Part I
Au: What is "Watching the tree to catch a hare"?
Book: It is a proverb from a chinese short story 'sho zhu dai tu' writen by Han Fei Tzu 2,234 years ago as follows:
"Once there was a boy who was told by his master to catch a hare. He went into the woods and looked around. Lo and behold, he saw a hare running along at full speed. As he watched in astonishment, the hare ran smack into a tree and knocked itself unconscious. All the boy had to do was to pick it up. For the rest of his life, the boy waited behind the same tree in the hope that more hares would do the same thing"
Au: So... what? (still not sure what the paragraph mean)
Book: The boy is like you (it means like the normal person in general), expecting the same condition to be waiting when you return.
Au: Then... what is this book about?
Book: (*smile*) The only thing that does not change is that everything changes
Au: Umm...
Book: Have you ever heard this chinese proverb? "shou zhu dai tu" (change is the only constant).
Au: Ok, I'm interested... tell me more...
Book: Anyway, before you read, I would like to tell you one more quote for to be aware...
Au: What is it?
Book: It is from German's great Philosopher Martin Heidegger -- "Whatever and however we may try to think, we think in the sphere of tradition"... which can also infer as a sphere of environment that you're growing up with. So, if you can't open out your sphere... you might not understand the others' sphere as best as you could.
Au: Ah... I see (but don't know how to do -- hihi)...
Book: So, have you ever heard of "I Ching"?
Au: Is that about Chinese's divination?
Book: Quite... but actually, 'I' ('yi') means "Changes" and 'Ching' means "Book"... So, it is a "book of changes" which was written by Fu Xi last 4,839 years ago.
Au: wow!
Book: Oh! you might like to know this as well... I Ching is about 'Yin' and 'Yang', which are represented by divided and undivided lines (respectively). Around 1646-1716, Leibniz -- an inventor of calculus -- was introduced to see it and he recognised in his own system as binary mathmetics (0/1) and invented it... oops, I think I gone too far on details...
Au: I don't mind (but the reader might mind)
Book: Ok next, have you ever heard of "Tao"?... which means 'The way' in English?
Au: I'm not sure...
Book: Yes...
"The Tao which can be expressed is not the unchanging Tao;
The name which can be defined is not the eternal name".
Tao is hidden and nameless (dao ying wu ming) and operates by non-action (wu wei) Or in conclude, "Tao takes no action but nothing is undone"
Au: ..^^..
Book: I think if I start talking about Tao it will be too long, I will talk to you more later on...
Part II
Au: I think this time I won't interrupt your explaination, please do continue as you wish...
Book: ..^^.. Ok, than I will continue draw you a sphere of Chinese's believe to pave a way to the core of this boook:
In the "Tao Te Ching", Tao is compared to water:
"Nothing under heaven is softer and weaker than water,
Yet nothing surpasses it in battling the hard and strong"
However, in the middle period Tao developed as a religion than a philosophy. So, as Taoism, years later on it had mixed with the other two main way in China... Confucianism and Buddhism. These mixture than become influent on Chinese's way of life, not as a religion...
Confucianism believes that 'xiao' (filial piety) is a root of virtue (e.g. the dominance of elders in the relationship). Confucius thought that religion should exist for the purpose of education and moral cultivation, than divination or conjectures concerning Heaven and Hell.
Buddhism, like Hindus, believe that the life we live now is not only life, but one of a great series of lives that extends far back into the past and stretches into future lives unless we attain enlightment. The balance of the account of good and bad deeds (our accumulated 'karma') determines our fate, but we all have the potential to become enlightened in this lifetime but we must find our own path. In the search, Buddha advised that people should follows the middle way... consists of recognition of the Four Basic Nobel Truths:
1. Pain and Suffering are common in life
2. Human cravings and desires often give rise to unhappiness (no. 1)
3. By relinquishing cravings and desires, unhappiness can be avoided.
4. Relingquish cravings can be done by the noble eightfold path of behavior:
(1) Right view
(2) Right thought
(3) Right speech
(4) Right action
(5) Right livelihood
(6) Right effort
(7) Right mindfulness
(8) Right concentration
Or, in short, the unceasing human desire for ego satisfaction keeps the wheel of cause and effect in ceaseless motion. This wheel exemplifies the eternal karmic round of existence.
In China around early fifth century, Buddhist monks translated Buddhist philosophy into Chinese with succinct lucidity and logic by using words from Tao ancient concept and marge with an existing Confucianism. Than, the mixture of three are much melted into 'chan' Buddhism (or 'Zen' in Japanese character). It reclaims to transmit the essence and entirely different from Indian meditation by encouraged people to find enlightment through stories, question, rituals, expressions and activities of daily life... for example:
"A pupil seeks out a Zen master in order to be enlightened. The master invites him to have a cup of tea. The tea arrives and the master courteously hands the pupil a cup of tea. He than starts pouring more tea into the cup.
The cup is full but the master continues to pour although tea is spilling over from the cup onto the table and floor.
'Master!' cries the pupil. 'The cup is full.'
'Exactly,' answers the master.
'How can I instruct you unless you have first emptied your mind?'"
Part III
The unchanged 'zero'...
Do you know what is "zero"? Let's listen to this children song:
My hero zero
When you stand to the right of the number one
The number become ten;
When you stand to the right of the number ten
The number become hundred... (and so on)
adding or subtracting zero from number changed nothing...
any number multiplied by zero become the zero itself...
whereas any number divided by zero become infinity...
In Tao's way:
zero... resembles an empty bowl
Which, while being used, can never be filled
Bottomless, it seems to be the source of everything.
Blunting all shapes,
Unravelling all complications,
Harmonising all glare,
Uniting the world into common dust.
Hidden and invisible,
Yet it appears to exist.
Bu yan zhi jiao (The lessons of silence):
... is firstly a four letter written by Lao Tsu. You can appriciate its importance with a discovery that you make for yourself... when you are ready.
People wifh youthful often fear of stillness, and are attemping to avoid certain emotions that only descend with the sound of silence.
But sometimes, in the hush late at night or with the dew of early dawn, there suddenly unfolds a special element of serenity. And it is often the moments that we ask ourselves whether we are hearing in the silence the whisperings of our innermost being...'Be still, and know that the Heaven is close at hand'...
If you take good notice, the perfect of nature is silence and emptiness as they are unchange because of their non-existance...
Au: What is "Watching the tree to catch a hare"?
Book: It is a proverb from a chinese short story 'sho zhu dai tu' writen by Han Fei Tzu 2,234 years ago as follows:
"Once there was a boy who was told by his master to catch a hare. He went into the woods and looked around. Lo and behold, he saw a hare running along at full speed. As he watched in astonishment, the hare ran smack into a tree and knocked itself unconscious. All the boy had to do was to pick it up. For the rest of his life, the boy waited behind the same tree in the hope that more hares would do the same thing"
Au: So... what? (still not sure what the paragraph mean)
Book: The boy is like you (it means like the normal person in general), expecting the same condition to be waiting when you return.
Au: Then... what is this book about?
Book: (*smile*) The only thing that does not change is that everything changes
Au: Umm...
Book: Have you ever heard this chinese proverb? "shou zhu dai tu" (change is the only constant).
Au: Ok, I'm interested... tell me more...
Book: Anyway, before you read, I would like to tell you one more quote for to be aware...
Au: What is it?
Book: It is from German's great Philosopher Martin Heidegger -- "Whatever and however we may try to think, we think in the sphere of tradition"... which can also infer as a sphere of environment that you're growing up with. So, if you can't open out your sphere... you might not understand the others' sphere as best as you could.
Au: Ah... I see (but don't know how to do -- hihi)...
Book: So, have you ever heard of "I Ching"?
Au: Is that about Chinese's divination?
Book: Quite... but actually, 'I' ('yi') means "Changes" and 'Ching' means "Book"... So, it is a "book of changes" which was written by Fu Xi last 4,839 years ago.
Au: wow!
Book: Oh! you might like to know this as well... I Ching is about 'Yin' and 'Yang', which are represented by divided and undivided lines (respectively). Around 1646-1716, Leibniz -- an inventor of calculus -- was introduced to see it and he recognised in his own system as binary mathmetics (0/1) and invented it... oops, I think I gone too far on details...
Au: I don't mind (but the reader might mind)
Book: Ok next, have you ever heard of "Tao"?... which means 'The way' in English?
Au: I'm not sure...
Book: Yes...
"The Tao which can be expressed is not the unchanging Tao;
The name which can be defined is not the eternal name".
Tao is hidden and nameless (dao ying wu ming) and operates by non-action (wu wei) Or in conclude, "Tao takes no action but nothing is undone"
Au: ..^^..
Book: I think if I start talking about Tao it will be too long, I will talk to you more later on...
Part II
Au: I think this time I won't interrupt your explaination, please do continue as you wish...
Book: ..^^.. Ok, than I will continue draw you a sphere of Chinese's believe to pave a way to the core of this boook:
In the "Tao Te Ching", Tao is compared to water:
"Nothing under heaven is softer and weaker than water,
Yet nothing surpasses it in battling the hard and strong"
However, in the middle period Tao developed as a religion than a philosophy. So, as Taoism, years later on it had mixed with the other two main way in China... Confucianism and Buddhism. These mixture than become influent on Chinese's way of life, not as a religion...
Confucianism believes that 'xiao' (filial piety) is a root of virtue (e.g. the dominance of elders in the relationship). Confucius thought that religion should exist for the purpose of education and moral cultivation, than divination or conjectures concerning Heaven and Hell.
Buddhism, like Hindus, believe that the life we live now is not only life, but one of a great series of lives that extends far back into the past and stretches into future lives unless we attain enlightment. The balance of the account of good and bad deeds (our accumulated 'karma') determines our fate, but we all have the potential to become enlightened in this lifetime but we must find our own path. In the search, Buddha advised that people should follows the middle way... consists of recognition of the Four Basic Nobel Truths:
1. Pain and Suffering are common in life
2. Human cravings and desires often give rise to unhappiness (no. 1)
3. By relinquishing cravings and desires, unhappiness can be avoided.
4. Relingquish cravings can be done by the noble eightfold path of behavior:
(1) Right view
(2) Right thought
(3) Right speech
(4) Right action
(5) Right livelihood
(6) Right effort
(7) Right mindfulness
(8) Right concentration
Or, in short, the unceasing human desire for ego satisfaction keeps the wheel of cause and effect in ceaseless motion. This wheel exemplifies the eternal karmic round of existence.
In China around early fifth century, Buddhist monks translated Buddhist philosophy into Chinese with succinct lucidity and logic by using words from Tao ancient concept and marge with an existing Confucianism. Than, the mixture of three are much melted into 'chan' Buddhism (or 'Zen' in Japanese character). It reclaims to transmit the essence and entirely different from Indian meditation by encouraged people to find enlightment through stories, question, rituals, expressions and activities of daily life... for example:
"A pupil seeks out a Zen master in order to be enlightened. The master invites him to have a cup of tea. The tea arrives and the master courteously hands the pupil a cup of tea. He than starts pouring more tea into the cup.
The cup is full but the master continues to pour although tea is spilling over from the cup onto the table and floor.
'Master!' cries the pupil. 'The cup is full.'
'Exactly,' answers the master.
'How can I instruct you unless you have first emptied your mind?'"
Part III
The unchanged 'zero'...
Do you know what is "zero"? Let's listen to this children song:
My hero zero
When you stand to the right of the number one
The number become ten;
When you stand to the right of the number ten
The number become hundred... (and so on)
adding or subtracting zero from number changed nothing...
any number multiplied by zero become the zero itself...
whereas any number divided by zero become infinity...
In Tao's way:
zero... resembles an empty bowl
Which, while being used, can never be filled
Bottomless, it seems to be the source of everything.
Blunting all shapes,
Unravelling all complications,
Harmonising all glare,
Uniting the world into common dust.
Hidden and invisible,
Yet it appears to exist.
Bu yan zhi jiao (The lessons of silence):
... is firstly a four letter written by Lao Tsu. You can appriciate its importance with a discovery that you make for yourself... when you are ready.
People wifh youthful often fear of stillness, and are attemping to avoid certain emotions that only descend with the sound of silence.
But sometimes, in the hush late at night or with the dew of early dawn, there suddenly unfolds a special element of serenity. And it is often the moments that we ask ourselves whether we are hearing in the silence the whisperings of our innermost being...'Be still, and know that the Heaven is close at hand'...
If you take good notice, the perfect of nature is silence and emptiness as they are unchange because of their non-existance...
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