Only the Four Seasons Turning

answered by Zhuangzi, Perfect Happiness

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🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

Ashes of Time (1994)

dir. Wong Kar-wai · Hong Kong

At an inn in the middle of the desert, people each carrying a love they wish to forget pass through. Before a wine said to erase the past, when trying to scrub away one gone beyond holding only makes that face clearer, it asks whether to let go is to forget, or to carry them and let them flow on.

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

A person gone beyond holding — do I let them go by forgetting them, or by carrying them and letting them flow on?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

是相與爲春秋冬夏四時行也

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

This is like spring and autumn, winter and summer, the four seasons taking their turns in course.

💡 TL;DR

Even having lost his wife, Zhuangzi calmed his grief by likening her death to the four seasons turning in their course.

📝The Classic Answers

Even having lost his wife, Zhuangzi calmed his grief by likening her death to the four seasons turning in their course. I read this not as heartlessness but as the wisdom of letting go. The harder one tries to scrub a departed person away — to wash them out with wine — the more vividly the wish to forget calls them back. As the seasons' coming and going cannot be halted, neither can a person's meetings and partings be held in place. To let go is not to cut someone out of memory but, as the seasons flow, to carry them in the heart and let them pass on. Rather than straining to forget, I choose to accept the passing as one grain of nature, and to set that person free.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

If you are straining to forget someone you have sent off, instead of trying to erase them, reset your heart to 'carry and let flow, as the seasons pass.'

📖 Classic Source: Zhuangzi, Perfect Happiness. Ancient text in the public domain; rendered and interpreted independently by ONGO.
The film is honored as an equal questioner; its plot is rendered only as a universal dilemma. The classic source is an ancient text (Public Domain), and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.