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
There are no greater adversaries than yin and yang, because nothing in Heaven or on Earth escapes them. But it is not yin and yang that do this, it is your heart that makes it so.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the duality of life represented by yin and yang, emphasizing that our perceptions shape our experiences.
Zhuangzi's quote can be interpreted as a reminder that the fundamental oppositions in life, symbolized by yin and yang, reflect not just external realities but also the internal workings of our hearts and minds. It suggests that our emotional and psychological state influences how we perceive and interact with the world around us, thereby shaping our experiences and challenges.
Themes
YinYangHeartPerceptionDualityLife
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a discussion on mindfulness and self-awareness.
More from Zhuangzi
All quotes →Either in conflict with others or in harmony with them, we go through life like a runaway horse, unable to stop.
ZhuangziRead
When people do not ignore what they should ignore, but ignore what they should not ignore, this is known as ignorance.
ZhuangziRead
The true man of the past waited upon Heaven when dealing with people and did not wait upon people when dealing with Heaven.
ZhuangziRead
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
ZhuangziRead
All the fish needs is to get lost in the water. All man needs is to get lost in Tao.
ZhuangziRead
Similar quotes
Modern systematic politics, whether liberal, conservative, radical, or socialist, simply has to be rejected from a standpoint that owes genuine allegiance to the tradition of the virtues; for modern politics itself expresses in its institutional forms a systematic rejection of that tradition
Alasdair MacintyreRead
I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse and in a republican government more than in any other.
James MadisonRead
Cynicism means the conduit to the soul has a great kink in it, like a garden hose in which nothing flows in either direction.
Clarissa Pinkola EstesRead
The fact that so many people choose to live in ways that narrow the community of fate to a very limited set of others and to define the rest as threatening to their way of life and values is deeply worrying because this contemporary form of tribalism, and the ideologies that support it, enable them to deny complex and more crosscutting mutual interdependencies-local, national, and international-and to elude their own role in creating long-term threats to their own wellbeing and that of others.
Margaret LeviRead
People have to be atomized and segregated and alone. They're not supposed to organize, because then they might be something beyond spectators of action. They might actually be participants if many people with limited resources could get together to enter the political arena. That's really threatening.
Noam ChomskyRead
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
Laurence J. PeterRead