Nameless, the beginning of heaven and earth; Fame is the mother of all things.

The third sentence of the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching:

㊣ nameless, the beginning of heaven and earth; Fame is the mother of all things.

(nameless is the origin of heaven and earth; Fame is the beginning of everything. ) Chapter 1 of Cool Talk about Laozi (17) Wittgenstein: Can't we experience death while we are alive?

1.

First of all, there is a lot of controversy about the sentence break, which has been divided into two camps since the Northern Song Dynasty.

The mainstream camp in the academic circle has the following sentence:

Nothing is the beginning of the world. Yes, the mother of all things.

Supporters are:

Wang Anshi's Annotated Edition of Wang Anshi's Laozi (the first edition)

Sima Guang's Theory of Moral Truth

Su Zhe's Interpretation of Laozi

Yu Yue's Comments on Scholars

The sentence of the non-mainstream camp in the second academic circle is:

nameless, the beginning of heaven and earth. Fame is the mother of all things.

The supporters are:

The Official Seal Sentence on the River

Wang Bi's Notes on Laozi

The Imperial Morality of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty

Zhu Xi's Zhuzi Genre

2.

I support the non-mainstream camp. Why? Three pieces of evidence. Evidence 1:

According to grammar, the word "name" doesn't exist at all, so it can be pulled out and shot directly.

Based on Laozi's unfathomable literary inner strength, it can be written as:

Nothing is the beginning of heaven and earth. Yes, the mother of all things. Evidence 2:

Laozi said in Chapter 32 of the Classic of Tao Te Ching:

"Tao is often unknown ..... before it becomes famous." Therefore, anonymity and fame should be Lao Tzu's original intention. Evidence 3:

The disjunctive syntax of "nothing and being" was initiated by Wang Anshi in the Northern Song Dynasty. That is to say, more than a thousand years before the Northern Song Dynasty, no one in Tao Te Ching had ever broken such a sentence.

Wang Anshi just likes to be unconventional, not only in politics, but also in literature. For example, when he was in power, he founded a school called "Jing Gong Xin Xue". Its main purpose is not to engage in academics, but to train the implementers and successors of the new law, so his new learning monopolized the academic circles for nearly sixty years. That is to say, the reason why his works like to break the tradition and bring forth the new is to serve politics in the final analysis.

Later, Kang Youwei, who was in the late Qing Dynasty, wrote "An Examination of New Learning and Pseudo-Classics" with the same logic. It was the first thing to create momentum for the "Reform Movement of 1898", the first thing to show off, and it didn't matter if the content was far-fetched. Anyway, it was just a political tool. From this, we can infer:

The sentence structure of "whether there is or not" created by Wang Anshi is not credible.

3. (1) Then why is "nameless" the beginning of heaven and earth?

Because the ancient human wisdom had not yet germinated when everything was growing in the beginning of heaven and earth, they could only live by instinct and had no ability to think abstractly at all, so the "indescribable" state was the original appearance of heaven and earth. Then why is "fame" the mother of all things?

In fact, if we translate this sentence into modern words, "Famous" became pregnant, and then gave birth to "Everything" and became the mother of "Everything".

that is to say:

fame comes first, then everything comes. Without name, there is nothing. Everything was born in human mind because of its name.

then, you must ask, if there is something without a name, doesn't it exist? My answer is:

"Yes."

"aren't you idealistic?" Regardless of whether this is idealism or not, I think it doesn't matter whether a person is "idealism" or "materialism". What matters is the process of thinking.

4.

We might as well think about this question first:

What is the difference between a vegetative person and a normal person?

First of all, let me explain:

The so-called vegetative state is generally defined by the international medical community as a "persistent vegetative state". Because the cerebral cortex is seriously damaged, people are in an irreversible deep coma and lose consciousness, but the subcortical center can maintain spontaneous breathing and heartbeat.

Therefore, a vegetative person has completely lost his body's ability to feel and take care of himself, and only has the basic function of survival, relying on the instinct of genes for metabolism and growth and development. Of course, there are also a small number of vegetarians who can perceive the sound with their residual hearing and then gradually wake up, but it is beyond my discussion.

Then after reading the medical statement above, I think you should have a less vague answer in your heart. A vegetative person has no perceptual ability, no thinking ability, only the instinctive will of genes. Kant, a great German philosopher, once defined:

"Those things that rely solely on natural will instead of our will are called" things "if they are irrational; On the contrary, rational things are called people. " (2)

According to Mr. Kant,

I'm afraid a vegetative person can't be called a "human", because he has no reason and no thinking ability, and grows and rests purely on the natural will of genes, which is equivalent to a plant or even a piece of wood.

Then, please ask:

Does our world, the scenery, music, food, emotions and other things in the world that can be perceived and enjoyed by normal people mean anything to a vegetative person?

or, in other words, does the perceptible world we live in exist or not exist for vegetarians?

5.

If you say it doesn't exist. Well, there will be many people pointing at your nose and saying,

"You are idealistic".

if you say, of course it exists! After all, the vegetative body is in the same space with us, and the world we perceive is objective, both visible and tangible, but the vegetative body can't perceive it. How can we say it doesn't exist?

Well, I have something to say:

You feel there because you can jump out of the limitations of a vegetative state and look at it in a higher dimension.

Then, compared with a vegetable, you are a person who has opened the perspective of God, and you can even say that you are God. That is to say:

You are standing outside the boundary that a vegetative person can think about, to answer this question.

Then ask:

Can we humans think about the world beyond the boundary of the universe? By the same token, can we think about the time 13.8 billion years ago, that is, before the Big Bang?

the answer is:

"No."

that's why Lao Tzu said,

"nameless, the beginning of heaven and earth."

it's not that I don't want to be named, but that I can't be named, indescribable and indescribable. Because we can't stand outside the universe to see our own world, and we can't think about time before it is born, just like we can't leave the ground by holding our hair.

In Wittgenstein's words, it is:

"Death is not a thing in life, and we can't experience it while we are alive." (3)

Being alive and dying are two completely different natures, totally isolated worlds, and you can't experience them at the same time. You can't experience death when you are alive, and you can't be resurrected after death. Then this means:

Compared with God, or the mysterious origin in the ultimate sense of religion founded by various nationalities all over the world, human beings on the earth are undoubtedly equivalent to 7 billion vegetarians.

in other words, the boundary we can think about is the boundary of our world. Then ask again:

Do we live in a world of subjective consciousness, or in a so-called "objective world" that can exist independently without consciousness?

I believe that there are two kinds of ideas fighting in your mind now. Well, we will judge these two concepts in the next section.

References:

1. The Collection of Zhu Xi? Volume seventeen? Reading Two Chen's Remnants

2. Kant's Principles of Moral Metaphysics? Chapter two? Transition from Popular Philosophy to Metaphysics

3. Wittgenstein's On Logical Philosophy? 6.4311 "Cool Lao Zi" Chapter 1 (18) Is materialism wrong? Sakyamuni: Our heart is a "cup" and the material world is the "water" in the cup?

1.

In the last section, we said:

The boundary we can think about is the boundary of our world.

So do we live in a world of subjective consciousness, or in a so-called "objective world" that can exist independently without consciousness? We might as well listen to the views of Buddhism again. The first-generation founder of China Zen Buddhism, Dharma, has such a dialogue in "The Theory of Deformity of Dharma":

Someone asked: "The three realms are vast and boundless. How can we avoid endless pain just by observing the mind?" Dharma replied, "Wrong! The three realms are not outside you, but in your heart. " The man was very surprised: "How can the Three Realms be in my heart?"

Dharma explained:

"The so-called three realms are the three poisons. Greed is lust, anger is lust. Insanity is achromatic. If you can subdue the three thieves of greed and ignorance by cultivating your mind, you can jump out of the three realms and get rid of the suffering of The six great divisions in the wheel of karma. "

From this conversation, we can see that the founder of Dharma can be said to have directly broken the "appearance" of ordinary Buddhist disciples by picking up the golden hoop: those so-called three realms and twenty-eight layers of heaven are simply things in our concept.

In other words, the Three Realms exist by the greed and ignorance in our hearts, and cannot exist independently without our subjective consciousness. Therefore, there is a saying in the Shurangama Sutra:

"All causes and effects, the world and dust are caused by the mind." (1)

It means:

Everything that happens and is logical with cause and effect, from the world to the dust, depends on the "heart" to make the finishing touch to become a concrete, recognizable and nameable "object."

That is to say, if you don't have a "mind", or if you can achieve a "mind without shelter", then cause and effect, the world and dust can't be called an identifiable and nameable "object" for you. Just like without the sun and light source, there would be no darkness and no shadow.

Make an analogy:

The relationship between our "mind" and "matter" is equivalent to the relationship between "cup" and "water".

Ordinary materialists think:

Our heart is equivalent to "water" and matter is equivalent to "cup"; Our cognition is passive, which is a kind of thinking activity to conform to things.

However, Sakyamuni did not agree with this statement. He thought:

Our heart is the "cup" and matter is equivalent to "water"; Our cognition is to actively construct a system and then make things conform to our thinking model.

so, which of the above statements do you think is more true?

2.

I think most people can't accept Sakyamuni's idea, after all, he didn't find the process of proof in Buddhist scriptures. Then, we might as well think about a simple question first:

What are the prerequisites for the so-called cause and effect, the world and the dust?

Let's talk about cause and effect first, that is, cause and effect. Its main feature is that two things happen in time, so "time" must be the premise of existence. Then there is the world and dust, whose main feature is volume, so "space" must be the premise of existence.

That is to say, if we can prove that

time and space are pre-existing cognitive models in people's minds, rather than objective existence in the material world, wouldn't it just prove that Sakyamuni's speech in the Shurangama Sutra is not self-deception?

that's right, so how can we prove it?

First of all, let's imagine two different scenes:

The first one is to imagine a scene that has no space or time at all, but has concrete matter. Specific substances can be arbitrary, such as apples, bicycles, houses and so on.

excuse me, can you imagine?

second, imagine a scene with no concrete matter at all, but with space and time.

excuse me, can you imagine? Anyway, as far as I'm concerned:

I can't imagine the first scene at all, and the second scene seems to be imaginable.

If the second scenario can be imagined, it means that time and space exist in our ideas first, and then they are applied to the material world. Let me make it clear first:

This proof method of imagining two different scenes is not my exclusive originality, but an argument method put forward by Kant, a great German philosopher, in Critique of Pure Reason more than 2 years ago.

But I'm still not sure:

Is the pure void in our minds learned through experience the day after tomorrow, or is it brought by birth?

Therefore, Kant's argument method does not seem to be 1% convincing. Of course, he also used another method, which is unprecedented. Like a dazzling lightning, it pierced the night sky of philosophy, lit up the future of western philosophy, and completely changed the direction of western philosophy.

what is this method? Let's reveal the secret in the next section.

References:

1. Shurangama Sutra? Volume 1 "Cool Talk about Laozi" Chapter 1 (19): Kant's antinomy: Space and time are both finite and infinite?

the third sentence:

㊣ nameless, the beginning of heaven and earth; Fame is the mother of all things.

(nameless is the origin of heaven and earth; Fame is the beginning of everything. )

1.

In the last section, we talked about:

Kant also used another method to prove that time and space are pre-existing cognitive models in human minds. This method is unprecedented, like a dazzling lightning, it broke through the night sky of philosophy, illuminated the future of western philosophy, and completely changed the direction of western philosophy.

what is this method?

are the four famous paradoxes in philosophy, which are strictly called four groups of "antinomy".

The so-called "antinomy" means:

There are two recognized laws that are both correct, but at the same time they run counter to each other and contradict each other.

Here, we only talk about the first group (about the finiteness and infinity of time and space):

Topic: The universe has a beginning in time and a boundary in space;

antithesis: The universe has no beginning in time and no boundary in space.

I have to say, these two propositions often appear in my mind, and they knock me from time to time, but I can't help them. Of course, I am not the only one who can't help it, and so is Zhu Xi, a generation of Neo-Confucianism master in the Southern Song Dynasty.

2.

According to historical records, when Zhu Xi was five years old, he pointed to the sun and asked his father,

"What is attached behind the sun?"

Father replied:

"It's attached to the sky!"

Young Zhu Xi widened his curious eyes and continued to ask:

"What was attached behind that day?" (2)

This question directly silenced the knowledgeable father. Seeing that his father could not answer, Xiao Zhu Xi became more curious, thinking day and night, thinking hard, and even thinking about tea instead of rice, which once became a disease and almost became his lifelong heart disease. Until his later years, the 67-year-old Zhu Xi was still worried about the question "What things are outside the world?".

So, how did Kant put these two contradictory propositions?