Zhuangzi — 吾生也有涯

Human life is finite, yet knowledge has no limit—a stark contrast that opens the *Zhuangzi*’s “Essentials for Nourishing Life.” These opening words do not lament our brevity but set a quiet, urgent frame: to pursue boundless knowing with a bounded self invites exhaustion and loss of balance. The passage goes on to describe how the mind, when fixated on right and wrong, becomes rigid like a trigger mechanism; how clinging to victory hardens the spirit like a sealed oath; how emotional surges—joy, anger, grief, pleasure—arise and vanish like mist from warm earth, unbidden and untraceable. All these movements replace one another ceaselessly, day and night, yet their origin remains unseen. The text asks: if there is a true ruler within us, why can’t we discern its trace? Though body and senses are fully present, which part is truly “us”? And if all parts serve one another in shifting roles—sometimes master, sometimes servant—where does genuine authority reside? The *Zhuangzi* does not offer answers but invites attention to this very question: what endures when everything flows? It suggests that recognizing the limits of life—and of knowing—is not resignation, but the first condition for living with integrity.