Butterfly dream: qinside-outsideq?

Constrained, Unconstrained and Surprised in a Global Context (Part #2)

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Comments on Tao Jiang's clarification, offer the eagle as an alternative to the turtle -- valuable given its role as national symbol of a number of countries at this time. Not mentioned there, however, is the much-cited tale of the butterfly dream, also  of Chuang Tzu:

Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

The dream is held to be the most celebrated ever to be recorded in the history of Chinese philosophy (Kuang-Ming Wu, The Butterfly as Companion: meditations on the first three chapters of the Chuang Tzu, 1990).

The dilemma of the butterfly dream is consistent with what is termed the "Borgesian conundrum" -- named after Jorge Luis Borges -- and defined as the ontological question of "whether the writer writes the story, or it writes him" or her (Fantastic realities of experiential space-time, 2013). Such considerations enlarge the possibilities of any more conventional approach to future possibilities -- introducing an experiential dimension potentially associated with lived reality, as argued separately (Living as an Imaginal Bridge between Worlds: global implications of "betwixt and between" and liminality, 2011).

As noted by the Wikipedia profile with respect to the The Garden of Forking Paths (1941), Borges presents the idea of forking paths through networks of time, none of which is the same, all of which are equal. Recurring use is made of the image of "a labyrinth that folds back upon itself in infinite regression" so we "become aware of all the possible choices we might make". The forking paths have branches to represent these choices that ultimately lead to different endings. Borges saw man's search for meaning in a seemingly infinite universe as fruitless and instead uses the maze as a riddle for time, not space.

In the light of Tao Jiang's focus, it might then be asked: is the dilemma of either the "frog" or the "turtle" (or both) comparable to that of the dreamer with respect to the "butterfly"?

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