Chuang Tzu explains his ideas of Taoism or “the Way”[2] using poetry very much like Lao Tzu although in greater detail due to the brevity of Lao Tzu’s poems[3]. Chuang Tzu’s ideas are also explained by using characters from other texts or from history in his stories to recreate scenes in a humorous way often using exaggerated characters and dialogue. The second chapter of the Chang Tzu “Khi Wu Lun”[4] translates to “Discussion on making all things equal”[5] as Burton Watson puts it. The second chapter is introduced with a conversation between a master and a man named Yen Ch’eng Tzu-yu.
The first part of the chapter is a description of the need and use for clarity, told as the master explaining to the apprentice. It is possible to think of this hectic introduction as an intentionally confusing series of analogies to try to get the reader to use clarity to move through the text without wasting energy trying to figure out Chuang’s contradictions and use of double negatives. What way do I have of knowing that if I say I know something I don’t really not know it? Or what way do I have of knowing that if I say I don’t know something I don’t really in fact know it? 6] The second teaching in Discussions on making all things equal seems to be an important element in the Chuang Tzu. It is more obvious than some of the obscure lessons and begins with an almost introductory sentence, Watson’s translation reads;
“Do you know what all things agree in calling right? ” Wang Ni explains that the values of each creature are incredibly different and of course he doesn’t know what each creature considers right. The message in the story seems to signify that wrong and right are so complicated that they practically don’t exist.
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Finally in the chapter, Chuang Tzu introduces a concept that translates as the Transformation of Things. [7] The concept is illustrated through the story of Chuang Chou dreaming he were a butterfly. This concept of a questionable reality is fascinating and mysterious and it gives an idea of where Chuang Tzu was coming from with his abstract descriptions and ideas. It seems common among many translations of the second chapter that Discussions on making all things equal bears the message that there is no right or wrong in the teachings of Chang Tzu as it is repeated several times.
To go even further one could speculate that not only is there no right or wrong but neither is there anything, as later chapters in the Chuang Tzu speak again of life being just another dream. Despite the Chuang Tzu’s slightly difficult structure at first, upon further reading of the text his messages are not nonsense. His writing gives a very insightful and imaginative view on how people can think, both in the past and now. “Now I have just said something.
