From ‘Foreword’, in “The Sound of the One Hand”, by Ben-Ami Scharfstein

“analytic thought must, by its very definition, apply definite names, concepts, and values to our experience. All these are necessarily subjective because their are derived from particular and limited points of view, and all are necessarily too definite, because they are inadequate to the fluidity, to the ebb and flow of nature. All these are therefore necessarily distorting. They lead us […] to become entangled in contradictions. We should learn to relax our conceptual definiteness and our incessant distinguishing between one thing and another. Things merge no less than they separate. […] Opposites are in a sense the same, “the admissible is simultaneously the inadmissible”, and every definite thing, every “it”, as the translator puts Chuang-tzu’s word, is also the same as that which is other than itself. “What is ‘it'”, says Chuang-tzu, “is also ‘other’, what is ‘other’ is also ‘it’.. Are there really It and Other? Or really no It and Other?”

From ‘Foreword’, in “The Sound of the One Hand”, by Ben-Ami Scharfstein