溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Which Part of the Body Am I Nourishing?
If even the body has nobler and lesser parts, and which one you nourish makes the person — what am I now feeding, and what starving?
One who nourishes the smaller part becomes a small person; one who nourishes the greater becomes a great one.
Mencius' question — that what you nourish makes the person — sits within the lineage of how to govern desire. Mencius put the heart-mind first, holding that nourishing the greater keeps the smaller from robbing it, while Xunzi held the opposite: left alone, human sensual desire brings strife and must be curbed by ritual. In far Greece, Epicurus divided desire into the natural-and-necessary and the vain, bidding one fill only the necessary, while the Stoics sought to govern and extinguish desire itself. Is desire to be nourished in order, curbed, or extinguished? Over the wants of the body, East and West split.
The more an age makes it easy to fill taste and stimulation at once, the more this question — which part of the body am I nourishing? — asks an order back into a day's choices.
Mencius said even the body has noble and lesser parts.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Mencius said even the body has noble and lesser parts. One who nourishes a single finger and forgets the shoulder and back is a fool. One who fills only the small wants of mouth and belly becomes a small person; one who nourishes the great thing, the heart-mind, becomes great. I read this not as contempt for the body but as asking that there is an order even in nourishing it. Feeding the taste and comfort before me, do I not starve what most needs nourishing? What is my day feeding? I stand between the smaller and the greater, before this question.
✍️Your Answer
The lineage of the ancients ends here. Now it is your turn before the question. There is no right answer — only how you, today, would answer.
🔒 This answer is stored only on your device. It is never sent to a server.
This is not a museum of answers but a lineage of questions. All sources are public-domain texts; the lineage and reflection are 100% original ONGO content.
