On Chinese Wisdom

On Chinese Wisdom

On Chinese Wisdom

This compilation is inspired by and offered to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother who guide us by their Presence and example. It serves as a reference material for people who find it useful to learn and apply the wisdom in life. This is an age where each individual has a unique role to play, and each culture has an opportunity to radiate its full potential, beauty and fragrance in the world garden. May each one blossom like a flower, each in its own time, own way. May humanity aspire for and realise Unity in Diversity by unending education, constant progress and a youth that never ages.

Book Details

Author: Sri Aurobindo, the Mother

Compiler: Anandi Zhang

Print Length: 48 pages

Book format: PDF, ePub, Kindle

Language: English

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Contents

  • The Five Dreams of Sri Aurobindo (An excerpt)
  • Sri Aurobindo: Asia & age of spirituality
  • Sri Aurobindo: The soul of poetic delight and beauty
  • Sri Aurobindo on the Chinese
  • Sri Aurobindo on Buddhism & Tao
  • Sri Aurobindo, like a Chinese sage?
  • The Mother on AUM and TAO sounds
  • The Mother tells the story of a Chinese emperor
  • The Mother plays Ping Pong (table tennis)
  • The Mother: Hu Hsu is a genius and a sage!
  • The Mother reads and comments on Wu Wei
  • The Mother: Story of Two Priests
  • Chinese sayings in the handwriting of The Mother
  • Further Reading
    • The Mother’s Dragons
    • Remembering Hu Hsu

Book Sample

On Chinese Wisdom

Sri Aurobindo on the Chinese

… No other race but the Chinese, trained by the Confucian system to habits of minute method, perfect organisation and steady seriousness in all things great and small, could thus calmly map out a stupendous political, social and educational change, as if it were the programme of a ceremonial function, and carry it out with thoroughness and efficiency. Once the Chinese have made up their minds to this revolution, they are likely to carry it out with the greatest possible completeness, businesslike method, effective organisation, and the least possible waste and friction. In the history of China, no less than the history of Japan, we are likely to see the enormous value of national will-power using the moral outcome of a great and ancient discipline, even while breaking the temporary mould in which that discipline had cast society, thought and government.

CWSA 08: 266

…the steady, resolute, methodical Chinese, with their unrivalled genius for organisation…

CWSA 08: 291

Sri Aurobindo on Buddhism & Tao

Buddhist Nirvana

The Buddhist Nirvana and the Adwaitin’s Moksha are the same thing. It corresponds to a realisation in which one does not feel oneself any longer as an individual with such a name or such a form, but an infinite eternal Self spaceless (even when in space), timeless (even when in time). Note that one can perfectly well do actions in that condition and it is not to be gained only by Samadhi.

*

It [the Nirvana of Buddha] is the same [as the Nirvana of the Gita]. Only the Gita describes it as Nirvana in the Brahman while Buddha preferred not to give any name or say anything about that into which the nirvana took place. Some later schools of Buddhists described it as Sunya, the equivalent of the Chinese Tao, described as the Nothing which is everything.

CWSA 29: 431

…