Just as in a great jungle all kinds of shrubs are found together; or as on a mountain you see trees and stones indiscriminately mixed,—so is what we call society.

Excerpt

Seasons have their beginnings and their ends. Generations change and change. Good and evil fortune alternate, bringing sorrow here, happiness there. He who obstinately views things from his own standpoint only, may be right in one case and wrong in another. Just as in a great jungle all kinds of shrubs are found together; or as on a mountain you see trees and stones indiscriminately mixed,—so is what we call society.

Source Chuang Tzu, chapter 25, §11 · 📖 Read the full passage

✨ To meditate on today

According to Chuang Tzu, the seasons, prosperity and adversity follow one another, but these variations do not change the great whole: all contrasts find their place in it without clashing, like the many kinds of grasses in a marsh or the trees and rocks on a mountain. Today, when you are with someone very different from you, look for the place they hold in this whole rather than for what sets you against them.

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