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I’m not going to say what is said isn’t generally true but Like a lot of things it is what you make it. Like was said in an earlier post many things in life are used in this way. It’s a very common reaction to life. There’s some nuances twists and turns to this martial art thing aswell like if you actually spar or “compete” your fear, delusion and ego take a different trip, if you practice a not combative martial art the sky is the limit for feeding your insecurity if that’s the process driving you. So many things are the realm of insecurity we seem to be terrible at dealing with this common situation in general.

The zhuangzi talks about how ancient knowledge would often be useless without the perspective or conditions of the time the knowledge is from. To only be exposed to a western perspective translation which is deaf to the perspective/conditions of the time is kind of like case in point . Even the Chinese commentaries hundreds of years after differ on their opinions. It’s an exaggeration I guess in this case that it’s useless but it definitely could be misleading. I think if you find an outlook to be true to you you go with that and your experience, leaving yourself open to change. I don’t get the feeling from that inner chapter zhuangzi that he wants you to follow him as much as he wants to free himself and others from BS. I do read western translations of this ancient Chinese book that has already been edited many times , over many years. I can only make of it what I can. It is funny to me trying to nail down what zhuangzi is saying or trying to sort out other confusing aspects of the text because how dismissive he is about everything. It is strangely fitting that the situation is so garbled.

I’m not sure if what is presented are the authors personal opinions as much as they are potential or likely possible meanings based on his own scholarly study of the text history and opinion, where one or all interpretations could have been intended. The zhuangzi is at times a mess of perspectives and emphasis. I don’t think anyone is certain why that is. I don’t think there is commentary on zhuangzi until hundreds of years after it was supposed to be written. There are many interpretations of any given story in it. These interpretations are informed by our perspectives..so I think theres a lot of reading any number of ideas into some of these stories. Translation is yet another hurdle for interpreting. I think it is very good to know zhuangzi relationship to The philosophy of the time and historical background of Chinese society at the time. It likely puts some things into light that many would otherwise not understand. It opens up potential interpretations. I like the videos. For whatever reason when I read or hear the butterfly story told I never think of the idea of not holding to static identity. I’m usually just reading or hearing it and thinking..that’s cute.. you know.. who knows what’s real? next. That’s probably because zhuangzi does a better job,in my opinion, hammering these things out plainly in those beginning chapters. Some of the concepts zhuangzi speaks of are just hard for me to read into the little stories. So yeah now the butterfly will remind me of that deeper meaning. Awesome. Most of the ideas being discussed are taken from zhuangzi whether it’s what he actually meant to say with these given stories, I don’t know. I think reading zhuangzis ideas into his sometimes vague stories is not a bad way to go. These are good videos because they explore perspective, which is very zhuangzi. Hell if one man actually wrote the whole book then he really could’ve held/entertained/was ambivalent to multiple points of view on a number of subjects. I don’t think anyone can know the full intentions.

I agree, their use as a hobby, stress reliever,fitness or whatever function they serve to different people is valid to me. It’s the lying to others and ourselves that is concerning to me. You’re right, people want to believe that these arts are Everything but to get the most out of them you have to use them — experience. For a lot of people just to be associated with the esteem of the art seems to be enough achievement. life.. in the end it’s up to you and what you make of it

If fighting isn’t your thing , for fun I think a taiji practitioner could benefit from clinching with a Muay Thai fighter or judoka. I know in many martial arts groups it’s just assumed whatever it is they’re doing is going to transfer and be effective,that’s just delusional. In life many people live fantasies. They may have no nefarious intent but their delusion can negatively impact other people. I’ve experienced this with martial art, I’ve seen it with religions and other situations where someone has knowledge and someone else is trying to get it. (Since this is a daoist forum I’ll share that This is in part my draw to zhuangzi philosophy. For me, I think opening your perspective helps protect one from delusion or maybe ive just seen too many people be burnt and read it into it, unsure.) When it comes to fighting if your teacher isn’t willing to spar, test yourself somewhere else. How can you honestly expect to use your art if no one around you is experienced? You’re going to have to learn yourself. Learn how to come at someone agressively and defend in a way that you might commonly encounter/dynamically/realistically. This alone will help your fighting awareness and help your interested classmates. Note that this can offend your teacher or make them uneasy. That’s life.. Hopefully Your teacher is honest, interested in understanding and helping Students. This isn’t an issue if you don’t care about self defense or want to avoid conflict. To echo Longrays sentiment, youd be riht to ask, if No one can actually fight or even defend themselves with your art, who dropped the ball and what else wasn’t taught along the way? What was the standard fighting ability in the arts glory days? You just can’t know unless you step out. Simple defense is taught in competitive fighting arts immediately and can be developed quickly, at the very least learn to avoid getting destroyed under pressure. If a. 5 year student can’t defend themselves how is this not a failure? It’s really up to teachers and future teachers to bring competence to their art.Internal martial arts are refined and it takes work to achieve but the whole time you’re doing that work you should be learning universal fighting sense so that when you develop that special ability you have Atleast a chance of applying it. This whole idea is at odds with the way they’re practiced now though. If you’re not aware of delusion your identity will fill in the holes and naturally keep you on that path. Seems like a lot of people have been down this road, I hope they take the lesson that people delude themselves and they test the reality and worth of what their teachers teach in life, in general.

this was already touched on but Ill 2nd 3rd or 4th the notion that you need to try to fight to have any real truthful expectation of being effective. You need to cultivate Fighting ability. Just about every martial art can be applied and be effective if you practice fighting. If you don’t practice actually fighting it might still work on someone who also doesn’t practice fighting. Many a brawler has won numerous fights in their town with their left hook or whatever . It’s going to get much harder when you suck at defending, evading, reading position, timing,controlling adrenaline. I think if you can find a situation where you work at applying what you know with someone who is experienced in say kick boxing you will no longer question what you need to work on. does it work? Yeah on some and if you can pull it off. You can’t even begin to say whether it work or not until you’re at the point that You can say you have the ability to not get destroyed instantly. You can’t just throw a bullet at someone. You need some other important things to make that bullet effective. I haven’t seen anyone win a fight with taiji I think you’re more likely to see a judo guy pull off taiji. I have seen just about every competing martial art win fights. I have seen a lot of non competing martial artists revert to bad boxing, brawling or just have no chance. The better the fighting ability the more art comes out In sparring,fighting. Just thoughts

I appreciate what your saying but I’m only commenting in hopes that original poster will not look at these things they’re talking about as a representation of all under the umbrella daoist or in some way to write off the whole. I don’t want to hijack this thread. I’m not saying I’m not somehow misguided, if you want to PM me about this I’m “all ears”, thanks

I agree with what you’re saying. I’m not trying to discredit any of the practices under the umbrella. I’m saying laozi and zhuangzi would not like to be associated with political/religious power struggles and some idea of only temples for the rich. I’m saying this question should be much more specific and wish I could’ve wrote what you did instead of “ I believe it represents the whole gamut”. Whose perspective under such a broad group are we trying to get?? What one group does does not represent the whole.

For what it’s worth I think laozi and zhuangzi would be very disapointed to be associated with anything like this. maybe”daoist” is a better term for modern organized and religious groups but in my understanding it represents the whole gamut . In my head using the simple broad brush term, daoist, to pose this question is..not the best.

Living virtuously is equal to living in accordance with one's experience of the actual course of nature Chrysippus

I don’t think zhuangzi ever says “go with the flow”. But I don’t speak ancient Chinese or modern Chinese so I rely on varying translations. I’m not sure the origins of the phrase “ go with the flow” but I’m pretty indifferent to it. There’s no way you’re going to,capture what zhuangzi is talking about in such a short phrase. It sounds like some 60s slogan, catchy easily.. I just looked his up Origin This expression was first recorded to be used by the Roman Emperor, Marcus Arelius, in his writings "The Meditations". He penned a lot about the flow of happiness and thoughts and he surmised that most things flow naturally and in his opinion it was better to go with the flow than to try and change society. Then sometime in 1960s America, this expression was ascribed to the hippies, who liked outdoor activities but also espoused a philosophy of taking life easy, not getting worked up, not struggling or fighting. These people drew an analogy from the way they kayaked and rafted on white water to the way life should be led, by going with the flow. Source: theidioms.com that is not surprising considering. Marcus’ stoic roots. A philosophy which shares some similarities with daoist ideas. Still I think no one knows the real origin and I think the phrase means different things to different minds (very broad)

Honestly this story is not the clearest in message. It’s spoken by Confucius making it even more unclear about the intentions of the whole thing. Different translations also really change the overall intention of it. the original quot you posted, attributed to zhuangzi, seems like an overall simplified paraphrase of zhuangzi. My feeling about “go with the flow” is that it’s in a way accurate and also so broad that it could apply to many philosophies. this chapter is about connecting with or going with the way, he describes a sort of primitive man in touch with the way. In this case (story)they’re already talking about an advanced thinker who seems to accepted certain unknown things in life as unknowable and in this way doesn’t attach all the false proclamations or worry of self or identity. He questions self and reality trying to link back to the idea that if you lose yourself (kind of like we can imagine an animal or primitive man from the beginning) you can get in touch with the way. Mengsun is concerned with his current state not worried about what is next. That’s what I got from it. I haven’t put much thought into this section because I’m caught up in human life and took it as advanced level detachment. I’m more of a dao sympathizer when it comes to these things, they would have dramatic impact on everything in your life —much easier for a recluse or something. (Not ready for them)

The different translations can vary pretty dramatically but this snippet kind of fits the last line of a story in chapter 6 . When one rests in what has been arranged, and puts away all thought of the transformation, he is in unity with the mysterious Heaven." The story is roughly giving the advice of the quote, but it’s not what one would expect from the quote alone. I can see how you could turn that into that quote. Your quote is much more broad and immediately relatable though. It could be somewhere else in there.

though I can’t give a daoist view, I can share an opinion and my current view which is definitely inspired by daoist writings. I think this topic and the topic of eating of animals is GREAT one for seeing and understanding human thought and how dynamic it is. . Because the answer changes with the world,with people,with environments, with time. We can look back and forward, to rationality,logic, to our hearts, to this and that. We can see how identity plays its role in those who pick sides, those who latch on and make this decision part of their life’s work. How people can get caught up with their beliefs to the point they’re swept away. It is a topic that points out our conditional nature and one that shows us that we don’t know. It’s all hinging on culture and perspective. Some of your ancestors would’ve saw your problem as a blessing and made lunch. Humans are unique animals in this regard. We essentialLy create our nature through ideas interpretations and abstractions of events happening to us, much of which is inherited. Even if we have some innate instinct, it can be masked with new ideas( positive or negative) which feel as though they are our nature. what does an ape do or different apes do? Does it clear all life from its home and set boundaries between it and the world? I honestly don’t know.. do people who lived in the forest or jungle do this? Do all of them? some people hold spiders, love spiders, eat spiders, differentiate threat levels of spiders, kill all spiders. We can say it’s natural to defend a threat. The question here is what is a threat? This would be the appeal to not killing them simply for intrusion. In this situation you probably have the luxury and burden of having a home (and considering a decent one) one which is expensive, strong and labor intensive. Someone else may the the luxury and burden of having a home which is cheap not so labor intensive but relatively weak. Some have space, some have no space.. Our realities drive our perspective, drive our opinions, and then options. All of it is an opinion and personal choice when someone is given the opportunity and wherewithall to choose . Logically something could be “right” but objectively who the hell knows. The tendency to follow the balance is fairly intuitive especially considering we owe our lives to it. Daoism to me and maybe only to me, Is encouraging the ability to SEE not to define or pretend on things like this.

It’s a matter of conscience. Buddha was alleged to have grown up sheltered (as many are today) from nature’s conditions. This changes perspective on a deep level. I don’t know the whys of how Buddhists developed these ideas but it’s pretty easy to see how monks who don’t live normal lives could follow their heart to this conclusion. They are following their conscience, applying it fairly,Consistently to life. It’s easy to understand if you can stop putting your perspective in the way. Whether they’re right or wrong and the fact that it’s inconvenient or limiting or potentially dangerous to themselves or etc etc is all a different matter. . with this type of belief life can become uncomfortable to not follow your conscience. You might gladly trade inconvenience for piece of mind or ‘enlightenment’. You definitely want to ask some Buddhists who practice this if you want their specific views on this...All anyone who hasn’t practiced this can do is give you a flat plane summary of a 3D subject.I’m not saying you are but It’s good to not write off perspectives based on flat or biased summaries and focus what you can experience. As far as daoism is concerned, in my experience, any of the 2000 year+ old writings would be advising to not get caught up in contentions of what you can’t know. They would also be attempting to free you of a lot of dogma. Later sects, religious or otherwise seem to have their own varying interpretations.