Over the course of the past two semesters, I worked with Professors Chün-fang Yü and Kenneth Holloway on a thesis which dealt with the key concept of the “Authentic Person” in a classical Chinese religious-philosophical text, the Zhuangzi, or Chuang-tzu, named after its purported author. Entitled: “The Masters and the Marsh Sparrow: Zhuangzi’s Authentic Person, A Classical Chinese Thinker on Limitation and Possibility at the Pivot of the Way,” my text focused on the way in which Zhuangzi used an unorthodox anecdotal or parablistic style to conjure up humorous and memorable characters to impart his vision of human Authenticity. I argued that for Zhuangzi, the ideal individual reaches authenticity or perfection not by mastering mystic rites or the like, but by coming to grips with his or her own limitations and specific place within the great natural order (Dao, or ‘the Way’) and living with those limitations. Ironically, it is in this act of understanding limitation that one is liberated, and given access to the infinite range of creative possibilities that present themselves to a given individual at any time. My work on this project was tedious but extremely rewarding, and in the future I intend to pursue graduate work in the field of religious studies, perhaps focusing on the spaces where the religious, political, and philosophical all link up.
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