And then, like the fluid face of Hundun, we could always be ready to be transformed into something new, never fixed into a single visage.

‘I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream’ (IV.i.206‒9).

Really it is a form of spiritual violence, which often leads to violence of a more concrete kind.

It is hardly news that humans seek high status and glory. More unusual is the theory that they do so simply as a consequence of trying to be themselves. To understand this idea, it is worth considering why we develop an identity at all. In the

The gardener’s boastfulness demonstrates that he has not forgotten himself at all. ‘One who boasts about himself has no merit’, as a later chapter, quoting the Daodejing, puts it (Z 20.16.8).18 The gardener in fact shows an attitude of ambition towards Zigong – an attempt to influence him through criticism, to make Zigong more like himself, or at l

Tagore might believe, as Zhuangzi seems to, that pursuing a broader identity is not enough for true happiness. For that, identity must be rejected altogether. But, setting aside the many dangers of identity, why would abandoning it be necessary for true happiness?

Spinoza’s answer is that we derive our sense of self in the first instance by imitation. This theory is not explicit in the text of Ethics.

The cultural memory of the Warring States period is funerary, elegiac.

In Greek myth, the prophet Tiresias lives first as a man, then as a woman, then as a man again, transformed by the goddess Hera. After he dies, he retains his gift of prophecy and is able to communicate with the living, hovering between the realms of life and death. He serves as Suyin’s emblem of superdeterminacy.