Zhuangzi's Drunkard: Exploring Taoism in the Club
From the dance floor to inner wisdom
The music thumps, glasses clink, and laughter fills the air. I find myself at a graduation party in an elegant venue near Naples. The VIP areas and exclusive sections should segregate us based on our social and economic status, but tonight, these invisible barriers that categorize and divide us dissolve like morning mist under the sun's rays. As I sip my drink, the parable of Zhuangzi's drunkard comes to mind, the one I shared in April 2024 on this blog. Now, with a renewed perspective that only lived experience can offer, everything seems different.
As the evening progresses, something extraordinary happens. The carefully constructed divisions – the private sections, the social hierarchies – dissolve completely. Alcohol loosens inhibitions, of course, but there's something deeper at play. Without realizing it, we have become the living embodiment of Zhuangzi's parable.
Regarding this parable, I would like to recall it:
"If a drunkard falls from a cart, he may get a few bruises but will never die. His bones and joints are the same as those of other men, but the blow that would kill a sober man does not kill him. This is because his soul remains intact, thanks to drunkenness, and he is not aware of being on the cart or falling from it. The shock, the fear of death and life do not penetrate him; he falls dangerously but without feeling the slightest fear."
(from "Zhuang-zi [Chuang-tzu]" by Carlo Laurenti and Christine Leverd [Biblioteca Adelphi, 121, 1982]
(Translated by me into English from the Italian version)
Intact Soul
The parable of the drunkard holds deep meanings beyond mere intoxication. The expression "his soul remains intact" indicates a state in which the individual is free from conceptual and judgmental awareness. The drunkard does not label the experience as dangerous, so he feels no fear. This state metaphorically represents liberation from the ego and discursive mind, allowing a return to the natural spontaneity of the Dao, embodying the principle of wu wei, effortless action. It is not about promoting physical drunkenness but illustrating an ideal state of consciousness: an inner integrity that makes one invulnerable to life's challenges.
This is exactly what was happening that evening: the drunkard falls from the cart unharmed because he does not know to be afraid. And we, at that party, were all "falling" together, in a unified experience where distinctions ceased to matter. The groups that had arrived separately merged and mingled naturally, laughter bridged every social gap, and the music carried us all in a single stream of shared experience.
Tao Yuanming
This reflection also made me think about the poetry of Tao Yuanming, a Chinese poet from the 4th century, and his relationship with wine. In classical Chinese tradition, we find the concept of xian (闲), which evokes a profound inner calm. The character itself suggests a powerful image: a tree standing in a courtyard, or in its alternative form (閒), a moon shining through an open door. It is not about laziness, but a contemplative calm that leads to the Dao, becoming an essential part of daily life.
Drinking wine, a recurring theme in Tao Yuanming's poetry, should not be interpreted as mere inclination towards drunkenness. Biographers of the time often associated it with his eccentric personality, but for Tao, intoxication represented a means to achieve that particular serenity that allows contemplation and, through it, transcendence. It was a state of mental freedom where inhibitions and artificial distinctions fall away, fostering a sense of unity with the surrounding world – essentially, a return to the true self.
This calm leads to the concept of ziràn 自然, spontaneity and naturalness, which is central to Taoism. This concept resonates beautifully in his poem "Drinking Wine (VII)," found in the collection "Drinking Wine" by Antonio Cosimo De Biasio (La Biblioteca della Dimora, Quaderni di traduzioni LXXVIII):
"Autumn, the chrysanthemums have beautiful colors,
They are bathed in dew, and I pick the flowers.
So I stay afloat and forget the sorrows,
And I distance myself from the emotions of the world.
Even if I empty a jug alone,
I refill the exhausted cup again.
The sun arrives, and all movements cease,
Every bird returns, and the forest trills.
I whistle under the eastern eaves,
And slowly I reclaim my life."
(Translated by me into English from the Italian version)
Parties
I have attended many parties in my life, and I thank heaven for always giving me so many friends and so many opportunities to have fun, but this one had a different flavor. The philosophies I study, in this case Taoism, "once again" had transformed into embodied wisdom that colored the entire experience.
In that moment of tipsy conviviality, I was struck by a profound intuition, one of those understandings that have illuminated my path throughout my life with a clarity even more marked than usual. The philosophies I have studied had transformed "yet again" into a kind of internal alarm system – vivid and tangible like the anxiety or fear that normally holds you back, but in their opposite form: instead of limiting you, they make you feel good, they lift you off the ground. It is a bodily wisdom that emerges as an impactful intuition, like a sudden clarity that initially leaves you astonished.
At first, there remains a ringing in the ears, a perfect metaphor for this process: from the initial intuition, attention shifts to this ringing, which represents the beginning of the sedimentation of reasoning. Over time, the ringing gradually fades, bodily sensations diminish, and what remains is the pure mentalization of the experience, the crystallization of thought in its most authentic essence.
Beauty
This is the beauty of the philosophical journey when it becomes lived: the teachings of non-duality are no longer just ideas I had studied in books; they have become the lens through which I experience daily reality. At that party, I viscerally understood what Zhuangzi meant when speaking of the formless state where separation dissolves. We were not just people at a party – we were the party itself, expressions of the same cosmic movement that embraces and unifies everything.
"All that has a face, a form, colors, and emits sounds is a being. How can these beings distinguish themselves from one another? Since they are merely forms, how can one surpass the others? But the being that attains the formless abides in the unchanging. If he goes all the way, how could other beings obstruct him? He has grasped the proper measure, the hidden essence, the beginning and end of all beings."
(from "Zhuang-zi [Chuang-tzu]" by Carlo Laurenti and Christine Leverd [Biblioteca Adelphi, 121, 1982).
(Translated by me into English from the Italian version)
Gong Yi - “The Drunkard” - Chat Between A Fisherman And A Woodcutter
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