Philosophy and Literature Blog

     Allison says that the transformation of the giant fish into the giant bird represents the transformation of the reader from reading the Zhuangzi.  He also says that the skepticism of the smaller animals is not just a representation of relativism, but is rather a representation of the 'small minded' reader who will not accept the idea of transformation.      I will have to see what the rest of his interpretation of the Zhuangzi says.  Allison's book has so far not told me the secret of the big transformation the book portends.  Most books that do this end up in anticlimax: "Always remember to check your references" or some crap will be the final message.

     So I got frustrated trying to understand what was going on in the Zhuangzi.  I then got on Amazon and bought three books on it.  The first one: Chuang-Tzu(Zhuangzi) For Spiritual Transformation, by Robert Allinson, claims that the Zhuangzi's inner chapters(1-7, the ones most likely written by the historical Zhuangzi) are intended not as a mere relativist treatise, but is meant to cause a 'spiritual transformation'.  I read the Tao Te Ching this way so I think this point of view has some merit.    Allison says that the mythological beginning is not just some obvious relativism, rather, it is intended to cause the reader to relax the analytic part of the mind and release the intuitive and aesthetic part of the mind.  He warns that the analytic part of the mind will be engaged in the text but that it is important to release it at the beginning.   Allison says that the myth is not literally true but is true in some other sense.  I agree with Allison that the aesthetic

     I've read about 1.5 chapters of the Zhuangzi. I've found it very difficult to understand.  I have understood some things but I suspect I am missing much of the point.  So far I've gleaned: 1. Chapter 1 is an examination of perspective.  There is a huge bird/fish.  The bird is referred to as the roc.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roc_(mythology) in the translation I have.  It can turn from a bird to a fish of enormous proportions.  The chapter reminds me of some of the themes in the story by Voltaire called Micromegas -- an extraterrestial in this story has 73 senses. 2.  It is evident from the examples given in the chapter that we should consider that our notions of the universe depend on our scale and our nature.  The universe itself has a nature which we are not necessarily  constructed to understand, if indeed the whole notion of understanding can be applied to the universe at all.  From the Tao perspective, "understanding" is always relative to interest

I know it's been a few weeks since I've written anything here.  Sorry I fell through on my promise to keep telling you how stupid your life is.  But I have in the meantime been reading a number of books on world religions that I wanted to have more exposure to.  In particular I read the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Tao Te Ching several more times. I also read some analysis of these books.  I've decided, however, that the book that I am going to spend some time working on is the Chuang Tzu, usually called a Taoist book,  but the translator says there was no such thing as 'Taoism' at the time this was written. There was a body of folk wisdom that the author(s) of the Tao Te Ching and The Chuang Tzu drew from.  Of the books I have read lately, the Tao Te Ching(I even got a book called the Dude De Ching, which gives a Big Lebowski reading) has had the biggest effect on me. It is difficult to grasp and short, so I thought I would try something a little longer and