[In response to the suggestion that Daoism does not make use of ideas:]
Zhuangzi’s method, moreover, to the extent that he can be said to have had one, is very much about the use of ideas—new perspectives—to transform one’s interface with oneself and the world. He suggests a kind of meditative imagining of different, broadening perspectives, whereby one can recontextualize oneself and be transformed. Imagine yourself as utterly non-dependent on anything, not even life itself. What then could you possibly fear? Imagine identifying, not with your isolated monadic self, but with the Totality of all things. “Hide the world in the world”. Where in Everything could anything be lost? Imagine life and death as a single string, not two different things, but one unit. How then could death represent a loss? Imagine humanity as the same and equal to all other things and creatures. How could we then not love and honor them all? Imagine the pronouncements of all our great theories as equivalent to the chirpings of a nest of baby birds. How could we then cling to our own dogmas as to sacred truths, and kill in their name? These and many other imaginative exercises have ideas as their point of departure and psychological transformation as their goal.
These exercises, however, are not intended to suggest anything as “true”. We needn’t believe in an actual Totality for its imagining to have a palliative effect. We needn’t think ourselves monkeys in putting ourselves in their ‘shoes’ and imagining how their preferences, so different than ours, are also as valid as our own. This parallels the use of words; though they can never replace experience, they nonetheless can point us in that direction. The celebrated metaphor of the fish trap attributed to Zhuangzi by a later contributor to the Zhuangzi makes this point: “A fish trap is for the fish. When you have got hold of the fish, you forget the trap. . . . Words are for the intent. When you have got hold of the intent, you forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words, that I might have a few words with him?” (Chapter 26; Ziporyn; Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings; 2009) Words are not experience, but they can point us in that direction. We do not believe in words, but we do believe in their power. In this way Zhuangzi makes upayic use of ideas without clinging to them as “true”.