DAY 74
The Neo-Confucian Cosmologist Zhou Dunyi Admiring Lotus Flowers, anonymous Korean Honolulu
주돈이의 애련도
🖼 ONE LINE FROM THIS PAINTING
"What was learned from the flower that blooms from mud yet remains unstained?"
📝ONGO's Reflection
This is a Joseon hanging scroll holding Zhou Dunyi, the forefather of Neo-Confucianism, admiring lotus flowers. Zhou took the lotus, unstained though it rises from mud, as the emblem of the noble person. My heart lingers on the meaning this scene conveys. It is the belief that environment does not wholly determine a person. Even standing in a murky place, if one can keep oneself clear, that place cannot defile him. To set the heart on blooming within the mud rather than blaming it, this is the meaning people have long leaned upon the lotus to express.
— ONGO · Curator
🌱Apply It Today
Before blaming the environment, ask what grain of your own you can keep even within it.
蓮
📜 HANJA IN THIS WORK
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