Ghosts and men are not that different after all

人是還沒死的鬼, 而鬼是死掉的人.
(Man is a living ghost, and ghost is a dead man)

How very true. The popular Taiwanese variety show, 我猜我猜我猜猜猜 (Guess Guess Guess) recently featured girls who look very much like ghosts in real life, which I think is an outrageous program idea. Five girls were chosen, each was questioned on how they got labeled as a ghost look-alike and their eerie encounters with ghosts. At the end of the show, a contest was held through voting: the one who resembles a ghost most wins! Unbelievable! Imagine how the girls' parents or friends must have felt, seeing their daughters, sisters, and friends compete for such thing?!? I must admit though, the show was at times hilarious at depicting the girls--they were asked to wear clothes associated with female ghosts, eg. red Chinese qi pao/cheongsam, schoolgirl uniform; one wore a bright red lipstick while another didn't wear one at all--and it almost shames me to say I laughed out loud quite a few times. The show's popularity stems from its originality. You should see it sometimes just for the sake of checking out.

In another related entry
Men and ghosts may live in different realms, but they certainly co-exist together. Humans fear death is the end of everything; some may say there is no life after death, some may say otherwise, but most associate death with a negative image, but is that necessarily true? Or is death a beginning of something else, something not quite like what we imagine it would be? ZhuangZi, a man who is universally regarded as the greatest Taoist after Lao Tzu, answers it best with his theory of relativity (no, not that theory of relativity). It goes like this:

"How do I know that enjoying life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death we are not like people who got lost in early childhood and do not know the way home? During our dream we don't know we're dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream.

Looks like plenty of gibberish, but it certainly is something to think about. Many things in life aren't as black and white as we thought, cause there's always room for some grey area. Again, Taoists reject the idea of dichotomy, which is in my opinion, two extremes of essentially the same thing. Everything is extremely relative. If there's no beauty, there's no ugliness. Or, if there's no good, there's no evil. Sounds good to me.

Another great story of Taoism I'd like to share, the "Butterly Dream" is perhaps the most celebrated dreams ever recorded in the history of Chinese Philosophy.

The great Taoist master Chuang Tzu once dreamt that he was a butterfly fluttering here and there. In the dream he had no awareness of his individuality as a person. He was only a butterfly. Suddenly, he awoke and found himself laying there, a person once again. But then he thought to himself, "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"

After straying from man-ghost relationship (if there is one) to Taoism and plenty of dreams, I think I should stop here. Too much straying ignites headaches.