Separation vs Amalgamation

Yours and mine, big and small 

erase these ideas from your mind. 

Then everything is yours and 

you belong to everyone. 

Insightful words from the Bhagavad Gita. 

Winning by losing

There is a beautiful scene towards the end of the movie The birth of the dragon.  The two great Kung Fu masters Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man have fought one another.  But after a while of fighting both stop, thank one another and end the fight.  Those watching the fight cannot say who won.  When they ask both of them who won, they do not respond.  It is later when an avid student approaches Wong asking him to state who among them won, so that he could declare it to the world (and gain freedom for the girl whom he loves), does the following conversation take place.

Wong: My intention was to teach Lee Jun that his attitude was irreverent and his style inadequate.  If in defeating him I've driven him further in that direction then I have lost.  If in losing to him, I've changed his direction, then I have won.  

Mac: We're not in a monastery in China.  This is America.  In America we have winners and losers.  

Wong: Life is not always that easy.  

Not always is there a clear line dividing everything in the world into good or bad, white or black, win or lose, this or that, secular or holy...  The Western mind does not know or does not want to acknowledge ambiguity.  It seeks precise definite answers, even when there cannot be answers or when answers are not that simple.

Does Charles Taylor's understanding of reasoning (and faith) and his whole exposition of language pointing us to move towards this Oriental perspective?  Jesus' teachings too contain similar paradoxes: those who want to save one's life will lose it and those giving it up will save it;  last shall be first and first, last;  when you're weak then you are strong...

Elsewhere in the movie, Master Wong tells Mac, 

Knowing you opponent and knowing yourself are the two things Kung Fu is all about. The rest is eternity. 

A western mind would clearly state: 'The rest is irrelevant'... but eternity?  Now how does one understand and explain that.  Certainly not in any easy terms!