Deliberate link with The Impossible Dream article. Also butterflies and animals and nature in general are so incredible.
IN ZHUANGZI 莊子, an ancient Chinese text written by Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi during the late Warring States period (476–221 BCE), a story tells that Zhuang Zhou once dreamed he was a butterfly, flitting and fluttering around, happy, and doing as he pleased. As a butterfly, he did not know he was Zhuang Zhou. All of a sudden, he awoke and found he was Zhuang Zhou, solid and unmistakably human. But then he did not know whether he was Zhuang Zhou dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou. In the end, Zhuangzi wrote, there was necessarily a difference between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly; this difference was the ‘transformation of things’ 物化. The transformation is a change in consciousness between reality and illusion. The constant flux between dreams and awakening leads the ‘self’ to change from being unaware of the distinction of things to being aware of the definite distinction between and among things.
Dance of the Monarch
Deliberate link with The Impossible Dream article. Also butterflies and animals and nature in general are so incredible.