Wang Bi Quotes on Nature
Wang Bi (226–249) — the precocious commentator who died at twenty-three but whose commentaries on the Daodejing and the Book of Changes (Yijing) reorganized post-Han Chinese philosophy — gave Chinese philosophy its founding statement of the Xuanxue (mysterious learning) reading of nature. The central commitment is that the manifold of natural phenomena issues from a fundamentally undifferentiated origin (wu, often rendered as non-being or nothingness) that is the proper subject of metaphysical reflection — and the corresponding analysis of the dao as the underlying principle (li) of natural transformation supplies the philosophical framework that shaped the Wei-Jin philosophical milieu and the synthesis of Daoist and Confucian elements that prepared the ground for the medieval reception of Buddhism in China.
Quotes
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Attributed to Wang Bi:
“Original non-being is the foundation of all being.”
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Attributed to Wang Bi:
“The Dao that can be named is not the eternal Dao.”
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Attributed to Wang Bi:
“Returning to the root is the way of the wise.”
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“I think what the Nobel committee is doing is going beyond war and looking at what humanity can do to prevent war . Sustainable management of our natural resources will promote peace .”
Interview in TIME (10 October 2004) -
“(WHAT'S THE PLANET'S BIGGEST CHALLENGE?) The environment. We are sharing our resources in a very inequitable way. We have parts of the world that are very deprived and parts of the world that are very rich. And that is partly the reason why we have conflict.”
Wikiquote -
“We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own—indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty, and wonder.”
Her memoir, Unbowed: A Memoir (2006).