Life Has a Limit; Knowing Has None

answered by Zhuangzi, The Secret of Caring for Life

기원전 4세기경

🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

Memories of Murder (2003)

dir. Bong Joon-ho · South Korea

When, however hard we try, the truth in the end will not come to hand, where must the longing for justice go? Is living with a question that never got its answer a failure, or the one place where a person grows humble before the truth?

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

Before a truth that will not come to hand, do I count not knowing it all as mere failure?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

生有涯知無涯

吾生也有涯而知也無涯

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

My life has a limit, but knowledge has none.

💡 TL;DR

Zhuangzi said life is finite while knowledge is infinite.

📝The Classic Answers

Zhuangzi said life is finite while knowledge is infinite. This is not a call to give up knowing but the humility of recognizing that some places the human hand can never reach. When, for all our effort, the truth will not be grasped, that incompleteness is not necessarily my failure. To live carrying an unanswered question is also proof that the longing for justice has not ended. Before branding not-knowing as mere failure, I choose to learn to grow humble before it.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

If a question torments you today for lack of an answer, rename it — not a failure, but a question still open.

📖 Classic Source: Zhuangzi, The Secret of Caring for Life. 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.