Zhuangzi dreams he is a butterfly, wakes, and does not know whether he is a man who dreamed a butterfly or a butterfly now dreaming a man. The story is short and refuses to resolve, which is the method: Zhuangzi's book is full of jokes, cooks, cripples, and useless trees that outlive useful ones, all aimed at loosening the reader's grip on fixed categories. Where the Tao Te Ching advises, Zhuangzi laughs — and the tradition has always needed both registers.