 Perhaps one of the stimulating ways to understand Zhuangzi’s view on emotions and naturally given qing (xing ming zhi qing 性命之情) is to compare his approach to qing with that of Xunzi’s. Xunzi believes that qing can be perfected by ritual, music, or other means of self-cultivation. To Zhuangzi, the whole idea of modifying or transforming qing through Confucian propriety and self-cultivation for the purpose of social order and moral edification misses critically important properties of qing, i.e., its natural spontaneity and unbiased openness. According to him, our feelings and emotions are important to us not because they can be perfected or matured but because they help us to sense and feel things without any premeditated or predetermined viewpoints or biases imposed upon by social conventions and moral norms. He stresses that one should preserve one’s naturally given qing because one’s achievement of the ultimate rightness consists in not losing one’s natural qing. (Zhuangzi, 8.1). Therefore, he criticizes Confucian virtues of benevolence (ren) and righteousness (yi) by stating that 