Chen Yinchi's "Hundred Sentences of Zhuangzi", a book about Zhuangzi's "speech", talks about Zhuangzi, not Zhuangzi.
Let's start with a story. Once, when the monarch Huan was reading aloud in the hall, a wheel craftsman named "Bian" passed by and asked, "What are you reading?" Huan Gong replied: "The sage's speech." Bian asked, "Is the saint still alive?" Answer: "Passed away." Bian said unceremoniously: "However, the readers of the king, the bad husband of the ancients!" ”
This story comes from Zhuangzi's "The Way of Heaven". Did he tell this story to deny the "words of the saints"? Not really. What Zhuangzi denies is something that can be transmitted through language and writing; He believes that the essence of the Tao can only be "understood", and as for those that can be carried by language, it is equal to the following.
Coincidentally, I recently read this story in another book. Chen Yinchi's "Hundred Sentences of Zhuangzi", a book about Zhuangzi's "speech", talks about Zhuangzi, not Zhuangzi. The so-called "100 sentences" is to simplify the complex and take the most classic sentences in the work. The speaker was Professor Chen Yinchi of the Department of Chinese at Fudan University, an authoritative scholar of Chinese studies on Zhuangzi. The book is a "small book", without a huge volume of quotations from the classics, it is written easily and wittily, easy to understand, and can be read by people with yellow hair and drooping hair. Let "everyone" talk about "small books", will it be a bit "overkill"? In fact, compiling this book itself is an attitude.
First of all, there is an academic insight in the "choice". Among the hundreds of sons of the pre-Qin Dynasty, Zhuangzi wrote a lot, Sima Qian recorded that "Zhuangzi wrote more than 100,000 words", and now it has been handed down, the inner chapter.
7. Outer chapters. Ten.
5. Miscellaneous Chapter 11, with a total of more than 65,000 words, it is by no means easy to choose "100 sentences" in such a large amount of space; Moreover, the so-called "100 sentences" are not general knowledge, but the words of a family, which seem to be objective, but in fact subjective, and have the scholars' own understanding and tendencies in them, and have absorbed the essence of their academic ideas and research results. Therefore, although it is a "small book", it should not be "underestimated".
Secondly, the book is written in a way that answers the question at the beginning of the article, and not only answers "necessary", but also further explores another level - "how to read", demonstrating a way of reading. After thousands of years, the pre-Qin classics have many difficult points that make ordinary readers daunted; If we "cling" to the opinions of thousands of years ago and remain unchanged, then we really have to learn the "bad spirit"? On the contrary, it is contrary to the original intention of Zhuangzi. This book is selected by famous masters to interpret the essence of aphorisms, combined with the vivid life and common thoughts, and it is like a "dialogue" that spans thousands of years, which not only rejuvenates the ancient classics, but also brings the joy of reading to today's people, which can be described as "the best of both worlds".
If you open "Hundred Sentences of Zhuangzi", you can quickly appreciate that the author "sticks" to Zhuangzi with a modern gaze. There is a Zhuangzi at the level of "original meaning", and the common misreading is "set right" - for example, there is a sentence in "The Way of Heaven" that "simplicity and the world can not compete with beauty", "simplicity" is a complete word today, and has independent significance, but if it is according to the meaning of today, this sentence will not make sense, and it is easy to cause confusion, which is necessary to break through the fog, so the author explained the "simplicity" and "prime" in the ancient texts respectively, so that it returns to the original meaning of "simplicity and originality", and helps readers understand the "original" Zhuangzi - more" Zhuangzi at the level of the kernel. Every philosophy has its own inner core meaning; Zhuangzi thought is no exception. To touch the "core", it is necessary to have a process of "seeing the mountain as the mountain and seeing the water as the water", which is by no means achieved overnight.
As a scholar who has studied Zhuangzi for half of his life, Chen Yinchi has long been familiar with Zhuangzi's thoughts, and is well aware of Zhuangzi's most important propositions, namely: nature and authenticity; All things in heaven and earth, as long as they lose themselves and go against nature, are putting the cart before the horse. When selecting 100 sentences, he infiltrated this kind of opinion, and most of the aphorisms he selected reflected this idea, such as: "Those who are deep in their desire for the elderly, their natural opportunities are shallow"; "It's better to forget each other in the rivers and lakes"; "Those who have machines must have things, and those who have things must have hearts" ......These sentences from different chapters, which were originally unrelated to each other on the surface, were selected by the author into the same book, and read by the reader in one go, invisibly echoing each other, and thus the true meaning of the Zhuangzi was as present as it is now.
Chen Yinchi talked about Zhuangzi and also integrated the spirit of Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi likes to "tell stories", and he tells stories in a whimsical and eclectic way; Reasoning is never deliberate, good at seeing the big from the small, from the shallow to the deep, and refining the big truth through the "small" story. In the interpretation of the "Zhuangzi 100 Sentences", Chen Yinchi is also like this, vertical and horizontal, touching the bypass, next to the "100 Sentences", with his interpretation articles, each of which is not the kind of "sitting in a precarious position", but a beautiful and readable small prose, as if it is a casual conversation, easy to understand, and full of fun. For example, when it comes to the sentence "the other is right and wrong, and this is also right and wrong", the conversation suddenly changed and talked about a past incident between Mr. Ma Xulun and his student Kang Baiqing of Peking University, which was vivid and witty, and taught people to remember this sentence at once. He also tells not only "near" stories, but also his stories have been told abroad, and even interesting stories about ancient Greek philosophers. He also quoted classics, such as Laozi, Mencius, and Confucius; When it comes to the rise, Tang poetry, Song poetry, and "Dream of Red Mansions" can all be talked about. Therefore, although these are "small" texts, they seem to be easy to come by, but they are actually rich in connotation and broad in ancient and modern times.
Overall, the biggest feeling of reading "The Hundred Sentences of Zhuangzi" is: relaxed, no threshold. Although there are only "100 sentences", the number of selected sentences in each article is uneven—nearly 10 sentences at most, and one or two sentences at the few, but it almost includes 33 sentences of Zhuangzi, which is enough to form an overview; For each sentence, there is both a literal translation and an explanation, which is enough to reach the essence of Zhuangzi's thought. Reading this book, if you can calm down, you can complete it in one day, and then you have a kind of "a thousand miles a day" reading pleasure. The form of "100 sentences" is helpful for memory, and although reading this book, although it is a superficial understanding, when the volume is closed, a vague and vivid impression of Zhuangzi has been generated. Following this, the progress of Chen Yinchi's "Zhuangzi General Knowledge" and "Zhuangzi Lecture Notes" is clear, and the more close it is to Zhuangzi's thoughts, the richer the nourishment of the soul. (Li Jia).