{"id":65362,"date":"2019-06-19T17:52:16","date_gmt":"2019-06-19T17:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=65362"},"modified":"2019-06-19T18:36:07","modified_gmt":"2019-06-19T18:36:07","slug":"the-ideal-and-the-practical-the-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=65362","title":{"rendered":"The Ideal and the Practical — the Practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — cross-posted from BrownPundits<\/a> in response to a friend’s comment there ]
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I’d written a response to @AnAn and included a quote from the Chuang Tzu’s chapter on Lord Wen-hui and what he learned from his Cook Ting<\/a>, and wanted to throw in the following DoubleQuote — but graphics seem to be discouraged in the Comment sections here, so I’ve opened this post for the purpose:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The thing is, Lao Tzu offers us the ideal statement, formulated in terms of an impenetrable absence of space, and an absence of substance to the point of non-existence — while Chuang Tzu, peering over Lord Wen-hui’s shoulder right there in Cook Ting’s kitchen, offers us the same insight, couched in terms of there being “spaces between the joints” and his knife having “really no thickness” — Chuang Tzu’s measureless insight penetrates Lao Tzu’s impenetrable absolutes to show us there’s room for play there — “room — more than enough for the blade to play about in”.<\/p>\n

If we bear these two versions of the same idea — formulated ideally and in practical terms by the two principle philosopher-poets of the Taoist school — in mind when our thoughts run up against the impracticality of an ideal, we may find, like Cook Ting, that we too have room enough room to play in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — cross-posted from BrownPundits in response to a friend’s comment there ] . I’d written a response to @AnAn and included a quote from the Chuang Tzu’s chapter on Lord Wen-hui and what he learned from his Cook Ting, and wanted to throw in the following DoubleQuote — but graphics seem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[526,144,627,1161,218,741,1,1911],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles-cameron","category-china","category-doublequotes","category-ideal","category-philosophy","category-poetry","category-uncategorized","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65362"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65366,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65362\/revisions\/65366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}