Wang Bi Quotes on Knowledge
Wang Bi, the brilliant young commentator of third-century China, shaped the reading of the foundational Daoist texts, and the quotes gathered here concern his understanding of knowledge. Wang Bi's school of Profound Learning held that the manifold of named things emerges from an underlying formless ground, original non-being, and that genuine wisdom consists in turning back toward it, since returning to the root is the way of the wise. He taught that this fundamental reality cannot be captured by names or concepts, that names cannot reach what is most fundamental and only the wordless can name it, so that the highest knowledge passes beyond language. The quotes here, which distil positions from his celebrated commentaries on the Daode jing and the Yijing, are marked as attributed rather than directly sourced. They present knowledge, for Wang Bi, as a return from the named many to the wordless root.
Quotes
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Attributed to Wang Bi:
“Returning to the root is the way of the wise.”
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Attributed to Wang Bi:
“Names cannot reach what is most fundamental; only the wordless can name it.”
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“We must resist the notion that there is only one way to be a woman, one way to be African, and one way to be human.”
Wikiquote -
“Nobel lecture (10 December 2004)”
As I conclude I reflect on my childhood experience when I would visit a stream next to our home to fetch water for my mother. I would drink water straight from the stream. Playing among the arrowroot leaves I tried in vain to pick up the strands of frogs’ eggs, believing they were beads. But every time I put my little fingers under them they would break. Later, I saw thousands of tadpoles: black, -
“Speech at Goldman Awards, San Francisco (24 April 2006)”
Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree , you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking. -
“Pages full of unlikely words, Handfuls of hot, bitter tears. They call the author a silly fool, For they know not what he means.”
Dream of the Red Chamber(1958) | p. 4