Was It the Butterfly, or Zhuang Zhou

answered by Zhuangzi, Discussion on Making All Things Equal

기원전 4세기경

🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

Farewell My Concubine (1993)

dir. Chen Kaige · China

A person who has lived their whole life as a role upon the stage endures the collapse of the boundary between stage and life, acting and true self, amid a convulsing age. It asks what, in a lifetime that flowed like a dream, was truly their own life — and whether such a division is even possible.

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

When the stage and role a person staked their whole life on is swallowed by an age's upheaval, what was truly their life?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

不知周之夢爲胡蝶與，胡蝶之夢爲周與

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

One cannot tell whether Zhuang Zhou dreamt he was the butterfly, or the butterfly dreamt it was Zhuang Zhou.

💡 TL;DR

Zhuangzi said he could not tell whether he had dreamt the butterfly or the butterfly had dreamt him.

📝The Classic Answers

Zhuangzi said he could not tell whether he had dreamt the butterfly or the butterfly had dreamt him. I read this question as the story of one whose boundary between stage and life has collapsed. To someone who has lived a whole life as a role upon the stage, where acting ends and the true self begins blurs, while the age convulses and sweeps everything away like a dream. Yet being unable to divide dream from reality does not make that life vain. The butterfly's dream and Zhuang Zhou's dream were each a whole life. Rather than straining to sort out what was real, I choose to embrace every moment I have lived as all my own life.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

When it confuses you where the real you ends and the role begins, embrace it: 'both are the life I have lived, and mine.'

📖 Classic Source: Zhuangzi, Discussion on Making All Things Equal. Ancient text in the public domain; rendered and interpreted independently by ONGO.
The film is honored as an equal questioner; its plot is rendered only as a universal dilemma. The classic source is an ancient text (Public Domain), and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.