Zhuangzi's concept of you 遊: limitless transformation along with things

Abstract

You 遊, which is usually translated as ‘wandering’, is a central concept in the Zhuangzi that appears over ninety times in the text. It is generally taken to mean the ideal Zhuangzian way of life, whereby one wanders around the world freely and aimlessly without having an ultimate goal in mind. The existing scholarship mostly uses the term to refer to a non-purposive mindset or activity that is associated with the daemonic performances of the skill masters from the famous “skill stories”. However, the bulk of the text is made up of a more poetic or elevated sense of you 遊, in which mystical sages are often described as wandering in some other-worldly dimension. In this dissertation, I argue that you 遊 designates an aimless mode of life, in which one continually transcends the confines of one’s own limited perspective by appealing to both Heavenly and earthly viewpoints in order to transform into any other perspective that comes along one’s way.