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Tzu himself lived like a fool, laughing, singing and dancing, talking in jokes and anecdotes. Nobody thought him to be serious. And you could not find a more sincere or serious man than Chuang Tzu. But nobody thought him to be serious. People enjoyed him, people loved him, and through this love he was sowing seeds of his wisdom. He changed many, he transformed many.
But to change a madman you have to learn his language, you have to use his language. You have to be like him, you have to come down. If you go on standing on your pedestal then there can be no communion.
This is what happened to Socrates, and it had to happen there because the Greek mind is the most rational mind in the world, and a rational mind always tries not to be foolish. Socrates angered everybody. People had to kill him really, because he would ask awkward questions and he would make everybody feel foolish. He put everybody in a corner -- because one cannot answer even ordinary questions if somebody insists.
If you believe in God, Socrates will ask something about God; you cannot answer, you have not yet seen. What is the proof? God is a far off thing. You cannot prove even ordinary things. You have left your wife at home -- how can you prove, really, that you have left your wife at home, or that you have even got a wife? It may be just in your memory. You may have seen a dream, and when you go back there is neither house nor wife.
Socrates asked questions, penetrating, analyzing everything, and everyone in Athens became angry. This man was trying to prove that they were all fools. They killed him. Had he met Chuang Tzu -- and at that time Chuang Tzu was alive in China, they were contemporaries -- then Chuang Tzu would have told him the secret: Don't try to prove that anybody is foolish because fools don't like it. Don't try to prove to a madman that he is mad, because no madman likes it. He will get angry, arrogant, aggressive. He will kill you if you prove too much. If you come to the point where it can be proved, he will take revenge.
Chuang Tzu would have said: It is better to be foolish yourself, then people enjoy you, and then by a very subtle methodology
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