“Zhuangzi”, from the Tang dynasty, is one of the most famous and most translated classical texts. It is a book that we all know as it is one of the most translated classic texts. It was translated by the famous Chinese history scholar, Li Zhongzhi. This literary work deals with themes that everyone will have to face sooner or later: life and death. For example, when I look at death, I think about what happens when all the things I've always loved are gone. The kind of attitude we have towards the inevitability of death is a recurring topic in the Zhuangzi text. There is always a theory on how we can describe life and death, however, as we read, we will examine how Zhuangzi best describes life and death. To begin, we will first discuss Daoism/Taoism and its relationships to life and death, how Zhuangzi's experience with death reflects his perspective, and finally how we can truly look at life and death in their Together. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Before we dive deeper into the thoughts people have about life and death, let's first talk about Daoism, also known as Taoism. To tell it even further, Zhuangzi (or Zhuang Zhou) is a Chinese philosopher who is credited with writing the text called “The Zhuangzi,” which is one of the foundational texts of Taoism. That said, Daoism/Taoism is an ancient Chinese philosophical tradition whose philosophy emphasizes the cultivation of virtue and love. The word "Dao" (literally "way") is one of the philosophical concepts meaning "the way", but in China and many other parts of Asia the word means "way of life". We all have our own perspectives and attitudes towards death; however, “perhaps the least familiar attitude toward death, pervasive in classical Chinese philosophy, particularly in the Daoist tradition, which has impacted Sinitic cultures to the present day, is the opposite: affirming death. This affirmation of death is captured in Zhuanzi's rather cryptic statement: He who is able to take "nothing" as his backbone and "death" as his buttocks, he who understands that life and death, exist and perish, they are a continuous unity - I would be his friend”. From Zhuangzi's text we can see that this attitude towards death is a not so familiar attitude towards persuasion towards death; in fact, the interpretation of “He who understands that life and death are a continuous unity” refers to the idea that there will always be a beginning and of course an initial end, thus making death not the end of life but rather a continuous structure that we find in nature. In classical Daoism, death was cited as “the process of exiting into life and returning into death. Travelers on the path of life are about a third, and those who have a life but go to the path of death are also about a third. How come? Because of their excessive care for life." Basically, in classical Daoism, people are divided into three groups: our first group are those who simply live their life as it is, the second group is those who suffer from external environmental problems such as disease, war, etc., and are closer to death, and finally people who want to live a natural life but have had the unfortunate circumstance of trying to stay alive and end up in the second group instead. That said, the Zhuangzi text also refers to Daoism as both texts explain the process of continuing life and death. The fact that Zhuangzi leads more to the acceptance of death rather thanto the labeling of types of death explains precisely why many of us are so attached to death since the topic itself is not the problem: the problem is not having the acceptance of death that allows us to fear death even if (according to Zhuangzi) is mainly a waste of time and/or blocking one's life from what we want to do but will not do because of our fear of death and not appreciating the prize of life. The prospect of Zhuangzi's death goes a long way when it comes to the moment when Zhuangzi's wife died. For many of us, when we experience the loss of a loved one, it becomes too overwhelming to manage our emotions, to the point where we live our lives in desperation, but the fact of the matter is that we show our emotions towards death. one way or another. When Zhuangzi found his wife, he began to play the drums and sing a song for his wife, which is an unusual approach to death, however when Zhuangzi responds for his actions he states, "You misjudge me," Zhuangzi said. «When he died I was as desperate as any man could be. But soon, reflecting on what had happened, I told myself that in death a new strange fate does not befall us. At the beginning we not only lack life, but also form. Not just form, but spirit. We are merged into one great indistinguishable and featureless mass. Then came the time when the mass evolved the spirit, evolved the form, evolved life. And now life has in turn evolved death." This type of perspective towards a loss explains the process of dying and what it means to accept death as it is. The purpose of explaining both classical Daoism and Zhuangzi is to provide a deeper understanding and perspective towards life's most popular yet inexplicable questions and understand that life is really just one continuous unity. Even though Zhuangzi lost his wife, the fact that he accepted death allows him to appreciate not death itself, but the process of life and to understand the form of an evolved life. Returning to the perspective of death according to Taoism, there is always a process of change on every attribute that life has given us. That said, if we had a direct understanding of how nature works (its beginning and its end) we could avoid the feeling of depression or despair just as Zhuangzi accepted the fact that his wife died, but since it is simply a process of nature, the emotions towards the event are deeper, not because of the death itself, but because of the fact that we live in this world called life. In Taoism, it teaches the meaning of "Dao" as 'the way' or 'the way in life' describes another philosophical aspect on the course of nature as “Zhuangzi taught that what can be known or said of the Dao is not the Dao. It has neither an initial beginning nor a final end, nor limitations or demarcations. Life is the continuous transformation of the Dao, in which there is no better or worse, neither good nor evil. Things should be allowed to take their course and men should not put one situation before another.” You can define Zhuangzi as a philosopher who is detached from any circumstances: he does not care about emotional attachment to the physical world as he believes that everything will take its course regardless of whether you attach yourself to it. Zhuangzi is an inconsistent poet in his own respect. opinions towards death, as we have seen in the previous passages that perfectly accepts death as it is and it is good to value everything we already have in life. However, in other passages, he highlights an attitude towards another direction that, despite our value towards death, Zhuangzi continues to despise it, but gaining value towards it allows him to avoid.
tags