Proverb 2: Hearing a hundred times...

Here is today's proverb:

百聞は一見に如かず

And in romaji:

hyakubun wa ikken ni shikazu

And English: "Hearing a hundred times is not as good as seeing once."

This is like the English saying, "Seeing is believing," and it's also a bit like "A picture is worth a thousand words," although that's more about pictures and written words, rather than seeing the thing itself versus hearing with your ears about it. I would relate this in my practice not so much to the contrast between hearing and seeing but instead to the contrast between reading-about and experiencing. I am definitely one of those people who spends more time reading about Buddhism rather than practicing. I'm book-addicted, and writing these blog posts I suppose is proof of that. Ha!

Looking for an image, I found this at a blog for French-speaking learners of Japanese, with French parallels that are like the English parallels I cited here! From haiku, I'm used to "mi" as the pronunciation of this kanji 見, so it was good to learn "ken" today.

My vocabulary for today:

見
けん
"see"