Buy used:
$22.48
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime
FREE delivery May 20 - 24 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Or fastest delivery May 19 - 22
Used: Acceptable | Details
Sold by All_Time_Books
Fulfilled by Amazon
Condition: Used: Acceptable
Comment: Has pages that contain markings, notes, or highlighting from a previous owner.

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and Amazon Prime.

If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you grow your business. Learn more about the program.

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the authors

Thomas Merton
+ Follow
Zhunag zi
+ Follow
See all
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

The Way of Chuang Tzu (Shambhala Library) Hardcover – March 9, 2004

by Thomas Merton (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 744 ratings
See all formats and editions
Chuang Tzu—considered, along with Lao Tzu, one of the great figures of early Taoist thought—used parables and anecdotes, allegory and paradox, to illustrate that real happiness and freedom are found only in understanding the Tao or Way of nature, and dwelling in its unity. The respected Trappist monk Thomas Merton spent several years reading and reflecting upon four different translations of the Chinese classic that bears Chuang Tzu's name. The result is this collection of poetic renderings of the great sage's work that conveys its spirit in a way no other translation has and that was Merton's personal favorite among his more than fifty books. Both prose and verse are included here, as well as a short section from Merton discussing the most salient themes of Chuang Tzu's teachings.
Read more Read less
Previous page
  1. Print length
    192 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Shambhala
  4. Publication date
    March 9, 2004
  5. Dimensions
    4.55 x 0.79 x 7.05 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1590301439
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1590301432
  8. See all details
Next page
The Amazon Book Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) was a Trappist monk, spiritual director, political activist, social critic, and one of the most-read spiritual writers of the twentieth century. He is the author of many books, including The Seven Storey Mountain.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Shambhala; 1st edition (March 9, 2004)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1590301439
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1590301432
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.55 x 0.79 x 7.05 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 744 ratings

About the authors

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Previous page
  1. Thomas Merton

    Thomas Merton

    Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is arguably the most influential American Catholic author of the twentieth century. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, has millions of copies and has been translated into over fifteen languages. He wrote over sixty other books and hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence, and the nuclear arms race.

    After a rambunctious youth and adolescence, Merton converted to Roman Catholicism and entered the Abbey of Gethsemani, a community of monks belonging to the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists), the most ascetic Roman Catholic monastic order.

    The twenty-seven years he spent in Gethsemani brought about profound changes in his self-understanding. This ongoing conversion impelled him into the political arena, where he became, according to Daniel Berrigan, the conscience of the peace movement of the 1960's. Referring to race and peace as the two most urgent issues of our time, Merton was a strong supporter of the nonviolent civil rights movement, which he called "certainly the greatest example of Christian faith in action in the social history of the United States." For his social activism Merton endured severe criticism, from Catholics and non-Catholics alike, who assailed his political writings as unbecoming of a monk.

    During his last years, he became deeply interested in Asian religions, particularly Zen Buddhism, and in promoting East-West dialogue. After several meetings with Merton during the American monk's trip to the Far East in 1968, the Dali Lama praised him as having a more profound understanding of Buddhism than any other Christian he had known. It was during this trip to a conference on East-West monastic dialogue that Merton died, in Bangkok on December 10, 1968, the victim of an accidental electrocution. The date marked the twenty-seventh anniversary of his entrance to Gethsemani.

    See more on the author's page
  2. Zhunag zi

    Zhunag zi

    Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

    See more on the author's page
Next page

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
744 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Savageblu
5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible
Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2024
Verified Purchase
One of the best Taoist tracts available in translation. Also, check out Han Shan's Cold Mountain Poems.
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Lawrence Weber
5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Ecumenical Work
Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2014
Verified Purchase
The Way of Chuang Tzu, by Thomas Merton, is the product of five years of immersion, study, prayer, and reflection on the work of Zhuangzi, one of the towering figures in Chinese Taoism (Daojia) who lived sometime between the Fourth and Third Century BC.

According to Merton, the notes based on his meditative readings, "have acquired a shape of their own and have become, as it were, 'imitations' of Chuang Tzu." Merton goes on to describe these imitations as personal spiritual interpretations and should not be mistaken for scholarship.
What evolves then becomes a multi-layered tapestry of the poetic, intuitive, provocative, and complex. Merton has found a kindred spirit in Chuang Tzu, and there is little doubt that Merton and Master Chuang share a viewpoint of life that may be common to many monastics across a broad spectrum of religious and philosophical disciplines. This kinship needs no justification by Merton, a towering figure of Twentieth Century Catholicism in his own right; and Merton goes on to say that he "may be pardoned for consorting with a Chinese recluse who shares the climate and peace of my own kind of solitude, and who is my own kind of person."

To attempt an understanding of Chuang Tzu, it is essential to understand the world in which he lived. Confucianism was the dominant Chinese philosophy of Chuang Tzu's time; and while Chuang Tzu often ridiculed Confucianism as too restrictive, it would be too simplistic to state that Taoism stood in direct contrast to Confucianism. According to Merton, "if Chuang Tzu reacted against the Ju doctrine [of Confucianism], it was not in the name of something lower-the animal spontaneity of the individual who does not want to be bothered with a lot of tiresome duties-but in the name of something altogether higher. This is the most important fact to remember when we westerners confront the seeming antinomianism of Chuang Tzu or of the Zen masters." While Confucius could advocate for Tao, Chuang Tzu believed that he was not referring to what he believed was the "great Tao" which is invisible and incomprehensible-the Eternal Tao.

For Chuang Tzu, the Eternal Tao was the source of all things. Chuang Tzu critiqued Confucius because he refused to focus his teachings on the Eternal Tao simply because it was unknowable. According to Chuang Tzu, only when one was connected in some way to the Eternal Tao (a connection beyond both words and silence), could one truly begin to understand how to live. Merton interprets Confucian understanding of Tao to be an "ethical Tao" or a "Tao of man," and he equates this understanding to be on par with the Christian interpretation of the Golden Rule. Merton concludes that this interpretation of Tao is not the Eternal Tao that Chuang Tzu espouses. Chuang Tzu eventually discarded this Confucian interpretation as illusory; where everything is distilled and categorized into a universal ethic of Tao (The Tao of Fatherhood is given as an example).

Merton brilliantly synthesizes Chuang Tzu's critique of the Confucian ethic of the "Superior Man" with the example of the heroic and the virtuous public servant by explaining that even the good and the noble person:

Engages in a self-conscious and deliberate campaign to 'do his duty' in the belief that this is right and therefore productive of happiness. He sees 'happiness' and 'the good' as 'something to be attained,' and thus he places them outside himself in the world of objects. In so doing, he becomes involved in a division from which there is no escape: between the present, in which he is not yet in possession of what he seeks, and the future in which he thinks he will have what he desires...

Chuang Tzu believed that abstractions such as "happiness," "virtue," and "justice" were concepts placed into the world of objects to be attained, and should be considered ambiguous at best, dangerous at worst. Here he means that whatever one considers good (the good) to be attained (as outside of one's self), the more the good becomes abstracted and unattainable. Instead, Chuang Tzu advocated Wu Wei, or non-action.

According to Chuang Tzu, Wu Wei is not concerned with conscious planning; in fact self-conscious action of any type is restrictive and stands opposed to the Eternal Tao. When you are in harmony with the Eternal Tao, right action, virtue, and good, which always manifest at the appropriate time without self-conscious deliberation, will intuitively become known to you, and you will act with Tao in full freedom. This concept of Wu Wei is reminiscent of the Gospel passage from Saint Matthew, "Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me (MT 16:24)." Dying to one's self or dying to one's self-consciousness is essential. Similarly, Saint Paul echoes this theme in Galatians 2:20 when he says, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." It is not difficult to imagine the phrase sounding like this: I no longer live, but Tao (the Eternal Tao) lives in me.

Here is where I believe Merton finds a kindred spirit in Chuang Tzu. Merton recognizes that Chuang Tzu is actually moving into an area of mysticism which goes beyond mere object good, into metaphysical truth. He does not disdain virtue, good, happiness etc...He transcends them. I like that Merton recognizes in Chuang Tzu a man who challenges Merton's own vocation to solitude and contemplation, and I admire Merton all the more for confronting Chuang Tzu's critiques of contemplation and the interior life by deeply connecting his monasticism with Tao. "The true tranquility sought by the 'man of tao' is Ying ning, tranquility in the action of non-action, in other words, a tranquility which transcends the division between activity and contemplation by entering into union with the nameless and invisible Tao." I believe Merton equates this with divine union.

Finally, it is critical to understand that for Chuang Tzu, Tao is found everywhere; in the same way that Christians believe that God is both omnipresent and omniscient (Proverbs 15:3 The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good). Merton connected to this abstraction personally. In living out Wu Wei, Chuang Tzu advocated a non-action that was in complete harmony with Tao-in other words-perfect action. Merton described this as "action not carried out independently of Heaven and earth...in perfect harmony with the whole. It is not mere passivity, but it is action that seems both effortless and spontaneous because performed "rightly," in perfect accordance with our nature and with our place in the scheme of things. It is completely free because there is in it no force and no violence. It is not "conditioned" or "limited" by our own individual needs and desires, or even by our own theories and ideas."

Today, when I read John 17:21, "that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me," it is not difficult to think that Thomas Merton, perhaps more than any Catholic during the last century, truly recognized the common spiritual unity (the oneness of each other's souls as grounded in the Triune-One) we all share as brothers and sisters in this world. Reading The Way of Chuang Tzu, truly contemplating Merton’s interpretive message which is rooted in his own Christology, and then living it out through Chuang Tzu's idea of non-action, becomes a great way to continue the wonderful ecumenical work Merton engaged in so selflessly when he recognized how interconnected he was with his brother Chuang Tzu, and how God (Eternal Tao) ultimately connects all of us together in the oneness of mystery and truth.
46 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Lilylady
4.0 out of 5 stars Delightful and thought provoking book
Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2015
Verified Purchase
An excellent, thought provoking book. It leads us to an innate understanding of "the way" as illustrated by the short stories of Chuang Tzu. I would have liked more of Thomas Merton's thoughts regarding these snippets, however, he probably allowed us more freedom with regard to this.
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Nicholas Costi
5.0 out of 5 stars Goes into the Concept of "Tao" in a very Simple Manner
Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2024
Verified Purchase
The whole idea of the "Tao" or "flow", "life force" or "natural order" and of-course the zen-like importance of "nothingness" and the inverse of what is desired being the antidote are explore in a very clever way in this book. While the book is essentially about "Chuang Tzu" it is actually just as much a good exploration of the concepts of "Lao Tzu" (Who may never have existed) and Tao in general. I have read books that specifically focus on Tao that don't go into its precepts as deeply as this one does.

The book starts with Thomas Merton explaining the ideas and practices of Chuang Tzu before going through a series of selected works. It's a great way to write a book because once you get to the actual prose writings and poems you have some groundwork on which to relate them.

It's also a good critique of the "one love" sort of morality that tends to get preached these days. Chuang Tzu was heavily against generalizations and believed that the more concepts got away from reality the more abstract they became. This fits perfectly in line with both the concepts of "zen" and "Tao", or the notion of being in the moment and observing the flow of the situation in regards to one self.

You cannot judge books by their cover and while this book is largely about Chuang Tzu it's also a great intermediate primer on the aforementioned concepts if you are already familiar with the general ideas.
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Happy Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Good book
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2024
Verified Purchase
Worth buying.
Helpful
 Report
R. C. Brusca
5.0 out of 5 stars A classic “Hero’s Journey” with timeless, universal themes (only built around religious faith)
Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2023
Verified Purchase
A fascinating autobiographic account by Thomas Merton of his extraordinary journey of self-discovery. The writing is superb and the story is compelling. A young man growing up in Europe, the son of a successful vagabond artist, he has to find his own way. Seemingly drawn since youth toward a Christian faith, he eventually finds himself deeply affected and quite easily influenced by the pomp and circumstance of Catholic rituals, churches, and monasteries. Apparently with little interest in women, the priesthood seems like the perfect profession to Thomas. But there are so many different Catholic orders to consider! Perhaps surprisingly, given his very social lifestyle, academic leanings, and love of writing, he forsakes his initial flirtation with the Franciscans and ends up in Trappist Monastery, an order that practices strict observance and a life of quiet contemplation. Trappists are an offshoot of the Cistercian Order, founded in 1098 as a stricter branch of the Benedictines. Writing as a life-time atheist, I find Merton’s journey, despite it being one dedicated to faith, a classic “Hero’s Journey” with timeless, universal themes and motifs. However, at some point one does begin to realize that the book is also a promotional piece for the Catholic church, as never once does Merton mention anything negative about any of the Catholic orders, or any of the priests he talks with, or any of the ideals of the Catholic faith. It’s all ice cream and cookies. And certainly, there is no mention whatsoever of the now well-known Catholic priesthood scandal.
4 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
James Kenney
3.0 out of 5 stars Ho hum
Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2023
Verified Purchase
I wasn’t all that impressed with Merton’s treatment of this essential text of Taoist thought. It’s neither fish nor fowl, neither a translation nor an analysis.

There are better books on this important text of early Taoism.
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Pepe
5.0 out of 5 stars Gran texto
Reviewed in Mexico on December 2, 2022
Verified Purchase
Joya de taoísmo
Report
Toto Mel k
5.0 out of 5 stars Good
Reviewed in Germany on May 6, 2023
Verified Purchase
good
Report
Frank Faulk
5.0 out of 5 stars A small book that contains vast wisdom.
Reviewed in Canada on January 17, 2020
Verified Purchase
A collection of wonderful, enlightening tales and parables from Chuang Tzu. Merton’s introduction is also excellent.
Report
Cliente Amazon
3.0 out of 5 stars me lo pidieron como encargo
Reviewed in Spain on February 17, 2017
Verified Purchase
no se como esta,yo no se ingles.compre el mismo en español,estos libros orientales son supercomplicados de leer,lo dice todo el mundo, a lo mejor es porque yo soy europeo,es otra mentalidad.
Report
Kaif Mahmood
3.0 out of 5 stars Sayings of an ancient Chinese master - mildly fascinating, somewhat blithe
Reviewed in India on July 21, 2016
Verified Purchase
This is a collection of 'sayings', that is, reflections and little stories, by Chuang Tzu, presented by Thomas Merton in his words - not exactly a translation, since Merton knew no Chinese, but a re-statement that tries to come to the intended meaning of the author. The introduction by Merton is a beautiful piece of writing that evokes Merton's spirit of exploration into the world's spiritual heritage, and gives the reader a taste of the Taoist way of being.

For the most part, the nature of this work is fable-like, giving lessons about a life that can be lived with ease, spontaneity, and simplicity. This is a much needed antidote to these overly complex, opaque, obsessive times we live in. However, the sayings do not seem to hold a great deal of depth, in my humble opinion. Occasionally, a line of great beauty and wisdom comes by, expressing itself in charming succinctness. For the most part, though, I doubt if these words hold the power to bring about a change in one's way of being.
2 people found this helpful
 Report