He doesn't know what he doesn't know,said my friend the Brilliant Master Wang Yang Ming. He knows nothing about human nature and anyway, it's like when you're driving a car. All you can see is what is out the windshield in front of you. All you really have is the view in front of you, right? How can anyone know about anything beyond that view? They think they know more than that. But they don't know, do they?
My friend was indeed famous for his unusual epistemology. The unity of knowledge and action (知行合一says in a nutshell, “If you want to know bitterness, you have to eat a bitter melon yourself.” No other knowledge is possible. All we know is what we do. And what we do is all we can know.
For more, see Being Embodied with Master Wang.
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Other posts that didn't show up in the feed: Dreaming of Carthage and Thermopylae
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