“This is just what happens to the mind: if it is unwilling to relax a little and give up to the body in distress and need, a little later a fever or a vertigo attacks it, and it is compelled to give up its books and discussions and studies, and share with the body its sickness and weariness. … When the body shares most in the work and weariness of the mind we should repay it by giving it the most care and attention” (Advice about Keep Well [Moralaia 137D-E]).” Cited from Dale B. Martin, Corinthian Body, (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1995), 30.
I believe many of my readers share this feeling expressed above.
My physical condition, especially my right arm and should, has been degrading but only became serious and acknowledge its owner a few months ago. I should not say “owner”. That’s exactly the problem–we, at least I, in many ways always treat our body as if it is given to us to freely exploit. I labour it, use it, as if it is not us, a fully inseparable corporeal unity. We thought that the me in me is the real me, the soul and spirit; body is but something that we are bound into. It will get old and then we hate for it that it gets old, hoping to get a new one if we can.
However, not only that our body is part of us. It is us. As much as it is corporeal, out spirit and soul is in a sense corporeal as well. Greek idea of spirit is not much different from Chinese qi氣–they all share the idea of corporeality. They are wind and fire, they come in and out one’s body. They are in our blood, which is said in Greek literature as well as reflected in Chinese term, spirited/breathed blood氣血.
Anyway, I am not here to introduce a philosophical argument, but to remind colleagues and friends who study and research, who always sick for long hours, albeit not always working but facebooking or blogging or interneting.
