Chuang Tzu: Letting Life Flow

by Thomas Merton

Back in Melbourne in 2017, I found myself deep in the contrast between two ancient ways of being. On one side, the path of Confucius—disciplined, structured, focused on becoming a “Superior Man” through love, duty, and ritual. It’s a noble idea: to live with compassion (Jen), fairness (Yi), reverence (Li), and wisdom (Chih). There’s a real beauty in that striving. A desire to align your life with the cosmos through intention.

But then there’s Chuang Tzu. And reading him felt like a deep exhale.

Where Confucius urges us to cultivate, Chuang Tzu invites us to let go. He says, stop trying so hard. Let Tao move through you. Let action arise not from effort, but from flow. His idea of wu wei—non-doing—doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means doing in harmony with the whole. Moving without force. Living without trying to control life.

Instead of becoming good through rituals or discipline, Chuang Tzu suggests that we already are—if we stop getting in the way.

That hit home for me. There’s something deeply freeing in his vision of quiet, humble living. A kind of faith—not in beliefs, but in life itself.

So while Ju philosophy feels like climbing a ladder toward virtue, Taoism feels like floating in a river. Both aim for harmony, but they take different paths. And in the stillness, I knew which one felt more like mine.