Friday, February the 3rd:
他人に頼るな
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“Don’t rely on other people” seemed a little out of place as a zen teaching at first, but I think it makes sense in a particular context.
I think it’s probably implying something like “don’t rely on other people [for your own worth]”, or “don’t rely on other people [for your self-actualization]”, and not “don’t rely on other people [for anything ever]”
I vaguely remember some allegory about zen buddhism, where the teachings and instructors are supposed to be like a finger pointing at the moon. They can guide you in the direction of truth/knowledge/understanding, but the work to actually see the moon itself is for you yourself to do. If I am remembering/categorizing correctly, this focus on a personal journey rather than a doctrinal one is one of the hallmarks of zen, so in that context it would definitely fit. (I am not super well educated about this, but I did take a sociology class on east asian religions that included some brief introductions to the various sects of buddhism, so pls correct me if i’m way off base 
)
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I don’t know much about zen teaching, or anything I guess.
But, I kind of just interpreted it as “Don’t (overtly) depend on others.” or “Don’t count on others (too much).”
In the sense that you should be independent, it’s not deterring you from seeking help, but just don’t be expecting others to do everything for you. Kind of like the previous patience one, where you shouldn’t go overboard with patience.
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Let’s trust others (?)
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Be strict with yourself
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yeah that’s how i was interpreting it I think, almost in direct contrast to the one before
Maybe there’s a difference in using 人 vs using 他人, so “let’s believe in humanity” ?
sounds right to me!
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Doesn’t sound very strict. 
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Oh yes, that sounds much better! Thank you!
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I’m not convinced that’s the nuance that’s contained in 信じる.
My monolingual dictionary says that it means
- to know that something is the truth
- to trust someone or to rely on someone
- to believe that something exists (God etc)
and I don’t see that with your sentence (but I‘m not an English native speaker so happy to be corrected!)
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They mean trust in/to have faith in.
What else would they mean? 
If you mean that that’s not a valid use of 信じる:
Would be the 信じていた友人に part, no?
Or わがチームを.
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in the sense I was trying to use, I think it’s close to (2).
For example, if you were trying to say you trusted a politician to make decisions that were for the best of the country, it would be appropriate to say that “I believe in [politician]”, it’s very close to trusting/relying on them.
So in this case “let’s believe in humanity” would be something like trusting that humans in general to tend to be good, and that they tend to want to to do good things (despite how people are capable of doing bad things, and how some people do them intentionally). You could definitely swap it out with “let’s trust in humanity” and it has pretty much the same meaning
It might be a little bit colloquial so it’s a valid thing to bring up: most of the situations I can think of this coming up are either in politics or in some sort of motivational speech. “Believe in yourself” is another one that’s pretty common (not (1) since we’re not dealing with matters of truth, and not (3) since doubting that you yourself exist is generally not a popular belief, ty descartes)
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Yes, I get that; I‘m just wondering whether the Japanese meaning is the same or whether it’s much more concrete
Exactly! And for me the sentence „I was betrayed by a friend whom I trusted“ carries a different nuance than „To have faith in mankind“ 
Yes. And all I wanted to say is that I‘m not sure that 信じる is used with this broad meaning.
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if something like (2) doesn’t apply, then don’t see how this proverb has any meaning at all, so I made a little assumption.
Humanity doesn’t have a truth value, and it’s not really something to doubt the existence of (unless I am misunderstanding the “humanity” meaning for 人)
Even in the case of the other interpretation “let’s trust others”, that’s pretty much synonymous with “let’s believe others” in this context, I think
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Now we’re getting to what I wanted to say: In my mind, ‚to believe‘ in English has many nuances, two of which you gave examples for. I see one as being „narrower“ or „more concrete“ than the other one, if that makes sense. And what I‘m not sure about is whether 信じる in Japanese can express both those nuances, or just the „narrower“ one.
I will chat with a Japanese friend tonight, and if I don‘t forget, I will ask them.
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AA I think I see what you mean now:
Are you saying there might be a difference between using this sense of belief/trust for a particular person (友達を信じる) vs believing/trusting in a general concept (国を信じる）? That is totally possible and I hadn’t considered it, but it’s definitely worth asking about!
If anything, i think this probably comes down to what the most natural way to interpret 人 in this example is. is it a stand-in for 人間 more broadly, all the tendencies of human nature (of which my understanding has been mostly shaped by western enlightenment thinking, there’s definitely no guarantee this concept works the same outside of europe/north america), or is it talking about specifically other people (like ones you could point to physically), or is it specifying something else that doesn’t have a neat concept in english?
Since we used 他人 in the previous proverb, I was trying to find a way to differentiate it, but it’s possible that was a bad assumption.
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I believe that people exist.
I’m not certain of that, to be honest, but there’s a reasonable body of evidence in support.
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Yes, that’s what I was aiming at! Thanks for the clarification 
Will ask about this and report back.
Well, solipsists don’t 
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Reading too much stuff like this is why I have problems thinking about the word “belief” in general.
Philosophy terminology has poisoned my brain and I’m never sure if my understanding/usage of a word is going to be the same way that other english speakers think about that word 
…I wonder if there’s a japanese equivalent of https://plato.stanford.edu/ … that would probably be dangerous for me 
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