“For Zhuangzi, the person who frees himself from the conventional views of judgement cannot be made to suffer, because he refuses to see poverty as any less good than affluence. Natural ills, such as death, are no longer seen as ills, instead as parts of the natural course of life. You stay within society but you refrain from following the egotistical desires that so often trap the common man. To fully embody Zhuangzi’s philosophy to to develop a well-being that transcends the external world… but it’s more than that, because in the same way that these green tea leaves come to life when they return to their natural hydrated form and gives me this beautiful tea to drink, when we shed all the baggage that society and us put on ourselves, we bring something new into the world—a natural effectiveness.”
—George Thompson