“A frog in a well cannot be told of the sea, being confined by its space.” The line comes from “The Floods of Autumn” in the Zhuangzi. After the River God sees the North Sea and recognises his own limits, the God of the Sea uses the well frog, the summer insect and the narrow scholar to show how place, time and teaching can restrict understanding. Some editions write 墟 rather than 虚; here it means the place one inhabits.
The sentence is not merely ridicule directed at someone with little knowledge. The frog cannot imagine the sea because its experience is limited. Today, the line asks for more than additional learning. Before judging other people or the world, we should notice how our own position defines what we are able to see.
https://ctext.org/zhuangzi/floods-of-autumn/ens
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