The following questions are based on the translation of Zhuangzi by Burton Watson.
What is the meaning of the story of Peng flying south?
In particular, the following:
Northern darkness and southern darkness,
Transformation of the fish Kun to the bird Peng,
"When the sea begins to move...",
Lake of Heaven.
The cicada and the little dove,
The analogy of the need to have deep water to raise up a big boat,
The need to prepare more food for long trip,
Little understanding and big understanding,
Short lived and long lived,
The pitiful attempt of people trying to ape Peng-tsu.
The story of Peng is repeated three times in Chapter 1. The first time, the author is telling the story to the readers directly. The second time, the story is recorded in the book "Universal Harmony". The third time, the story is discussed among the questions of Tang to Chi. What might be the reasons for the story to be repeated three times?
What do you think of the statement "the Perfect Man has no self; the Holy Man has no merit; the Sage has no fame."?
What might be the meaning of the following:
The story of Yao wanting to cede the empire to Hsu Yu,
The story of the Holy man living on faraway Ku-she Mountain,
The story of the man of Sung who sold ceremonial hats,
The discussion between Hui Tzu and Chuang Tsu about usefulness of things?
The book Zhuangziis an ancient Chinese text from the late Warring States period (476–221 BC) which contains stories that exemplify the carefree nature of the ideal Daoistsage. The book is named for its traditional author, Zhuangzi, which means Master Zhuang (2).
The Zhuangzi consists of a large collection of stories, which are often humorous or irreverent. Its main themes are of spontaneity in action and of freedom from conventions. The stories in the text attempt to illustrate the falseness of human distinctions between good and bad, large and small, life and death, and human and nature.
Though primarily known as a philosophical work, the Zhuangzi is regarded as one of the greatest literary works in all of Chinese history. A masterpiece of both philosophical and literary skill, it has significantly influenced writers for more than 2000 years from the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220) to the present.
In the introduction to his Zhuangzi translation, the American scholar Burton Watson concluded: "Whoever Zhuang Zhou was, the writings attributed to him bear the stamp of a brilliant and original mind." In the Preface of Watson's book, the following poem was quoted.
讀莊子 - 白居易
去國辭家謫異方，中心自怪少憂傷。
為尋莊子知歸處，認得無何是本鄉。
Read Zhuangzi - by the famous Chinese poet Bai Juyi
Leaving homeland, parted from kin, banished to a strange place,
I wonder my heart feels so little anguish and pain.
Consulting Zhuangzi, I find where I belong,
Surely my home is there in Not-Even-Anything land.
The above video is a wonderful reading of the first seven chapters (the inner chapters) of the Zuangzi translated by the American scholar Burton Watson.
The above introduction was based on information from Wikipedia.
The following words are different ways of describing the same person or thing. The differences are due to the use of different Chinese phonetic systems.
The last class of term 1 will be on 6th April. We plan to have a BYO lunch meeting that day. Depending on the weather, we will have the meeting either outdoor in the BBQ area or in the Dining Area in the Hub. See you all there.
The picture above is by Machine Elf 1735 - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13285286
Some Definitions
Emotion
Emotions can be understood as either states or as processes. When understood as a state (like being angry or afraid), an emotion is a type of mental state that interacts with other mental states and causes certain behaviours.
Understood as a process, it is useful to divide emotion into two parts. The early part of the emotion process is the interval between the perception of the stimulus and the triggering of the bodily response. The later part of the emotion process is a bodily response, for example, changes in heart rate, skin conductance, and facial expression. This description is sufficient to begin an analysis of the emotions, although it does leave out some aspects of the process such as the subjective awareness of the emotion and behaviour that is often part of the emotion response (for example, fighting, running away, hugging another person).
Feeling
Feeling was originally used to describe the physical sensation of touch through either experience or perception. The word is also used to describe other experiences, such as "a feeling of warmth" and of sentience in general (i.e. anything of which one can be aware).
In psychology, the term feeling is closely related to emotion, and usually refers to the conscious subjective experience of emotions.
The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio distinguishes between emotions and feelings: Emotions refer to mental images (i.e. representing either internal or external states of reality) and the bodily changes accompanying them, whereas feelings refer to the perception of bodily changes. In other words, emotions contain a subjective element and a 3rd person observable element, whereas feelings are subjective and private.
Mood
In psychology, a mood is an affective state. In contrast to emotions or feelings, moods are less specific, less intense and less likely to be provoked or instantiated by a particular stimulus or event. Moods are typically described as having either a positive or negative valence. In other words, people usually talk about being in a good mood or a bad mood. There are many different factors that influence mood, and these can lead to positive or negative effects on mood.
Positive mood can be caused by many different aspects of life as well as have certain effects on people as a whole. Good mood is usually considered a state without an identified cause; people cannot pinpoint exactly why they are in a good mood. People seem to experience a positive mood when they have a clean slate, have had a good night sleep, and feel no sense of stress in their life.
Negative moods have been connected with depression, anxiety, aggression, poor self-esteem, physiological stress and decrease in sexual arousal.
Note: The definition of emotion is based on the definition in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The other definitions are based on articles in Wikipedia.
Affect
Affect, in psychology, refers to the underlying experience of feeling, emotion or mood.
What is emotion?
The video below from Khan Academy tries to answer the question "What is emotion?"
Theories of emotion
Some of the theories of emotion are introduced in the following videos.
Neuroscience of emotion
There following Khan Academy videos give a brief introduction of the neuroscience that relates to emotion.
Critical thinking contributes to the understanding of the world; helps to distinguish between reality or fiction, usefulness or irrelevance, good reasoning or fallacy.
