CHINESE BUTTERFLY DREAMS!

ZHUANG ZHOU MENG DIE
Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream
A painting by Qian Xiaochun



The title of our blog came through a loving thought of what to call our precious daughter until we decide on her name. We just can not finalize a name until we see her beautiful face. After we had come up with butterfly and of course dreaming of her so.....butterly dreams....I then did a search online for china and butterfly dreams. I was curious of what would come up....low and behold a Chinese connection...and this I knew was all meant to be her interim nickname, epecially since all this came after I had already decorated her room in butterflies.

The story, Zhuangzi, is about a Chinese philosopher, Chuang Tzu, who dreamed that he was a butterfly, flying about enjoying itself. In the dream he was perfectly clear about his identity, but after he was awakened, this became uncertain. Suddenly he awoke, and inevitably was Chuang Tzu again. He did not know whether it was Chuang Tzu dreaming that he was a butterfly, or whether it was the butterfly dreaming that it was Chuang Tzu.

Here is a perfect children's book for our daughter, it has traditional Chinese children stories in it. I had to have it!!I can not wait to read stories to her every day!!






I also found of all things a beautiful butterfly dream catcher. I have always been fascinated by butterflies and their emergence from a caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly. Its as if one life as a caterpillar was lived then there is this whole new life that is there to be experienced and lived as a butterfly. In so many ways a caterpillar to a butterfly is much like the transformation our child will make in so many ways. Life is all about how you perceive and view things that will determine how you experience them.

The mark of your ignorance
is the depth of your belief
in injustice and tragedy.
What the caterpillar
calls the end of the world
the Master calls a butterfly.

Richard Bach, Illusions