Awakening from the Mundane Dream, the Past Is Like Wind

Life can never be calm; the only thing that can be calm is our own heart.

—Epigraph

At the age of eighteen, when I was a freshman, my father went bankrupt and the family fell into hardship. That year my elder brother was a junior, and the whole family was clouded with worry over money. I decided to make my own way and not let my parents worry about me at all.

Besides tutoring, I went to work as a salesperson at a fitness equipment company. When I had nothing to do in the office, I would settle down to read; at that time I often read Shanghan Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage) and Honglou Meng (Dream of the Red Chamber), and I would often sit at my desk and write something. Our sales manager took an interest in me; she asked to borrow Honglou Meng, and by the way looked at what I had written.

One day she said to me: "Zhiyuan, your present choice is wrong. You should not be toiling over these family matters—these matters, once you start to toil over them, will never end. You should walk your own road. As long as you hold to your dream, with your talent, one day you will become strong, and then you will naturally be able to help your family."

At that time I could not take in what she said. There is a fable in Zhuangzi: Zhuangzi's family was poor, and he went to his friend the Baron of Jian River to borrow some grain in an emergency. The Baron told Zhuangzi that he would soon receive his salary, and would then lend Zhuangzi three hundred pieces of gold. Zhuangzi's countenance flushed with indignation, and he said to his old friend: "When I came here yesterday, on the road I heard a carp in a rut calling for help. I asked the carp what help it needed; the carp said, 'I need a dou or sheng of water to live.' I told the carp, 'I will travel south to Wu and Yue, and when I reach Wu and Yue, I will use the water of the West River there to rescue you, so that you may swim freely—would that be all right?' The carp's countenance flushed with indignation: 'I have now lost the water most critical to my survival; a dou or sheng of water would keep me alive. You talk to me of this—are you making sport of me?' Old fellow, you are treating me as the carp trapped in a rut!"

This allusion is the source of the famous idiom "the carp in a dried rut." At that time I thought my sales manager did not understand that I was then in the plight of the "carp in a dried rut," and that there was a touch of standing and talking without a backache about her words. Nineteen years later, I still remember clearly what this elder sister said to me. Suddenly looking back, I felt that in my youth, by not following her advice, I had taken too many detours.

Life always has all kinds of difficulties; at every moment we may feel ourselves like the "carp in a dried rut," urgently needing a dou of water to live. Thus we have no choice but to sacrifice our ideals and scramble about in real life, only to find in the end that this scrambling has no day of rest. Life is short, and the days gone are numbered; after wasting a great deal of time, when we look back, we find that the various toils we undertook for mundane life are not as meaningful as we imagined. Moreover, many problems in mundane life do not actually require such toil to solve; trapped in the mundane trap, for the people we care for, we bury our ideals and still do not obtain the recognition we expected.

One day, a junior fellow apprentice found me and expressed his admiration for me over the years. To be honest, I really did not know him. In my school days I had been all-powerful, passionate, a thoroughgoing idealist of extraordinary perseverance, and I had left a very deep impression on him as a lowerclassman. My junior fellow apprentice said to me: "Senior brother, you are my idol; all these years it has been you who have inspired me to go forward."

These words made me suddenly feel ashamed beyond words, for if he had not come to remind me, I would almost have forgotten the hot-blooded years when I wrote with such fervor. Perhaps some impassioned speech I gave back then from the school rostrum inspired him; perhaps the sight of my sweating, struggling efforts at school inspired him, so that more than ten years later, my junior fellow apprentice still revered me greatly.

In my thirties, my long-dormant ideal gradually awakened. My heart returned to the years of youth; I once again held to idealism and, relying on my consistent independent and unorthodox style, made a major change in my life. This change was extraordinarily painful: not only did I myself have to go through the pain, but my family had to go through it too, because I decided to wrench myself free from mundane life and chase my ideal. The pain of the transformation made me struggle and waver several times, but in the end my will grew firmer and firmer; I did not want to turn back, did not want always to be like a "carp in a dried rut," urgently seeking the dou-or-sheng of water that keeps one alive, and did not want to be unable to pull myself out of this vicious cycle. I want to race death for time in order to chase my ideal; before I die, at least I will have satisfied myself.

I want to be a passable physician and writer; even if I will live a life of poverty and be mocked and ridiculed by those around me, I do not care. Life is like a tangle of hemp, and like a pile of chicken feathers; if one must mind the sufferings of mundane life, there will never be a day of departure. Firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, tea, and all manner of emotional entanglements will bind a person to death, making it very hard to pull free. The only thing one can do is wield the sword of wisdom, cut through the thousand threads of vexation, and enter the state of transcendence beyond the mundane. Only powerful spiritual strength can help ourselves escape the various temptations and censures, not be hampered by desires, and truly find joy in poverty and follow the Way.

Thus I awakened from this mundane dream, little by little, while all the affairs of the past passed away like wind. On the road of chasing my ideal, I continue to perfect myself, pressing forward without haste or impatience.