Hi Andre You are a year older than me !
As you can see, the birth time, day, month and year represents your space time co-ordinates for entering this plane of existence and this sort of determines your trajectory until your exit, which have are the co-ordinates for your exit and hence entry into the next plane. To your students, all this has great significance in their interaction with you and for the harmony of things. Your relationship with them, collectively and individually on this plane is tied in with your trajectory as well as theirs. As for the political system, I would not justify in any way the one party state that prevails today, and in any communist state, there is an inherent waste of the human resource. Yet in the Chinese adaptation of socialism with Chinese characteristics and their market economy, it seems that they are trying to strike at a balance of both extremes; the interests of the individual and the state. I do not for one moment say that individuals in China are insignificant and that they defer to the collective will. The Chinese people are not exactly powerless, even when ruled by Emperors. And if we look are Taiwan and Hongkong, democracies as such, we get an idea how Chinese society would be expressed as free market entities. There are several layers of social relevance for the individual; the communist propaganda of the cultural revolution and the Mao years were but a blip in the millenia of Chinese society. Layered into the family, into the clan, into the village, into dialect groups, their professions and their businesses. China today, as always has been, is not without its faults. But I am trying to understand where your pessimism is coming from. It is a civilisation completely rooted into a metaphysics of it own, notwithstanding the extreme directions it has been taken by its leaders, imperial or socialist. It makes no pretense that intellect is merely a tool (even if elements are borrowed from the West) it is not an end in itself. Best Regards Khoo Hock Aun On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 9:40 PM, Andre Broersen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > Thank you very much Khoo for this. As you gathered I already know (very > little) of this: > > Each year is made up of 12 months represented by each animal sign and every > 12 days is also represented by each animal sign. Each day is also > designated > into 12 two hour blocks representing the 12 animal signs. The animals signs > follow this order - rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, > monkey, rooster, dog and pig. > > Andre: > > This I found very interesting and whilst walking through the one-tree > forest > in Ruili came across this on a round wall. Asking my students for its > meaning they did try to explain but it remains very difficult ( not only my > understanding but also their English explanations). > I was however pleasantly surprised when they asked me my birth year > (1954-Horse) and birth day, Sunday (Bird?) and they were exuberant in their > reactions. It appears the combination had some significance. > > Khoo: > > Chinese cosmology is one of a space time continuum worked out combining and > reconciling the collective and the individual at the same time. This is the > map; navigate it as you will. > In this sense, the Chinese world view is alliterative, in that the chinese > language and its 'reasoning' is very much in dealt with in relation to the > universe than based on subject object reductionism. > > Khoo may I ask you then..the Emperors have been replaced by a party system > which leaves the people completely powerless. From what I see and hear and > feel, through my Western glasses and ears and patterns, this reconciling > the > individual and the collective makes little sense to me.I see so much waste > of ideas, initiative, creativity. > > If individual patterns cease to count, be important...where do we go? > Surely this is also something Pirsig suggests...the importance of > individual > patterns because they are a (potential) carrier of ideas. > > Am I way of track in the way I see and feel this? > > Very thought provoking post. > Andre > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] 6016-301 4079 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
