The Equality of Things

Ziqi of South Wall sat leaning on his armrest, looking up at the sky and breathing gently. He seemed to have lost his other half. Yancheng Ziyou asked, 'Can the body be made like dried wood, and the heart like dead ashes? The one now leaning on the armrest is not the one who leaned on it before.' Ziqi replied, 'Just now I lost myself.'

Great knowledge is broad and unhurried; small knowledge is cramped and busy. Great speech is clear and luminous; small speech is garrulous and petty. Joy, anger, grief, delight, worry, regret — music from empty holes, mushrooms from the mist. Day and night they alternate before us, yet no one knows from where they spring.

Without them, there is no self; without self, they have nothing to take hold of. It seems there is a true master, but there is no trace of it.

Words are not just wind. Words have something to say. But what they say is not fixed. Where is the Way hidden that there should be true and false? The Way is hidden by petty achievement, speech is hidden by flowery ornament.

There is nothing that is not 'that'; there is nothing that is not 'this.' From 'that,' one does not see; from 'this,' one knows. Thus it is said: 'that' arises from 'this,' and 'this' also depends on 'that.'

Heaven and earth were born together with me, and the ten thousand things and I are one.

Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, fluttering about — happy and doing as he pleased. He did not know he was Zhou. Suddenly he woke, and there he was — Zhou, solid and unmistakable. But he did not know whether he was Zhou who had dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming it was Zhou. This is called the transformation of things.