The hearing that is only in the ears is one thing. The hearing of the understanding is another. But the hearing of the spirit is not limited to any one faculty to the ear, or to the mind.
ZhuangziRead
Why don’t you try wandering with me to the Palace of Not-Even-Anything
Interpretation
The quote encourages exploration and a rejection of rigid definitions of reality.
This quote by Zhuangzi invites individuals to embrace a sense of wonder and curiosity about life, suggesting that traditional notions of existence and meaning can often limit our understanding. By proposing a journey to the 'Palace of Not-Even-Anything', Zhuangzi encourages us to entertain possibilities beyond conventional thinking and to explore the unknown freely.
In practice
During a philosophy class, to encourage critical thinking about existence and reality.
The hearing that is only in the ears is one thing. The hearing of the understanding is another. But the hearing of the spirit is not limited to any one faculty to the ear, or to the mind.
Either in conflict with others or in harmony with them, we go through life like a runaway horse, unable to stop.
When people do not ignore what they should ignore, but ignore what they should not ignore, this is known as ignorance.
The true man of the past waited upon Heaven when dealing with people and did not wait upon people when dealing with Heaven.
The mind remains undetermined in the great Void. Here the highest knowledge is unbounded. That which gives things their thusness cannot be delimited by things. So when we speak of 'limits', we remain confined to limited things. The limit of the unlimited is called 'fullness.' The limitlessness of the limited is called 'emptiness.' Tao is the source of both. But it is itself neither fullness nor emptiness
All the fish needs is to get lost in the water. All man needs is to get lost in Tao.
The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play).
Our life is half natural and half technological. Half-and-half is good. You cannot deny that high-tech is progress. We need it for jobs. Yet if you make only high-tech, you make war. So we must have a strong human element to keep modesty and natural life.
An act cannot be defined by the end sought by the actor, for an identical system of behaviour may be adjustable to too many different ends without altering its nature.
When we understand our relationship to God, we also understand our relationship to one another.
Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic.
Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.
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