The Essential Chuang Tzu [Hardcover]

Sam Hamill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 22, 1998

The ancient Chinese text known as CHUANG TZU has been translated into English many times, but never with the freshness, accessibility, and accuracy of this remarkable rendering--the result of a unique collaboration between one of America's premier poet-translators and a leading Chinese scholar. At turns playful and acerbic, the book presents a philosophy of life that is politically radical and deeply spiritual.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you have looked long at the serene freedom of a Chinese painting or been baffled by a Zen koan or been knocked off your stool by a Beat poet, you have met Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi). If you would like to get to know him better, spend some time with poet Sam Hamill and scholar J.P. Seaton's translation of The Essential Teachings of Chuang Tzu.

Of the 33 chapters in the original, Hamill and Seaton render 19 completely and 3 partially into a naturally flowing English idiom that captures the vibrancy, humor, and playful sincerity of Chuang Tzu's language. Chuang Tzu offers insights more than teachings, startlingly transparent nuggets of wisdom in short episodes with colorful characters and trenchant punch lines. His overarching themes of freedom, living naturally, using the useless, the interconnectedness of all things, natural transformation, and such materialize as the eye meanders from passage to passage. Here is a concise, fluent rendition that makes reading Chuang Tzu almost as much fun as wandering free and easy through the infinite. --Brian Bruya

From Publishers Weekly

Like a treasure chest of precious stones, the writings of Chuang Tzu shine with uncommon wisdom and insight. This new translation, which expertly preserves the humor and bite of these ancient teachings, will entice a whole new audience to read?and re-read?Chuang Tzu's writings. In their informative introduction, Hamill and Seaton discuss the vast influence Chuang Tzu, a disciple of Lao Tzu, has had on writers as diverse as Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot. Chuang Tzu's moral and spiritual instructions teach distaste for technology, love of nature and suspicion of social convention. This revered Taoist teacher also longs in his writings for a golden age when everyone lived a better life. Although written in the third century B.C., Chuang Tzu's teachings are astonishingly contemporary.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 170 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala; 1st edition (September 22, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570623368
• ISBN-13: 978-1570623363
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,915,586 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you thought you loved Thomas Merton's condensation..., August 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Essential Chuang Tzu (Hardcover)

My, my this is beautiful. For me it lights up everything else I've read in Taoism and Zen. The translators have made careful decisions about how to say certain phrases that come up often. It's as poetic and faithful as Stephen Mitchell's Tao de Ching, but so much more fleshed-out, of course. It's so practical. You need this book!

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "All ten thousand things are one horse.", May 26, 2002

By 

G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Essential Chuang Tzu (Paperback)

It has been said that if we want to know "the force that keeps the sky blue, the stars burning, the mountains high and still, the rivers running and the oceans flowing," then we must "remove the veil" that stands between us and the Tao (Deng Ming-Dao, 365 TAO, p. 146). Helpful in that respect, the CHUANG TZU is an anthology of Chinese wisdom stories attributed to Chuang-Chou (369-286 B.C.). Along with Lao Tzu's TAO TE CHING, the CHUANG TZU provides the core teachings of Taoism. Like the TAO TE CHING, the CHUANG TZU is can be read in a single sitting, but offers its reader the challenge of a lifetime to understand. Hamill's translation into colloquial English conveys all the subtlety, paradox, and wisdom of the original. These stories encourage us to first listen with the heart and mind, rather than the ear, and then to stop listening with the heart and mind, and listen with the ch'i, that is, the very energy of our being, instead (p. 25). This book is essential for anyone interested in Taoism.

G. Merritt

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Esswntial Chuang Tzue, May 3, 2010

By 

Lucas Herr (TREMONT, ILLINOIS, US) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Essential Chuang Tzu (Paperback)

This has some great writings from Chuang Tzu, although it can be a bit tough to read, as it dry in spots. Has a lot ancient rhetoric from the times of Chuang Tzu, so an interest in this area would help in keeping the readers attention.