"Zhuangzi Heaven" said: "Being quiet, indifferent, lonely and doing nothing is the foundation of all things."
This is from the philosophical ontology that "emptiness and quietness" is the fundamental feature of all things, that is, the essence of "Tao" as the foundation of all things is emptiness and quietness, loneliness and inaction. In this case, the object of cognition, as the subject of cognition, of course needs to conform to the way of nature with an "empty mind" in the process of cognition. In order to form the emptiness of the subject's mind, Zhuangzi put forward a series of viewpoints, such as "keeping the mind empty" (making the mind "wait for things to be empty") and "sitting and forgetting" ("knowing from the shape"), and repeatedly emphasized that "hearing is empty, keeping the mind quiet" and "turning a blind eye, listening but not listening, knowing but not listening".
"The world on earth" says: those who are angry also treat things with vanity. Only the Tao is empty. Insufficient, the heart is also lent.
Selected Works of Human Life: Zhong Ni suddenly said, "What is forgetting?" Yan Hui said, "If you have a broken limb, you will know it. It is the same as Datong. This is forgetting. "
The so-called "spiritual fasting" is to make the mind empty and bright, so that it is possible to treat things with emptiness. Why treat things empty? For a simple example, a cup needs to be empty to hold water, and a container full of articles can't hold what it should hold. The subject's mind should also abandon other thoughts, so that it is possible to understand the true meaning of Tao. The so-called "sitting and forgetting" is to forget the form and abandon the intellectuality, so as to get rid of the shackles of form and name, and the subject's mind can truly reach the realm of freedom. "Heart fasting" and "sitting and forgetting" are both the mind of the subject, and this process is also a process of "emptiness and quietness".
In order to demonstrate the importance of "emptiness and quietness" in epistemology, Zhuangzi told many fables about literary and artistic creation, such as "Knowing it can solve the cow" in the chapter of "Master of Health", "Loving the person to succeed" in the chapter of "Sheng Da", "chopping wood from youth is an elixir" and "Tian Zifang". Let your mind be integrated with nature, and let your mind reach a natural state, that is, the realm of nature. Only in this way can we "integrate heaven and man" and understand the highest realm of skills.
The theory of "emptiness and quietness" is applied in the field of aesthetics and literary creation, which can be called China's ancient theory of artistic conception. It has quite a lot of reasonable elements, and it reveals the important characteristics of the soul of the subject of aesthetic and literary creation, that is, aesthetic and artistic creation should be super-utilitarian. In literary creation or artistic appreciation, the aesthetic subject can't get rid of the intrusion of secular concepts such as fame and fortune, and it is likely to fail. Only when the subject's mind reaches a state of emptiness and quietness can he have the most comprehensive and profound understanding of the objective world, can he freely take aesthetic photos, can he make artistic creativity flourish, and can he create works completely consistent with the nature. Why? Or Zhuangzi described it well: "When the water is still, there is a candle eyebrow, which is fair and accurate, and the main choice is the law." The water is still bright, but the spirit is good! Heart of a saint, calm down! The mirror of heaven and earth is also the mirror of everything. "Still water is bright, still fire is bright, and meditation is impressive.