Viewing Self-Transcendence in the Zhuangzi and Confucianism Through Dreams

Abstract

Pre-Qin Confucians frequently discussed dreams; it is a significant contribution of the Zhuangzi to elaborate on the self and self-transcendence through the medium of dreams. The particular nature of dreams is closely associated with death and intoxication. The attitude to death and drunkenness indicates that pre-Qin Confucians did not engage in extensive reflection on dreams or the self-identity associated with them. The self always runs through the two realms of dreaming and consciousness with undoubted identity, which is called “Viewing Dreams with the Self”. In Zhuangzi, the subjective self can be reconstructed into the transcendent “Great Self” only after the purification of “losing myself” in dreams, which is the “Viewing the Self through Dreams”. Firstly, sensory experience serves as the first feature of dreams, and self-identity is proposed and established under the view of the body. Secondly, the similarity between death and dreaming inspires a new possibility of consciousness and reveals that the statement “I lost myself” actually involves the loss of self-identity; finally, the connection between drunkenness and dreams suggests that the transcendence of the “Great Self” in the Zhuangzi does not lie in pure theory or sensory experience, but in the spiritual breakthrough opened up by unique sensory experience, and that self-transcendence is manifested as the transcendence of the identity of the self. Building upon the Zhuangzi’s concepts of the “Great Self” and Qi theory, Neo-Confucianism in Song dynasty gradually established a new interpretation concerning the self and the transcendence of identity, and developed new understandings of dreams, death, and intoxication.