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Zhuangzi (Zhuang Zhou)4th century BCE (traditional)

Zhuangzi's butterfly dream

Did the philosopher dream he was a butterfly, or is a butterfly now dreaming it is a philosopher? Two thousand years later the question still unsettles people.

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The dream

Retold in our own words from the sources below, not quoted.

The Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou once dreamed he was a butterfly, fluttering about happily, doing as it pleased, with no idea that it was Zhou.

Then he woke up, and there he was, unmistakably Zhou. But he could not tell whether he was Zhou who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming of being Zhou. Between Zhou and a butterfly, the passage ends, there must be some distinction; this is what is called the transformation of things.

Where the story comes from

The story closes the second chapter of the Zhuangzi, a Daoist classic traditionally attributed to Zhuang Zhou, who lived in the fourth century BCE. The book was compiled over a long period and scholars agree that not all of it is by him, but this chapter is usually counted among the earliest parts.

It is less a dream report than a philosophical parable, and one of the most quoted passages in Chinese literature. We retell it from Herbert Giles's public-domain translation of 1889.

How it has been read

Classic texts

In the Zhuangzi the point is not what the butterfly means but what the dream does: it loosens our certainty about which state is the real one. The chapter argues against fixed distinctions, and the butterfly is its most memorable example of how easily one identity becomes another.

Research

Dream science has its own version of the puzzle. While we dream we rarely notice that we are dreaming; lucid dreams, in which the dreamer knows, are the exception. The feeling of being fully convinced by a dream world is one of the most studied features of ordinary dreaming.

Questions for your own dreams

  1. Have you ever woken unsure for a moment which world was real?
  2. In dreams, are you ever someone or something other than yourself?
  3. What in your life feels more like you than your everyday self does?

Symbols in this dream

Had a dream that stayed with you?

Tell us your dream

Sources

Every reading on this page comes from these works. Page references have not all been checked yet; those still waiting are marked.

  1. Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzŭ) (1889). Chuang Tzŭ: Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer, translated by Herbert A. Giles. London: Bernard Quaritch.

    first published 4th-3rd century BCE

    public domain

    • Cited at: ch. II, closing passage (reference not yet checked)
    • Cited at: ch. II (reference not yet checked)

  2. Antonio Zadra, Robert Stickgold (2021). When Brains Dream: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep. New York: W. W. Norton.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: chapter on lucid dreaming (reference not yet checked)

    NEXTUP model: dreaming explores weak, unexpected associations between memories.