溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Whatever My Body Becomes, Can I Accept It?
If even a sick, bent, twisted body is what the maker gave — do I resent this body that will not obey me, or accept it?
If in time my left arm were transformed into a rooster, I would use it to call the dawn.
Zhuangzi's question — accepting whatever the body becomes — sits within the lineage divided over one's stance before the body's transformation and illness. Daoism embraced the body's change as nature's working, and the Stoics too bade one accept what befalls the body as fate and keep the mind's calm. This gaze meets the uncontrollable body without resentment. But on the other side was a lineage that sought to cure and reverse the body. Since Hippocrates, medicine did not leave illness as nature's giving but rose to govern it, and modern medicine made the body's defect a thing to correct. Is a sick body a working to accept, or a defect to fight and mend? The lineage split.
The more an age sees every bodily flaw as a thing to correct and improve, the more this question — how to meet a body that will not obey — asks after the border of acceptance and resistance.
Zhuangzi draws Ziyu, whose back is bent and organs twisted by illness.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Zhuangzi draws Ziyu, whose back is bent and organs twisted by illness. When his friend asks if he loathes it, Ziyu answers — how could I? If the maker turned my left arm into a rooster, I would use it to call the dawn; if my rump into a cart, I would ride it. He embraces the body's transformation not as curse but as nature's working. I read this question as drawing the far limit before an uncontrollable body. How do I meet a body that illness and weakness make disobey me? Do I burn with resentment, or accept it as nature's working? I stand before this question too.
✍️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.
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