FREE ESSAY ON COMPARITIVE THEMES IN THE CHUANG-TZU AND CONFUCIANISM

COMPARITIVE THEMES IN THE CHUANG-TZU AND CONFUCIANISM

The brightest signs of art and thought in civilization often spring from turmoil, be it
outer war or inner strife, as is definitely the case in ancient China. During one of
these periods in transition of government and ruling class, two distinct philosophies
sprang from the raging waters of China's ever-cyclic river of war and rebuilding. These
philosophies were the brain-children of two very notable individuals, Confucius and
Chuang Tzu, both of whom saw the suffering of their country men and felt called upon to
render the way which would relieve their people.
Confucius, was a very rational, logical man who believed that the world could be set into
its proper order by prescribing morals embedded in ritual's practiced by those in power.
Therefore instilling a desire for the people to practice these same rituals and
ultimately leading a moral educated life. Although this is just a very basic statement of
Confucian thought it does illustrate the great differences in the approaches taken by
these two men. For while in all his teachings Confucius stressed the importance of morals
and the attention that must be paid to scholastics and the matters of the physical world
of politics and order, Chuang Tzu, takes an entirely different, and I believe, commonly
misunderstood approach to resolving the same issue.
In his writings Chuang Tzu, constantly hints at the existence of this mystical energy
force, which flows with exact order through the cosmos, a presence if you will that has
been since there has been anything, but yet is not old. In the mind of Chuang Tzu, when
one discovered this flow, and was able to establish a solid connection, one would be
filled with the energy of the cosmos, taking its' power with them wherever they went,
constantly using it to guide them through the labyrinth that appears to those outside of
"the way" to be the path of life. Therefore, by establishing and maintaining this
connection, one can no in absolute certainty what is and what should be the proper course
of action they should take. It has been said many times that Chuang Tzu himself was quite
a spiritual mystic, which I believe to be a fitting description. However, the problem
arises when individuals take this description and simply write off his works as nothing
more than complex fairy tales separated by only a few degrees from those of dragons and
fairies in western myth. One must not make this mistake, for mysticism and the life and
work of and eastern spiritual mystic has just as much validity as does that of faith and
the writings of another quite "mystic" spiritual character found embedded in western
thought, this person being none other than Jesus of Nazareth. 
There are many questions which modern science has no answer and for these questions the
mystics have the upper hand, for if through their arts, one souls finds their way then
they have accomplished a task which will forever elude the scientific realm.