Frivolous quickie post today.
My mother is fond of unleashing the occasional pithy Cantonese saying and one of her favourite ones is the one above. Loosely translated it means ‘to see someone’s face does not mean you know their heart’. The English equivalent is perhaps the saying ‘Still Waters Run Deep’. What the saying is trying to get at is that it is hard to know a person’s true intentions even if you know the person. It is one of those Cantonese sayings that has sort of acquired a life of it’s own – it has become regarded as a truism, without sometimes much regard for whether or not it is actually TRUE. (much like that saying about how Feng Shui Masters can at best, ‘cheat’ one for 10 or 8 years – well, a Feng Shui Master can only bluff you if you don’t know anything at all about Feng Shui)
In this case, this particular saying was thrown into the conversation mix as I was relating to her the tale of a friend’s unfortunate HR problem which resulted in a hire that went decidedly south.
So I attempted to explain to my mother that this popular Chinese saying entails something of a misconception – if one knows BaZi or Face Reading, it is not possible really to be in a situation where you see a person’s face but do not know their heart. Armed with a person’s BaZi (even if incomplete), you know precisely what kind of person they are. You know their fallacies, their inclinations, their motivations, their bad habits, their virtues, their vices…
She of course still maintains: 知人口面不知心
But if you also happen to know face reading, then there’s doubly no excuse for not really knowing what a person is thinking or what their true character is. Sometimes, pithy Cantonese sayings are not truisms.
Tend to agree with your mum. Nowadays, there’s plastic surgery! 🙂
Well, if a person knows bazi, even without the time, still can pretty much know the character and personality etc.. that’s like not good. I need to hide my bday in FB!!! 😛
There’s no need to do that. Using purely bazi alone, you wouldn’t know a person’s Wealth star is actually his father, money, job or wife or girlfriend. Especially without the hour pillar. A supplementary system of reading must be used.
Speak for yourself.
Okay, my bad. I admit it was a feeble attempt to discourage folks from hiding their birthdate, haha.
What if, knowing bazi makes one pre-judge a person? Afterall, bazi is not definate in determining a person’s good or bad… what if the person’s choice and actions speaks otherwise: he chooses a different path?
Have heard this mentioned to me before. Blog post to follow on this ‘judgmental’ issue.