ChineseStudy

33. Knowing Self

Contents

Text

English translation

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is clarity.

Understanding other people takes judgment, but seeing one's own desires, abilities, and limits is harder. Self-knowledge keeps judgment from being clouded by self-deception.

Overcoming others takes force; overcoming yourself is true strength.

Defeating others depends on outward power. Restraining one's own impulses, biases, and desires requires inner strength, which is more lasting and fundamental.

Those who know contentment are rich.

Wealth depends not only on how much one has, but also on whether desire has limits. Contentment ends the sense of poverty created by endless pursuit.

Those who persist with determined effort have resolve.

The effort here is not about forcing others, but about urging oneself onward through difficulty. Purpose becomes real through steady action.

Those who do not lose their proper ground endure.

One's ground is the place and foundation appropriate to oneself. Remaining rooted in it, without being pulled off course by outside attractions, makes endurance possible.

Those who die yet are not forgotten have longevity.

The measure of life is not only the number of bodily years. Character, deeds, or thought that continue to shape later generations give a person another kind of lasting life.

Feedback