24.02 The actuality of a deeply rooted tradition

From Chuang Tzu, The Cook:

When I first butchered an ox, I saw nothing but ox meat. It took three years for me to see the whole ox. Now I go out to meet it with my whole spirit and don’t think only about what meets the eye. Sensing and knowing stop. The spirit goes where it will, following the natural contours, revealing large cavities, leading the blade through openings, moving onward according to actual form - yet not touching the central arteries or tendons and ligaments, much less touching bone.

And from the New York Times, 17.02.2011, about Xi Jinping, the next President of China, who was sent from Beijing to the province Shaanxi at age 15 to toil in a work brigade. A native, Mr. Lü, recalls a dialogue:

He said to me: "You Shaanxi people are really something. You can spot stones in the fields that I can't." And I said, "You don't look for the stones, you feel for them."

15.03 Co-Existence

In the plain, with eyes closed. A field of sounds: a voice from behind, the noise of the turbines, in front two voices chatting, the rustle from the turning of a newspaper page.

What was new? The sounds were as if scattered in a meadow, like various flowers, weed, bushes, and trees – there was no position taken from my side towards those sounds (I like it, it annoys me, etc): I was that meadow. Its silence silenced the sounds too, it made each one descript, three-dimensional, it allowed them to co-exist in a friendly proximity.

29.09 ''never never give up!''

(In a wall in Los Angeles. Kathimerini.gr)

Who is the one who never gives up? Or, who experiences resignation as the ultimate loss?

The one who has identified his existence with this one and only way. Then resignation would equal mutilation.

As one long prepared, and graced with courage,

as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,

go firmly to the window

and listen with deep emotion, but not

with the whining, the pleas of a coward;

listen—your final delectation—to the voices,

to the exquisite music of that strange procession,

and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.