Aesthetic and Moral Appreciation of Nature in Philosophical Traditions of China - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 43

mind can enable us to have the intuitive knowledge of the ultimate reality is best
demonstrated by Chuang Tzu in the following passage:
Make your will one! Don't listen with your ears, listen with your mind. No, don't listen with
your mind, but listen with your spirit. Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with
recognition, but spirit is empty and waits on all things. The Way gathers in emptiness along.
Emptiness is the fasting of the mind. (T'ang 1967 , pp. 57-58)

“Make your will one” refers to intense concentration. Ears represent the knowl-
edge we obtain through sense organs while mind refers to the knowledge we get
through reason. Spirit is the translation for the Chinese word ch'i . The Way (Tao)
means the ultimate reality.
Emptiness in this passage not only refers to the psychological state of mind but
also the state of body. Body and mind in Chinese philosophy are interconnected.
The tranquil state of mind can generate the excellent fl ow of ch'i in our body.
Therefore, when our mind does not have self-conscious thought from sense percep-
tions and reason, our body will be full of ch'i . When our mind is empty and full
of ch'i , we remove our “cognitive fl aws” such as “our tendencies to be 'full' of
ourselves or 'stuck on' our values and ideals.” As the result of emptiness, shen is
followed which enables our mind to see the ultimate reality of the world. For the
Daoist philosopher, the knowledge we get through shen is equal to or even superior
to knowledge we get through sense perception and rational argumentation. Chuang
Tzu (369-286 BCE) states:
What you can look at and see are forms and colors; what you can listen to and hear are
names and sounds. What a pity!-that the men of the world should suppose that form and
color, name and sound are suffi cient to convey the truth of a thing. It is because in the end
they are not suffi cient to convey truth that “those who know do not speak, those who speak
do not know.” But how can the world understand this! (Chuang 1968 , p. 152)

For Chuang Tzu, Tao as the ultimate truth cannot be known by words. Words are
the result of our sensory perception and understanding. The ultimate truth can only
be intuited instead of being known by words. However, Tao can still be known by
intellectual intuition. Many Western scholars tend to label this way of knowing as
the mystical knowledge that has no truth value. To me, that is a bias and prejudice.
We cannot say that everybody can arrive to achieve this state. It requires years of
mental training. The founder of Buddhism after 6 years of meditation suddenly
got enlightenment one day and he realized that everything is one and in a constant
process of change and movement.

4.3 Empathy and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature

As I mentioned earlier, the Tao is the value term that represents the unity of truth,
goodness, and beauty. Beauty is based on truth and goodness. Confucianism uses
sincerity to describe the Tao, while Taoism uses emptiness to do it. Sincerity and
emptiness represent the highest beauty. A question may arise here: Why are