Making Peace with the Inevitable

Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu on life, death, and fate, dialogue#7

May 25, 2025

The True Human of ancient times knew nothing of loving life, knew nothing of hating death. He emerged without delight; he went back in without a fuss. He came briskly, he went briskly, and that was all.


Burton Watson, "The Great and Venerable Teacher," in The Complete Works of Zhuangzi (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 43. Translation Modified.

Most of us need to practice witnessing death. It’s something we try not to think much, or say too much, while we’re busy with everyday living.

Generally speaking, the fear of death is also a common experience, for it is part of human nature to resist pain, suffering, and negative feelings.

Death, in many popular and cultural contexts, brings about such a typical reaction. Naturally, the ceremony of death is often done with delicacy, handled by professional services, narrated in euphemisms, and quickly shrouded by life’s continuous obligations and entanglements.

For the person who has to experience death, there’s no doubt that it’s painful, disturbing, and always associated with a saddened sense of loss. It’s not something we can get rid of permanently, like the flux of emotions, the thought of someone close to you is gone, will always come back to visit, in unexpected moments of living.

There is no easy way to let all those feelings pass. For we tend to see death as the end, the stop in one’s journey, the sudden suspense of the tune of life. And of course, we don’t think about how death is connected to the invisible, intangible realm before one is even born.

To some extent, the modern person has been accustomed to the notion of having a “scientific” outlook on life, to be guided by logical thinking, which does not allow for the existence of “mystical” experience. It is fundamentally opposed to intuitive thinking, which can be grounded in common sense and captures the essence of living not by reasoning, but by insight.

Naturally, we refuse to look directly at the dissolving edge where “I am” becomes “I was,” or what “I will become.”

But death is more than that. Chuang Tzu, very notably, perhaps has the best writings on the subject of life and death in the entire Classical Chinese literary and philosophical traditions. Compared to viewing death as an end, there is an alternative view on how we can accept it without resistance or fear.

In the Taoist perspective, death is not necessarily the negation of living but its natural modulation, like the cycle of day and night. And it is possible, in the face of the certainty of endings, to step through the doorway and look at life and death with calm and refreshed eyes.

The death of Chuang Tzu’s wife

When Chuang Tzu’s wife passed away, Hui Tzu came to offer his condolences. To his surprise, he found Chuang Tzu sitting with his legs sprawled out, pounding on a tub and singing.1

Hui Tzu asked, “You lived with her for years. She brought up your children and grew old with you. It should be enough simply not to weep at her death but to beat a tub and sing; this is going too far, isn’t it?”

Chuang Tzu replied, “Certainly not. When she first died, do you think I didn’t grieve like anyone else?” But I looked back to her beginning and the time before she was born.

Not only the time before she was born, but the time before she had a body. Not only the time before she had a body, but the time before she had a spirit. In the midst of the jumble of wonder and mystery, a change took place and she had a spirit.

Another change and she had a body. Another change and she was born. Now, there’s been another change and she’s dead. It’s just like the progression of the four seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter.

Now, she’s going to lie down peacefully in a vast room. If I were to weep and wail, it would show that I don’t understand anything about fate and the nature of things. So, I stopped.”

A Taoist song of life and death

So, we see that Chuang Tzu peacefully accepts death. To him, they were not opposites or separated but two phases of the same flow. Life and death are like the changing seasons, part of a natural cycle of growth and decay.

For someone as sensitive, observant, and empathetic as Chuang Tzu, the departure of loved ones must have brought pain and sadness. His seemingly nonchalant attitude wasn’t indifference—it was a sign of profound understanding and acceptance, arising only after deep reflection, emotional processing, and a holistic grasp of humans’ relationship with the cosmos.

What is Chuang Tzu’s, or in general, the Taoist view on the matter of life and death?

1) The cosmic rhythm of existence

Life and death are the inevitable phenomena in the natural world. Like the cherry blossom that ushers in the liveliness of spring, or red maples thinning as winter cold deepens, there is always the constant transformations of things in nature.

In other words, the alternation of life and death is an inherent feature of the Taoist cosmological view. The universe is an everlasting and constant flux, in which the myriad things manifest in their various life forms.2 Human life is interconnected to the natural cycles of the universe. More importantly, the Taoist view is that humans can correspond with nature, with the universe, in harmonious vibrations rather than confrontation.

Put differently, the universe exists as an eternal harmony. There is always something out there that eludes us, silently escapes us. We might capture a few notes of its playing or whispering. Yet, to comprehend the infinite by means of our finite intelligence is very much overextending ourselves.

The universe does not speak, yet it silently operates to produce the four seasons, the sky and the stars above, and the mystery of the human heart-mind we all have. We are inescapably in its grip, and we cannot fully know it. We can attempt to understand it by a transcendent intelligence, by something more subtle than logic, by the sudden bursts of insight through our aesthetic, moral, and spontaneous being.

On a personal level, there’s the element of chance and tragedy in a person’s lifespan of going from being born to death. Yet, seen from the holistic view of humanity as part of nature, the permanent transformation of life and death in the universe, there is the ultimate sense of relief.

Chuang Tzu has felt the fleetingness and shortness of human life: “Human life in this world is but as the form of a white pony flashing across a rock crevice. In a moment it is gone. Suddenly waking up, all life is born; suddenly slipping off, all silently creep away.”3 There’s nothing we can do to prevent the eventual departure.

Therefore, the sense of fear toward death and our excessive and unnatural clinging to life are simply our emotional reactions toward that which is inevitable. This is a state of living in bondage.

2) Voyage into the unfathomable

Death belongs to the kind of things that we think we cannot accept. It reminds us of the vulnerable nature of life, that there is something beyond our control, that there’s so much beauty and wonder to be discovered in the midst of living and simple being. For the most part, we are not seeing that it is desire and expectations, attachments, and clinging that make us resist pondering on or facing death.

Yet, this matter of life and death is real and applies to all of us; it’s not something to be fought over, but to see through. For it is just a natural thing, like the coming and going of morning and night. How do we stop that?

Life and death are the appointment of destiny. Their sequence, like the succession of day and night, is the evolution of nature.4

To face death directly gives us a sense of sobriety and an urgency to become aware of our state of being. It makes us realize that to live a human life is essentially embarking on a voyage searching for unknown lands.

In this journey, we assume that we have everything within our control, our plans, wishes, and schemes; nevertheless, to a large extent, we are at the hands of the unfathomable cosmos, forces that shape social realities that go beyond our liking and preferences.

Nevertheless, it also makes us see things with clarity, while being intimidated by the dread of dying, urging us to embrace the moments of living with authenticity, gratitude, and presence.

3) The philosophy of Yin and Yang

From the ontological perspective of being, Taoist philosophy regards nonbeing 無, or nothingness, as the fundamental or the source of the myriad things.5

The Tao is the creative interactions of being (you, 有) and nonbeing (wu, 無), two aspects of the same process.6 The silent operations of the Tao reveal the constant adjustment of the Yin 陰 and the Yang 陽, reaching a state of harmony.7

Light and shadow, good and evil, positive and negative, are all simply the manifestations of this dynamic equilibrium. All life is in movement. And movement, as something in constant flux, cannot be rigidly categorized and cut into separate pieces by logical thinking and classification.

It should be noted that the Yin refers to that which is passive, receptive, and negative. And the Yang is active, aggressive, and positive. All life forms arise from the blending and harmony of these two seemingly opposite forces.

Yet, what is critical to see is that the Yin and Yang are complementary forces in endless flux. Tension, conflict, turmoil, struggles, and discord are symptoms of the disturbance in the inherent equilibrium between these two forces in nature and the human heart.

What this dynamic dualism of the Yin and Yang further indicates is that things alternate in cycles. One force may dominate for some time while the other is receptive and passive. But it does not mean one is weak or the other strong. To dwell in a lowly place is to conserve energy and strength. And to be in a dominant position is to be burning one’s essential energy.

In Lao Tzu’s words,

Reversion is the action of Tao.
Gentleness is the function of Tao.8

That is to say, the Tao rises to activity and falls back to quietude in a constant cycle. In nature, when the winter season has reached its climax, the winter solstice, it is the day that the Yang principle starts to gain its momentum, as the daylight becomes longer afterward.

In this sense, branding one as wholly good and the other as utterly evil, or one as desirable and the other as unpleasant, as we have seen in the popular receptions of chaos and order, anarchy and stability, aggression and defense, are symptoms of binary thinking that fails to grasp the essence of this intuitive and holistic thinking that underlies the ancient Chinese mode of thinking. This way of thinking was deeply rooted in the teaching of I Ching 易經, or the Book of Changes, which was inherited by early Taoism and Confucianism.

The origin of life is a process of going from nonbeing to being. As Chuang Tzu explained, “Not only the time before she was born, but the time before she had a body. Not only the time before she had a body, but the time before she had a spirit.”

The myriad things are the manifestations of qi (氣, breath or vital energy). And human life is one form of being, a temporary formation of qi. Therefore, life and death are the natural process of coming together and the dissolution of qi in the process of transformation. In Chuang Tzu’s words,

Man’s life is a coming-together of breath. If it comes together, there is life; if it scatters, there is death. And if life and death are companions to each other, then what is there for us to be anxious about?9

In this sense, death is not the end of human life in an absolute sense. Instead, it is life being transferred into another form of existence or being, like a flower and a fallen leaf becoming the source of an insect, and insects turning into flowers and grass. “The Way is without beginning or end, but things have their life and death 道無始終，物有生死…One moment empty, the next moment full…”10

Such is the essence of the myriad things going through the cycles of life and death in its constant transitions. Therefore, the Tao is everlasting, and all life forms are destined to experience living and dying.

4) Currents of impermanence

Everything moves, evolves, fluctuates, and changes. There is a sense of tragedy in this understanding. Since everything spontaneously moves, and nothing truly stays.

Human life is merely a brief interlude, or a short stay, in the ongoing evolution of the natural world. In essence, life and death are part of the never-ending currents and undercurrents in nature. “Life is the working of Heaven; death is the transformation of things.”11

Yet, most of us are naturally and continually saddened by the scene of death, especially the ones close to us, and delighted by the sight of life. Sadly, but truly, this is the symptom of a soul that is very much entangled in this phenomenal world. The myriad things in nature, being what they are, are the various manifestations of the constant Tao, and human life is just one part of it.

Our affections, love, and true bonds are the temporary moments of resonance and connection, two solitary souls coming together, sharing the same rhythm, touching on the same level of vibration.

Since situations constantly change, the loss from yesterday cannot necessarily be compensated by today’s or the future’s discoveries. The coincidence of this encounter becomes precious and everlasting, and the departures from each other thus bring us pain, agony, sadness, fear, and a sense of disillusionment in living.

What Chuang Tzu suggests, very challenging to internalize and practice, is to see through that life and death are simply the constant evolution of the Tao, the come and go of the qi 氣, the criss-crossed flow of currents.

The death of a person, in a physical sense, does not mean absolute departure; the spirit, shared memories, and thoughts toward the deceased or the one who has gone, without being aware, have become imprinted on the one still living.

5) Transcending death

Therefore, in the Taoist spirit, “life is the companion of death; death is the beginning of life. Who understands their workings?”12

Every day, we are not just living, but also marching toward the very end of dying. But dying is the beginning of the beginning, the blending with the harmony of the universe. “Death and life, existence and nonexistence, are one.”13

From seeing life and death as a natural process to perceiving them as equal, a distinction is dissolved in the mind. Living well by dwelling lightly becomes a lifelong practice to prepare for the call of death at the end of this short life.

From conceiving life and death as natural processes to regarding them as two aspects of the same thing, Chuang Tzu suggests an alternative approach to facing death: not fearing or resisting it, but peacefully accepting and transcending it.

Still, we wonder, what kind of life can be considered worthwhile, without regret, or truthful, that encourages a person to embrace the end of it with serenity of mind?

This points to the Taoist view that life is essentially a short-term wander, to be lodged somewhere on this earth, and death is returning to the home of nature, the life-giving universe that is in constant transformation. Following this view, one would naturally perceive “life as a loss, and death as a return.”14

There is always some kind of loss, from the moment of birth, or somewhere, lying in the journey of life. It just cannot be helped.

Tao Yuanming (365- 427 AD) captured this insight in a poetic spirit15,

Man's life is without any root,

Whirled like dust on the road,

Scattered at the wind's will,

For this is no abiding form.

If all who are born are brothers,

Why need they be blood relations?

When we find some joy, we must make merry;

With a measure of wine gather near neighbors.

The years of our prime do not come again;

To one day there can be no second dawn.

To meet the occasion we must strive;

Years and months do not wait for men.

Such a poetic way of understanding life and death, the relationship between a person and nature shows another possibility of the essence of being. The end of personal life is not the ultimate stop, but being merged with the organic whole of nature. In this sense, the limited existence of the individual constitutes the comprehensive, limitless, and permanent evolution of the collective life that underlies the silent workings of the Tao.

"Though the grease burns out of the torch, the fire passes on, and no one knows where it ends.”16

If Taoist life philosophy is about harmony with nature for the living, then finding lasting rest in nature when we leave this world is the natural closure in this life, but essentially following the Tao in the metaphysical sense. There are no fears, anxieties, or resistance, but only an inner lucidity to see the unity of things.

When we relinquish the hope that we can hold onto a sense of security and that death should be avoided, we discover the courage to rest in the rootlessness of our condition.

“The universe carries us in our bodies, toils us through our life, gives us repose with our old age, and rests us in our death. That which makes our life a good makes our death a good also.”17

Spiritual liberation, in this sense, means that we are relieved from the fear of not having a solid foothold. And in this act of renunciation, we find our true beginning: to walk the path without seeking a shore beneath our feet, but firmly trusting the ever-shifting currents of time.

Being aware of the nature of the self as a floating, solitary being is not fearful, not something to be shunned: the spirit and the wisdom of the ancients lived through the self that is awakened and willing to see, listen, and feel.

All our longing, anxiety, and unease spring from the fear that life has its time, and death also has its time. Day and night, like the flowing tides drawing moonlight across the water, fold into one another, practicing the cycle of life and death. To live in relationship with death in the everyday and ordinary moments is to learn patience, to wrestle with and make peace with insecurity, and to taste and feel the ebb and flow of all things.

Therefore, Chuang Tzu’s view on living is that we need to carefully preserve the body and spirit, surprisingly, as our body and spirit are not only ours, they are the haven of treasured memories, pure spirits, and legacies inherited from the past.

When we become reckless and careless in destroying the purity of spirit, a part of us is not living, as we have been forced into an unconscious and benighted state. Chuang Tzu advised, “There is no grief greater than the death of the heart-mind — beside it, the death of the body is a minor matter.”18

What transcends the limitations of life and death are the things that are constant, shining through time and space. And the memories, shared space, and experiences that keep coming back to us become part of our lives.

By seeing the possibility of the physical self gone but leaving the spirit in the realm of being/existence, one embraces the everlasting Tao, no longer shackled by life and death, external things, and peacefully living in the state of solitude in the realm of self-forgetfulness — one is spiritually liberated through dissolving the limits of the narrow self.

In other words, what is spiritual is everlasting, independent, and transformative. Such is the preservation of a value system: the philosophy and teachings of the ancients became the source of Chuang Tzu’s philosophical creation.

But what connects the transition between life and death goes far beyond thoughts and ideas; it touches on the most subtle and softest parts of the human soul.

Love, departures, and fate

What is love? It can be the strongest vibration between two souls that can see, feel, and understand each other.

This kind of love is rare and precious because that unique and subtle accord between two individuals is often randomly placed in the human world.

This is to suggest, to one’s disappointment, that actively searching for it might not work. There’s a mysterious force behind it. The intentional attempt may not outsmart the arrangement of fate.

Love is joined by destiny, and it cannot be separated by death. The spirit and shared memories are still living in the person who is alive.

So, there’s no need to question Chuang Tzu’s love toward his deceased wife. In the ashes of grief and attachment, Chuang Tzu found inner peace. His acceptance of death was not a rejection of emotion but a transcendent recognition of the cycles of life and death, the calling of destiny. And he saw what was inevitable and chose to make peace with it.

Still, we cannot avoid the ultimate sense of tragedy in facing the death of a loved one. It’s not easy to digest and recover from witnessing death.

One becomes emotionally unsettled and spiritually disturbed, feeling that the vibration of energy becomes destabilized and weakened, as if part of us has also entered the sphere of nothingness.

Love and the human bond, despite their fragility, possess some transcendent force that goes beyond the limits of time and space.

In the South Korean movie “The Classic,” the encounter between Joo-hee and Joon-ha is pure coincidence, yet their love becomes everlasting.

From the idyllic walks near the riverbank in the countryside to exploring a “haunted” house across the river, from being caught in a sudden summer storm to the moon-lit way home, they have built an invisible and imperishable shelter in their hearts. The river has since then become their place with stories only they know.

There are firefly-light, the scent of wet soil, the moon-silver river water, and the music of cicadas in that shared space. All these experiences, no matter how remote, have become memories, and love is distilled to ink and paper that echo after decades.

Underlying this genuine human affection is the sense of powerlessness in the face of the unfathomable destiny.

When one is still young and inexperienced, one is inclined to believe that intentional efforts lead to desirable outcomes, as if the magic of mathematical equations applies in life.

The natural unfolding of things often comes with unbearable surprises, family hurdles, social constraints, and the occurrence of war and departures…

Still, a promise is a promise for life. For Joon-ha, the necklace from Joo-hee becomes a pledge, a talisman to the end of his days. It is the bond between two souls, the spiritual sanctuary of cherished memories, and the symbol of permanence.

Most often, we cannot really make the most sound and clear choices in life’s specific moments, as there are circumstances beyond our control and understanding. To some extent, the interplay of various unknown and unidentifiable factors has the power to shape the course of events, often not to our favor.

We feel a sense of guilt and regret for the mistakes we’ve made, assuming that we could have turned things in another direction. But it’s not really one person or another’s fault, as the turn of events in a complex social circumstance can proceed in unexpected ways.

Such is the reality of the impermanence of life, the unpredictability of union and parting, and the constraints of naturally given situations.

---

Love can also become silent and subtle, while one is entangled with the everyday challenges of living. In the midst of going about, contemplating life and death does not enter the spirit easily.

Some affections can fade away over time, but they can also stem from a genuine wish bestowed on a child by their parents. Someday, the child can reciprocate that love with understanding and gratitude.

In the Japanese movie “Departures,” the cello played by Daigo Kobayashi becomes a symbol of his broken dream and a disconnection between his late father and the family.

As a failed cellist, Kobayashi takes the profession of a nokanshi, a traditional Japanese mortician. Yet, this job becomes a spiritual practice that teaches him to confront and accept the fleetingness and impermanence of life.

As he learns to pick up the ritual care of preparing the dead, he gradually understands that this is not just for those who have passed, but also for the living. Through each farewell, each act of witnessing death, Kobayashi begins to see that death is not an end, but a continuation of life’s mystery.

And it is the encounter with this job, which deals with life and death directly, that Kobayashi comes to realize that the cello is already a vessel for his emotional restoration, and through music, he honors his father and releases a grief buried for too long. In this sense, the cello becomes the bridge between past and present, life and death, a spiritual link reconnected between the son and the father.

The universe is a great furnace, and time acts as a great craftsman.19 Kobayashi is molded by the currents of time and experience. His spiritual journey from loss to return, from disturbance to reconciliation, from separation to understanding, eventually allows him to see the temporary gathering and scattering as natural rhythms. He learns to immerse himself in the harmonious music of life and death while participating in the silent and constant transformation of things.

Being at ease with fate and change

Death does not have to be understood literally, in the physical sense. We encounter it in everyday life. Broken dreams, personal crises, business failures, relationship fractures, social and political systems breakdowns, and everything unpleasant and undesirable are experiences of death.

We feel hurt and identify with the sense of suffering because we cannot get away from the fear of death. And we habitually project our hopes and wishes onto the outside.

Yet, as we now see the Taoist perspective on life and death, to live is to be shaped by the formless, and to die is to return to the natural transformation of the universe. The things that we cannot let go of, the struggles we cannot let pass, the expectations that stir us, are symptoms of clinging and fleeing. There is no escape from insecurity, anxiety, and restlessness.

So many mysteries and secrets of life are hidden in the unfathomable arrangements of fate, the flux of events, stories, encounters, and coincidences that lead us toward individual destinations. So, we hear Chuang Tzu advise gently and helplessly about confronting the unknowable world for the vulnerable soul,

“To serve one’s own spirit so as to permit neither joy nor sorrow within, but to consider the inevitable as the appointment of destiny and to be at ease there, is the perfection of virtue.”20

We are accustomed to the habit of seeking happiness and avoiding pain. But they are essentially the same thing, complementary feelings in a cyclical stretch of human emotions. In other words, Chuang Tzu suggests an attitude toward life that is neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but rather equanimous, a state of detached serenity in the face of change.

Such a life philosophy transcends the binary thinking habit characterized by optimism and pessimism, and is, therefore, typical of the pattern of intuitive thinking — a practice of spiritual cultivation that fosters harmony with oneself.

Harmony with oneself comes with a hard-earned inner peace by going through the trials of human joy and sorrow. It is the heart tempered and refined by experiences, and ultimately obtained by accepting the vicissitudes of change.

When someone who understood us has left our world, we have nowhere to place our heart, to share our innermost thoughts and experiences together. There is only silent solitude and the acceptance of naturally shifting situations as the arrangements of fate.

When life forces us to have no alternatives but to reconcile with our realities, we would not linger in the thought of having expectations, but accept whatever is presented to us.

In this sense, accepting life and death as a natural part of existence eventually brings us inner calm because there are no more expectations, whether of external conditions or of others. Nevertheless, it also reminds us of the importance of living well. For taking care of oneself is a form of honoring the loved ones and cherished memories.

With this understanding, death, uncertainty, insecurity, and the things that we do not want to see and experience become less fearful, for they are all part of change. Since we no longer have excessive attachments and clinging, we can constantly practice being at ease with what it is that unfolds, to dwell lightly in the midst of the course of changes. As Guo Xiang 郭象 (235-312 AD) commented on the universe as an eternal flux,

Change is a force, unobservable yet most strong. It transports heaven and earth for the new. It carries hills and mountains to quit the old. The old does not stop for a minute, and immediately the new comes. All things change all the while… All that we meet secretly pass away. We ourselves in the past were not we ourselves now. We ourselves now still have to go with the present. We cannot keep them.21

Despite recognizing the importance of adapting to changing times, we do not get lost while being entangled in experiences, as we already know what it is that we should cherish. Being positioned in this ever-changing human world, the only assurance one can hope for is to preserve one’s spiritual and authentic core.

The essence of living, distilled from accepting the constant flux of nature, as Chuang Tzu has told us, lies in keeping to the pure spirit that is protected by self-regulation, self-cultivation, and constant self-transcendence.

To be pure, clean, and mixed with nothing; still, unified, and unchanging; limpid with wu-wei; moving with the workings of Heaven — this is the way to care for the spirit. 純粹而不雜，靜一而不變，淡而無為，動而天行，此養神之道也！22

There are no arbitrary and reckless moves, but resting with awareness in simplicity and stillness, and resigning oneself to the forces of change. That special person, that unique bond, and that memory become one with the essence of being. From arising above external nuisance and disturbance, one dwells in the lasting state of inner tranquility.

I would say that Tao Yuanming expressed the Taoist perspective of living truthfully in a succinct but beautiful manner, which is the spirit of the poetic and intuitive grasp of things:23

Give yourself to the great transformations; 

You will have no joy, but also you will have no fear. 

When you should end, then you must end;

Never again ponder much upon it!  

縱浪大化中, 不喜亦不懼, 應盡便須盡, 無復獨多慮!

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