Why was Zeng Guofan's study named "Searching for Shortage"?

Zeng Guofan was known as the "First Minister of Zhongxing" in the late Qing Dynasty. He was knowledgeable and made outstanding contributions, but he named his favorite study "Qiuquezhai". This is somewhat puzzling. What else does such a "first perfect man in ancient and modern times" want? But he has his own ideas, and nothing can be perfect. If there is a little deficiency, there will be room for continuous improvement, and life will have inexhaustible motivation.

In fact, the name "seeking lack of fasting" contains a philosophical implication and has a profound meaning. In Chapter 45 of Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu said that "there is a great deficiency, but its use does not harm", which means that the most successful and perfect things seem to have defects, but their functions will never fail. Looking at things from a dialectical point of view, a great achievement or achievement can hardly be perfect without defects. The so-called success and perfection are relative. At the same time, as long as there is room for development and change, things will not die there, and this role will not fail. Just as the Tang Priests and disciples on the Journey to the West were basking in the scriptures on their way back to Tongtianhe, the clumsy pig Bajie accidentally tore them up. The Monkey King said philosophically: There is no perfect person in heaven and earth, and there is no perfect person in scriptures. Indeed, the missing part is Tang Yan's regret, and it is also where he needs to continue to work hard for it.

Both China's classical philosophy and modern materialist dialectics believe that there is no perfect person, no perfect thing, no complete works, and no real perfection and real success. Perfection is imperfect, success is unsuccessful, and perfection is imperfect. This is the normal state of things. For example, in "Brokeback Venus", in addition to the graceful curve and posture of the human body, the most surprising thing is those broken arms. Although later sculptors competed to create Venus with repaired arms, they could only gild the lily. Similarly, according to the law of "extremes meet", if the moon is round, it will lose money, and if the sun is round, it will be useless. If things are too perfect and perfect, they will flourish and decline and go to the opposite side.

The philosophical thought lacking in merit contains the great wisdom of China's sages in life, and embodies the regular grasp of the evolution and development of all things in the world. On the one hand, all phenomena in nature, human society and the field of thinking develop as a process, just like "people can't step into the same river twice", because both people and the river itself have changed at this time. Success and perfection are only a staged state and staged evaluation. On the other hand, everything has two sides. The development and change of things are caused by contradictory movements. Contradiction refers to the mutually exclusive, interdependent, antagonistic and unified relationship contained in things themselves. Everything in the world has two sides, one is positive and the other is negative. Even the sun, which created everything, cannot shine sunlight on both sides of a coin at the same time. There are two sides to everything. As lev tolstoy said, "All changes, charms and beauty in life are made up of light and shadow." It can be seen that nothing is absolutely beneficial and nothing is absolutely harmful.

Nowadays, many people have such a mentality: everything must be pursued for complete success, perfection, and even perfection, in order to have a satisfactory full stop. This is an extreme self-confidence, trying to find a sense of exclusivity beyond the outside world. But the reality often backfires, which is not the result of insufficient efforts, but the law of things. The lack of perfection is the long-term stable perfection. Just as people can't ask the moon to be full every day, it is still incomplete most of the time, but it is in the process of expecting the full moon when it is missing that aesthetic feeling arises.

Of course, emphasizing that people have room to do things and allow some shortcomings and deficiencies is not to encourage people to cling to the remnants and do nothing, but not to blindly pursue those absolute perfection and perfection. Accepting such imperfections and imperfections, being good at facing them squarely and finding new strength points from them are the great wisdom of life contained in "great achievements and insufficient achievements".