{"id":1095847,"date":"2018-08-22T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?guid=9458678f8205ba9a815632a4f38844f6"},"modified":"2026-07-16T07:58:54","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T06:58:54","slug":"butterfly-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/butterfly-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Butterfly Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awakened, and there I was, veritably myself again.<\/p>\n

Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.” – Zhuangzi (c.3rd century B.C.):<\/p>\n

The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the first three chapters of the Chuang-Tzu, by Kuang-Ming Wu (1990).<\/p>\n

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Today was too hot for human comfort in New York, but the butterflies seemed undaunted. There were several monarchs like the one above in thewildflower meadow on Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park. They reminded me of the famous butterfly dream of the Chinesephilosopher Chuang-Tzu, which I’ve quoted above.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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“Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awakened, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":2196652,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-wlERRV2FkNQ\/V7D8U2ik2AI\/AAAAAAAAFzY\/anu1QYwkEeAzSzq4UgdPW_A73wajt8ZaQCK4B\/s1600\/butterfly.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[3661,194,6736,5735],"class_list":["post-1095847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-brooklyn-bridge","tag-butterfly","tag-monarch","tag-new-york"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1095847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2196652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1095847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1095847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1095847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}