活 (Alive)
Later on, printing appeared.
You have come.
Miss Talented, characters always keep their promise.
I thought it was a dream.
Calling it a dream is not wrong.
But I'm clearly awake.
Being awake is also a kind of dream.
You mean a lucid dream?
No, we are not talking about the kind of dream that can be controlled by conscious awareness. We are saying that consciousness itself is a kind of dream.
Consciousness is a dream... strange... I do have this feeling.
No need to find it strange; this is a good phenomenon.
Is this good? I feel a bit scared, like I can't tell what’s real and what’s not.
You've been reading lately, haven’t you?
You know everything?
We are character spirits, we know everything about words.
There’s nothing unrelated to words, so we can say we know everything.
I’ve been reading about the history of printing, but I’m reading slowly.
That’s fine; let’s talk about the history of printing. Do you know the origin of printing?
Every schoolchild knows that it’s one of China's four great inventions.
Good. What about the time?
The Tang dynasty, around the 8th or 9th century AD.
The so-called invention, from nothing to something, what’s the key?
Is it intelligence?
You mean to say that the Chinese are more intelligent?
That’s not what I meant.
Intelligence has no direct connection to invention.
So, more importantly, it is...
A shift in consciousness.
Your terms are very modern.
It’s just keeping up with the times. If you like, in old language, it’s a divine transformation.
I don’t quite understand.
Understanding how to reverse the characters, carve the reverse, and print the correct text, that’s not about intelligence. People used to know nothing about it, and then suddenly they knew. Once they knew, they didn’t find it strange at all. What was strange was why they didn’t know such a simple truth before.
It’s like the moment when a child discovers that the image in the mirror is its reflection.
Is that a kind of growth?
The term “growth” is too Western. We used to say — dream awakening.
So it’s an awakening.
To be awakened is also too Western. Dream awakening means you know there are dreams, you know there is waking, and you know that dreaming and waking are different, but you don't know if you’re in a dream or waking. There are dreams within waking, and waking within dreams. It's like positive and negative, yin and yang; there's no order or hierarchy.
Like me now?
Look! She truly is a talented person!
Her intuition is good.
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