...'I thought the rule was that all monks were shaved.' 'Oh, Soto says he is bald under the hair,'said Lu Tze. 'He says the hair is a separate creature that just happens to live on him.
Interpretation
This quote humorously questions the nature of identity and existence, suggesting that we might not be defined entirely by our physical attributes.
In this quote from Terry Pratchett, the characters engage in a lighthearted dialogue that reflects on the nature of self and existence. The idea that Soto, a monk, considers his hair as a separate entity raises philosophical questions about how we categorize our physical and metaphysical selves. It subtly invites us to ponder identity, suggesting that we are more than the sum of our parts, and humorously challenges conventional ideas about what constitutes 'self'.
In practice
During a public discussion about identity and self-perception.
And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.
They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man ... one vet. ... Everyone has ... the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened civilization.
Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.
I grew up with the understanding that the world I lived in was one where people enjoyed a sort of freedom to communicate with each other in privacy, without it being monitored, without it being measured or analyzed or sort of judged by these shadowy figures or systems, any time they mention anything that travels across public lines.
Maybe right and wrong did not move, but understanding of them did. The wrenching pain of walking the same path, even for a short space, tore away the willingness to judge.
Those who remain silent are responsible.
Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history.
The Experience of Sacred Space makes possible the founding of the world: where the sacred Manifests itself in space, the real unveils itself, the world comes into existence.
When I am silent, I have thunder hidden inside.
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