溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Knowing Others, Knowing Yourself
Is knowing others wisdom, but knowing yourself clarity?
One who knows others is wise; one who knows oneself is clear-sighted.
Laozi set two kinds of knowing side by side and subtly ranked them. To know others is "wisdom" (zhi) — cleverness; but to know oneself is "clarity" (ming) — a light dawning from within. He then added: "One who conquers others has force; one who conquers oneself is strong." The question carried on in the East. Confucius made conquering the self and returning to ritual the path of benevolence (ren); Zhuangzi went beyond knowing the self to "losing the self" altogether. Meanwhile Socrates, on the opposite side of the earth in the same era, cried "Know thyself" — showing that self-knowledge was the root of wisdom, East and West alike.
In an age flooded with tools to analyze others, the clarity that lights up the self must still be kindled alone.
In this line I meet an embarrassing truth.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
In this line I meet an embarrassing truth. I know others remarkably well — I can see plainly why that person acts so, what their problem is. Yet why my own heart wavers as it does is often pitch dark to me. Laozi asks me to turn that outward-facing bright eye inward. Higher than the cleverness of knowing others is the clarity that lights up the self. I have not yet reached that clarity, but today I turn one glance inward.
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