Yes, it’s both accurate and insightful to interpret Zhuangzi’s key message as non-dualism, and to further argue that non-dualism implies—and is—freedom.
Let’s unpack that a bit.
1. Zhuangzi and Non-Dualism
Zhuangzi persistently challenges binary distinctions:
• life vs. death
• self vs. other
• usefulness vs. uselessness
• right vs. wrong
• dreaming vs. waking
This is not to erase all differences, but to dissolve the rigidity of dualistic thinking. He doesn’t replace one pole with the other (like privileging death over life), but invites us into a space beyond the dichotomy itself—what he calls the 道 (Dao), or the unnamable flow of all things.
A good example is the famous “Dream of the Butterfly” story. It blurs the boundary between dream and waking life—not to confuse, but to free us from clinging to fixed identities.
2. Non-Dualism as Freedom
In Zhuangzi, freedom is not autonomy in the Western liberal sense (self-mastery or rational control), but spontaneity (自然而然) and freedom-from-attachment to rigid distinctions. It is:
• freedom from being fixed to one viewpoint (見)
• freedom to follow the transformations of the Dao (乘物以遊心)
• freedom as wandering (逍遙遊), which literally means “free and easy wandering”
This “wandering” is ontological lightness—living in alignment with the ever-changing Dao, without resistance or self-centered will. In this sense, non-dualism is not just a belief—it is the condition of freedom itself.
Would you like to compare this to Advaita Vedanta or Zen, which also see non-dualism as liberation? Or maybe see how this contrasts with Confucian or even Western existential notions of freedom?
