溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
To Not Grieve Death — Heartlessness, or Understanding?
To sing at the death of one's nearest — is that coldness, or an eye that has seen through life and death?
Drumming on a basin, and singing.
Zhuangzi's "drumming on a basin and singing" exposed a great fork in Eastern thought over how to face death. Daoism saw life and death as the gathering and scattering of one vital force, teaching acceptance of death as nature's cycle and a moving-past of grief. Confucianism went the opposite way, making mourning for parents and spouse — the deep sorrow of the three-year rite — central to being human and wholly rightful. Stoicism, like Daoism, counseled calm before death, yet stressed that the calm came from understanding, not heartlessness. Is grief before death a delusion to transcend, or a humanity to keep? The question still divides the detachment of understanding from the devotion of mourning.
In an age that rushes us to get over grief quickly, Zhuangzi's question — whether a song before death is understanding or heartlessness — makes us reconsider the place of mourning.
When his wife dies, Zhuangzi drums on a basin and sings.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
When his wife dies, Zhuangzi drums on a basin and sings. A friend come to mourn scolds him as heartless, and Zhuangzi answers: at first I too grieved, but then I saw that she was born from what had no form or breath, and has now simply returned there. Before a change as natural as the turning of the four seasons, to wail is rather to not know the way of things. I find this story serene and cold at once. Seen as the great cycle of nature, death's sorrow thins. Yet does that understanding not forsake love? Is not-grieving enlightenment, or heartlessness? I linger long before that basin too.
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