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Zhuangzi on Saturn
Lady Li was the daughter of a border guard. When the duke of a neighboring state sacked her hometown and brought her to his palace, she wept until her robe was drenched in tears. But as time went on and she experienced palace life, eating fine food and sharing the duke's bed, she came to love her new life and wondered why she had ever wept.
In the same way, how do we know that loving life isn't a delusion? How do we know that by hating death we're not like someone who left home as a child and forgot the way back? What if the dead, like Lady Li, wonder why they ever longed for life?
(Zhuangzi II, as adapted by yours truly)
One day, old man Yu became ill, and his friend Ssu came to visit him, asking how he was. Yu answered, "Amazing! Look how crooked I am becoming! My back sticks out like a camel, my intestines are over my head, my chin digs into my belly, and my bottom points up to the sky!" He hobbled over to the well and, looking at his reflection, remarked, "My, how the Creator is changing my shape!"
Ssu was surprised at how at ease his friend seemed, and asked, "Are you really not upset at all?"
Yu answered, "Not a bit: what is there to be upset about? Maybe tomorrow I'll awake and my left arm will be changed into a rooster, and I'll announce the dawn; or, perhaps, the Creator will make my right arm into a crossbow and I'll go out and hunt for dinner. Maybe my buttocks will be transformed into cartwheels, and I'll climb up onto myself and go for a ride! I'll never need a carriage again!
"I was born when the time came, and I will similarly die at the appointed hour. When you fight against reality, you lose: that's just the way things have always been. So, instead, I am content with whatever life presents to me and therefore immune to both sorrow and joy. That's why I'm not upset."
(Zhuangzi VI, as adapted by yours truly)
Zhuangzi's wife died. When Huizi went to convey his condolences, he found Zhuangzi sitting with his legs sprawled out, pounding on a tub and singing. "You lived with her, she brought up your children and grew old," said Huizi. "It should be enough simply not to weep at her death. But pounding on a tub and singing—this is going too far, isn't it?"
Zhuangzi said, "You're wrong. 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 follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don't understand anything about fate. So I stopped."
(Zhuangzi XVIII, as translated by Burton Watson)
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