The seeds of things have mysterious workings. (ch18)
Let yourself be carried along by things so that the mind wanders freely. (4:16)
This human form is merely a circumstance that has been met with, just something stumbled into, but those who have become humans take delight in it nonetheless. (6:28)
When it came time to arrive, the master did just what the time required. When it came time to go, he followed along with the flow. Resting content in the time and finding his place in the flow, joy and sorrow had no way to seep in. (3:7)
Shun said, "If my body is not my own possession, whose is it?"
Cheng said, "It is just a form lent by heaven and earth. Life is not your own possession; it is just a harmony lent by heaven and earth." (ch22, p87)
Hui Shi's talents were fruitlessly dissipated running after things and never returning to himself. He was like a man trying to silence an echo with shouts or to outrun his own shadow. How sad! (ch33, p125)
So neither you nor I nor any third party can ever know how it is - shall we wait for yet some "other"? (2:43)
When the smaller is hidden within the larger, there remains someplace into which it can escape. But if you hide the world in the world, so there is nowhere for anything to escape to, this is an arrangement ... that can sustain all things. (6:27)
Go as far as whatever you happen to get to, and leave it at that. (2:22)
Fools imagine they are already awake. (2:42)
The blackboard image above works the characters 不知周 into a butterfly. I'd asked students to try writing these character a few times and then write them on the board, maybe like butterflies, but only later disclosed the meaning of the characters and the reason for the exercise. The text is full of frustrating claims that sages and the "genuine men of old" got things right by not trying to, not aiming to, perhaps not even knowing they were. Can one learn from such a book?
Once Zhou [Zhuangzi] dreamt he was a butterfly, fluttering about joyfully just as a butterfly would. He followed his whims exactly as he liked and knew nothing about Zhou 不知周. (2:48)
