In contrast, MENGSUN Cai and the four friends appear to accord with a distinctively non-local, globalized nature, the macrocosmic processes that govern the wider world. They abjure the local for what might be called an “overflight” of understanding,a perspective on events achieved through apprehension of nature writ large, their own particular conditions refracted through the lens of wider necessities. One may feel the pull of sorrow when another dies, but to yield to this pull is to cling to that which afforded pleasure at the cost of losing the broader comfort of being at home in the wider world. Unlike according with a localized conception of nature, however, understanding modeled by Zhuangzi’s sage figures does, in some of its effects, resemble the detachment of the Stoic “overflight.”. theirs is a posture that apparently requires cultivation to develop. One must actively frame experience in understanding.