Burton Watson (1925–2017)

This book contains the "inner chapters," not the entire Chuang Tzu, but generally considered the essential and least corrupt chapters. It's one of my favorite books, and after reading Watson's translation I'm unable to read anyone else's - it's wonderful (and there are quite a few weak versions, and weaker paraphrases). Of the Chinese classics I've read this is not only the most subtle and profound, it's sometimes absolutely hilarious. His parodies of Confucianism are a riot, his magical show more unrealism is timeless, his man dreaming he's a butterfly - or is it the other way around? - the useless tree that's preserved itself so long by being useless, not like all those fructiferous trees .... It's a rare combination of inane silliness with serious reflections on human nature, existence, nature and metaphysics (if that's the right term). show less

It’s a classic Taoist text, so reviewing it seems a little strange. If you’re interested at all in Taoism, this should be on your reading list, right after the Tao Te Ching, even if you have read it many times before.

I’m not a scholar of Taoism by any means. And Taoism is not part of my heritage. So I know its effect on me, as a modern western reader raised in a Christian culture, may be very different from what it is to others.

Quietism. An acceptance that things just are as they are, show more and to fight against that is a losing battle, like trying to hold back a wave.

More specifically, a withdrawl from judgment. Judgments oppose reality. Judgments that something shouldn’t happen, although it does. Judgments that something should happen, although it doesn’t.

Judgments are never absolute. You can’t count on them. Something large is always smaller than something even smaller. Something useful is always useless for one purpose or another. Something is right for the moment, but not for the next moment.

By themselves, things just are, and wisdom is a matter of accepting, in your thoughts and in your actions, that things just are as they are.

It means, in simple terms, aligning your efforts with the way the world moves and works, so that your efforts aren’t really efforts at all. Swimming with the current, not against it.

It’s a difficult message to swallow. We want to fight with reality, to fight against the current.

And what if the current isn’t healthy? What if the current is built on corruption, danger, or harm? What if the current is climate destruction, hunger, or cruelty?

But those things are all judgments, aren’t they?

Are those things the “way”? They can’t be. Are they in fact counter to the current of the world — corruptions, efforts against health, against life?

Maybe the biggest reward (and fun) of reading Chuang-Tzu is his play with language. He regarded language as an untrustworthy friend, someone who will lead you to insights tangled with blind alleys and dead ends when you follow it too far. As you read, you learn to trust nothing at face value, not even that you should trust nothing at face value.

Wisdom is elusive. It defies descriptions and rules. Descriptions have counter-examples, rules have exceptions and often mislead.

The opening of the Tao Te Ching says, in some translations, that the Tao that is spoken of is not the Tao. That’s because language leads us into these blind alleys and dead ends. All that we can do, through experience, including the experience of the Taoist texts, is approach the goal, to get nearer to it without ever supposing you have captured it in your words or the terms of your understanding. If you think you have captured it, you’re up a blind alley.

The Tao isn’t rational. It isn’t something you can describe. It’s only something you can experience. That’s why it is told in parables, parables that often don’t make obvious sense or have an obvious moral.

You fall into Chuang-Tzu’s paradoxical way of thinking and speaking — it is this and it isn’t this, it means this and it doesn’t mean this. You’ll never talk or think your way to it. It’s right in front of you, and it’s elusive. It’s right up ahead, and you’ll never get there.

It all sounds so mystical, but I think the point is that it is anything but mystical. It’s so real, so ordinary, and so familiar that it’s right there in front of us, all the time.

I keep rewriting this review as if I were going to get it “right.” Gotta laugh! show less

This is the fourth book with Burton Watson in charge of the translation that I read. As I'm absolutely not acquainted with the Chinese language, I'm extremely happy that such jewels were rendered into the english language. For all I know in ancient China heroes were cultural, i.e. no man of war was praised, no person of great conquest. People who set foundations for cultural values and development of civilizational refinement were much respected. Su Tung-P'o was definitely a Confucian ideal: show more He was punished by the Emperor's ruling party once - by justly siding with the people when his better judgment told him to - and he was right, pardoned later. Yet his forebearance and a sense of righteousness portray a deeply wounded man, whose first beloved wife passed away early. Who was moved from place to place without firm rooting by official governmental decrees. Poems as lifeblood of mawkish uprightness, overcoming the sentiment and moving forth, partially drunk where he reminds of Ommar Khayyam and his praises to wine in the Rubayyat. I envisioned sceneries of his travels in my mind, thinking about all the scrupulously presented annotations by Watson, so that we may acquaint the history and meandres of the times better. A book is an insight into the mind of the author, and a window into his times, all the dust that the dead gathered are alive with poetry. 'Living water needs living fire to boil' - in the words of Su Tung-P'o. Let's share this chalice. show less

I don't know that I have the energy to write a review like this book *deserves* -- but I'm stunned no one has reviewed it! Just gobsmacked. This is a ~600 page survey of Japanese poetry from (I think) the oldest things there are to the work of poets born well into the 20th century. It feels pretty comprehensive, and it runs from things that are so ... I don't know, elemental ... they're hard to connect with, through loads of haiku, hokku, renga, tanka and so on, loads of which are show more wonderfully evocative of the natural world, to ... well, very modern stuff. You *won't* love everything presented here, but you *will* come away enriched, thrilled anew with poetry's possibilities, and curious about a culture where poetry seems ... ah, I dunno, *important*? I ordered my copy used, and to my irritation I got a copy with a broken spine, that has chunks of pages falling out. Normally I'd unload a book like that, but this one is so good I'm going to keep it (and probably replace it with a better copy). Get it! show less