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Review: The Way of Chuang Tzu — the parables, for delight
★★★★☆4.2 / 5.0 (editorial rating)
Verdict: the most enjoyable way in. The Trappist monk Thomas Merton spent years with the existing translations of Chuang Tzu and then wrote his own free, poetic versions of the parables he loved most. As a book to make you fall for Zhuangzi — the butterfly, the useless tree, the joy of fishes — nothing on this shelf beats it. Rank it below the translations for one honest reason: it is an interpretation, not a faithful rendering, and Merton says so himself.
- Title
- The Way of Chuang Tzu (Second Edition)
- Author
- Thomas Merton (preface by the Dalai Lama)
- Publisher
- New Directions, 2nd ed. (first published 1965)
- Length
- Interpretive readings · ~176 pp.
- Difficulty
- Beginner ★☆☆ — short, plain, and a pleasure to read
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What it is — in three lines
Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk and one of the twentieth century's most-read spiritual writers. He did not read classical Chinese; instead, over some five years, he steeped himself in the existing English, French, and German translations of Chuang Tzu and composed his own free versions — "readings," he called them — of the passages that spoke to him. The result is a slim, warm book of parables in Merton's own voice, opening with an essay on why a Christian monk found a kindred spirit in an ancient Daoist.
The core — a monk reads a Daoist
What Merton hears in Chuang Tzu is the critique of usefulness and striving — the usefulness of the useless, the freedom of the person who has stopped competing for the world's approval. It is a natural fit for a contemplative, and Merton's versions bring out the wit and the lightness that heavier scholarly renderings can flatten.
The gnarled, worthless tree is the one the woodcutters pass by — and precisely because no one has any use for it, it lives out its years untouched, and gives its shade.
— the parable of the useless tree, as Zhuangzi tells it (editorial paraphrase, not Merton's wording)
Read it aloud and you understand why the book has stayed in print for sixty years: it is a pleasure, not a task.
Three highlights
1. The flavor, undiluted
If your worry is that ancient philosophy will be dry, this is the antidote. The humor and the imagery come through as poetry.
2. Merton's opening essay
"A Study of Chuang Tzu" is a small classic in its own right — a generous account of what one contemplative tradition can hear in another.
3. Short enough to finish in a sitting
At well under two hundred pages, it removes every excuse. You can meet Zhuangzi tonight.
What to watch out for
The one thing to keep in mind is the governing note of this whole site: this is not a translation. Merton worked from other people's translations and rewrote them to suit his ear and his purposes, so the wording is his interpretation and the selection is his taste. Do not cite it as "what Zhuangzi says," and do not stop here if you want the argument as well as the mood. Treat it as the doorway — and then walk through it into a real translation. Used that way, it is close to perfect; mistaken for the text itself, it will mislead you.
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