Zhuangzi portrays reality as a ceaseless process of transformation rather than a collection of fixed substances or stable essences. All things are caught up in an ongoing flow of change, where life and death, success and failure, and even self and other are shifting phases within a larger movement. This transformative process is grounded in the Dao, an all-pervading Way that is not a discrete thing but the underlying, spontaneous pattern of existence. From this vantage, nothing maintains a permanent identity, and any attempt to pin reality down in rigid terms misses its living, dynamic character.

Within this vision, all distinctions are relative and perspectival, not absolute. What counts as large or small, good or bad, beautiful or ugly depends entirely on the standpoint from which one looks. The famous reflection on dreaming of being a butterfly, or being a butterfly dreaming of being human, dramatizes how uncertain the line is between illusion and what is taken to be waking reality. No single viewpoint can claim final authority, because every perspective is conditioned by bodily limits, habits, and conceptual schemes. Opposites and dualities, such as right and wrong or noble and base, are revealed as artificial cuttings in an undivided whole.

Language and conventional knowledge, for Zhuangzi, tend to distort more than they reveal. Names, social norms, and value judgments carve up the world in ways that obscure its underlying unity and fluidity. Words and categories inevitably fall short of the Dao, which is nameless and beyond full conceptual grasp. By mistaking these mental constructions for reality itself, people generate conflict, anxiety, and a false sense of certainty. Skepticism toward fixed knowledge thus becomes a spiritual discipline, loosening attachment to rigid viewpoints so that a deeper accord with the Dao can emerge.

In this light, the most authentic way of being is characterized by spontaneity and “free and easy wandering.” The perfected person does not cling to a fixed self or to fixed truths, but responds fluidly to changing circumstances, moving in harmony with the effortless unfolding of the Dao. Such a person does not try to impose order or control on the natural flow, but allows action to arise without forcing, in a manner often described as non-striving or non-coercive. Reality, then, is not something to be mastered conceptually, but a mysterious, ever-changing flow to which one can attune through openness, humility, and responsive freedom.