When Meaning Is Seen, Words Are Forgotten — Chuang Tzu's Poems Part 1
The Freedom of the Empty Boat: Beyond Words, Meaning, and the Subtle Traps of Ego
Civilization → Conformity → Rebellion
Freedom → Renunciation → Self-Emptiness
Words → Meaning → [[अहं]] → [[मनोवैज्ञानिक समय]]
Two figures stand across civilizations, separated by geography yet united in spirit: Diogenes in ancient Greece and Chuang Tzu in ancient China. They were near contemporaries—living in roughly the same broad historical period—and both embodied a radical interrogation of society, convention, and self. Each mocked civilization in his own manner. Each exposed the artificiality of power and status. Each demonstrated what it means to stand outside the psychological structure that most call normal life.
Yet their temperaments diverged.
Diogenes displayed defiance. Chuang Tzu embodied equanimity.
When confronted with authority, Diogenes barked. Chuang Tzu smiled.
When Diogenes declared, “I would rather be a dog,” he meant he preferred authenticity in the mud over hypocrisy in the king’s court. When Chuang Tzu declared, “I would rather be a turtle dragging its tail in the mud,” he declined imperial employment not with contempt, but with natural indifference.
Both rejected power. But one rejected it with disdain, the other with effortless detachment.
This difference is subtle. It is also structural.
Freedom as Rebellion vs Freedom as Self-Absence
External Rejection → Independence
Internal Release → Self-Absence → [[साक्षीभाव]]
Diogenes’ freedom is visible and theatrical. He lived in a tub, owned almost nothing, and publicly ridiculed social pretension. His rejection was outward. It confronted society directly.
Chuang Tzu’s freedom is less dramatic yet more penetrating. He did not merely refuse the court; he saw no essential distinction between court and wilderness. The difference did not psychologically register as significant.
This is not rebellion. This is indifference born of clarity.
The Cynic rejects society.
The Taoist dissolves the structure that makes society binding.
The distinction matters.
Rebellion still assumes the structure it opposes. It says: “You matter enough for me to oppose you.” Equanimity says: “Your category does not define my being.”
This structural shift moves freedom from external opposition to internal release.
Parallel Currents: India and the Question of Liberation
Bondage → Ignorance → [[अहं]]
Liberation → Insight → Freedom from Self
In India, near that same historical horizon, stood Mahavira and Gautama Buddha—also contemporaries. Both articulated freedom as the highest human goal. Both located bondage not in political systems but in ignorance.
The chronology moves approximately:
Mahavira → Buddha → Diogenes → Chuang Tzu
The cultures differ. The language differs. The metaphors differ.
But the structural claim converges:
Freedom is the highest aim of awakened consciousness.
Not freedom as choice.
Not freedom as social mobility.
Freedom from the self that clings.
Mahavira speaks of non-possession.
Buddha speaks of non-attachment.
Diogenes lives external poverty.
Chuang Tzu speaks of internal emptiness.
The convergence is unmistakable.
Words, Meaning, and the Trap Beyond the Trap
Word → Meaning → Attachment
Attachment → Identity → [[मनोवैज्ञानिक समय]]
Chuang Tzu offers a statement that destabilizes even philosophical reverence:
“The trap exists for the fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten. Words exist for meaning, and when meaning is seen, the words are forgotten. Where can I find one who has forgotten both words and meaning? He is the one I wish to meet.”
Most thinkers stop at the first refinement: forget the word, preserve the meaning.
They say content matters, form does not.
That already appears wise.
But Chuang Tzu advances further. Forget not only the word but also the meaning.
This is structurally radical.
Because meaning itself becomes an object of identification.
One may move from attachment to form → attachment to content.
From ritual → interpretation.
From memorizing verses → memorizing commentary.
The trap merely becomes subtler.
Freedom is not migration between traps.
Freedom is absence of dependency.
Memory, Knowledge, and the Ego’s Food
Experience → Memory → Selection → [[अहं]]
Sacred Word → Psychological Ownership → Identity Reinforcement
In the light of Vedantic insight, every object to which the ego clings becomes its nourishment. It may cling to wealth. It may cling to austerity. It may cling to scripture.
If there is something one leans upon, there is ego.
The rightful function of authentic teaching is not to become another possession. Its function is diagnostic. It reveals the ego to itself.
Great words are not meant to be stored. They are meant to dissolve what is already stored.
Memory is not neutral. The ego selects what flatters its continuity. You remember what confirms your psychological structure.
When profound words arrive, they should weaken dependency on previous words.
If they become new possessions, they have failed.
When small words are dissolved, great words too lose function. Their purpose is complete.
A ladder is not worshiped once the roof is reached.
Knowing vs Memorizing
Memorization → Accumulation → Identity
Knowing → Being → Non-Accumulation
Just because something is in memory does not make one a knower.
Memorization pertains to what you have.
Knowing pertains to what you are.
This distinction is not rhetorical. It is ontological.
One may recite scripture flawlessly yet remain structurally dependent on recitation for identity. Another may forget scripture entirely yet stand in freedom.
Transmission through memory does not make something sacred. Deep listening makes it sacred.
Shruti is not holy because it is remembered. It is holy because it is heard from silence.
The ego, however, prefers memory. Memory gives continuity. Continuity gives psychological time. Psychological time sustains identity.
This is the chain:
Memory → Identity → [[अहंकार]] → [[मनोवैज्ञानिक समय]]
To ask someone to accumulate more sacred names when the mind is already full of names is not liberation. It is ornamentation of bondage.
Projection vs Reflection
Insecurity → Projection → False Sacredness
Awareness → Reflection → Exposure of Self
Projection and reflection appear similar but are structurally opposite.
In projection, you see yourself but believe you are seeing another.
In reflection, you see yourself and know it is yourself.
Projection protects the ego. Reflection exposes it.
If the ego declares something holy, can it be holy?
The ego is not holy. Its projection cannot transcend it.
When the ego selects an object of reverence, it often selects something that confirms its structure rather than challenges it.
Thus the so-called sacred may become merely psychological decoration.
One more projection does not burden the ego. It strengthens it.
Therefore authentic teaching must unburden.
It must function as mirror, not extension.
The Empty Boat
Possession → Identity
Non-possession → Emptiness → Freedom
Diogenes reportedly said that even the gods long to meet someone who owns nothing.
Chuang Tzu longs to meet the one who has forgotten words and meaning.
Who is this person?
An empty boat.
To own nothing externally is striking. To own nothing internally is transformative.
Diogenes renounced material dependency.
Chuang Tzu addressed subtle internal dependency.
Both point toward non-possession.
But sages are less concerned with external objects than with internal identification.
Internal possession is heavier than material wealth.
You may own nothing and still own an image of yourself as one who owns nothing.
That is still ownership.
The Proper Function of Words
Word → Indication → Silence
Interference → Analysis → Ownership
When a word arrives, its function is to point, not to be manipulated.
The correct posture is receptivity.
If one stands silently and allows the word to operate, it performs its task. If one begins to analyze compulsively, memorize defensively, or conclude prematurely, one interferes.
Doing is the function of the word.
Stillness is the function of the listener.
When you attempt to do something with the word, you exceed your brief.
This aligns with the spirit of Tao: allow what is to unfold without appropriation.
Why Is It So Difficult to Be Absent?
Control → Fear → [[अहं]]
Letting Be → Trust → Absence of Psychological Center
[[Shrimad Bhagavad Gita 3.20 — Let Life Be Intelligence Beyond the Ego]].
Why is it difficult to simply flow?
Why is absence—described in the spirit of the Gita’s teaching of action without egoic burden—so rare?
Because identity seeks continuity.
To be absent feels like death to the constructed self.
The ego prefers refined traps to no trap at all. It prefers sacred identity to no identity.
Thus even spirituality becomes psychological time extended.
One memorizes verses not for insight but for reinforcement. One repeats mantras not for dissolution but for security.
Freedom requires relinquishing even subtle securities.
Structural Integration
The arc across civilizations converges on a single insight.
Mahavira, Buddha, Diogenes, Chuang Tzu—different languages, different gestures, same structural clarity.
Bondage is not primarily social. It is identification.
Identification sustains the ego.
The ego sustains psychological time.
Psychological time sustains fear.
Words can liberate or bind. Meaning can illuminate or become another possession.
Projection strengthens identity. Reflection dissolves it.
External poverty without internal emptiness is incomplete.
Internal emptiness renders external conditions secondary.
The highest freedom is not rebellion.
It is absence of the self that needs to rebel.
Not forgetting words alone.
Not preserving meaning alone.
But freedom from the structure that converts both into identity.
Therefore, the one worth meeting is not the scholar, not the ascetic, not the rebel.
It is the one who owns nothing inwardly.
An empty boat does not collide.
And in that non-collision, there is freedom.