Customer Reviews

The Book of Chuang Tzu (Compass)

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This is a great version of the Chuang Tzu containing all of the Inner, Outer and Miscellaneous chapters. Martin Palmer begins the book with a well written and educational preface and introduction going into the details of his translation and the Taoist concepts and ideas in the book.

He states: "The Book of Chuang Tzu is like a travelogue. As such, it meanders between continents, pauses to discuss diet, gives exchange rates, breaks off to speculate, offers a bus timetable, tells an amusing incident, quotes from poetry, relates a story, cites scripture."

"And always listen out for the mocking laughter of Chuang Tzu. This can be heard most when you start to make grand schemes out of the bits, or wondrous philosophies out of the hints and jokes. For ultimately this is not one book but a variety of voices swapping stories and bouncing ideas off each other, with Chuang Tzu striding through the whole, joking, laughing, arguing and interrupting."

Indeed the Chuang Tzu does all these things. Providing a fascinating and enlightening glimpse, using heavy doses of humor and wit, into the path of Tao. Experience is all.

As a long-time Chuang-Tzu enthusiast, I thoroughly enjoyed this translation. I imagine this would be very enjoyable to the general reader; I have read many commentaries on the meaning of Chuang-Tzu's philosophy (Victor Mair's, Allinson's, Wing-Tsit Chan's, A.C. Graham's, etc.) so my perspective is "biased" in particular way- I like the absurdity and relativistic notions, sort of a Lewis Carroll point of view. This translation fits in with my predilictions nicely. Chuang-tzu takes some pondering, and any translation that makes it too simple is doing the reader an injustice. This one captures all the irony and absurdity, yet leaves plenty of room for befuddlement. It contains ALL the chapters, not just the inner ones. Highly recommended!! I keep this by the bed along with The People's Guide to Mexico, another perennial favorite!

I prefer Burton Watson's translation to Palmer and Breuilly's, especially after reading parts in the Chinese text. But Palmer and Breuilly won't steer U wrong though. No, this is a decent translation of the entire text, which is not a common sight! Only Burton Watson, James Legge, and Victor Mair have put out complete Zhuangzi translations. AC Graham's translation is also quite good.

BAO PU-
embrace simplicity

All readers, both professional scholars and general auditory, interested in Taoist Philosophy may enjoy having this translation from the Classical Chinese text of the book of Chuang Tzu. Most of poetical parts of the original text have been translated with keeping the beauty of the original. This book is an important tool for deeper understanding of Philosophical Taoism.

This is a good book. How do I know? Because it is practical that is to say the concepts WORK. For another practical spiritual book I would recommend the book An Encounter With A Prophet

Fantastic!

Chuang Tzu is considered to have been a follower of the Taoist school of thought, influenced by Lao Tzu. However, we know much more about Chuang Tzu. He can be said to fit the classic ideal of a Taoist as a carefree ascetic with a sense of humour living in the forest in harmony with nature. This is certainly the portrayal of him in the book.

It is unclear who wrote the work and many authorities consider only the first few chapters as authentic. That's why it's good to get a translation that covers all the chapters as from reading them it's possible to get the feeling that even if are were a forgery, they are a worthwhile, beautiful forgery.

What is Chuang Tzu's philosophy? This is a question that has plagued people from religious Taoists to scholars for ages, because there is no definite answer but a number of strands. However, he is certainly a critic of contemporary society in terms of what he sees as a life that is too complicated. He is critical both of language as a means of pinning down concepts and civilisation in terms of corrupting people by creating rigidity. Many see him as a moral relativist, but I think he was just an advocate of a simplicity and "naturalness" and thought that moral labels only tended to make people more immoral.

The other concept I loved was wu-wei or "non-action". Unlike the cryptic nature of it in the Tao Te Ching, here, Chuang Tzu shows us through a series of misfits, cripples, ascetics and the like - all of whom figure as characters in his stories. Many of them survive and thrive through some kind of skill they've developped which doesn't require much intellectualising. When they're lost in their work (say trapping cicadas), they are happy and achieve success by not struggling, hence wu-wei. For starters, this highlights better than almost any other text I've read the intrinsic dignity of lives that are radically different to the norm in that they can still be worthwhile and fulfilling if we open our minds and see their essence. But Chuang Tzu was concerned in applying that kind of not-overly-intellectual action to government, which is also fascinating.

The edition has some footnotes but the book itself is large sections of narrative/prose/poetry that requires little external explanation. The translation probably leans towards poetic paraphrase over precise equality which I think is good for classic texts. The illustrations are great and really enhance the value of the book as a coherent whole.

A book of moving, funny, sad, chaotic, intuitive parables, stories, allegories and anecdotes that feel like they're speaking to you directly from over 2000 years ago.

Since I am not a scholar of classical Chinese, it would be ridiculous for me to express a preference for one translator of Chuang-tzu over any other. I like Burton Watson. I have no complaints about this Penguin: all translations from Ancient Chinese are interpretive, the language was so ambiguous. But Burton Watson was like a voice speaking to you, whereas this is a shade official and anonymous. However, you can only get Watson's complete Chuang-tzu in the big, ugly, expensive hardback. The paperback has only the "Inner Chapters" (the original core of the book?) plus a few extra ones. The best bits, sure, but all Chuang-tzu should be read. So the Penguin has to be first choice.

A.C. Graham is for the completist. Scholars have long known that "Chuang-tzu" is a composite, written by several people at different times. So Graham has rearranged his version in order of who wrote what, when and where (in his opinion.) Most readers will find this unhelpful, pedantic and annoying.

Sometimes I try to list my 10 favourite books and this is always near the top. Several philosophers have called it the greatest book of philosophy ever, but it's hardly philosophy in the usual sense. No technical terms, no paragraphed arguments, no subtly distinguished shades of meaning. Instead, wonderful and sometimes preposterous stories, anecdotes, stray thoughts. The reader is left to fill in many blanks. Chuang-tzu doesn't have a "philosophical system".

He prefers questions to answers. He likes to upset assumptions and open the mind to new vistas. Men consider a beautiful woman attractive: but if a deer sees her, it runs away; if a fish sees her, it swims away. People are afraid to die and desperately hang onto life: yet we know nothing bad about death, we know many bad things about life. The ailanthus-tree is huge, but so crooked and knotty that its wood is good for nothing: so no-one comes to cut it down. If we could learn to be useless like that we could live out our lives in peace.

The most ancient philosophical texts, the Greeks, the Upanishads, the early Chinese, have a special fascination. With little reliable factual information, they just let their minds go out. Their world was malleable and vague-edged like a child's world. They saw the vastness and mystery of the Universe, of the mind and human life. We don't know who we are, where we come from or where we're going. "Is human life really this crazy? Or am I the only crazy one, and everyone else knows stuff that I don't?"

Chuang-tzu is only difficult if you make him difficult. The jumbled sequence of stories is the result of the chaotic way the book was put together, it's not a puzzle you have to solve. He seems cryptic because he expresses himself so briefly, as Chinese characters encourage you to do. He is a skeptic. "People think words are different from the cheeping of baby birds, but is there really any difference?" As in the Upanishads, we find here the first hints of spiritual practice: by forgetting words and petty concerns, bringing our minds back to mystery and vastness, we restore contact with reality. "He relies upon nothing but this; he relies on this without knowing it. This is called the Way."

Were I too have one book on that proverbial desert island, this would be it. Chuang-Tzu speaks to my heart like no other both in the content of his "teachings" and in presentation. Experience this and there is nothing more. And this particular translation is both readable and true.

This book offers a new perspective of the world in a way that is interesting, thought provoking, and timeless. It is not a particularly difficult read, but it has a lot to it. Definitely worth reading more than once.

This book occasionally was interesting and inspiring for me, and sometimes confusing. The less often I read it, the more I like it. Overall I prefer to read the Tao Te Ching much more than this, but I have enjoyed this too. I have never read another version of this text, but as far as I can tell, this one is very readable and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this one. A great book to take with you to a Chinese of Japanese garden if you have one in your locale.