Chuang Tzu and Zhuangzi Wage War Throughout Heaven and Earth

May 11, 2025

I've been told that, as an introduction to the following essay, I should explain to my readers what the Zhuangzi and the Dao De Jing are. I will attempt to do so as succinctly as possible:

The Dao De Jing (also known as the Tao Te Ching) is an ancient Chinese work written some time before the 4th century BCE. It is a series of elusive and mysterious poems concerning the Dao, serving as a foundational work in both Daoism and Chinese philosophy more generally. It is credited to Lao Tze, or Laozi, who may or may not be a legendary figure.

The Zhuangzi was written later, at some point during the Warring States Period (476-221 BCE), and serves as a successor text to the Dao De Jing. It communicates similar (but not identical) themes in the form of parables and dialogues. At least parts of it were written by a man named Zhang Zhou, also known as Zhuangzi, but the authorship in general remains a subject of debate.

As with all important and ancient documents, the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi have many different English translations. These range from the poetic to the prosaic, from the scholarly to the artistic, and from the informed to the less-informed.

One of the more famous translations of the Dao De Jing was written by Ursula K. Le Guin, a renowned author of fantasy and science fiction. In truth, her work is more of an adaptation than a translation, as Ursula K. Le Guin didn’t know how to read Classical Chinese.

I go back and forth on whether such a "translation" is presumptuous, or kind of cool. If I consider it as an independent work that leaves the original Dao De Jing as it is, then it doesn't bother me at all. I can treat it as an expression of her own understanding: essentially, a form of commentary. However, when I think of it as a work attempting to occupy the place of the Dao De Jing, then the whole thing makes me a little uncomfortable.

The fact of the matter is that the only truthful Dao De Jing exists only in Classical Chinese. Any translation into English is, by its nature, imperfect. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being imperfect!

Professors teaching the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi tend to use multiple translations of a passage — often including their own — as well as a glossary of Chinese characters/concepts that allow the student to form connections between these works and other Chinese texts. If the same Chinese word is translated into different English words depending on its context (something which is impossible not to do), its important for the scholar to understand that these are, in fact, the same word. If they don’t, they will be missing context, and therefore unable to form connections, which is what scholarship is all about.

The product of this amalgamation of multiple translations and a Chinese glossary is, quite frankly, ugly. If it were presented in a book as a single text, very few would want to read it. And in a certain sense, it defeats the unity of the work itself. The Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi are philosophical works, but they are also literary works — and thus, aesthetic works. They revel in the appearance of simplicity. If the translation makes them appear convoluted and overly academic, this destroys the reading experience, which is essential to the work’s meaning.

Sometimes, I like to read passages from the Dao De Jing in Chinese. I can’t actually read Chinese, but I can recognize a lot of the characters from Japanese. With the help of cross-referencing with a dictionary or a few translations, I can develop some further understanding of the text. Is this understanding accurate? I have absolutely no idea. I am certainly interpreting the work, in some way, but does an interpretation have value if it is not based on accurate information?

This problem rears its head in regards to other religious works, even a work as fundamental to Western culture as The Holy Bible. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible was then translated into Latin, from which translation most of Western European theology is derived. In English, we for a long time relied on the King James Bible, which was based on the original Hebrew and Greek, although modern scholars have found certain inaccuracies caused by the relative inadequacy of Hebrew scholarship at the time. All that being said, the Latin Vulgate and the English King James Bible have been read and accepted by millions, forming the basis of their faith. It would be incredibly presumptuous to argue that this faith is invalid simply because of a few translation errors.

Even within a single translation, the meaning of passages in the Bible are subject to interpretation and debate. The discourse surrounding meaning in this less-literal sense could be considered far more significant than any quibbles regarding Hebrew grammar.

The first version of The Holy Bible I read was the King James Version. This was important for me to read as a student of literature, for this is the version that is most often quoted in English poetry and prose. Nowadays, I’m more likely to refer to the New Revised Standard Version. The copy of the NRSV I use is the New Oxford Annotated Bible, which is rife with scholarly footnotes and maps.

The King James Version treats the Bible as a literary and religious work. The New Oxford Annotated NRSV, on the other hand, treats the Bible as a historical document, and offers insights into its production and potential modification over time. These are two wildly different and equally useful texts, each making some sort of claim to be The Holy Bible.

The first version of the Zhuangzi I read was instead called the Chuang Tzu, translated by David Hinton. David Hinton’s Chuang Tzu is a folksy collection of nonsense. He gives chapters titles like “A Little Talk About Evening Things Out.” (Compare his grandiloquence to the Chinese title 齊物論.) His propensity for splitting chapters into a preponderance of numbered sections obscures the connections between them, making the work seem like a series of non-sequiturs. For example, in the first chapter, section 13 reads,

“Someone in Sung had some marvelous hats to sell, so he took them to Yueh. But the Yueh tribes crop their hair short and tattoo their bodies, so they had no use for marvelous hats.”

All the other translations I’ve consulted include this section as part of the previous dialogue between Jian Wu and Lian Shu, where it acts as an explanatory example of people receiving gifts that they don’t need. This is in the context of a parable about some men who live atop a mountain and need for nothing. Jian Wu fails to understand the parable, and accuses the parable-teller of speaking nonsense. Lian Shu explains to him that this is an example of small minds failing to understand greater minds.

The small being unable to understand the large is the prevailing theme of the chapter. Thus, the story of the hat-seller from Song, in itself, is not all that important. What's important is Jian Wu's inability to understand it. Hinton's translation removes this context, and therefore makes the whole section a lot less coherent.

For several years, I considered David Hinton's translation to be synonymous with the Zhuangzi. The two were the same thing. I enjoyed its disconnected, meandering, and somewhat goofy nature, thinking that was all part of the point. I read and re-read the stories, trying to gain a further understanding.

It was only recently, after opening up a more "accurate" and scholarly translation, that I'm starting to understand its inadequacies. And yet, opening up this new copy, I still feel like I am approaching it as a person with an understanding of the Zhuangzi.

When it comes to obtaining information, we are always relying on sources of varying levels of reliability, from journalists to technologies to our very own senses. Knowledge is primarily passed on second- and third-hand, and our ability to confirm its validity is always limited. If we are searching for the Truth, then simply obtaining as much information as possible isn't enough. We need to be able to synthesize and derive meaning from this information.

In this way, we could say that attaining wisdom is far more about developing a keen sense of intuition. This intuition is what allows us to make judgments about the information we receive about the world. It may not always lead to particular, material truths, but instead to more general, universal Truths.

The question, then, regarding my relationship with the Zhuangzi, is whether I have been able to use the texts available to me to strengthen my intuition, and make myself into a wiser person. The answer, in regards to both translations, is yes. Which means that, instead of replacing my old, inferior knowledge of the Chuang Tzu with my new, superior knowledge of the Zhuangzi, I am instead doubling up — adding a force multiplier to my ongoing ascension on the path toward becoming a wise sage immortal.

Which is, no matter how we slice it, probably a good thing!