To be in harmony with nature is to be free for being an instrument for the manifestion of the Tao in all that one is and does. The Tao is not obliged to present itself in this way. If you are willing to be lived by it, you will see it everywhere, even in the most ordinary things. The lower right foreground not only echoes the distant mountains but also balances the mist-shrouded village on the other side of the water. Happiness, for Chuang Tzu, is to be found everywhere since Tao is everywhere and is in the ordinary, simple, everyday existence.
Perfect joy is to be without joy.
Chuang Tzu is not concerned about words or concepts about reality, but with a direct experience of it. The Tao is so mysterious for Chuang Tzu because it is so simple. On a lonely boat sits an old man with bamboo hat and cape, Fishing silently in the snowy river. Each invades the other's hemisphere and takes up its abode in the deepest recess of its partner's domain. And in the end both find themselves resolved by a circle that surrounds them, the Tao in its eternal wholeness.