When Zhuangzi went to Chu, he saw an empty skull, bleached indeed, but still retaining its shape. Tapping it with his horse-switch, he asked it, saying, "Did you, Sir, in your greed of life, fail in the lessons of reason, and come to this? Or did you do so, in the service of a perishing state, by the punishment of the axe? Or was it through your evil conduct, reflecting disgrace on your parents and on your wife and children? Or was it through your hard endurances of cold and hunger? Or was it that you had completed your term of life?"

Having given expression to these questions, he took up the skull, and made a pillow of it when he went to sleep.

At midnight the skull appeared to him in a dream, and said, "What you said to me was after the fashion of an orator. All your words were about the entanglements of men in their lifetime. There are none of those things after death. Would you like to hear me, Sir, tell you about death?"

"I should," said Zhuangzi, and the skull resumed: "In death there are not (the distinctions of) ruler above and minister below. There are none of the phenomena of the four seasons. Tranquil and at ease, our years are those of heaven and earth. No king in his court has greater enjoyment than we have."

Zhuangzi did not believe it, and said, "If I could get the Ruler of our Destiny to restore your body to life with its bones and flesh and skin, and to give you back your father and mother, your wife and children, and all your village acquaintances, would you wish me to do so?"

The skull stared fixedly at him, knitted its brows, and said, "How should I cast away the enjoyment of my royal court, and undertake again the toils of life among mankind?"

EDITOR'S NOTE

I'm not clear when Zhuangzi journeyed to Chu, but he was certainly mature--this dream is notably darker and more world-weary than his more famous butterfly dream. He's seen more of the world; and maybe he wishes he hadn't.

The whole story may sound like a literary device, but I'm not so sure. He's practicing dream induction, an art well-developed by Daoists even this early. To induce a dream answering your questions, pose them right before sleep, if possible with an ongoing, subliminal reminder, like, say, sleeping on someone's skull. Too extreme to be true? Oh, ask the Tibetans about that--say, Buddhaghosa’s Path of Purification. Those guys will do anything.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: online. Translation by James Legge, probably The Writings of Kwang-tse, 1891, though with spellings modernized.

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