A Quote by Li Hongzhi

In the West, the spirit is separate from the body. In the East these are things that are very real and concrete. — © Li Hongzhi
In the West, the spirit is separate from the body. In the East these are things that are very real and concrete.

Quote Author

Li Hongzhi
Born: May 13, 1951
It is easier to compare concrete things in a fictional story with concrete things in real life than it is to compare abstractions with concrete things in real life (though both are honorable and necessary things to do).
Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east.
Real compassion is not emotional. Real compassion is based on the experience that all beings, which might appear separate, are actually a part of my own body, and I am a part of the body of the universe. We are not separate. So if one being hurts, I also hurt.
As the snake is separate from its slough, even so is the Spirit separate from the body.
You cannot separate passion from pathology any more than you can separate a person's spirit from his body.
The truth is that there wasn't much competition. There was the East and the West, but there was really no West before us. We came in so different, so real, that we were immediately heard.
With its declining population, with people moving out of the Far East, with an enormously powerful China in the east, I think the real destiny of Russia is to become closer to the West.
But in the West it is very easy to dissolve the ego. So whenever a Western seeker reaches an understanding that ego is the problem he can easily dissolve it, more easily than any Eastern seeker. This is the paradox - in the West ego is taught, in the East egolessness is taught. But in the West it is easy to dissolve the ego, in the East it is very difficult.
In a compass, we got north, south, east and west, right? But in between that, you got things like north-east - now that, to me, is where real life is. Everybody's life is not straight: it's often 30 degrees to your left, or in the hardest part of the reach.
Nature is like a canvas, a painting of countless options and possibilities. You don't really worship spirit, because you are also spirit, and spirits don't worship one another. What makes you different from spirit overall is that you are locked into temporality. You have a body, like a piece of cloth that is decayable. While you stay in it, it's hard for you to have the same abilities that spirit has without a body. It is also easy to make mistakes about what is real, and how to go about things effectively.
OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!
Oh East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.
Ameen Rihani, one of the earliest Arab Americans, devoted his life to bringing the East and the West together. We are not of the East or the West, he wrote. No boundaries exist in our breast: We are free.
Someone might say about a person, "Oh, they are a 'Westerner." But who are Westerners? Greek, Bulgarian, German, English, Scandinavian, Spanish, American, Latin. All different nations, all different people. Different individuals live in the West. There's no such thing as "West" just as there's no such things as "East." What is "East?" Turkey, Iran, China, India, Japan. They are all different. They are all unique.
I'm very proud of what I was able to do during the '90s, when baggy pants were in and East/West rap was relevant and all these different things.
The West can teach the East how to get a living, but the East must eventually be asked to show the West how to live.
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