Daoist Lessons for Life from Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream
How dreaming and waking life unite to give us wisdom.
When we dream, we are typically unaware that we are dreaming. Lucid dreams are rare for most people. Likewise, our profound lack of self-consciousness while dreaming is incredibly potent when our dreams take place from another person or creature’s perspective. Indeed, when we dream of ourselves as another person or animal, we can even forget we exist and instead come to fully identify with our newfound perspective temporarily. And there is good reason to believe that this forgetfulness is partially related to our substandard ability to form strong memories of our dreams.
Our brains are programmed to benefit our ambitions and survival by systematically forgetting irrelevant pieces of information. As Tufts’ philosopher Daniel Dennett says, the brain is perpetually trying to help us answer the following question: “Now what do I do?” In conjunction with that question, our brains are also “anticipation machines.” Knowing what you need to do at any given moment depends on the future, whose attributes constantly change in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term. The most unmistakable evidence of these changes occurs when these different times conflict. These changes can radically alter our perspective each day, sometimes making us more compassionate and, at other times, prone to irritability.
Suppose, under the pretense of having a secure and lucrative job, you decide to buy an ultra-expensive and non-refundable Blink-182 reunion tour ticket. You made this purchase with a long-term perspective characterized only by security. What if this security is suddenly shattered by getting fired? The emotional and experiential magnitude of one’s mistake gets exacerbated substantially after getting fired, as now, instead of having rent money, you have concert tickets. In contrast, before getting fired, at worst, you had merely made a silly spendthrift error and at least had an event to look forward to as a consequence. In failing to anticipate employment termination, the question “now what do I do?” becomes a lot harder for the brain –and by extension, for you — to answer, leading to general stress and discontentedness.
How the short-term decision to purchase a concert ticket is perceived becomes radically different depending on the employment status of its possessor. So, naturally, you’ll resent your past self, who was responsible for making what you now perceive as a dumb decision on your behalf. And you will, in characteristic anticipation, worry about your future self, who will probably need to sell their ticket on StubHub to make ends meet.
Effectively, this shift in perspective has damaged the quality of your well-being in the present. A substantial portion of this damage consists in mulling over how to prevent further accidents from occurring in the future. When our sense of security is shattered, as it is when our worldviews come into question, the most natural thing to do is grasp quickly for solutions. Indeed sitting around and meditating about your dreams wouldn’t be helpful to answering the “now what do I do?” question, which explains why dreams are so readily forgotten. Yet, ruminating on dreams –with the aid of Daoism- might be precisely what’s needed.
Butterflies and Different Perspectives
The ancient Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi once dreamed that he was a butterfly. In this dream, he completely forgot that he, Zhuangzi, existed. Zhuangzi woke up, remembered having this dream, and it made him wonder whether, currently, there was a sleeping butterfly dreaming it was Zhuangzi. “Now surely [Zhuangzi] and a butterfly count as two distinct identities, as two quite different beings! And just this is what is meant when we speak of the transformation of any one being into another –of the transformation of all things.” (The Zhuangzi)
The two potential perspectives are not meant to get us wondering whether Zhuangzi is truly a butterfly or if Zhuangzi is two distinct entities simultaneously. These lines of inquiry are self-evidently nonstarters due to their patently absurd and contradictory claims. It is, therefore, equally appropriate to quickly dispense with them as genuinely competing options. Instead, Zhuangzi points out that the shift in perspective, which occurs from dreams to waking life, and vice-versa, are equally significant to all other possible changes in perspective.
Dreaming Zhuangzi was equally convinced of being a butterfly as wakeful Zhuangzi is of being himself, making the distinction between these perspectives utterly superfluous. Once noticed, such superfluousness reveals the absurdity of our natural inclination to search for and think about which perspective is “best” or which is “right.” It proves that convictions, in general, are absurd. How could one be convinced one way or another? Moreover, on any given topic, there’s no such thing as the absolute “best” perspective or the absolute “right.” Utter conviction and, thus, complete attachment to anything — any worldview or way of living — is as absurd as Zhuangzi thinking of himself as a sleeping butterfly. Yet, we vacillate between being convinced by a diversity of periodically conflicting perspectives. In our failure to see ourselves grasping for the “best” perspectives and the absolute “right” answer to life’s problems, we suffer immensely in our inability to live lives of purpose.
Recognizing this absurdity allows us to release ourselves from attachment to perspectives that are needlessly harming us — especially the one that incessantly seeks the “right” answers and “best” perspectives. Without some “non-doing,” as Zhuangzi refers to it, our well-being precipitously diminishes.
Daoism is a philosophy that encourages us to view the distinctions between all perspectives as equally redundant to the one found in Zhuangzi’s famous butterfly dream. Therefore, there is no good reason to feel any different about purchasing a concert ticket from before getting fired to after, as ultimately, there is no difference between these perspectives.
A single human can –and indeed will — hold endless contradictory perspectives on a single topic for their life, each with equal conviction. Humans as a global community coexist in such a state of pluralism with one another. Consider that differing cultures can possess different values, generating radically different perspectives on all facets of reality. When we see that all perspectives are equal in this pluralistic sense, we can forgive our past selves for their misadventures. We can assure our present selves that the general character of the future is out of our control.
There is no stable self –whether future, present, or past — that exists for one to worry about. As David Hume once said, the self is merely a bundle of equal perceptions. Since there is no ultimate distinction between them, we have no good reason to attach ourselves to any particular perspective or sense of identity.
“Non-doing” is merely residing in these insights’ frame of mind. You will find it easier to move on –whether through starting a job search or engaging in a hobby — after buying the overpriced Blink-182 ticket and will do so in a free-flowing manner. When one can let go of their natural inclination to amplify the distinctions between things, they will find themselves acting in ways that come to them more “naturally.” Losing the job and wasting the money on the concert ticket becomes insignificant when you’ve free-flowed yourself into becoming highly skilled in something. Simply from being allowed to go where your natural inclinations draw you, without perturbation concerning whether one activity or another is the ‘best’ use of your time.
