Dear Monarch,
I discovered you yesterday afternoon,
motionless, along the roadside.
Using a stick, I hoped you would
cling to it, so you could be transported
to safer ground.
It felt as if you did,
although weakly,
and so I gingerly lifted you
onto the plastic bag holding the new phone book.
Knowing where there were milkweed out back,
I stepped through the tall grass
and blackberry thorns to deliver you.
I slipped your still inert body onto a leaf
and walked over to the water.
A slight breeze rippled the surface
as a heavy life form leapt in,
causing mini-waves.
I turned to look at you again before walking
back to the house.
Alas, you’d been blown from the leaf
and were laying upside down on the grass.
At first it looked like your torso was gone.
I flipped you over to dispel the vision.
One of your antennae were missing.
You were light as a feather.
Why didn’t I feel your diaphanosity before?
Sympathy washed over me.
What far land had you traveled from
only to be snuffed by a motored beast
as you neared your prize?
Tao Talk
You have reached a quiet bamboo grove, where you will find an eclectic mix of nature, music, writing, and other creative arts. Tao-Talk is curated by a philosophical daoist who has thrown the net away.
Tao Talk 
Stumbled upon you post because I just published one on Tao and butterflies… so I stopped to say hi. Hi.
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hi!
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Maybe your butterfly is the one in the dream of my post :-)
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Anything is possible. Maybe it was just a dream?
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Dreams and reality shouldn’t be aware of each other. Posting on each other’s helm? We are flying over dangerous territory.
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Agreed. Don’t you think Master Zhuang was trying to say the problem lies in figuring out which is which?
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I was reading a recent translator saying some of the nuances get lost on the translation to English and the original point there being the need to keep a separation to keep things full, like life and death. But honestly I’m just replicating someone else’s opinion that made sense. Too much of a rookie to be able to discuss in such depth
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Either way, discussing that level of nuances may be the same of trying to figure out which is which, throwing us into a circular, self referential argument that keep us lost forever :-)
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I think maybe what Master Zhuang was getting at, Mighty Tigress :)
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It’s not the paradox that gets you lost, it’s looking so hard that you can’t help but trying to hard to decipher it and missing the chance to be a full man or butterfly?
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As to translation, there are several excellent ones out there. If you want to get to what might be closer in interpretation, go to a native Chinese speaker who has translated to English. Find, “The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the first three chapters of the Chuang Tzu”, by Kuang-Ming Wu.
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Killing the flow here just a little: Do you think the way my characters interpreted and retold the story is wrong?
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Your guess is as good as mine. If a master is trying to teach a student, it is possible the master would be pushing their way as the best way. But as a student gets to a certain point, they are ideally supposed to surpass the master if the master taught them properly. Your student “flips the script” on the master in your story. Perhaps your story is the next chapter in the story? What do you think?
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That’s what it is indeed. The master telling her there must be some level of separation between forms and application, which she later learned to agree, but her main journey is her trying to surpass the master, eliminating all barriers. Ironically, as she achieves that, she reaches a level of skill and vision where it doesn’t matter anymore, and she really can’t show anyone cause nobody can see what she sees.
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p.s. What I know about Master Chuang is that a big focus for him was looking at things from different perspectives and not wanting to be pinned down to an absolute. “This” and “that” are merely observances from the point of view of the observer.
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In this case when my Sifu says “both” seems right, but the discouragement to look at the other side is wrong? (Well the character is allowed to interpret that his own way, even if he’s wrong, right?
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