Zhuangzi

Zhuang Zhou, known as Zhuangzi (“Master Zhuang”), lived in the late fourth century BCE. The book that bears his name is a compilation: its first seven “inner chapters” are usually attributed to him, and the rest to followers and later writers.

Through stories, jokes and paradoxes, most famously his dream of being a butterfly, after which he could not tell whether he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming it was Zhuang Zhou, he questioned whether any single perspective, including those of the debating schools of his day, could claim to be the right one. He recommended a flexible, spontaneous way of living in tune with the natural dao.