In Zhuang Zhou’s seminal Taoist text “Zhuangzi”, he tells a popular story about how he dreamt he was a butterfly. “栩栩然胡蝶也”, is commonly interpreted as “a butterfly flying about, feeling that it was enjoying itself.”(Sturgeon, trans. Legge) The phrase uses the term “栩栩然”, meaning he had a vivid (lit. producing strong, clear images in the mind) experience of being a butterfly. Remarking upon his experience, Zhou expresses uncertainty “whether it had formerly been Zhou dreaming that he was a butterfly, or it was now a butterfly dreaming that it was Zhou. But between Zhou and a butterfly there must be a difference. This is a case of what is called the Transformation of Things.” (Sturgeon, trans. Legge)

The balisong (or “butterfly knife”) is a folding Filipino knife, its dangerous swiveling handle offers an opportunity to demonstrate agility and deftness with the weapon. Some tales tell of it being invented in the Philippines in the 1940s, others the early 1900s, while as early as 800CE has been claimed. 

The sound of balisong comes from the aesthetic dance of its user, using its split handle and hidden blade to weave a complex—and dangerous—dance, where the blade and the handle constantly move between states of open/closed, sharp/safe, hidden/exposed, armed/disarmed. Just as the butterfly floats through the air with its flutter, the balisong swings in a choreography between states of life and death. The handle and the blade are indistinguishable from each other as they stay in constant movement, faster than one can observe. The handle and the blade are in a state of superposition.

Handle ≡ Blade

The balisong is seen as an expression of Filipino pride, but in the west the imagery of the Balisong conjures a more indeterminate other: the Asian Gangster, the All-American Karate Instructor badass. Its association with Asian crime stereotypes alone lends itself to martial arts scenes in films, but it’s the choreography and the satisfying rhythmic noise as the knife opens and closes that completes the depiction. A balisong without its signature “click/clack” is only a blur, the sound being the only clear signal that the spinning knife has changed direction, momentum, or state.

Percussionists face grave danger when traversing the rhythmic desert of the tacet: an open space of madness where the musician traverses a featureless plane of rests. Charged to do naught but be in the position when the tacet ends. Despite the strong attack, the strike’s only sustain is the reverberation before silence returns. Yet the silent dancer does not cease to exist between these moments. The sticks continue to be bound by the laws of physics and the dance continues, for a rest is not “nothing”, but instead a period of being in motion without grasping at result. It is a boundless Emptiness of potential, yet still bound by the laws of Cause and Effect.

Rest ≡ Note

Zhuangzi believed he was a butterfly upon awakening, yet quickly retrieved his identity as Zhou without losing his experience of being something else. This vivid experience asks the question: If a vivid experience of being something I not was wholly convincing, then no vivid experience of conditioned reality is more or less valid than another. If Zhou and a Butterfly were both equally believable as his identity, then there is no fixed nature to Zhou or the Butterfly, and the separation of the two is merely a matter of context.

Robbed of visual aesthetic and markers of authenticity, we are free to perceive the knife as it truly is. We can follow the Buddha’s logic in the Vajra Prajnaparamita: ‘x is not x, therefore it is called x.’ (Yifa) While in superposition between open/closed, we call it a knife because it is both knife and not knife, lacking a fixed

We are not distracted by the state of the knife, the identity of its user, the flashy movement of the blade, nor even whether or not the recording is of a balisong at all? Its potential artifice leads to questioning the very nature of the documentation.

Did the artist bruise their knuckles, and cut themselves repeatedly, wasting countless hours learning how to use the balisong just to make this piece?

Did the artist pay somebody to do balisong tricks, and if so, who?

Or is this just complete artifice? Was the process spent making foley (sound effects) to deceive the viewer into believing that there was ever a balisong at all?

Vividly listen to its click. Vividly see its clack.

The butterfly is not a butterfly. That is why it is called butterfly.

Bibliography

Brown, Trevor. “History: The Disputed Origins of the Butterfly Knife.” BLADE Magazine, September 4, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210904040526/https://blademag.com/knife-history/history-the-disputed-origins-of-the-butterfly-knife.
Sturgeon, Donald. “Zhuangzi: Inner Chapters: The Adjustment of Controversies.” Translated by James Legge. Chinese Text Project (Chinese: 中国哲学书电子化计划). Accessed February 27, 2026. https://ctext.org/zhuangzi/adjustment-of-controversies.
Yifa (Venerable), M. C. Owens, and P. M. Romaskiewicz. Vajra Prajnaparamita Sutra: Translated from the Chinese Version of Kumarajiva. Buddha’s Light Publishing, 2006.