There is a Daoist master who could ride the wind. Not metaphorically. The texts say he literally mounted the air and traveled wherever he wanted, effortlessly, above the ground. His name was Liezi, and the most important thing about him is that he considered this ability a failure. That is the kind of philosopher we are dealing with.

He Said Freedom Was Not What You Think It Is

Liezi lived around the fifth century BCE, roughly contemporary with Confucius and Laozi, though the dating is uncertain and some scholars question whether he was a historical person at all. The book attributed to him, the Liezi, is a collection of philosophical stories, parables, and arguments that occupies a strange space in the Daoist tradition: stranger than the Dao De Jing, funnier than the Zhuangzi, and more willing to say things that make no sense on purpose. Scholars of early Chinese philosophy at Peking University have described the Liezi as the most playful of the major Daoist texts. It contains a story about a man who is so worried about the sky falling that he cannot eat or sleep. It contains a story about a musician so skilled that his audience cannot tell where the music ends and the silence begins. It contains a story about Liezi himself, who rides the wind for fifteen days and then lands and realizes he has achieved nothing. The wind-riding is the point that undoes the point. Liezi can fly, but flight requires wind. He is free, but his freedom depends on something outside himself. True freedom, the text argues, would depend on nothing at all. It would be indistinguishable from doing absolutely nothing.

The Stories Are the Philosophy

Western philosophy tends to make arguments. Daoist philosophy tends to tell stories and then walk away before explaining them. The Liezi does this with particular relish. There is a parable about a man from the state of Qi who is convinced the earth will collapse beneath his feet. A friend explains to him that the earth is solid, the sky is empty gas, and nothing will fall. The man is relieved. The text does not say whether the friend is right. It does not say whether the earth is solid. It lets you sit with a man whose anxiety has been cured by an explanation that may itself be wrong, and it asks you to decide what matters more: truth or peace. Research from the Institute of Chinese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong has argued that the Liezi represents a strand of Daoist thought more interested in the limits of knowledge than in spiritual cultivation. Where Laozi offers guidance and Zhuangzi offers liberation, Liezi offers uncertainty. He tells you a story, shrugs, and lets you figure it out. He rode the wind. He put it down. He said even that was not free enough. The rest is silence, which is the one thing Daoists have always trusted more than words.