can maintain health, can support a lifetime, and can support relatives for several years. " Putting forward this view is to tell people how to survive in troubled times, and it also reflects Zhuangzi's cherish of life. Zhuangzi is not shy about "death". In Master of Health, Zhuangzi wrote such a story: When he died, his friend Qin was lost. When Laozi's disciple asked Qin why he cried a few times and left, Qin explained, "It is right to come, and so is the master;" Appropriate, the master is also suitable. When it is peaceful, you can't go into mourning. The ancients called it the solution of the emperor county. " We should conform to the natural cycle, live fearlessly, die fearlessly, face the unchangeable fate, and live and die peacefully with an open mind. The agreement of four people in A Generation of Masters: Zisi, Yu Zi, Gigi Lai and Zilai "Who can take nothing as the head, life as the spine and death as the coffin, and who knows the integration of life and death, I will be their friends." Here is Zhuangzi's own attitude towards life and death in the form of fables, and the four people's "smile at each other and never go against their will" is Zhuangzi's more affirmation of this attitude. Yu Zi didn't feel sad because of his illness. Instead, he wants to "soak his left arm and turn it into a chicken, so that he can stay up all night;" Immersed in the fake, I gave it to my right arm as a bullet. I gave it to you out of jealousy. Vacation becomes a wheel, taking God as a horse and taking advantage of it, let alone riding it? " Because "the winner, lost time, smooth; When you are safe, you can't enter the funeral. " Zhuangzi used the characters in fables to tell the truth that there is no need to be sad or happy in life and death, which is exactly what Zhuangzi advocated and wanted to spread widely. People should respect and conform to nature. Therefore, in the interpretation of life and death, Zhuangzi agrees with "obedience". When life comes, we should not rejoice in it, but when it is over, we should not resist it or grieve for it. Zhuangzi wrote in "The Emperor's Father", "My husband kept me alive, let me grow old and let me die. Therefore, it is good to be alive and good to be dead. " Zhuangzi looks at life and death from an equal perspective here. People have sufferings when they are alive, and the most painful death in the eyes of ordinary people may be the end of these sufferings. If existence is a good thing, then death is also a good thing. In "Sheng Da", "To build a shape, you must use things first, and those who have more things have them; If you are alive, you will not leave your shape, and there will be people who will not leave your shape. You can't live without it, but you can't leave. " "If you leave the world, you will not work hard. If you leave life, you will not lose money." The husband's shape is completely exquisite, and he is one with the sky. "Life comes and goes artificially, and we can't change and stop this process. What we can do is to conform to nature, face life and death, and have relatively more freedom in the unchangeable whole process. Only by facing up to all this can we treat the world correctly and underestimate its impermanence, and we can truly "achieve life", that is, understand the meaning of life.

2. Be born with it, and die without regret.

? I think Zhuangzi's understanding of this point began with his Dream Butterfly. "I wonder if Zhou's dream is a dream of harmony?" Here Zhuangzi blurs his body and directly interprets dreams with consciousness, so he doesn't know whether he is Zhuang Zhou or a butterfly. Zhuangzi began his perspective transformation from here. Some people regard this concept as agnosticism, but this method does give a way to explain life and death later. After that, "I don't know the happiness of fish unless I am myself?" This sentence explains the same thing from three angles. Although it didn't produce very convincing results, Zhuangzi developed a way to look at things from different angles. Zhuangzi often makes such a change of perspective, preparing for his later change of life and death. After the death of Zhuangzi's wife, Zhuangzi "sang with drums and pots", and interpreted it as "observing its beginning without life, without life without form, without form without life. Miscellaneous between mans fluorenes, it turns into gas, gasifies into tangible, deforms for a living, and now turns into death, which is the same as the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. " Here, Zhuangzi believes that life and death, like the cycle of the four seasons, are a cycle of reincarnation. Life is not the end, and death is not the end, so it is not necessarily a bad thing for a wife to die. She left this painful life and returned to the life that produced her most. It is precisely because of this view that when Zhuangzi died, students were not allowed to rebury him, but the celestial burial of "heaven and earth as coffins, the sun and the moon as walls, the stars as pearls, and everything as coffins" was enough to show Zhuangzi's understanding attitude towards life and death. Zhuangzi's concept of "Qi" originated from Laozi's "Tao", but the difference is that "Tao" is an abstract concept and "Qi" is a concrete representation. "Know the North Tour" in "Life and death, the beginning of life and death, who knows its discipline! When people are born, they gather together. If you gather, you will live, but if you disperse, you will die. What's wrong with me coming back from the dead! Therefore, everything is magical because of its beauty and decays because of its evil; Rotten rot is transformed into magic, and magic is transformed into rotten rot. As the saying goes, "everything in the world is blocked by one ear", and Zhuangzi used "Qi" to explain life. Life changes from "Qi" to "Qi" after death and enters another cycle. Therefore, with "Qi" as the medium, life and death are interrelated and mutually transformed. Zhuangzi also described it in Sheng Da: "Heaven and earth are the parents of all things, and when they are United, they become adults, and when they are scattered, they become the beginning. The essence of form is not lacking, which means that it can move; Clear sky Wan Li. "Yin and Yang combine to form life, and death makes tangible life return to intangible Yin and Yang. Be in harmony with nature when you are alive, so as to ensure the highest unity of body shape, and vice versa. Only when your spirit reaches a high level can you complement nature. Zhuangzi developed from Laozi's simple view of life and death that "life is precious and death is important" to "the view of life and death can be transformed into each other", which is the perfection of Taoist theory and the result of Zhuangzi's own exploration of life and death in the world.

3. Beyond life and death, "heart" is big

? Zhuangzi's exploration of life and death is based on Laozi's by going up one flight of stairs. The readers of Laozi's works are all kings of various countries, so most of them are about how to govern the country and become saints. His emphasis is mostly on the living. As a civilian thinker, Zhuangzi expressed his purest personal thoughts, so he explained the issue of life and death from various angles in Zhuangzi. In other words, Lao Tzu is obsessed with the living, and Zhuangzi transcends the boundary between life and death. People, regardless of life and death, are just an individual after all. Become angry after death, invisible and intangible. How can we escape from this process, make people's spirit and thoughts immortal, and how can we transcend life and death? In Tian Zifang, Zhuangzi gave the answer through Zhong Ni's mouth: "The husband's grief is greater than the heart's death, and the human death is second." In other words, as long as the "heart" does not die, the real death will not come. There is little description of the concept of "heart" in Zhuangzi. I think Zhuangzi's "heart" and "qi" can be equated. Zhuangzi's "Qi" originated from Laozi's "Tao". If we can get the Tao, we can reach the realm beyond life and death. In "The Emperor's Father", Nu Wa tells her own story of "Tao": "I still have it, and I can go abroad when I go to Japan; I have been out of the world, and I will keep it. After seven days, I can put my things outside. It's foreign, so I'll keep it and give birth outside in nine days. It has been born outside, and then you can see it; Look forward to it, and then you can see independence; See independence, there can be no ancient and modern; There is no distinction between ancient and modern, and then you can not die. " You can reach the realm of life and death after gaining the Tao, and Tao is the key to transcend life and death. Push everything back and let the world return to its original state. "There is a beginning and an end, a beginning and an end, and a husband has no beginning and an end. Some people have it, some people have it, some people have it before, some people have it before. Russia has nothing, and there is nothing unknown. " At this time, everything is nothing, there is no difference between life and death. Tao is to enter the initial chaotic state of everything, so that "heaven and earth coexist with me, and everything and I are one", so that the body can blend with everything, the spirit can get rid of the bondage of the body and coexist with everything, and life and death will be "meaningless". Zhuangzi also talked about the process of getting the Tao in the fable: "From what I have heard, one year is wild, two years are followed, three years are accessible, four years are changed, five years have passed, six years have gone into ghosts, seven years have become natural, eight years have no knowledge of life and death, and nine years are wonderful". Therefore, "Tao" cannot be taught.

? I used to read Zhuangzi, but I only looked at its surface. This time, when I reread it, I only caught a glimpse of its philosophy. Zhuangzi pursued freedom all his life and didn't want to be bound, whether it was Dapeng's idea that "water beats three thousand miles and rises upwards" or Shanmu's idea that "things are not things but the ancestors of all things". He put this idea into his whole thought, so Zhuangzi's view of life and death is also free and easy. Confucius said, "If you don't know life, how can you know death?" Lao Tzu said, "Forever and ever. The reason why heaven and earth can last long is that they are not born by themselves, so they can live forever. Being a saint, being the first, being outside. " Both philosophers attached great importance to life, but in Zhuangzi, he not only attached importance to life, but also attached importance to death. He developed the philosophy of predecessors more perfectly, from "life" that everyone can see to "death" that people think is mysterious and unknown. He realized that there is no difference between life and death, but a complete cycle. This seems to have similarities with the reincarnation of Buddhism, but their similarities are limited to this aspect. Buddhism lies in enlightenment, and he values the bitterness and happiness in the afterlife, while Taoism emphasizes the preservation of this life. Starting from this world, Zhuangzi emphasized "life" mainly by "nourishing the spirit" and "saving lives", and at the same time explained the fearless view of "death". There is no end to the cycle of life and death. As long as the spiritual realm is still there, it is not real death. Laozi's concept of "staying in his place for a long time, not dying, and living a long life" is such a concept. Zhuangzi raised life and death from a normal natural physiological phenomenon to a philosophical concept, which, together with other concepts such as Tao and Qi in the book, constituted Zhuangzi's whole philosophical system. Now the academic circles agree that Zhuangzi was not written by Zhuangzi alone, but by many people. I think the central idea of this book has not deviated, and many concepts I want to express are not contradictory, such as the concept of life and death, which is a progressive concept, so I analyze Zhuangzi as a whole, not just a part of it. Generally speaking, Zhuangzi's view of life and death is based on Zhuangzi's free thought, following Laozi's consciousness of emphasizing "life", making "life" and "death" in the same position, and finally reaching the realm beyond life and death in the state of "Tao has no desire and no demand".

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