This reading had a lot of important and hard to grasp teachings. One in particular that stuck out to me was ,”I take inaction to be true happiness, but ordinary people think it is a bitter thing. I say: perfect happiness knows no happiness, perfect praise knows no praise. The world can’t decide what is right and what is wrong. And yet inaction can decide this. Perfect happiness, keeping alive – only inaction gets you close to this!”. (J). Happiness is a concept everyone strives to be but it never can stay forever. I think what Chuang Tzu was getting to is that you can’t chase a concept down in order to hold it in yourself. People buy things, go to things, trying to force the feeling of happiness from outside sources to bring it into their own emotion. In order to feel real and true happiness, one shouldn’t try to force it using other things in their life but instead settle and focus on other things and happiness will come to them naturally when they are not looking for it. I also think that Chuang Tzu was saying that sometimes people think the absence of sadness is still not happiness, but he was saying sometimes the happiness can come from the nothingness if you are not seeking it out. I do agree that people should not rely so heavily on material things and other peoples actions to find their happiness.
Chuang Tzu
