Zhuangzi’s voice echoes through later Chinese thought as a persistent reminder of an inner freedom that no social order can fully contain. His playful skepticism, relativism, and ideal of “free and easy wandering” helped shape the more mystical and experiential side of Daoism, so much so that he came to be honored alongside Laozi as a foundational figure. Religious Daoism drew on his teachings about spontaneity, non‑coercive action, and union with the Dao, treating his parables as scriptural resources and meditative images. Commentators such as Guo Xiang worked to systematize his often paradoxical tales into a more explicit metaphysics of naturalness, ensuring that his insights would be woven into the doctrinal fabric of later Daoist schools. Through this process, his celebration of naturalness and effortless alignment with the Dao became a touchstone for discussions of self‑cultivation and spiritual realization.

In the literary realm, Zhuangzi’s influence can be felt in both style and spirit. His daring mixture of fantasy, satire, dialogue, and allegory offered a model of prose that refused to be confined by rigid forms, encouraging later writers to experiment with imaginative structures and philosophical storytelling. Poets such as Tao Yuanming, Li Bai, and Su Shi drew deeply from his themes: transcendence of worldly burdens, unity with nature, and the dream‑like liberation that loosens the grip of gain and loss. Iconic images from his text—the butterfly dream, the giant fish Kun transforming into the great bird Peng, the debate over the joy of fish—reappear across poetry, prose, and painting as symbols of spiritual freedom and the instability of fixed perspectives. In this way, Zhuangzi helped establish the cultural archetype of the eccentric sage or recluse, inwardly free even when outwardly marginalized.

Zhuangzi’s thought also entered into a long and subtle dialogue with Confucianism and other philosophical traditions. His critique of rigid ritual and moral absolutism pressed Confucian thinkers to refine their understanding of spontaneity, emotion, and flexibility in ethical life. Neo‑Confucian philosophers engaged his ideas seriously, sometimes rejecting his skepticism, yet also absorbing elements of his reflections on mind, nature, and non‑duality into their accounts of moral cultivation. At the same time, his relativistic stance on values and perspectives influenced debates about language, knowledge, and the limits of rational argument, providing a counterweight to more dogmatic tendencies in Chinese intellectual history.

Within the broader spiritual landscape, Zhuangzi became a kind of patron for those who sought liberation from oppressive structures, whether political or psychological. Many scholars and officials who withdrew from public life during troubled times turned to his writings to justify reclusion, poverty, or wandering as higher forms of integrity. Chan (Zen) Buddhism, in particular, found deep resonance with his paradoxes, his suspicion of fixed doctrines, and his stress on wordless understanding. Chan masters adopted methods reminiscent of his style—riddles, abrupt reversals, and shocking images—to point beyond conceptual thinking, blending Daoist spontaneity with Buddhist insights into emptiness. Over time, a shared Chan‑Daoist sensibility emerged, in which Zhuangzi’s language and imagery became part of the common vocabulary for speaking about awakening, detachment, and the freedom of the mind.

Across these many currents, certain expressions and practices associated with Zhuangzi—“free and easy wandering,” “sitting in forgetfulness,” “fasting of the mind,” the image of the “useless tree”—entered the cultural lexicon as shorthand for a life rooted in inner spaciousness rather than external achievement. These motifs shaped not only formal philosophy and religious practice but also everyday moral and artistic discourse, offering a way to imagine being inwardly unbound in a world of constraints. Through literature, art, and spiritual practice, Zhuangzi’s vision of spontaneity and freedom thus continued to invite later generations to loosen their grip on fixed identities and to move more lightly with the transformations of the Dao.