why can't you step into the same river twice?

Question

i think its a confucian saying that you can't step into the same river twice, but what on earth does it mean? i stepped into the rhone twice!

Answer 1

This is wonderful paradox, a brief history of which you have already known. It is wonderful because of the analogy of a river: something so fixed as major land feature anywhere and yet so dynamic that it very existence is due to its changeability or it ability of constant flow, like a seemingly endless walk of a pilgrim.

The saying is meant to sensitise the mind about the constantly changing nature of all things in existence: nothing can exist without time, and therefore nothing can exist without an ability to change in time - things would simply disappear and fall through the fabric of time into annihilation if they would not change.

This is the reality of our physical being, and this is what this wonderful saying is trying to bring home to us. There is clear message that nothing is permanent or fixed in nature of all things, and therefore nothing is trustworthy in form. Then there is also a message of hope as we realise that things when they change allow novelty and newness into our life - a new life, every moment.

Answer 2

It is a world view shared by many. The world changes seconded by seconded. It is no longer in the same place, the earth has rotated just a bit, no one is in the same relationship they once were. People move; things move, almost everything changes. So does the river, so you can only step in the same river once. Time marches on!

Answer 3

The saying is actually from Herakleitos of Ephesos, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. In contrast to another philosopher, Parmenides of Elea who taught that there is only Being eternal and unchanging, Herakleitos taught that all things were in a constant state of flux, i.e. change, nothing is the same from one moment to the next, so you can't step into the same river twice.

Confucius would never have said any such thing, the question didn't arise in his universe of relationships.

Answer 4

Two things here:

1) Heraclitus said that. It's one of the fragments left from his time in ancient Greece.

2) The saying has to do with change, flux. The water is constantly flowing, and so the river is not *exactly* the same from moment to moment. The path is the same, but the water isn't. (So what *is* a river anyway?) And you aren't the same from moment to moment. Everything is changing.

Answer 5

Because it is not the same river you stepped into the last time. The 'you' that stepped into the river the first time was someone else.

Circumstances keep changing in life.

Answer 6

What about on two different occassions or something like the Upper and Lower Nile or perhaps there is a River Twice

Answer 7

It means that the water in the river flows and is constantly changing, therefore if you step into the river one day, technically if you step into it the next day, it's not the same river.

Answer 8

You can.

The idea comes from a confusion of words. There are two meanings of "the same": quantitly the same (two iced buns that are exactly identical) and quantively the same (One iced bun that changes appearance because you bite it.)

The saying means that the river will have changed (won't be the same river qualitivley) and therefore won't be the same river (won't be the same quantitley). You jump from one meaning of the word to the other.

Answer 9

The river is the water so when you step in again it`s not the same river as it`s gone with the current.

Answer 10

Same place maybe but technically different water, so not the same river as the first time. Inscrutably picky but that's where he was coming from.