Tuesday, December 11, 2007

week 13 "to live is to know"

Well, being as this is final exam week, I'm thinking that if "to live is to know" then I shouldn't have to study I should just live and I'll know all the answers, right? So I don't think it works that way, unfortunately. But in the sense of the Ancient Chinese Saying "When I hear, I forget/When I see, I remember/ When I do, I understand" I could imagine doing and living as close to the same thing, and that doing something, ie living it, is what brings true understanding. That's why we do so many clinic hours, so that we are doing/living Oriental Medicine, thus hopefully developing true understanding. At any rate, I like "to live is to know" better than "I think therefore I am." The latter making it all dependent on thought is kind of scary, since thought is so capricious, and I certainly think that we can "be" on a deeper level than thought -- go beyond the intellect to a purer state of being. The phrase "to live is to know" allows for that deeper state of being, and ultimately true knowledge probably arises from that state -- I hope to experience that.

1 comment:

Sung Woo Kim said...

Arpita,

I'm totally with you on that how if we can really know everything by living that we should just know how to pass our tests :-)

As an aside, I find it interesting how I am learning, retaining and able to retrieve all the information that we are learning. I am hoping that we'll have the system down on how to incorporate and live with all the things we're learning and SOON