The Awakening at Forty: Emptiness Itself

The sky is high and crisp; after one autumn rain after another, Beijing has grown much cooler, and the hot summer is finally drawing to a close.

Buddhism has the tradition of varsa, the summer rains retreat. I was born at the turn of summer and autumn; every year, at the hottest time of summer—which is also when I grow a year older—I always like to set my work aside for a while.

For one thing it lets me escape the heat; for another, it happens to leave fewer matters on my mind, so I can read a few good books to my heart's content, reflect on what I have done over the past year, let myself settle, and let my mind grow a year older too.

Once the hottest days have passed, I must return to study and work. As one part on the great machine of society, a person who is basically healthy still has to accomplish something; he cannot just eat for free.

After this year's birthday I shall be full thirty-nine and enter my forties. Confucius said that at forty one is free of perplexity. What Confucius meant was that after living forty years and experiencing many things, a person has his own judgment and a clear head.

Is my head clear? Hard to say. But I have gradually entered a state of ever greater composure, which is rather nice. Forty years of life experience and reading have, more or less, had some effect. I am not so easily stirred up now; on this count alone, I am indeed better than a callow youth.

In the Analects, Confucius praised his disciple Yan Hui in these words: "How virtuous was Hui! A single bamboo dish of rice, a single gourd of drink, in a mean alley—others could not have endured the distress, but Hui never changed his joy. How virtuous was Hui!" This says that Yan Hui could dwell in poverty and delight in the Way.

Confucius also said: "Hui has nearly attained it! Again and again he is empty." This describes Yan Hui as broad-minded as a valley, his heart empty as a void, holding no prejudices and able to receive all things. The root of Yan Hui's ability to dwell in poverty and delight in the Way lay precisely in his being "again and again empty."

Yan Hui was the first among the seventy disciples of the Confucian school, and Confucius' favorite student. Though he lived only thirty-two years, he lived a life of quietude and few desires, and so was always able to find joy in himself. Whether by innate nature or by exceptional intelligence, Yan Hui could possess such detached composure.

Yan Hui left no writings, and records about him are few. So it is hard for us to say clearly just how Yan Hui thought; we can only come to know this person from these scant words.

But because of Confucius' unstinting praise of Yan Hui, for over two thousand years Yan Hui has exerted great influence among Chinese scholars. Yan Hui was not necessarily a poverty-ideologue; probably even if he had had money and did not have to live the hard life of "a single dish of rice, a single gourd of drink, in a mean alley," he would still be "again and again empty" and "never change his joy."

I am duller than Yan Hui. At forty, I still occasionally have a little worry. When the number of patients I treat grows large and work pressure grows heavy, the anxiety of patients' families and of the patients themselves more or less affects me; at times I inevitably feel some fatigue, and cannot always "never change my joy."

Happily I have now gradually learned to adjust my work rhythm. Tense and relaxed in turn—the way of Wen and Wu—being always tense is sure to cause problems. So now and then I give myself a break, read a few miscellaneous books, and occasionally step away from medical practice for a moment to clear the negative emotions from my mind. Perhaps if Yan Hui came to today's society to be a doctor, he would have to do much the same.

If I have made any progress compared with before, it may be that I have learned to be "again and again empty," like Yan Hui. The Confucian school rarely spoke of emptiness; emptiness is more something Buddhists love to talk about—the Buddhist gate is even called the "gate of emptiness," and the Buddha Shakyamuni is called the "King of Emptiness." Yet Confucius praised Yan Hui as a man "again and again empty."

Just how empty Yan Hui was we do not know. But from his ability, even in the hard life of "a single dish of rice, a single gourd of drink, in a mean alley," to remain unchanging in his joy, we can see that Yan Hui was empty enough. Probably when he dealt with people he was even-tempered too.

Laozi urged people to learn from children, whose hearts are simple and empty as a void; but for adults to be that simple is unrealistic. We now live in an age when the earth holds over seven billion people; one can no longer live as the ancients did, with "the cocks and dogs of one neighborhood heard in another, yet people growing old and dying without ever visiting one another." The degree of mutual dependence between people far exceeds that of the ancients. So Laozi's way cannot be realized by modern people. If seven billion people all lived the small-state, sparse-population life Laozi liked, the earth could not bear it.

Besides, an adult is an adult: he must support the old and raise the young; once the burden of feeding the family is on his shoulders, he has no choice but to be somewhat worldly.

But in modern urban life, one can still try, like Yan Hui, to be "again and again empty" in heart. Whether it is "a single dish of rice, a single gourd of drink, in a mean alley" does not matter; what matters is "never changing one's joy."

"Again and again empty"—again and again means frequently, often. "Again and again empty" shows that emptiness has become a constant state. To be empty once in a while is something anyone can manage; "again and again empty" is not easy.

My present realization is that for a person to be "again and again empty," there must be a thorough, marrow-deep cognition to support it. Buddhism sums up this cognition as "dependent origination and the emptiness of inherent nature" (yuan qi xing kong), the very foundation of Buddhist philosophy. Buddhism holds that only by recognizing dependent origination and the emptiness of nature can one exhaust all vain imaginings and wrong views.

So-called dependent origination and the emptiness of nature means that nothing in the world exists independently; all things arise from the convergence of causes and conditions. That is, under the interplay of various conditions, all things are produced. If these various conditions did not operate, the root of all things would be void and empty.

So Buddhism holds that all things are merely various "appearances" produced under the joint action of various conditions—the appearance of a person, the appearance of a self, the appearance of living beings, the appearance of a lifespan; all appearances are illusory. Let the conditions change, and these appearances all vanish or alter; the essence of all things is emptiness, not appearance.

Therefore, those who cling to outward appearances court suffering for themselves. Only one who understands dependent origination and the emptiness of nature can cut off all illusory views and enter the suchness of nirvana. Having entered such a state, one attains the fruit level of the undefiled arhat, and afflictions will never arise again.

Daoism has a similar formulation. Laozi said: "All things under heaven are born of being; being is born of non-being." He also said, "The Dao gives birth to one, one gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, and three gives birth to all things." Following this, the root of all things is non-being.

In modern times, through the joint efforts of philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, historians, and anthropologists, another clearer cognition and formulation emerged. This cognition is a vast system; contemporary humanitarianism, humanism, and person-centeredness are all built on this foundation.

In brief, modern humanities scholars gradually developed a sympathy-based understanding of human nature, recognizing that the emergence and evolution of human nature is influenced by environment. So modern social governance has become realistic: while strengthening education, it optimizes the system of social governance as far as possible, trying to let everyone live out this life reasonably well.

Our ancients said: read ten thousand books, travel ten thousand miles. In Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin left a couplet: "A clear grasp of worldly affairs is all scholarship; a mature understanding of human relations is all literature."

Around the age of forty, through reading, traveling, seeing the world clearly, and maturing in human relations, I have basically driven the words "empty" and "non-being" deep into my marrow.

Of course this state was not reached all at once; it was trained step by step, from the overweening arrogance I had before twenty, through the agonized thinking after twenty, to the "daily thrice self-examination" after thirty.

We often say that all principles return to one, and that different roads lead to the same destination. Whatever the school, on certain fundamental truths they are actually much the same. So, having read many books, the concept of "emptiness and non-being" was naturally gradually reinforced in our minds, until it finally became an ineradicable inner quality.

And people too are much the same. Both biological and psychological research show that more than 95 percent of a person is identical, and the differing parts are less than 5 percent.

So, as long as one lives in the human world, basically all people may eventually converge in their understanding. Precisely for this reason the Buddha said that everyone possesses Buddha-nature; Buddha-nature is the self-nature of a person, hidden when deluded and manifest when awakened. Precisely for this reason universal values have the possibility of being accepted by all people, and a Great Commonwealth (datong world) has the possibility of being realized.

The things I am rambling on about would make Yan Hui laugh, would make an old farmer in the countryside laugh, and would make the Buddha and Laozi laugh even more. Because this is originally an extremely simple matter, which I have complicated by talking about it.

Old Master Zhaozhou talked of Chan in only three words: "Go have your tea!" The best philosophy has always been plain and easy to understand, practiced in the mundane mess of ordinary life—not in anyone's high-flown discourses.

That is why the sutras say: "To feed a thousand-million Buddhas of the three times is not as good as feeding one who has nothing to cultivate and nothing to attain." This means that the merit of making offerings to a thousand-million Buddhas of the three times is not as great as the merit of making offerings to one ordinary person who has nothing to cultivate, nothing to attain, and no afflictions.

The rambling preacher, the word-dancer and tongue-wagger, are not as true as the taciturn practitioner.

So the truly accomplished people in life are: Yan Hui, "again and again empty," with a dish of rice and a gourd of drink, unchanging in his joy in a mean alley; Su Dongpo, at ease and unruffled in adversity or prosperity alike; Tao Yuanming, picking chrysanthemums by the eastern hedge and gazing leisurely at the southern hills; Emerson, living in solitude by Walden Pond and finding joy in himself; even those old farmers in their curling woodsmoke, or beneath the warm spring sun, with nothing on their minds and a lifetime of peace; and the vegetable vendors in the market who sell their greens yet keep up hearty laughter all day long.

If, now that I have lived to forty, to the age of freedom from perplexity, I have gained anything, it is probably just this word "empty" and this word "non-being." Since what I have gained is emptiness and non-being, emptiness of all things, then words themselves must cease, and everything is beyond speech.