3 Between truth and falsity

Discoursing the ancient Chinese

alternative to Episteme and Doxa
Alfredo P. Co

It is often assumed by many that the success of democracy is the championing of

the public sphere, for it is there that democratic ideals have transvaluated from the
abiding principles of the Athenian polis to a massive glaring worldwide ideology
All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

that governs state principles and interventions (See Blackwell, 2003). Glaring evi-
dence of the key trait of democracy is free discourse. The democratic highlight of
“rule of the people”, rather than dishing it out as a mere system of government,
has immensely impacted facets of human social and intellectual life. In the most
remarkable history, we saw how Western civilization’s democratic spirit was driven
by the free spirit as the compelling force that identifies problems and the subse-
quent emergence of the public sphere based on discourse that was once mainly
enjoyed in the ancient polis. Free discourse gives humans a sense of empowerment
in the exercise of free speech. Alas, that freedom is never more felt than where we
are now, in the age of the Internet, a whole new virtual social world of connectiv-
ity in a veritable sense of boundless space and time of a virtual world.
Freedom of expression that was once reserved in restricted elegant French
salons of 18th century Paris or even other privileged intellectual discourses in
some watering holes of coffee shops, or even trans-Atlantic exchanges of letters
during the Siècle des Lumières1 has now been “democratized” exponentially, to
say the least, in the age of new media platforms. The unprecedented speed in
which the world is transforming today has reached new heights in that it is now
heralded as the age Post-Truth 2 raising the democratic ideals to an even unim-
aginable extreme.
The viral seduction to embrace digital democracy furnished society with a
new form of virtual public sphere where we now see the more dramatic stage of
public discourse unfurling (See Loader and Mercea, 2011, p. 10). It is an entirely
new medium of expanded democratic space for human discourse where the pub-
lic speaks with absolute freedom—freedom of expression that challenges what
we used to understand to contain Truth. Suddenly, the entirely new social world
cogitates a new emerging phenomenon of “post-truth”, or what once people of
the axial age have raised the perplexing question of the world as to whether it is
real or unreal, and where the tag question, What is Truth? re-emerge.
To address this nagging issue of our time, allow me to take you to a historical
journey to a discourse of the axial age to bring back philosophical ruminations
Copyright 2021. Routledge.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003104117-3

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AN: 2896494 ; Jnis (John) Tlivaldis Ozoli.; Education in an Age of Lies and Fake News : Regaining a Love of Truth
Account: s8238270.main.ebks
 42  Alfredo P. Co
that animated the ancient world, which to me echoes the chagrin of the age
of new media, post-truth, etc. And I raise a hypothetical question, what if the
world is not real? An inspiring passage from the Sacred Vedas reads;

Lead us from the unreal to the Real

From darkness to Light
From death to immortality3

Reality as illusion
The passage comes right from the forest sages and it distils the very philosophi-
cal preoccupation of the thinking of those times. It begins with the understand-
ing that the world is unreal, dark and bleak, temporary, and ephemeral. But the
sad state of affairs is buoyed by a human desire to rise to reality, to illumination,
and to eternity. The human project is evidently not easy, so intense is the magic
of the illusory world of Samsara4 because of the eternal presence of Maya.5
In the Bhagavad Gita,6 we find the most inspiring spiritual conversation
between Krishna7 and Arjuna.8 This tells the story of a quarrel between cousins
over the inheritance of the kingdom. On one side are five brothers—just and
honourable—belonging to the Kshatriya9; on the other side are their implacably
jealous and spiteful cousins, backed by their family and their friends. In spite of
all that, the brothers can do to end the quarrel peaceably and justly, and in spite
of their forbearance under the plots and persecution of their cousins, it comes
at last to a mighty battle between the Pandavas10 and the Kauravas11, each with
its allies and their armies.
When the two sides of the armies were face to face in all their splendour,
Arjuna, who was the bravest and greatest warrior of the Pandavas side, was
overcome by extreme pity and grief over the idea of having to kill his own friends
and kin. In this story, the god Vishnu took the form of an avatar Krishna who
became a friend of the Pandavas. In the battle, Krishna did not help his friends
but agreed to serve them as their charioteer. Arjuna tells Krishna that he could
not fight nor kill his friends and relatives. Krishna answers him, and the dia-
logue between them is one of the greatest spiritual conversations found in the
world literature. It is called the Bhagavad Gita that means the Song of God, and
it is considered as an important religious message as the Vedas. Krishna begins
by discussing death and immortality.

You grieve for those who need no grief,” Krishna tells Arjuna. “The wise
do not mourn either for the dead or for the living.  For there never was a
time when I did not exist, or you, nor any of these kings of men; nor shall
we ever cease to be…. These perishable bodies belong to the eternal lord
of the body, the imperishable and immortal spirit…….It is never born and
never dies and will never cease to be; it is not slain when the body is slain. 
As man puts off an old garment and takes a new one, so the spirit leaves its
mortal body and enters a new one. Weapons cannot wound it, nor can fire

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 Between truth and falsity 43
burn it; water does not wet it, nor the dry winds parch….This lord of the
body dwells immortal in the body of each one; therefore do not grieve!
(Bhagavad Gita, II, 11–30)

Krishna tells Arjuna to fight this battle for it is a just one. Arjuna belongs to
the Kshatriya; if he does not fight, he will fail both in duty and in honour. He
would not have been born in that caste if he were not destined to do the work
of a warrior and a ruler of men. But he must fight without hatred and without
any desire for victory or reward; he must dedicate all that he does to God and
remain firm and at peace within himself. Good and bad fortune, gain and loss,
victory and defeat, must be the same for him. Only so can he engage in this
terrible combat without sin.

He who abandons an action, saying, ‘It is painful, does not know the truth,’
says Krishna, “but he who does the required work, saying, ‘It ought to be
done’, giving up passion and hatred and all desires for reward, his work is
pure.  With this doubts cut away, he accepts his work, whether it is painful
or pleasant… The four castes have their different duties, ordained by their
natures…. Heroism, energy, firmness, prowess, refusal, to flee in battle, gen-
erosity, and noble leadership are the duties of the Ksatriya. A man reaches
perfection by devotion to his own duty when through his work he worships
God, from whom all things come and who is all in all…….He whose mind
is unattached, he has conquered self, who is free of desire, will reach that
perfect state which is beyond all action.”  “The Lord, O ARJUNA, dwells
in the heart of every creature.  Take refuge in Him with your whole heart
and you shall find peace, the eternal resting-place.”
(Bhagavad Gita, XVIII, 8.10, 41–49)

The debate oscillates between human predisposition to take the world as a prod-
uct of rational endeavour or as a mystical encounter; a cogitation that predates
the Greek–Western epistemic claim to reality.
For the Indian mind, the world is an illusion.12 As our naked eye merely see
illusions conjured by the life of Samsara. “Maya is the cosmic illusion which
arises from human self’s consciousness[.]” (Freihaut, 2015). The magic caused
by Maya is the veil that shrouds our understanding that there is only one true
reality, and that is Brahman. One must be made conscious of evanescent reality,
the limits of causality, of time and space continuum, of the laws of nature. “We
are Brahman. Our true Self, the Atman, is one with Brahman” (Vedanta Society
of Southern California, 2016). Maya also presents an internal struggle of reality.
The problem between one and many is irreducible to an outright rejection of
the other extreme. Sticking to the oneness of reality overlooks the variances of
the multiple, while the many disregards the singularity (See Freihaut, 2015).
Moreover, Maya is the experience of finitude especially in the face of utmost
infinity (Blackaller, 1938, p. 8). Human cognition falls short from attaining true
insight into the divine reality within.

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 44  Alfredo P. Co
We leave this Eastern attitude to the understanding of the world and take you
to the Greek philosophical plight that captivated the intellectual psyche of the
whole history of Western philosophy and Western civilization that led to its pro-
pensity to search for what now constitutes their attitude towards an intellectual
appreciation of knowledge.

From Doxa to Episteme or the flight to objectivity

In The Republic, Plato undertook the grand project in search of the Transcendence
of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful that gained a permanent stronghold in
their philosophical enterprise. The entire endeavour of Plato points to the tran-
scendentals. So intense was this passion that he declared the distinction of the
two-world idea. We follow this vision for it is here that we come closest to Plato’s
flight to objectivity, and objectivity in which man reaches the main philosophical
discourses that impassioned Plato—What is the True? What is Good? and What
is the Beautiful?13

The true
Our encounter of Plato’s flight to objectivity takes us to his Analogy of the Line
that divides understanding into two groups, and here we cite,

Then, take a line cut in two unequal segments, one for the class that is seen,
the other for the class that is intellected—and go on and cut each segment
in the same ratio. Now, in terms of relative clarity and obscurity, you’ll have
one segment in the visible part for images. I mean by images first shadows,
then appearances produced in water and in all close-grained, smooth, bright
things, and everything of the sort, if you understand.
I do understand.
Then in the other segment put that of which this first is the likeness—
the animals around us, and everything that grows, and the whole class of
artifacts.
(Plato, 1968, VI)

Dividing the line does not diminish the capacities of the line, for we understand
from geometry that line is infinite while segments are limited and finite. Plato’s
choice for the discourse on knowledge on a line rather than just a segment points
to infinity of the line which represents the infinity of knowledge that stretches
on. This infinite line of knowledge that extends to physical but also to intel-
lectual things is the capacity of the transcendental idea of truth to emulate in
discourse; he divides the line for one to understand the continuity of knowledge.
Just as social ontology is divided into a natural hierarchy of rulers and ruled,
so too are the distinction between an intellectual class of knowledge and the vis-
ible. The permanent and the unchanging from the transitory and temporary, of
this, Plato attributes to the intellectual disposition to abstract from the physical

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 Between truth and falsity 45
world to that of judgement only possible to the intelligent human being of the
ruler class of men14 and philosopher-kings are cognizant of those which do not
change, of what is eternal, of what is naturally good, whereas the rest of society
is ruled by feverish impulses and physical magnificence. The intellectual virtue
strikes as the moral virtue of judgement while the proclivity of the masses is for
the physical.15
For Plato, episteme (knowledge) is made possible because of the dialec-
tic character of reason. The ability to hold on to abstract concepts and make
use of them in discourse—where you find the development character of the
emergence of truth or what we will now refer to as a flight to objectivity in
a gradation from physical to abstract (from imagination to intellection in the
form of ­rationalization)—constitutes what is referred to now as episteme. This,
then, becomes the basis of all epistemological, rational psychological, and even
anthropological studies of man. We come to comprehend more, that objectifi-
cation of truth takes the form of standardization of knowledge and perspective,
stretched between the polar opposite of Doxa and Episteme.
Objectivity of human understanding in episteme is evidently made possible, by
the rigor of another branch, or method of knowledge acquisition, by the use of
Logic and Metaphysics. It is in both the instrument of systematic understanding
of reality, that the Greeks endeavoured into the use of intellectual categories
arising from the necessity of acquiring an objective understanding of the world,
neatly classified in categories of the mind in terms of—quantity, quality, time,
space, etc.
These whole “intellectual”, albeit artificial bracketing constitutes what is now
considered as “Objective Truth” in the world—the arrival at episteme now held
dear by human understanding of an objective world, of objective Truth, and the
opposite as untrue, and sometimes viewed as false or even lies.

The good
Plato guides us to another level of human disposition after justifying the validity
of acquiring the human capability of rising to epistemic truth, now the plight to
the understanding or the identification with “the Good”. We take another anal-
ogy to highlight the idea of Plato through the Allegory of the Sun. Here we cite;

Which of the gods in heaven can you point to as the lord responsible for this,
whose light makes our sight see in the finest way and the seen things seen?
The very one you and the others would also point to,” he said. “For it’s
plain your question refers to the sun.
[…]
Well, then,” I said, “say that the sun is the offspring of the good I mean—
an offspring the good begot in a proportion with itself: as the good is in the
intelligible region with respect to intelligence and what is intellected, so the
sun is in the visible region with respect to sight and what is seen.
(Plato, VI 508 a–c, 188)

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 46  Alfredo P. Co
This Allegory provides us the glaring insight into the knowledge of the Good
guided by what constitutes the process of “seeing”, for the faculty of sight needs
the presence of illumination of the sun. The faculty of sight alone does not make
one see, it requires the light bouncing off objects passing through the cornea,
as our present science confirms the analogy (See National Eye Institute, n.d.;
American Optometric Association, 2019). To see, requires the faculty of sight
but more so the presence of light. Plato capitalized on the image by expounding
on the development of the notion of the “good” as the guiding principle where
the sun guides the physical eyes to see, so too does the good guides the mind’s
eyes to see the True.
Good, thus, guides the intellect in realizing the True making the human
moral disposition as the director of the trajectory for the understanding of the
True, but in fact, the two, in a very real sense, are easily convertible. The True
requires the good, and the good leads to the True. This, therefore, becomes the
basis of all ethical inquiries. The objectification of goodness takes the form of an
objective standard that guides and enlightens actions.
Plato stretches this basic idea and expounds on the development of the good
as a guiding idea; as the sun guides the physical eye to see, so too does the good
guide the mind’s eye to see. Plato’s pedagogical guides show that the process of
illumination guides the individual in order to see, the mind’s ability to transcend
the nuisances of the ephemeral but the understanding the truth as something
good. The sun provides the light for what the body needs while the good pro-
vides the guiding principle for the mind’s cognitive function, for rationality, for
objectivity.

The beautiful
With True and Good in tow, what comes next is the agenda for the rise to the
Beautiful. How does one who possess the good and true disposition rise to the
level of the beautiful? This flight to objectivity brings us back to the Allegory of
the Cave again and we quote;

See human beings as though they were in an underground cavelike dwelling

with its entrance, a long one, open to the light across the whole width of the
cave. They are in it from childhood with their legs and necks in bonds so
that they are fixed, seeing only in front of them, unable because of the bond
to turn their heads all the way around. Their light is from a fire burning far
above and behind them. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a road
above, along which see a wall, built like the partitions puppet-handlers set in
front of the human beings and over which they show the puppets.
(Plato, VII 514b–516b, 193–195)

What emerges in the beautiful allegory takes one to an ontologization of the

human experience of thought, for that good that leads to light also leads to the
level of aesthetical taking the three in sublime fusion as one ascent to the mouth

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 Between truth and falsity 47
of the cave. For, in reality, the True is also the Good and the Beautiful. As a ped-
agogical tool, this is the aesthetic training of individuals. “It is a story about the
human journey from darkness to light, from sleeping to waking, from ignorance
to knowledge” (Messerly, 2014).
This heraldic turn constructed a system. “What is important is that the theory
of meaning has been decisively brought on the scene” (MacIntyre, 1998, p. 29).
With the three distinct paths, one ultimately realizes this flight to objectivity
that metaphysically secures Western philosophy. It has provided the foundation
for thinking with certainty and conviction: instead of focusing on the dynamic
element of this flight, the epiphenomenon of a single standard perspective in
place of truth has gained more importance throughout the years; instead of an
ongoing realization of goodness, the standard to moral action has become a
reified notion of collectivity; instead of focusing on the rigorous ascent to truth
and goodness, the aestheticization of experience has begotten the sensuous
reduction of ideas to objective realities. Through the paths of Plato to objectiv-
ity, Western philosophy has shut other paths for thinking. Plato has closed the
system and it is in this light that Alfred North Whitehead openly declares that
the “safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is
that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” (Whitehead, 1979, p. 39). From
thereon, objectification of human understanding is raised to the level of what
constitutes as TRUE, and that what falls short of it is FALSE, or considered a
LIE, and in our contemporary age of the New Media, False News.
But, going back to where we started, what if the world is unreal? or for some
other traditions, like the Chinese mind, What if there is no such thing as True or
False? If Doxa, simple human opinion regarding the world surrounding him is
given the space on how man has to proceed to understand the world without
being obsessed with the rigorous passion for the objectification of the world of
phenomena?

The Chinese mind

Crossing over to the Sinitic culture, one needs to be reminded of the neces-
sarily distinctive character of the Chinese language, which plays a central role
in thought processing. One acquires greater insight if a little pain is taken to
understand the culture’s experience of the world.16 Understanding what they
experienced as a people provides an insight to their general indifference to logical
problems of the Western lexicon, which reflects in their own language. For exam-
ple, in Indo-European languages word inflection forces one to think in mental
categories such as space-time, quality, quantity, action, past, present, future, sin-
gular, plural, the middles, and inconsistencies. How these can be transliterated
in the Chinese language pose serious difficulty. Chinese words are uninflected
as their functions are marked only by particles and word order presenting this
fluid appropriation of reality through their language prism (See Co, 2009, p. 15).
Thus, in Chinese classical philosophy, the idea of truth and falsity never
emerged. Western True–False is untranslatable to the Chinese. The Chinese did

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 48  Alfredo P. Co
reject false propositions and adopt true ones, but they never used the “concept
of truth” in philosophizing unlike the Western intellectual development. Rather,
what the Chinese used is si fei or khe-i or bo khe-i, which may be crudely translated
as “true” or “false”. To illustrate, when the Chinese asks “Have you eaten?”, the
answer is “eaten” or “not eaten”, not “yes” or “no”. Understanding and trans-
lating Chinese thought, therefore, does not depend solely on grammar but on
the broader context of social practices. Most of all, it is not formulated akin to
the copulative structure of Western logical statements, and truth is discoursed in
terms of si-fei “yes–no”, or khe-i–bo khe-i “agree–not agree” (See Co, 2009, p. 16).
With this mindset, the classical Chinese philosophers approached knowledge
and wisdom differently: They were concerned with understanding the world,
rather than analyzing it; of learning to live life rather than challenging it; of
gliding with nature rather than conquering it. In short, the Chinese sages were
more interested in the problem and the importance of living meaningfully in
this world.17

Confucian knowledge—Wisdom and ethical life

Learning ethical life, for example in The Analects of Kong Zi, does not proceed
from any logical or epistemic arguments, but is conveyed through aphoristic
sayings that readily distil the very essence of what constitutes an ethically good
life. The aphorisms tend to be persuasive, always laden with the power to trans-
form rather than just to inform human. In this sense, ethical–social and political
teachings always come with the intention of making one move to moral action
or to transform man to become an ethically conscious individual. Knowledge
in this sense is not based on simple information, which is the basic intention of
Western teaching, but relies on its potency to transform the interlocutor.
Chinese moral thinkers are grounded in a different moral framework. The
emphasis on Ren 仁, Yi 義, Li 禮, or Xin 信 (Benevolence, Righteousness,
Propriety, and Trustworthiness) (See Co, 2009, pp. 110–120) and the tendency
to extend moral responsibility to everyone who might have had an effect in
forming one’s character (parents, relatives, friends, and even teachers)18 reflect
their difference from the Western groundwork. In stating their moral ideals
through hyperbolic and metaphoric expressions, Chinese philosophers highlight
participation with the cosmos in determining outcomes.
What is clear is that the Chinese place great importance on propriety of utter-
ances, because along with speech is an expected action qua behavioural con-
sequence. “Respectfulness without Li becomes laborious bustle; carefulness
without Li becomes timidity boldness without Li becomes insubordination;
straight-forwardness without Li becomes rudeness” (Kong Zi, 8.2). For the
Chinese true, wisdom is “knowing to” and not “knowing that”: the former is
proper to the moral person mirroring the paradigm of a perfected moral man
of Ren.19
Chinese thought considers wisdom through the elimination of non-essentials;
in reducing problems of philosophy to just a few—the enjoyment of life (such

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 Between truth and falsity 49
as harmony in the family), of living, and of nature, and the relation of man to
civility and culture. “When I want true humanity, Lo, there it is, right by me”
(Kong Zi, 7.29). With this realism and with genuine distrust for rigid logic
and rhetoric, philosophy for the Chinese becomes a matter of a direct and very
intimate feeling of the rhythm of life. The Zheng Ming (Rectification of Names)
presents this practical purview: “Let a ruler be a ruler; a minister, minister; a
father, father; and a son, son” (Kong Zi, 12.11). The return to reasonableness
in thinking is marked by anthropocentrism. The Chinese mind belabours itself
with the problem of man’s place in society, the meaning of life, the essence of
a good life, the problem of human relations—basically, the problems of society
and ethics. “To govern means to rectify. If you lead the people in rectitude, who
will dare not to be rectified?” (Kong Zi, 12.17). Instead of asking and answer-
ing external realities, the cause of the universe and the destiny of the world, the
Chinese perspective questions and resolves problems of life and existence, how
a man can live life meaningfully through moral rectitude and deep service to
propriety. It is a civilization that attempts to provide a solution to how a person
can live a good life, not through a universal or scientific method, but via moral
and social sensitivity. The consciousness of the human-other is the very moral
founding-block of Chinese moral philosophy. Man, rather than the cosmos, is
the centre of philosophizing. The Golden Rule of Kong Zi precisely explains the
Chinese anthropocentric moral philosophy:

Do not use what you dislike in your superiors in the employment of your
inferiors. Do not use what you dislike in your inferior in the service of your
superiors. Do not use what you dislike in those who are before you to prove
to those who are behind you. Do not use what you dislike at the right to
display towards the left. Do not use what you dislike at the left to display
towards the right.20

In this regard, philosophizing does not flow from an epistemological or log-

ical necessity but from a socio-ethical understanding of reality. The Chinese
approach to reality via ethics, than epistemology, is in contradistinction to
Western philosophy’s logical structuring. Life’s moral agenda weighs more than
any logico-epistemic agenda.
This take on wisdom stands in contrast to the Chinese purview, emphasizing
true wisdom as “knowing-to” and not just “knowing-that”, the former as the
transformative power of ethical teaching than the latter which is mere inform-
ative understanding. The Chinese sage Kong Zi once declared: “‘Knowledge
(Truth)’ may not depart from human nature; if what is regarded as truth departs
from human nature, it may not be regarded as knowledge (truth)” (Kong Zi,
1938, p. 131). This serves as a literal reminder for people to depart from formal
and logical reasoning and to stick to common sense so that in the absence of
epistemic or semantic truth, the practical and pragmatic aspects suffice. Chinese
ethical teaching is characterized by the pragmatic focus on the idea’s ability to
transform and not just to inform the person.

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 50  Alfredo P. Co
Daoism, the question of being, and the possibility of becoming
The history of the notion of identity or of “being” is a creation of many factors
grounded on the propensity of the Western linear thinking to understand real-
ity with certitude. This may, in part, come with language syntax that requires
the use of the copulative verb “to be” expressed through “is” or “is-ness” that
demonstrates “being” or “existence”. This makes possible the building of a
logical method to reach judgement via affirmation and the opposite negation.
Understanding in oppositional pairs of “is” and “is not”, “being” and “non-­
being”, and “existence” and “non-existence” becomes the founding block of
logico-epistemic and metaphysical methods of grasping reality. All systematic/
system thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Descartes, and even
Hegel built their thought along this rigid method with a focus of arriving at
epistemic certitude. The end game is the arrival of what is called “truth” and
this alleged “truth” is what we conveniently identify as “being”, “reality”, or
“existence”, and with the same arrogation, episteme. In Aristotelian–Thomistic
thinking, for instance, we refer back to the three laws of thought: the principles
of contradiction, of excluded middle, and of identity. A thing cannot be and not
be at the same time; between these two states cannot exist a middle term; and
that a thing is identical to itself and its parts. With these laws, being developed
is within confinement of is and is not.
But how do we arrive at the notion of “identity” or “being”? Suppose we
appropriate reality in a diagram through a line. We say, that from the horizontal
line as a spectre of reality, we identify points A, C, F, or K as distinct beings or
things that exist. But to be able to identify in the first place requires an artificial
suspension of time–space to make sense of or to “grasp” these which we identify
as “being”. Thus, we say A is distinct from C, F, or K. But all these identifica-
tions are only made possible through suspension of the time–space continuum.
This suspension of the continuum does nothing to us but forces us to immedi-
ately perceive reality only through this artificial paradigm which we bolster in
different terms such as knowledge, understanding, certitude, episteme—or even

Figure 3.1  Ice-water critical threshold.

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 Between truth and falsity 51
the whole fuss on “being”. There is however another perspective to grasping
the world through a non-linear, transitional phenomenon. To illustrate, we can
see the reality of the transformation of water into ice; what is water is not ice
and what is ice is not water—principle of linear identity/non-identity. Suppose
though we look at water in transformation to ice, it eventually arrives at a certain
point I call the “critical threshold” when it is neither water nor ice. It assumes
a different understanding as being neither exactly water nor ice yet at the same
time it in essence both water and ice. To make sense of this using natural phys-
ico-biological disposition, we are unable to identify it in a singular context but
resort to calling it as “water-ice” or “ice-water”. We may not be able to recognize
or dogmatize such “oxymoronic” realities but we can neither deny its presence,
the moment of traversing that “critical threshold”. At that moment it is indeed
always in the process of becoming and never merely in a state of being. With this
in mind, we are therefore to say that the whole world is in an eternal process—
and this gives a new realm of grasping reality as a whole. We ought to reconsider
those which we treasure dear—phenomena, certitude, episteme—that could
not have emerged simply out of this context. It is to this point that the Daoist
Zhuang Zi gave us a poignant hint; “The sky is blue. Is it really so? Or does it
look blue because it stretches off into infinity? When Peng looks down from
above, it will also seem blue” (ZhuangZi, 1974, p. 5). Whereas, Western logic
has dogmatically put the two in contradistinction and antithetical to each other,
Daoism finds none whatsoever. It sees both is and is not and neither is nor is not.
It is here that the object in the plight of its natural flow in existence is both is and
is not and neither is nor is not.
Daoism sheds lights to reality through the process of becoming. Western
logic limited the notion of truth to the polar opposites of is and is not and has
perpetuated this perspective through the principles of thought. The argument
against this that being is ontology while becoming is cosmology is but another
rendition of the arbitrary division of the accustomed mindset. A greater reflec-
tion on this matter results not in the constancy of being but the dynamicity of
becoming, or to use the Western jargon albeit weakly, an ontology of becom-
ing. It is the transgressions of apparent contradictions. “When there is no more
separation between ‘this’ and ‘that,’ it is called the still-point of Dao. At the
still-point in the center of the circle, one can see the infinite in all things.
Right is infinite; wrong is also infinite” (Zhuang Zi, 1974, p. 29). It is precisely
at that moment of transgressing the critical threshold of rational thought that
one understands the process of becoming. It is the still-point of rationality:
“Look, it cannot be seen—it is beyond form. Listen, it cannot be heard—it is
beyond sound. Grasp, it cannot be held—it is intangible. […]” (Lao Zi, 1972,
p. 14). It is the critical threshold of rational thought for transgression is tanta-
mount, in Western logic, as outmost irrationality. “When there is separation,
there is coming together. When there is coming together, there is dissolution.
All things may become one, whatever their state of being” (Zhuang Zi, 1974,
p.  30). It is paradoxically at the separation of states that these two extremes
come together.

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 52  Alfredo P. Co
This natural flow to reality was a recognized theme in Daoist discourses. To
engage in this discussion, one distances from language, syntax, or narration
through the same epistemic approach as the West. Instead of arbitrary logical
categories, Daoist discourse proceeds with what we conveniently call “paradox-
ical expressions” to divert us from the habituated mental flow. An excursion
to some of the terms Dao, De, Wei-Wu-Wei, Si Ran, or Po brings you to an
entirely new satellite world that can be misconstrued as “self-contradictory”,
“illogical”, or “untrue”—but something that I would often refer to in my many
previous lectures as “Genius” or that the entire spectre of sensing reality as that
of “Genius of the Absurd”.

A good walker leaves no tracks;

A good speaker makes no slips;
A good reckoner needs no tally.

A good door needs no lock,

Yet no one can open it.
Good binding requires no knots,
Yet no one can loosen it.
(Lao Zi, 1972, p. 27)

These words from the Dao De Jing exhibit the paradoxical nature of truth
and falsity that can be predicated to moral judgement. “As I see it, the rules of
goodness and wisdom and the paths of right and wrong are inextricably min-
gled and confused. How can I tell which is which?” (Zhuang Zi, 1974, p. 40).
Epistemological and ethical judgements for the West—regarding questions of
what being is—necessitate the object’s momentary suspension in both space, a
point in an infinite line, and time, from its natural oscillation between states.
The dynamicity of existence is paused in order to speculate—and from this we
have created dogmas and laws of nature. Thus, we talk of a thing qua “being”. It
is being; it is present; it is suspended. It is a glimpse of existence but not existence
in its entirety.
From the juxtaposition, one discerns how Daoists tend to be intuitive. Their
approach starts with the things unfolding before their eyes; then, they allow
their mind to flow along with their immediate and unspoiled impressions of
reality; streams of consciousness flow right from their consciousness, having no
time for artificial censure or imposition of reason’s principles. What eventually
matters is what I now see and what my immediate impressions of them are, not
in “either-or” but through “both-and”. This reconciling tendency may deprive
them of discovering absolutes in things, but it affords them to see both sides of
reality with the absence of the notion of contradiction.
This lack of the notion of a single interpretation makes them take the notion
of evil lightly, as they identify no absolute goodness and evilness in things. There
is always something good in evil in as much as it is always evil in good things.

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 Between truth and falsity 53
This attitude also affords their will to rest comfortably. They usually acknowl-
edge the individual significance—not only of every human but also of each kind
of philosophy as a thought of possessing some degree of “truth” (or falsity) or
better, an acceptability and non-acceptability in it. This tolerant leniency, or
should I call it creativity, enables them to develop a refreshing mental posture
that the attainment of truth is not a monopoly of one but a possibility for all.
Such an attitude can only exist in a mind that brushes logic aside to creatively
embrace all sorts of thought through the immediate impression of experiences.

Chan and opening up to the void (a leap of direct understanding)

Daoism and Confucianism provided a different intellectual impetus when it
encountered the Buddhist philosophy of sunyata or void. These traditions even-
tually came to be known as Chan—a deep meditation of the phenomenon of
existence and an inward turn into deep consciousness. It is an awareness of the
gap between the inmost thoughts of enlightened consciousness and the con-
stricting words employed to express them. An enlightened man abides within a
spiritual ontology and pellucid meta-ethics, and his words can but best provide
merely indicators for the Reality of reality, speaking only in terms of hints, sug-
gestions, or guesses to objects.
Psychologically speaking, the human mind can assimilate universal conscious-
ness by rising to the level of reality itself, which creates a form of direct contact
between the intuiting mind and the object-to-be-known. This is best articulated
however in silence. Chan focuses on the void between the knower and known
and aims to develop wisdom in this emptiness through meditation. The medita-
tive practice cultivates in man a steady mind and heart prompting consciousness
to release itself from arbitrary contradictions—the mind expands and unleashes
a flash of enlightenment. Chan holds that the universe must be realized directly
without relying on the rational–analytic method. The use of unconventional
means to evoke in the disciple the sudden wordless experience of reality is the
viable alternative. This meditative approach to experience reality is a technique
of seeing within and discovering one’s own being released from the bondage of
the artificial ego.
In this sense, what man has to do is to aim for a direct grasp of reality forego-
ing the intermediary artificial structures between the aspirant and the object of
truth, letting go of the rigid logico-epistemic framework, and embrace the aes-
thetic impressions of reality as a whole. At this moment of sudden illumination,
of transgressing the critical threshold, no word is really capable of capturing the
true essence of this encounter. For the profundity of one’s experience of reality
pulverizes all human intellectual and logical categories. There is no room for
language games; and one may say that this is irrational, but the irrationality
is not that it defies reason but that it finds reason constricting, artificial, and
immensely inadequate. The reason is irrational as it is simply a method of disci-
plining the mind, a convenient signpost to reach “truth” instantaneously but not

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 54  Alfredo P. Co
truth itself. In the same spirit, Wittgenstein (2001) ends his Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus with the words:

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who

understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has
used them—as steps—to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak,
throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these
propositions, and then he will see the world aright.
What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
(p. 89)

Reason must let go of its logico-epistemic parameters as it realizes the aes-

thetic plane of reality. This “creative understanding”, we can say, is when see-
ing becomes an instant act when reason immediately takes in the whole truth,
beyond the dualism of its epistemic ladder. This take of looking at reality assumes
a fresher, deeper, and more profound understanding of truth. In Chinese, it is
called Kai-wu “opening void” or better still “opening up to the void”. The
Japanese Zen practitioner calls it Satori.
Kai wu is thus direct looking into the nature of reality bypassing the analyti-
cal phase of intellection. It is opening up to the “irrational”, to the creative. It is
grasping the moment when knower and known become one, as it flees and not
after it is gone, in becoming and not in “being”. While it is in flight, there is not
the time to recall a memory or to raise logical blocks. The idea is to Grasp the
truth! Grasp it now! It is the embrace of Daoism’s “nothingness”.21
It is evident that the Chinese intellectual attitude prefers to live close to life:
a life in which the human instincts and emotions are given the freedom to go
beyond its bifurcation, with an ironic combination of devotion to the flesh and
the worldly, at times with arrogance of spirit, of paradoxical wisdom and even
with foolish gaiety, of high sophistication, and even childish naiveté. Lin Yutang
observes that this philosophy is typically characterized by a gift for seeing life
whole in art, a conscious return to simplicity in philosophy, and the sublimity
of reasonableness.
But if there is an eloquent way of illustrating a mode of articulating the
Chinese understanding of reality, one may find it in their aesthetic expression of
calligraphy, which is considered one of the Six Arts of a Confucian Scholar. In
one such poetry, “Cha Chan Wu Dao” is written in character on the left side, a
painter executes it in a form of calligraphic painting. In the painting on the right
side, the characters assume an impressionistic aesthetic art form:
The poetry on the left Cha Chan Wu Dao (literally Tea-Meditation-
Enlightenment-Dao) or Meditation on the Tea gets one Enlightened of the Dao.
The painting on the right is an artistic rendition, an aestheticized execution via
calligraphy of the poem.22
For the phenomenal world comes to him in the form of abstract impression
and his aesthetic disposition, captures the phenomenon intuitively. And in the
intuition of the soul, any artistic impression you have of the world is valid, and

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 Between truth and falsity 55

Figure 3.2  Li Zhe Chinese characters.

Artist: Li Zhe. Alfredo Co Private Collection.

when done with mastery of execution, becomes an art form where the reality
also becomes good and beautiful. We now see that between Doxa and Episteme,
there is a wide range by which the Chinese mind understands the phenomenal
world. Call it an impression, call it Kai-wu, call it opening to the void, or call it
Satori. Nothing is absolutely certain, it is just neither doxa nor episteme.

Conclusion
Plato’s flight to the transcendental corresponds to three value-spheres of human
affirmations. This corresponds to three different fields of inquiry that modernity
tried to liberate: the ideals of epistemology as science’s truth; ideals of aesthetics
as art’s beautiful; and ideals of ethics as religion’s good. The Indian cogita-
tions in the Bhagavad Gita and the Greek Dialogues of Plato provided us their
insights to understanding reality. It is that the whole is identical to its parts, and
understanding the parts corresponds to understanding the whole. This forms a
whole hermeneutic circle that preoccupied the history of philosophical conver-
sations. These three value-spheres were discoursed to a state of undifferentiated
fusion in the ends, identifying the good with the beautiful and the true.
Their fusion in Platonic philosophy to modernity’s liberation defines the
beautiful story—or horrible tragedy—that the present human condition is.

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 56  Alfredo P. Co
Differentiation has thus brought us to understand the world as fragmented,
broken, and flattened. Art became a free expression independent from the true
and the good; good as the freedom to pursue what delights one… And what
happens to the question of Truth? It heralded postmodernity where the many
pathologies of dissociation are pervasive, including the emergence of cultural
constructivism, scientism, relativism, systematic reductionism, aesthetic infan-
tilization, epistemic collapse, and even post-truth politics that now preoccupies
philosophical debates.
The swift technological advancement of new media and artificial intelligence
that plies the phenomenal and artificial parallel world of the Internet has now
made everything more complex and increasingly incomprehensible. From a dis-
tance, we begin to be agitated and argue once again the understanding of the
reality before us. Questions of Truth, Lie, False News, and Moral Education
unsettle us all to the core of our human condition.

But, what again, if the world before us

is indeed illusory and unreal?
This question presses against us to remind us to challenge our epistemic, moral,
and even aesthetic assumption. We then may perhaps see what the ancient
Chinese sages were telling us all along: That we cannot understand the world
in its absolute form through a rigid epistemology. For a world in perpetual
change can only best be suggested but never captured in its whole. The most
one is able to do is to get the immediate impression of the momentary flash of
understanding—­just like the impression of the world—as evident in a Chinese
painting. Neither doxa nor episteme—it is just a simple impression of the world,
temporary, ephemeral but always aesthetical and therefore we say good.
It is at this point that the Chinese glosses over the issue of either dwelling in
the realm of simple opinion and cultured episteme. Between the crude opinion
and mathematical-epistemic certitude is a whole prism of ways to understand the
world—calling it “either-or”, “both and”, or “neither nor”—that moment of the
human instantaneous grasp of thing provides momentary impressions that man
can always hold dear or irrelevant. There is no need to judge if it is truth or lie, or
if even it is “False News”—whatever it may be, he can allow them to either inspire
or un-inspire him. It is a phenomenon impressing itself on him, on every one of us.
Thus, suddenly we become speechless, no word surfaces; language becomes
inutile—everything else should just be taken as impressions. Moral education
assumes a new form of a healthy attitude towards the world, phenomenal or
virtual. We teach humanity to exert effort to understand it and we grasp reality
in its momentary truth, circumstantial relevance, relative goodness, and relative
truth. Not that there is no absolute True, Good, and Beautiful, but that even if
there were, the human being for all his limitation can only grasp reality piece-
meal. He asserts his own perspective that momentary suspension in space and
time and judge it—not as if it is true, good, and beautiful in totality, but as an
ephemeral image. Man must, therefore, continue to seek more, and philosophize

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 Between truth and falsity 57
more. Suddenly, we awaken anew, of the fact that despite all human apprehen-
sion of both real and virtual world, human beings continue to ask again and
again. And because we continue to question, we continue to breathe life to
philosophy. Vive la difference! Vive la philosophie!

Notes
1 The “Republic of Letters”, as commonly dubbed, is explicated further in sev-
eral other writings. Some insightful positions may be found in Lilti, 2005,
pp. 415–445; Ultee, 1987, pp. 95–112; Burke, 2012, pp. 395–407).
2 Post-truth won as Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 and is defined as
“relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential
in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”. (Oxford
Living Dictionaries, “Word of the Year 2016 is...”; available from https://en.­
oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016), as cited in
Mann, 2018.
3 The Pavamana Mantra is the prayer of the admittance of the sense of limitedness
and a desire for aid in transcendence (Devi, 2019). It is found in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka
Upaniṣad I.iii.28.
4 For the Indians, Kalpa (time) is eternal. This gives the opportunity to traverse a
world of Samsara, a life of transmigration in a series of birth-life-death-rebirth
until finally reaching the divine. As the spirit remains attached to this world and
aims as self-gain, it will continue to enter into as many bodies and will pass through
as many births and deaths. Samsara is thus a perpetual movement through a puri-
fication process in difference states of existence.
5 Maya is understood as a veil that covers existence.
6 The Bhagavad Gita literally means “The song of the Lord” and is considered an
important piece of literature, philosophy, and life-religion for the Hindus, that
narrates the battle between the Pandavas and Kauravas.
7 Krishna is the eight incarnation of Lord Vishnu and one of the popular characters
in Hindu mythology. He is described as the Supreme Creator and is able to use
proficient weapons and skills. The “the story of Krishna contains a double con-
cealment—Krishna is both a god disguised as a mortal and a prince disguised as
a commoner. Accordingly, the myths contain many metaphors of disguise, such
as a spark within a pile of ashes or a mighty sword in its scabbard, and these hint
at Krishna’s dual purpose as the punisher of human deeds but also as a bringer of
enlightenment” (Cartwright 2015).
8 Arjuna is one of the heroes of the Mahabharata, born third of the five Pandava
brothers. Arjuna adventures with Krishna, such as in the main narrative, and their
relationship develop into a peer-relationship rather than a mortal-immortal one
(See Violatti, 2013).
9 The Kshatriya is one of the four castes that compose the social structure of the
Indian life-world. The Chatruvarnas (lit. four cases or castes) is a well-ordered and
highly stratified system in which the classes of people are defined by some occupa-
tional activity of labour and social function. There are four castes, namely the Brah-
min (Priestly caste), Kshatriya (Warrior caste), Vaishya (Entrepreneurial caste), and
Shudra (Service caste). The Kshatriya class belongs to the noble caste of rulers,
administrators, warriors, and landowners. This caste is thought to have cosmically
emerged from the hands of Brahman and was commanded to physically maintain
and protect society. A Kshatriya is characterized by heroism, power, determination,
resourcefulness, courage in battle, generosity, and inspiring leadership (See “The
Laws of Manu” I:89 and Bhagavad Gita XVIII, 49).

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 58  Alfredo P. Co
10 The Pandavas are the five sons of Pandu, King of Hastinapur, namely Yudhistira,
Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, and Sahadeva. The first three were mothered by Kunti,
while the last two by Madri. While hunting in his kingdom, Pandu hit a copulating
couple who were disguised as deer. Rishi Kidamba, the male deer, casted a curse on
Pandu to die as soon as he approaches intimacy with a woman. He then renounced
his kingdom and lived in the forest as an ascetic, and gave his throne to his brother
Dhritarashtra. He was able to have children because Kunti received a boon in
her youth and, through the use of mantras and invocations, she bore Yudhistira,
Bhima, and Arjuna. She aided Madri and the latter eventually bore Nakula and
Sahadeva (See Joshi, 2016b).
11 The Kauravas refer to the 100 sons of Dhritarashtra and Gandhari. Since Pandu
could not continue to remain the king of Hastinapur due to a curse, Dhritarash-
tra, his cousin brother received the throne. Whereas the Pandavas were good-­
natured, the Kauravas “were notorious for nurturing a desire to kill the Pandavas”
(See Joshi, 2016a).
12 See Śvetāśvatara Upanishad 4. 9–10, as quoted in Hume (1921, p. 43).
13 What is essential for now is my invitation to look into the tenants of the Repub-
lic, the dramatization, and dynamicity of the discourses, and see the discourses
between the personae Plato uses. Having made the crossing from Athens to the
Piraeus, Socrates, and Glaucon, were invited by Polemarchus, son of Cephalus, to
come to their house and persuasion gave way to force to bring them to their com-
pany. Socrates and Glaucon meet with Polemarchus and others (See Plato, 1968,
pp. 3–4). From this assembly, the whole Republic is concerned with an inquiry to
justice on which the interlocutors discourse (See MacIntyre, 1998, p.  23). Early
on in the Republic, this concept of justice is the kernel of the discussion that bears
significant implications to a modification, if not even a prescription, of the Athe-
nian polis during Plato’s time that was heading towards its eventual decline (See
Annas, 1999, p. 78). Historically, one recalls the decline of the integrity of Athens
as they emerged victorious alongside Sparta against the Persians. However, this
paved way for Sparta to focus its attention to its former ally which it left bankrupt
and low-esteemed in defeat. Hence, the Peloponnesian war and the defeat of Ath-
ens to Sparta, followed by the oligarchic rule of those in support of Sparta (Cf.
History.com Editors, 2018). Instead of the cultivation of intellectual virtues, what
was prominent during that time was the prestige of viscerality—something foreign
to the founding ideals of the city set on the hill, away from the wayward practices
of the Piraeus.
One therefore notices an initial flight to objectivity, from the deceiving practices
of the Piraeus to Athens, a city set on a hill. It becomes a flight from the wayward
discourses to intellectually engage discourses on the hill. The whole history of West-
ern philosophy follows this movement to the top of the hill. It is an upward move-
ment from waywardness, a flight to unprejudiced ideas, to the transcendentals; a
movement away from confusion and a movement towards truth. Three analogies in
the Republic constitute this flight to objectivity, flight to the transcendetals—truth,
goodness, beauty.
14 For Plato, there are three classes in society—The Philosopher-kings, the auxiliary
(guardians), and the masses, representing the three parts of the soul (IV, 443d,
123.).
15 Plato makes it known that the philosophy-kings are properly called lovers of wis-
dom “rather than lovers of opinion” (480a, 161) and discourses on the nature of
the philosophic (VI, 484ff., 163ff.).
16 The broader context of language’s cultural dimension plays a key role in understand-
ing a foreign language, but more so their own distinctive psychological disposition
in approaching reality. I present some examples of this. (1) The impact of gender on
nouns affects how speakers describe objects. Bridge in Spanish is m ­ asculine while

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 Between truth and falsity 59
feminine in German. Hence the description: the Spanish el puente fuerte (strong) as
to the German die schöne (beautiful) Brücke. (2) Instead of relative directions, some
languages (Guugu Yimithirr, Australia; Sambali, Philippines; Balinese, Indonesia;
Tzeltal Mexico) use cardinal directions. (3) Some languages (Finnish, C ­ hinese,
­Japanese, German) have a seeming continuity in time’s relation; verbs used in pres-
ent form can be used to refer to the future with aide of some adverbs or other
words—parenthetically speakers of these languages tend to be better in planning.
(4) Finally, some exhibit a varied sensitivity towards colour: Nafaanra, Ghana, has
only three colours: black, white, and red; Himba, Angola, has five: red, green-­
yellow, dark, yellow-white, blue-green; Russian has a wider spectrum: light blue is
(pronounced as) goluboy while dark blue is (pronounced as) siniy.
17 It is easily understood by China readers that the problems focused on during the
Chun Qiu and Zhan Guo (The Spring and Autumn Period and the Period of War-
ring States) were the problems of morality. But all these early impressions are now
seriously affecting contemporary Western Sinologists as they continue to discover
that Chinese morality does not have concepts of truth that are the very mainstays
of Western ethical thinking. For truth and truth-telling functions—the paradigm
examples and crucial test cases of moral behaviour most especially defined in a
Judaeo-Christian-Kantian moral structure—are remarkably absent from ancient
Chinese moral philosophy.
18 The Wu Lun (Five Relations) expounded in Confucian philosophy.
19 Two considerations come to fore: (1) we must say that in a written language and
in a cultural setting that contrasts significantly with the Western logical forma-
tion, certitude is not the ultimate goal of philosophizing. Perhaps the Chinese
inventors of their language form were conscious from the very start that language
is spatio-temporal and as such it is a non-final medium for grasping reality or com-
municating it. If language is not capable of totally capturing reality, then language
might as well be artificially constructed to pursue such an impossible- goal. And
one had to be conscious of this from the start, or else be drowned by his own jar-
gon. No amount of language structure can help one grasp, least of all capture, the
Truth. (2) the Chinese language is marked by the pragmatic focus on what idea is
best able not just to inform but also to transform man. Language becomes a sign-
post for experiencing a good life rather than merely knowing it. It is a language
that is action-oriented rather than knowledge-oriented. The language consistently
reflects the practical, action-guiding emphasis all throughout the ancient classics.
Language thus becomes merely a cane to assist the crippled to move on; but if one
wants to experience the joy of walking, one has to abandon this cane. Man there-
fore uses language, first to be informed on how to proceed, and then to be able to
experience a good life. Meanwhile, the morality of “truth-telling” is shown to be
absorbed by the promise of keeping the virtue called Xin (trustworthiness). Here,
the virtue is understood as a correspondence between language and intention.
20 Da Xue.
21 In fact, this mode of thinking took three great thoughts, namely; the Confucian
Li (rite-ceremony), the Daoist ideas of Dao (unnamable absolute) and Wu-wei (par-
adox view of the world of phenomena), and the Buddhist Sunyata (nothingness).
This mental attention has been the guiding intellectual attitude of the Chinese’s
profound sense of approaching reality in the ancient world.
22 The image is a contemporary calligraphic painting of Li Zhe that was given as a
personal gift to me. Li Zhe is the author of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games meters
long scroll. He is the winner of the Shanghai Da World Kenis, a world harmonious
culture ambassador, contemporary famous calligrapher, scholar, and cultural celeb-
rity. He is currently the president of the National Association of Scribes, a member
of the Chinese Calligraphers Association, a senior adviser to the China Intangible
Cultural Heritage Development Foundation, a member of the Hong Kong ­Society

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 60  Alfredo P. Co
for the Promotion of Chinese Cultural and Artistic Exchange, and an adjunct
professor at Beijing Jiaotong University. He is the author of Collection of Li Zhe’s
Calligraphy Works, Li Zhe’s Calligraphy Centennial Olympic Volume, Calligraphers
Reading Notes, The Soul of the Chinese MoBao Olympic Games, and many more.
He holds regular individual and joint exhibitions in Beijing, Shenzhen, Lanzhou,
Jinan, amongst others. Li Zhe’s calligraphy is well-known for its official script and
grass, and the unique style of Fang Yuan and its unique dot line pen reflect big
pattern and minor sentiment, which has established the status of the book world
today. Li Zhe had completed 18,000 copies of the Earth-Tibetan Scriptures, each
of which took several years to complete, mirroring most of the Tibetan sutra build-
ings in the 10 ancient historical jungle temples at home and abroad. These include
the Han Biography, the Tibetan Biography, the Southern Biography (Thailand),
the five holy places of the Bodhisattvas and the Zen Forest of the Great Living
Monk. In this era, this can be considered as a great cultural heritage. The 2008
Beijing summer Olympic Games 2008-meter-long calligraphy volume consists in
more than 130,000 words, 19 calligraphy styles, containing a detailed record of the
history of the Olympic Games. This project garnered multiple recognitions among
which was the Gold Medal and the Special Contribution Award (Highest Prize)
by the Olympic Organizing Committee, and the high praise of the China Central
Television (CCTV).

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