7 Feelings of Cheng Yi
feelings of Cheng Yi 7 Feelings are problem for the Neo-Confucian, Cheng Yi. In his view, these seven feelings have the power to corrupt people’s original purity if allowed free rein. Even though human nature starts off pure, the social world that we inhabit corrupts it. The task we all face, therefore, is the endless struggle of protecting this tender shoot of goodness from the onslaught of life at large. This list of seven feelings is an interesting departure from notions more familiar to the Western reader, such as the Seven Deadly [...]
Is my lovely cup of tea a cup of tea?
Some time ago there was an advert for, I believe, water filtration of one kind or another, in which a woman of unblemished skin and calm disposition brews herself a cup of enticingly translucent tea in a glass cup, using said water. Her equally impeccable husband, looking on jealously at her newly-steeped beverage says admiringly, "That's a lovely cup of tea". To which she archly replies, "Wrong again! It's my lovely cup of tea." (I cannot now remember the male partner's first inaccuracy that made him wrong for the second time - presumably some wrong-headed assumption about water filtration.)
7 Worthies of the Bamboo Grove
In the tumultuous Three Kingdoms period, the dangerous world of politics led seven friends to meet together in a bamboo forest, writing poetry, discoursing on philosophy, and enjoying the natural world. Some of the seven retained official roles, while others turned their backs on politics entirely. The seven as a whole became important icons in a long tradition of abandoning the stifling world of hypocritical politics for a life of the mind.
