Chuang Tzu's Butterfly Dream

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[IlRezzonico]

Chuang-Tzu did not believe him. “If I were to persuade the arbiter of fate to return your body to life, to re-make your bones, flesh and skin, to restore you to father and mother, wife and children, township and neighbourhood, friends and acquaintances – would you not desire it?”

The skull knitted its brows with a deep frown. “How could I refuse the joy of a king on his throne, to suffer again the toils of humankind?”

[IlRezzonico]

“In death there is no lord above or subject below, nor any of the toils of the four seasons. Untrammelled we last out the spring and autumn of heaven and earth. Even the joy of a king on his south-facing throne cannot exceed it.”

[IlRezzonico]

Or did you last out your spring and autumn to arrive at this?”

At the end of the speech, he pulled the skull over to him, pillowed his head on head on it, and went to sleep. At midnight, the skull appeared to him in a dream.

The skull said, “That talk of yours resembled a rhetorician’s. Consider the things you were talking about. All belong to the ties of living men – once dead we have them no longer. Would you like to hear my exposition of death?”

“I would”, said Chuang-Tzu.

[IlRezzonico]

When Chuang-Tzu was going to Ch’u, he came across a skull lying on the ground. He flicked it up with his horsewhip and took it as an occasion for questions.

“Was it by misjudgments in your greed for life that you became this thing, sir? Or was it perhaps by the troubles of a ruined state, or punishment by the executioner’s axe, that you became this? Or perhaps you committed some evil deed, and in shame of bringing disgrace on father, mother, wife and children, you became this?

[MzDTH]

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