The exception will be when we want to accomplish things in the world, yet that is no problem for the sage, whose free roaming harbors no such schemes. "Since the sage does not plan, what use has he for knowledge?" For him our usual "knowledge is a curse," whereas "utmost knowledge doesn't plan" (ch. 5, p. 82).

　　 As this last quotation suggests, Zhuangzi's understanding of knowledge and ignorance can be formulated into two levels of truth. Such a two-truths doctrine is also essential to Buddhism, especially Mahayana, and its paradigmatic formulation is by Nagarjuna:

The teaching of the Buddhas is wholly based on there being two truths: that of a personal everyday world and a higher truth which surpasses it.
Those who do not clearly know the true distinction between the two truths cannot clearly know the hidden depths of the Buddha's teaching.
Unless the transactional realm is accepted as a base, the surpassing sense cannot be pointed out; if the surpassing sense is not comprehended nirvana cannot be attained. (MMK 24:8-10)

　　 Sakyamuni himself made an implicit distinction between words that deem and words that change with circumstances when he compared his own teachings to a raft that may be used to ferry across the river of samsara to the other shore of nirvana and then abandoned, not carried around on one's back. Nor did Nagarjuna understand his own writings as committing him to a particular view: "If I had a position, no doubt fault could be found with it. Since I have no position, that problem does not arise." How could he avoid taking a position? There is no position to be taught because there is no truth that needs to be attained; all we need to do is let-go of delusion: "Ultimate serenity [or beatitude: siva] is the coming to rest of all ways of taking things, the repose of named things; no Truth has been taught by a Buddha for anyone, anywhere." (MMK 25:24) The Astasahasrika, probably the oldest and most important of the prajnaparamita sutras, begins by emphasizing the same point:

No wisdom can we get hold of, no highest perfection,
No Bodhisattva, no thought of enlightenment either.
When told of this, if not bewildered and in no way anxious,
A Bodhisattva courses in the Tathagata's wisdom.

　　 In the Diamond Sutra Subhuti asks the Buddha if his realization of supreme enlightenment means that he has not acquired anything. "Just so, Subhuti. I have not acquired even the least thing from supreme enlightenment, and that is called supreme enlightenment." Then it could just as well be called supreme ignorance -- as long as that is not confused with ordinary ignorance.

　　 How does this reconcile with the two-truths doctrine enunciated by Nagarjuna above, which emphasizes the importance of the higher truth in attaining nirvana? No truth is the higher truth: not a more abstract or profound set of concepts, but an insight into the circumstance-changing nature of all truth. That makes it sound easy, yet the rub is that such a realization requires letting-go of oneself, which is seldom if ever easy. The bewilderment and anxiety that the Astasahasrika mentions are the rule rather than the exception. The basic problem, again, is that discriminating between ignorance and truth -- rejecting the one, grasping the other -- is an intellectual way (is especially the intellectual's way) the self tries to find some secure ground for itself. With such discriminations we tame the mystery and terror of the world into the truths that are necessary for us to live because they teach us what the world is, who we are, and why we are here. Untold millions have killed and died defending such truths: in religion, it is faith in the doctrine which can save us and which therefore needs to be defended at all costs against heretics; less dramatically yet more intimately for many of us, it can also be the "liberating insights" of psychoanalysis and deconstruction, etc., or the "enlightening" Asian wisdom of Buddhism and Daoism. This is not to deny that they can be liberating and enlightening; but only when we do not need to secure our-selves can we become comfortable with and able to live the lack of such a higher truth to identify with.

　　 Then the truth of no-truth must always self-deconstruct. On the one hand, it needs to be expressed somehow, for without that there is no Daoist or Buddhist teaching and no help for the benighted. As Nagarjuna puts it, the transactional realm -- our everyday use of language and understanding of truth -- is necessary to point out the surpassing sense of truth, that there is no higher truth whose understanding liberates us. Yet what one hand offers the other must take away. No statement of this paradox can be final, pretending to offer a definitive understanding, for to do so makes us like the would-be sage who realized that no one should have disciples and promptly organized a group of disciples to disseminate this teaching. And our intellectual understanding of these issues is liable to make us into converts who, in effect, join his band of disciples.