溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
If We Come Empty-Handed and Leave Empty-Handed, What Did We Hold?
If all I held was finally never mine, what have I lost — and what did I ever possess?
Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return.
Job's lament that "naked I came, naked I go" left the question of how to see possession and loss. The Stoic Epictetus took it up almost verbatim, teaching us never to say we have lost a thing but that we have given it back — wife, child, and property are all entrusted a while. Buddhism pressed the insight further into non-possession and no-self, that there was never anything to call one's own from the start. Modernity, by contrast, saw possession as a rightful human right and the ground of self-realization, resisting the view of what one has as a temporary trust. Is possession a passing trust or one's rightful portion? The question still divides the wisdom of letting go from the affirmation of having.
In an age where having more is taken for life's achievement, Job's question — naked we come and naked we go — asks back what we truly hold.
Having lost his wealth and children in a single day, Job leaves not a scream but these words: naked I came, so naked I shall return.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Having lost his wealth and children in a single day, Job leaves not a scream but these words: naked I came, so naked I shall return. Even in the grief of losing all he had, he sees that it was, from the first, only entrusted to him a while. I feel this saying is neither resentment nor resignation but a third kind of seeing. What I hold I did not make; it was set for a time in my passing hands. Seen so, loss is not robbery but return. Among the things that were never finally mine, what did I truly hold? I look down at my empty hands too.
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