The Mind of the Utmost Person Is Like a Mirror

answered by Zhuangzi, "Fit for Emperors and Kings"

기원전 4세기경

🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

Zorba the Greek (1964)

dir. Michael Cacoyannis · Greece·USA

A bookish intellectual who has only ever measured life through calculation meets a free man who lives by meeting the world with his whole body, dancing. His way of laughing and dancing even before failure and loss reveals a freedom calculation alone can never reach.

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

Between calculating one's way through life and meeting it fully with one's whole body, where does true freedom lie?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

至人之用心若鏡，不將不迎，應而不藏，故能勝物而不傷。

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

The utmost person's mind is like a mirror — it neither sends off nor welcomes, it responds but does not hoard. Thus it can meet all things without being wounded by them.

💡 TL;DR

Zhuangzi said the mind of the utmost person is like a mirror.

📝The Classic Answers

Zhuangzi said the mind of the utmost person is like a mirror. A mirror neither clings to what passes nor dreads in advance what comes. An intellectual who has only ever understood life through calculation and books learns what he has been missing when he meets a free man who embraces life bodily and dances. Not hoarding sorrow when he fails, not clinging to joy when it comes — that very attitude is why a mirror can meet all things without being wounded. Whenever I try to calculate every moment of life, I choose instead, just for a moment, to simply reflect it like a mirror.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

Find one moment today you can meet with your whole body rather than calculation, and simply live it, without measuring.

📖 Classic Source: Zhuangzi, "Fit for Emperors and Kings". 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.