What does this proverb mean?

paul8f

As far as I know this is an old Chinese saying, but I'm just wondering what it means:

" The Rivers Flow Into The Sea
But The Sea Does Not Overflow "


Any ideas?

paul8f

Thanks to everybody for the great response to this :rolleyes:

Through a bit of research here are a few possible meanings I've discovered myself...


(1) No matter how much you seem overwhelmed in life, it's important not to let those issues take over your life and "put you under"

(2) The sea could represent your brain, and the rivers represent knowledge. Basically, your brain can never have enough knowledge.

(3) All the problems flow to God, but he can always handle some more

(4) It could be in relation to the water cycle. (Philosopher Aristotle used to muse about what we now know as the hydrological cycle). The amount of H2O (water in either liquid form, vapour or solid ice) held within the bounds of earth's atmosphere is constant, so on average the sea level should remain roughly the same. (This is a bit ironic, with global warming and all in the last few decades.... The sea level is actually rising; overflowing very slowly... ). Let's hope it's only temporary.

(5) Everything must meet a conclusion that does not always cause catastrophe. In other words the sea can handle it. It's an aspiration to excel yourself and take on more... to stretch yourself and not look for limitations.

(6) All different bodies (human, animal, whatever) combine, collaborate, and work together to help maintain the Earth, but it can still be too difficult a task for us .... . . . I'm not too sure of the origins of this view...

(7) While on this earth, we are but a water droplet, forced to make our turbulent journey through this river of life. We mature, and then die in the sea, but we are raised up again, so we may be part of an everlasting life.

(8) This is an interpretation of the Ecclesiastes passage “To the place from which the rivers go out, they return, so that they may flow again” : . Individual men are continually changing, while the succession of the race continues; just as the sun, wind, and rivers are ever shifting about, while the cycle in which they move is invariable; they return to the point whence they set out. Hence is man, as in these objects of nature which are his analogue, with all the seeming changes "there is no new thing"

(9) Another interpretation: . All things change, and never rest. Man, after all his labour, is no nearer finding rest than the sun, the wind, or the current of the river. His soul will find no rest, if he has it not from God. The senses are soon tired, yet still craving what is untried.


Anybody else want to add their own "thinking outside the box" ideas ?

Burial

No matter how much you add/do in your life, it is never truely full/finished.

Burial

Maybe it's saying that the sea can handle anything the river puts in it, and it always has room for more. Like your understanding of life never ceases, but is continuous??

Those are my guesses, and ffs. You replied at night. You can't honestly expect a deadish forum to reply instantly or even reply overnight....

K4t

Erosion? :pac:

pickarooney

All life, begining on the fast-moving high-ground in the mountains, eventually ends, in the great everything of the ocean. The sea is eternity, there is no coming back up to the higher ground, to life.

reg_anam

maybe it means that no matter how many interpretations of this proverb you come up there is still room for more !

gabigeist

Its about perspective to me...

What may seem big and significant to you (a river) is tiny in the bigger scheme of things (no effect on the ocean level).

Shinji Ikari

paul8f wrote: »

As far as I know this is an old Chinese saying, but I'm just wondering what it means:

" The Rivers Flow Into The Sea
But The Sea Does Not Overflow "


Any ideas?

Hhhhmmm.... All souls(lives) are impermanent of self. They ultimately lead to nirvana which is the only thing that is not impermanent.

Capt'n Midnight

Point of information.
the sea can overflow !
in the past it has been up to 300m above current levels.

also as we know there aren't plenty more fish inthe sea as the adds for New Zealand thingies instead of cod shows. When Europeans first fished cod off north america they were 5ft long

Ask a chinese person , a lot of these things don't translate well
re. Camel/Eye of needle - the "eye of a needle" was the name given to a small gate used at night when the main gate of a town was closed at night. The camel would have to enter crawling on it's knees. Not as easyas walking , but any camel was well capable of doing it.

gondorff

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

the sea can overflow !
in the past it has been up to 300m above current levels.

And even then could it've overflowed when the rivers flowed in?

K4t

gondorff wrote: »

And even then could it've overflowed when the rivers flowed in?

Yes, thousands of people in Asia lost their lives when a tsunami struck in 2004. And thousands of houses along coasts all over the world have been destroyed due to erosion. The see does overflow. Fact.

Capt'n Midnight

*pedantic*
The med overflowed into the black sea a couple of thousand years ago

The Atlantic overflowed in to the Med about 6 million years ago. It was a desert and parts were up to two miles below the Atlantic sea level. This has happened many times.

gondorff

K4t wrote: »

Yes, thousands of people in Asia lost their lives when a tsunami struck in 2004. And thousands of houses along coasts all over the world have been destroyed due to erosion. The see does overflow. Fact.

I wanted to point out that no matter what the sea level, there is a capacity for it to rise. Flooding, death, destruction, apocalypse etc don't come into it. Read my post again, and this time think about it in the context of the post I was quoting. Do you see any denial of responsibility there for catastrophic global events? Do you?

The proverb is a metaphor for equilibrium.
The river gives to the sea.. What gives to the river?

The point is that a sea does not (cannot) overflow.

There is no sea.
There is no river.

Capt'n Midnight

if the earth was perfectly smooth then it would be covered by an ocean 2 miles deep so I guess that's when the sea can no longer over flow

gondorff

I was becoming bogged down by my own blinkered thinking until I reconsidered the original question.

It's becoming clearer now that I'm not thinking about peripheral irrelevancies.

It's all about tea. Yes I'm sure it is, it's all tea.

Tea all the way.

juuge

The sea will not overflow, the sea allows clouds to form, turn to rain and fill the rivers which flow into the sea and so on never ending and thus representing the continuum of life.

TiGeR KiNgS

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Point of information.
the sea can overflow !
in the past it has been up to 300m above current levels.

also as we know there aren't plenty more fish inthe sea as the adds for New Zealand thingies instead of cod shows. When Europeans first fished cod off north america they were 5ft long

Ask a chinese person , a lot of these things don't translate well
re. Camel/Eye of needle - the "eye of a needle" was the name given to a small gate used at night when the main gate of a town was closed at night. The camel would have to enter crawling on it's knees. Not as easyas walking , but any camel was well capable of doing it.

what constitutes overflow to you is actually irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things, just like global warming
global warming will only raise the sea level a certain amount and even then it wont at all be that much in the grand scheme, so what if the world has to readjust its coastline a mile inshore (admittedly more /less in certain place's to which i reply it was a flooding plain anyway ie bangladesh)

Ostrom

paul8f wrote: »

(4) It could be in relation to the water cycle. (Philosopher Aristotle used to muse about what we now know as the hydrological cycle). The amount of H2O (water in either liquid form, vapour or solid ice) held within the bounds of earth's atmosphere is constant, so on average the sea level should remain roughly the same. (This is a bit ironic, with global warming and all in the last few decades.... The sea level is actually rising; overflowing very slowly... ). Let's hope it's only temporary.

Anybody else want to add their own "thinking outside the box" ideas ?

Maybe he didnt understand isostasy