"Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life" On Being Vague

1 00:00:07,216 --> 00:00:10,761 Eastern wisdom and modern life. 2 00:00:12,304 --> 00:00:14,473 With Alan W. Watts. 3 00:00:16,558 --> 00:00:19,353 Produced by KQED San Francisco. 4 00:00:19,478 --> 00:00:24,942 For the Educational Television and Radio Center. 5 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:32,074 Watch Online Movies and Series for FREE www.osdb.link/lm 6 00:00:33,033 --> 00:00:35,953 Alan Watts is a scholar, lecturer, 7 00:00:36,078 --> 00:00:43,043 and the author of many widely read books on comparative philosophy and religion. 8 00:00:55,722 --> 00:00:59,101 You know, it's not surprising that in this day and age, the 9 00:00:59,226 --> 00:01:02,729 most up-to-date and respectable form of academic philosophy 10 00:01:06,692 --> 00:01:13,573 taught in our universities, is what is called logical analysis. 11 00:01:13,699 --> 00:01:17,244 A logical analyst, you know, is the kind of fellow, the moment you say something, you hardly 12 00:01:17,369 --> 00:01:20,956 get a word out of your mouth before he says, now just precisely what do you mean by that? 13 00:01:26,962 --> 00:01:30,716 You can't take a step of the way in unfolding 14 00:01:30,841 --> 00:01:34,011 a proposition or a thesis or an idea 15 00:01:34,136 --> 00:01:39,808 without his going minutely into the meaning of each word that you say. 16 00:01:39,933 --> 00:01:43,687 And as a result of this sort of technique, most logical analysts have come to the conclusion that the 17 00:01:43,812 --> 00:01:47,941 problems that have been discussed by philosophers for several thousand years are mostly meaningless problems. 18 00:01:56,575 --> 00:01:59,995 Because when you look very precisely at the form of words in 19 00:02:00,120 --> 00:02:04,082 which they're stated, and you analyze each word bit by bit, 20 00:02:04,207 --> 00:02:08,086 you come to the conclusion that it didn't really mean anything but I think there's a profound fallacy in this because it's based on the assumption that 21 00:02:08,211 --> 00:02:12,215 the meaning of words is supposed to be precise but unfortunately for this sort of approach to things we're living in a world which isn't precise where 22 00:02:31,276 --> 00:02:35,322 Nature on the whole is extraordinarily vague. 23 00:02:35,447 --> 00:02:38,784 I mean, it would be very nice for purposes of precise calculation if 24 00:02:38,909 --> 00:02:42,412 the Earth in its orbit around the Sun went round in a neat 360 days. 25 00:02:46,958 --> 00:02:48,460 But it doesn't. 26 00:02:48,585 --> 00:02:53,048 It goes round in 365 in some wretched fraction. 27 00:02:53,173 --> 00:02:54,174 Everything's a little odd. 28 00:02:54,299 --> 00:02:55,759 Everything's a little off-center. 29 00:02:55,884 --> 00:02:59,054 For example, how are we to decide exactly where now is? 30 00:02:59,179 --> 00:03:00,972 You know? 31 00:03:01,098 --> 00:03:02,182 When is now? 32 00:03:02,307 --> 00:03:05,769 If I look at my watch and take a good look at the second hand to find out exactly 33 00:03:05,894 --> 00:03:09,314 when now is, well, that second hand, I can see it, so it must have some size. 34 00:03:11,358 --> 00:03:13,527 So let's take out a magnifying glass. 35 00:03:13,652 --> 00:03:17,823 Then it appears that the thing that marks now looks about so wide. 36 00:03:17,948 --> 00:03:22,077 And then, well, let's draw it a bit finer and draw it a bit finer. 37 00:03:22,202 --> 00:03:25,414 But we never seem to be able to get to the end of analyzing it. 38 00:03:25,539 --> 00:03:27,874 Now, you see, it's fuzzy. 39 00:03:27,999 --> 00:03:29,626 It's vague. 40 00:03:29,751 --> 00:03:30,377 It's like 41 00:03:30,502 --> 00:03:34,297 the field of vision which you have in front of your eyes you can see clearly in the middle but going 42 00:03:34,423 --> 00:03:38,510 out to the sides things get a little bit blurred or where exactly does the head stop and the neck begin? 43 00:03:44,474 --> 00:03:45,809 You hear? 44 00:03:45,934 --> 00:03:47,144 You hear? 45 00:03:47,269 --> 00:03:49,062 You hear? 46 00:03:49,187 --> 00:03:52,607 We can't really decide the only way to be perfectly clear about where the head stops and 47 00:03:52,732 --> 00:03:56,361 the neck begins is to chop off the head then you've got a neat dividing line in other words 48 00:04:01,908 --> 00:04:05,287 The whole process of analysis is a process of chopping, of cutting apart, 49 00:04:05,412 --> 00:04:08,915 of approaching nature with a knife, with a dividing line, with a scalpel. 50 00:04:16,882 --> 00:04:19,968 And although there is most definitely a place in life for precision, for clear 51 00:04:20,093 --> 00:04:23,889 distinctions, for the attitude of the knife, this kind of thing can be enormously overdone. 52 00:04:31,062 --> 00:04:34,858 And if one approaches the poet, I remember a cartoon once I saw in a newspaper, showed Shakespeare walking on the clouds of immortality, holding his 53 00:04:34,983 --> 00:04:39,029 head in his hands, oh, he was being pursued by a pedestrian little man wearing a cap and gown, saying, Mr. Shakespeare, your use of the conjunction if. 54 00:04:55,295 --> 00:05:00,300 And one knows all too well a certain style of personality 55 00:05:00,425 --> 00:05:05,388 which likes to be precise. 56 00:05:05,514 --> 00:05:08,850 The sort of person who, always in his opinions and attitudes, seems 57 00:05:08,975 --> 00:05:12,521 to be using his thought as a means of tearing other people to pieces. 58 00:05:15,732 --> 00:05:19,528 Isn't it wonderful to be equipped with a rigorous philosophical 59 00:05:19,653 --> 00:05:22,864 method that can tear all fuzzy thinking to shreds? 60 00:05:22,989 --> 00:05:25,742 You know the kind of person who says, I don't like fuzziness. 61 00:05:25,867 --> 00:05:28,620 I like to be definite, clear, and meticulous. 62 00:05:28,745 --> 00:05:32,123 You always feel that person has got his knife in your life or sometimes you meet among 63 00:05:32,249 --> 00:05:35,752 scientists sort of person who likes to talk about brute facts why must facts be brute? 64 00:05:44,469 --> 00:05:50,559 Hard and clear facts aren't there also facts that are soft and vague? 65 00:05:50,684 --> 00:05:54,479 But you see that kind of attitude represents 66 00:05:54,604 --> 00:05:58,441 and in a way caricatures something 67 00:05:58,567 --> 00:06:02,112 that is, on the whole, rather characteristic of the total 68 00:06:02,237 --> 00:06:05,574 attitude of Western civilization to the environment. 69 00:06:07,450 --> 00:06:10,954 You know, one of the first things that Oriental peoples 70 00:06:11,079 --> 00:06:14,457 notice about us so-called white people is our noses. 71 00:06:16,418 --> 00:06:20,505 After all, the bridge of a Chinese nose is rather flat. 72 00:06:20,630 --> 00:06:22,257 Same with Negroes. 73 00:06:22,382 --> 00:06:26,177 And when they see us Caucasians for the first time, 74 00:06:26,303 --> 00:06:29,681 What they notice about us is this nose that goes out like this, and seems 75 00:06:29,806 --> 00:06:33,977 to be prodding into everything, and the deep-set eyes with a fixed stare. 76 00:06:34,102 --> 00:06:37,897 If you look at old Japanese screens, which show what we call caricatures, but what they thought were fairly good 77 00:06:38,023 --> 00:06:42,110 representations of the first Western people they saw, they look like penguins or goblins because of their long noses. 78 00:06:49,701 --> 00:06:52,037 For it seems that this Western man has this 79 00:06:52,162 --> 00:06:55,165 prodder out in front of him, which is into everything. 80 00:06:55,290 --> 00:06:58,960 He can't leave anything alone. 81 00:06:59,085 --> 00:07:02,380 And although, as I say, there is a place for precision, nevertheless, a fundamentally 82 00:07:02,505 --> 00:07:06,092 hostile, cutting up attitude to life gives us dead knowledge instead of living knowledge. 83 00:07:18,563 --> 00:07:20,231 It kills things. 84 00:07:20,357 --> 00:07:20,982 You know, 85 00:07:21,107 --> 00:07:24,319 It's a way of approaching everything rather on the 86 00:07:24,444 --> 00:07:28,114 lines of the old story about Achilles and the tortoise. 87 00:07:33,703 --> 00:07:38,375 You know perhaps the problem of Achilles and the tortoise. 88 00:07:38,500 --> 00:07:41,795 Achilles and the tortoise agree to have a race, but because Achilles 89 00:07:41,920 --> 00:07:45,465 can run twice as fast as the tortoise, the tortoise gets a head start. 90 00:07:49,886 --> 00:07:51,346 Achilles begins here, 91 00:07:51,471 --> 00:07:54,974 and the tortoise begins here. 92 00:07:55,100 --> 00:07:59,062 Now then, when the tortoise has gone half the distance between his starting point and Achilles' starting point, 93 00:07:59,187 --> 00:08:03,108 when the tortoise goes that much and is here, Achilles, who can run twice as fast, moves from here to here. 94 00:08:19,999 --> 00:08:23,795 The tortoise goes half as far as that distance Achilles does twice as much and he lands up here and then the tortoise goes half as far as he 95 00:08:23,920 --> 00:08:28,007 went again and lands up here Achilles does twice as much and he's here and so the tortoise goes half as far again and Achilles does twice as much 96 00:08:46,359 --> 00:08:50,238 and he lands up here and notice you see he, Achilles is still behind the tortoise and the next time the tortoise will go half as much as that and Achilles will come up to here and we shall go on doing 97 00:08:50,363 --> 00:08:54,367 this thinking about smaller and smaller and smaller intervals and as a result of this Achilles will never overtake the tortoise now of course in actual life Achilles jolly well does overtake the tortoise 98 00:09:15,555 --> 00:09:18,641 and goes right by him. 99 00:09:18,767 --> 00:09:22,061 That why this is a problem is it is a way of thinking about 100 00:09:22,187 --> 00:09:25,774 the situation that is infinitely and indefinitely analytical. 101 00:09:30,069 --> 00:09:36,743 It doesn't, as it were, let life go on, but it stops to analyze the whole business. 102 00:09:36,868 --> 00:09:39,913 It breaks it down into minuter and minuter and 103 00:09:40,038 --> 00:09:43,666 minuter quantities so that the whole thing is delayed. 104 00:09:43,792 --> 00:09:48,880 The whole situation is, as it were, stopped and killed. 105 00:09:49,005 --> 00:09:52,258 And this will always happen whenever we get into 106 00:09:52,383 --> 00:09:56,012 the bind, the rut, of trying to think too precisely. 107 00:09:59,557 --> 00:10:03,311 And it's for this reason that the Taoists, and I think also the Confucian philosophers of China, 108 00:10:03,436 --> 00:10:07,106 are very mistrustful of logic chopping, of being too analytical about the meaning of words. 109 00:10:15,031 --> 00:10:18,326 Let's take, for example, a word that is absolutely fundamental to 110 00:10:18,451 --> 00:10:22,038 Chinese thought, a word which I've used a great deal in this program. 111 00:10:27,293 --> 00:10:28,545 Tao. 112 00:10:28,670 --> 00:10:35,677 You know this is in English, spelled this way. 113 00:10:36,719 --> 00:10:38,721 Tao, in Chinese, 114 00:10:54,779 --> 00:10:58,241 We usually translate that, the way, the way of nature, the 115 00:10:58,366 --> 00:11:01,786 way of things, but that's only one of its many meanings. 116 00:11:07,584 --> 00:11:11,045 Indeed, the term is so difficult to define that Lao Tzu, you know this 117 00:11:11,170 --> 00:11:14,591 man, the man who was the founder of Taoist philosophy, L-A-O-T-Z-U, 118 00:11:23,308 --> 00:11:27,145 Lao Tzu started out his book by saying and this is a phrase which already shows how many meanings the word has 119 00:11:27,270 --> 00:11:31,316 Tao which can be Tao but here the word means spoken it has that double meaning but Tao which can be spoken is not 120 00:11:58,134 --> 00:12:02,013 the eternal, the regular, or you might say the real Tao oh yes, he was inconsistent he then went on to write a whole book about it but really the whole purport of 121 00:12:02,138 --> 00:12:06,142 the book is to show that Tao the fundamental nature of the world is something you cannot get too precise about you can't think about it and understand it that way 122 00:12:27,997 --> 00:12:31,250 In other words, what is the fundamental basis of one's 123 00:12:31,376 --> 00:12:35,004 life, as of one's thought, always has to remain undefined. 124 00:12:38,841 --> 00:12:42,720 You see, if you insist, and Chinese philosophers and scholars always are very clear about this, if you 125 00:12:42,845 --> 00:12:46,808 insist on defining words meticulously, you always have to have other words to define your definitions. 126 00:12:51,813 --> 00:12:53,940 And then you have to have words to define those words, 127 00:12:54,065 --> 00:12:56,442 and words to define those words, and there's no end to it. 128 00:12:56,567 --> 00:12:59,862 But otherwise you can get around this by going in a circle, which is that, you know, 129 00:12:59,988 --> 00:13:03,574 when you look up the dictionary and you look up to be, you find the definition to exist. 130 00:13:04,826 --> 00:13:07,996 All right, you look up to exist and you find the definition to be. 131 00:13:08,121 --> 00:13:09,914 And then where are you? 132 00:13:10,039 --> 00:13:13,376 Either you go around in a circle, which fundamentally tells you nothing, or 133 00:13:13,501 --> 00:13:17,046 else you go on and on and on, getting more meticulous, and you never arrive. 134 00:13:19,298 --> 00:13:24,012 Once, a Western psychologist 135 00:13:24,137 --> 00:13:28,516 asked a Chinese friend, what do you mean by Dao? 136 00:13:28,641 --> 00:13:31,477 And the friend said, go and look out of the window. 137 00:13:31,602 --> 00:13:33,104 And he went and looked out of the window. 138 00:13:33,229 --> 00:13:33,646 What do you see? 139 00:13:33,771 --> 00:13:37,358 He said, I see houses in the street. 140 00:13:37,483 --> 00:13:38,693 What else? 141 00:13:38,818 --> 00:13:40,570 I see people moving around. 142 00:13:40,695 --> 00:13:42,071 What else? 143 00:13:42,196 --> 00:13:44,657 I see clouds in the sky. 144 00:13:44,782 --> 00:13:45,742 What else? 145 00:13:45,867 --> 00:13:48,286 And the wind was blowing. 146 00:13:48,411 --> 00:13:54,876 The Chinese extended his hands like this and said, that is the Dao. 147 00:13:55,001 --> 00:13:58,296 And so I remember, too, a very great Japanese artist who was teaching over here in 148 00:13:58,421 --> 00:14:02,008 the United States, and he was always being pressed by his students to define himself. 149 00:14:07,221 --> 00:14:09,140 And he used certain expressions. 150 00:14:09,265 --> 00:14:10,767 They said, now, exactly what do you mean? 151 00:14:10,892 --> 00:14:11,684 They were always saying this. 152 00:14:11,809 --> 00:14:12,435 And one day he got mad. 153 00:14:12,560 --> 00:14:14,562 And he said, what's the matter with you? 154 00:14:14,687 --> 00:14:16,397 Can't you feel? 155 00:14:17,815 --> 00:14:23,905 And so it is that there are certain basic ideas 156 00:14:24,030 --> 00:14:31,537 like Dao, which the Chinese feel must come to us. 157 00:14:31,662 --> 00:14:33,331 We can't go out to get them. 158 00:14:33,456 --> 00:14:34,665 We can't grab them. 159 00:14:34,791 --> 00:14:41,214 They must come to us in the same way as light comes to our eyes. 160 00:14:41,339 --> 00:14:46,886 This thing then is mysterious and unknown. 161 00:14:47,011 --> 00:14:54,227 Like the hermit sage in one of the most famous of all Chinese poems, 162 00:14:54,352 --> 00:15:00,358 jarred dowels, seeking for the hermit in vain. 163 00:15:00,483 --> 00:15:03,986 I asked the boy beneath the pines. 164 00:15:04,112 --> 00:15:07,657 He said, the master's gone alone, herb picking somewhere 165 00:15:07,782 --> 00:15:11,119 on the mountain, cloud hidden, whereabouts unknown. 166 00:15:16,958 --> 00:15:20,586 The whole power of the poem is in the mysterious 167 00:15:20,711 --> 00:15:23,923 imprecision of the old man's whereabouts. 168 00:15:25,716 --> 00:15:29,262 Which, somehow or other, brings the spirit of the hermit 169 00:15:29,387 --> 00:15:32,723 sage closer to the inquirer than an actual meeting. 170 00:15:36,060 --> 00:15:40,439 His absence says more than his presence. 171 00:15:40,565 --> 00:15:44,193 Lost somewhere on the cloud-hidden mountain, he communicates 172 00:15:44,318 --> 00:15:47,572 far more than if he had come down to explain himself. 173 00:15:50,867 --> 00:15:53,202 And this spirit would be totally missed 174 00:15:53,327 --> 00:15:57,206 by the literal-minded, no-nonsense sort of person who at this point would want to clear away the clouds and the 175 00:15:57,331 --> 00:16:01,335 mystery, to rush in and find out just exactly where the old fellow has gone and just what herbs he is picking. 176 00:16:07,550 --> 00:16:10,970 You know, it's absolutely impossible to understand and appreciate 177 00:16:11,095 --> 00:16:14,557 our natural universe unless you know when to stop investigating. 178 00:16:19,937 --> 00:16:22,148 In our restlessness, 179 00:16:22,273 --> 00:16:26,194 you're always tempted to climb every hill and cross every skyline to find out what lies beyond yet as you get older and wiser it isn't just flagging energy but rather increasing 180 00:16:26,319 --> 00:16:30,281 wisdom that teaches you to look at mountains from below or perhaps just climb them a little way or at the top you can no longer see the mountain and beyond on the other side 181 00:16:52,053 --> 00:16:57,225 There is perhaps just another valley like this. 182 00:16:57,350 --> 00:17:04,357 An old Indian aphorism says, what is beyond is that which is also here. 183 00:17:06,067 --> 00:17:13,074 And you mustn't mistake this for a kind of blasé boredom, tiring of adventure. 184 00:17:13,199 --> 00:17:16,244 It's the startling recognition that in the 185 00:17:16,369 --> 00:17:19,956 place where we are now, we have already arrived. 186 00:17:20,081 --> 00:17:21,499 This is it. 187 00:17:21,624 --> 00:17:28,339 What we are seeking is if we are not totally blind already here. 188 00:17:28,464 --> 00:17:31,884 For if you must follow that trail up the mountainside to its bitter end, 189 00:17:32,009 --> 00:17:35,471 you will discover that it leads eventually right back to the suburbs. 190 00:17:40,643 --> 00:17:43,854 But only an exceedingly stupid person will 191 00:17:43,980 --> 00:17:48,317 think that that's where the trail really goes. 192 00:17:48,442 --> 00:17:50,945 For the actual truth is 193 00:17:51,070 --> 00:17:56,617 that the trail goes to every single place that it crosses. 194 00:17:56,742 --> 00:18:01,914 It leads also to where you are standing and watching. 195 00:18:02,039 --> 00:18:05,293 Watching it vanish into the hills, you are 196 00:18:05,418 --> 00:18:09,046 already in the true beyond to which it leads. 197 00:18:11,299 --> 00:18:14,885 Many a time, I have had intense delight in listening 198 00:18:15,011 --> 00:18:18,306 to some hidden waterfall in a mountain canyon, 199 00:18:21,517 --> 00:18:24,895 a sound all the more wonderful since I have set aside the urge to ferret the thing out, 200 00:18:25,021 --> 00:18:28,566 clear up the mistletoe, and find out just where the stream comes from and where it goes. 201 00:18:37,908 --> 00:18:41,245 Every stream, every road, if followed persistently 202 00:18:41,370 --> 00:18:44,874 and meticulously to its end, leads nowhere at all. 203 00:18:50,421 --> 00:18:52,256 And this is why 204 00:18:52,381 --> 00:18:55,885 The compulsively investigative mind is always landing up in what it believes 205 00:18:56,010 --> 00:18:59,388 to be the disillusion, the hard and bitter reality of the actual facts. 206 00:19:06,979 --> 00:19:13,152 Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping cat's entrails with horsehair. 207 00:19:13,277 --> 00:19:20,242 The stars in heaven are, after all, only radioactive rocks and gas. 208 00:19:21,327 --> 00:19:23,496 But this is the illusion. 209 00:19:23,621 --> 00:19:31,212 That truth is to be found only by picking everything to pieces like a spoiled child. 210 00:19:31,337 --> 00:19:37,802 This is why the painters of the Far East so seldom tell all. 211 00:19:37,927 --> 00:19:42,890 Why they avoid filling in every detail. 212 00:19:43,015 --> 00:19:48,646 And why they leave in their paintings great areas of emptiness and vagueness. 213 00:19:48,771 --> 00:19:52,483 These aren't just unfilled backgrounds. 214 00:19:52,608 --> 00:19:56,570 They are integral parts of the whole composition. 215 00:19:56,695 --> 00:20:00,366 Suggestive and pregnant voids and mists, which leave something to our imagination, even though 216 00:20:00,491 --> 00:20:04,161 we don't make the mistake of trying actually to fill them in with detail in the mind's eye. 217 00:20:11,544 --> 00:20:16,215 We let them remain suggestive. 218 00:20:16,340 --> 00:20:19,844 Autumn clouds, vague and obscure. 219 00:20:19,969 --> 00:20:23,848 The evening, lonely and chill. 220 00:20:23,973 --> 00:20:30,980 I felt the dampness on my garments, but saw no spot and heard no sound of rain. 221 00:20:34,400 --> 00:20:38,487 Cliffs that rise a thousand feet without a break. 222 00:20:38,612 --> 00:20:43,325 Lake that stretches a hundred miles without a wave. 223 00:20:43,451 --> 00:20:48,539 Sands that are white through all the year without a stain. 224 00:20:48,664 --> 00:20:54,044 Pine tree woods, winter and summer ever green. 225 00:20:54,170 --> 00:20:58,966 Streams that forever flow and flow without a pause. 226 00:20:59,091 --> 00:21:03,429 Trees that for 20,000 years your vows have kept. 227 00:21:03,554 --> 00:21:07,016 You have suddenly healed the pain of a traveler's 228 00:21:07,141 --> 00:21:10,519 heart and moved his brush to write a new song. 229 00:21:12,563 --> 00:21:17,693 There was something vague before heaven and earth arose. 230 00:21:17,818 --> 00:21:20,070 How calm, how void. 231 00:21:21,614 --> 00:21:24,283 It stands alone, unchanging, 232 00:21:24,408 --> 00:21:27,703 It acts everywhere, unpiring. 233 00:21:28,913 --> 00:21:33,083 It may be considered the mother of everything under heaven. 234 00:21:33,209 --> 00:21:39,173 I do not know its name, but call it by the word Tao. 235 00:21:40,216 --> 00:21:44,011 The Tao is something blurred and indistinct. 236 00:21:44,136 --> 00:21:50,392 How indistinct, how blurred, yet within it are images. 237 00:21:50,518 --> 00:21:53,270 How blurred, how indistinct, 238 00:21:53,395 --> 00:21:56,440 yet within it are things. 239 00:21:56,565 --> 00:22:02,863 How dim, how confused, yet within it is creative power. 240 00:22:05,950 --> 00:22:10,579 Picking chrysanthemums along the eastern fence. 241 00:22:10,704 --> 00:22:14,124 Gazing in silence at the southern hills, the birds fly 242 00:22:14,250 --> 00:22:17,711 home in pairs through the soft mountain air of dust. 243 00:22:20,464 --> 00:22:22,049 In all these things 244 00:22:22,174 --> 00:22:25,636 There is a deep meaning, but when we are about 245 00:22:25,761 --> 00:22:29,181 to express it, we suddenly forget the words. 246 00:22:32,726 --> 00:22:35,938 The song of birds, the voices of insects, 247 00:22:36,063 --> 00:22:39,733 are all means of conveying truth to the mind. 248 00:22:41,610 --> 00:22:47,658 In flowers and grasses, we see messages of the Tao. 249 00:22:47,783 --> 00:22:50,869 The scholar, pure and clear of mind, 250 00:22:50,995 --> 00:22:58,002 that serene and open of heart should find in everything what nourishes them. 251 00:22:58,127 --> 00:23:01,672 But if you want to know where the flowers come 252 00:23:01,797 --> 00:23:05,134 from, even the god of spring doesn't know. 253 00:23:09,597 --> 00:23:16,312 Things are produced around us, but no one knows the whence. 254 00:23:16,437 --> 00:23:22,067 They issue forth, but no one sees the portal 255 00:23:22,192 --> 00:23:27,323 Men, one and all, value that part of knowledge which is known. 256 00:23:27,448 --> 00:23:34,496 They do not know how to avail themselves of the unknown in order to reach knowledge. 257 00:23:34,622 --> 00:23:38,751 Is not this misguided? 258 00:23:38,876 --> 00:23:42,254 But, it isn't by pushing relentlessly and aggressively beyond those hills 259 00:23:42,379 --> 00:23:45,883 that we discover this unknown and persuade nature to disclose her secrets. 260 00:23:53,349 --> 00:23:59,313 What is beyond that is also here. 261 00:23:59,438 --> 00:24:05,527 Any place where we are may be considered the center of the universe. 262 00:24:05,653 --> 00:24:12,660 Anywhere that we stand can be considered the destination of our journey. 263 00:24:13,869 --> 00:24:18,040 But we have to be receptive and open. 264 00:24:18,165 --> 00:24:23,754 We have, in other words, to do what Lao Tzu advised when he said, 265 00:24:23,879 --> 00:24:27,466 While being a man, yet one should also preserve a certain femininity, 266 00:24:27,591 --> 00:24:30,886 and thereby one will become a channel for the whole universe. 267 00:24:37,351 --> 00:24:40,521 You know, that's one of the things which I 268 00:24:40,646 --> 00:24:44,358 believe in our culture of the West is submerged. 269 00:24:47,236 --> 00:24:51,490 The feminine values are despised values. 270 00:24:51,615 --> 00:24:54,952 And we find, typically among men, a strange 271 00:24:55,077 --> 00:24:58,622 kind of reluctance to be anything but a man. 272 00:25:01,667 --> 00:25:05,546 A kind of anxiety to be 100% male. 273 00:25:06,547 --> 00:25:08,424 And that's a kind of monster. 274 00:25:08,549 --> 00:25:11,927 A man who is 100% male, 100% tough guy, is a sort of 275 00:25:12,052 --> 00:25:15,556 human mollusk who has no softness and no sensitivity. 276 00:25:20,227 --> 00:25:24,148 And indeed, it's a common psychological observation that people who are constantly anxious to prove their masculinity, who are scared to death of being 277 00:25:24,273 --> 00:25:28,235 sissy, of being weak, of being unaggressive, those are the very people who have doubts about their own masculinity, who are not really sure of it. 278 00:25:40,831 --> 00:25:45,711 And so, there is a tremendous necessity for us 279 00:25:45,836 --> 00:25:49,173 to value alongside, as it were, the aggressive masculine element symbolized by 280 00:25:49,298 --> 00:25:52,843 the sword, the receptive feminine element symbolized perhaps by the open flower. 281 00:25:59,558 --> 00:26:02,978 For after all, our human senses are not knives, they're not hooks, 282 00:26:03,103 --> 00:26:06,565 they are the soft ball of the eye, the delicate drum of the ear, 283 00:26:15,282 --> 00:26:19,036 the soft skin on the tips of the fingers and on the body it is through these delicate receptive things that we basically receive our knowledge of the world and 284 00:26:19,161 --> 00:26:23,290 therefore it is through a kind of weakness and softness that it is possible for knowledge to come to us so putting it in another way we have to come to terms with nature 285 00:26:46,146 --> 00:26:50,567 by wooing her rather than fighting her. 286 00:26:50,692 --> 00:26:54,071 Not just putting nature at the so-called distance of objectivity as if she were an 287 00:26:54,196 --> 00:26:57,699 enemy to be shot, but something rather to be known by embrace like a beloved wife. 288 00:27:08,293 --> 00:27:13,257 For you see, what does one really want to know about? 289 00:27:13,382 --> 00:27:17,386 Does one rather want to manage the whole thing 290 00:27:17,511 --> 00:27:23,559 Does one want to be a kind of omnipotent God in control of it all? 291 00:27:23,684 --> 00:27:27,604 Or does one rather want to enjoy it? 292 00:27:27,729 --> 00:27:35,028 One cannot, after all, enjoy what you are all the time anxious about controlling. 293 00:27:35,153 --> 00:27:37,948 One of the nice things about one's own body is 294 00:27:38,073 --> 00:27:40,868 you don't have to think about it all the time. 295 00:27:40,993 --> 00:27:44,329 If you had, when you woke up in the morning, to think about 296 00:27:44,454 --> 00:27:48,166 every detail of your circulation, you'd never get to the day. 297 00:27:48,292 --> 00:27:51,378 As was well said, the mystery of life is not a 298 00:27:51,503 --> 00:27:55,257 problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. 298 00:27:56,305 --> 00:28:56,931 Support us and become VIP member to remove all ads from www.OpenSubtitles.org