Body Ill but Heart Untroubled: Reverence for All Beings, and Timely Silence

Recently Ethel, a long-lived British woman, died at the age of 114; it is said her greatest trait was a heart free of worry. This is a bit like the late Chinese scholar Zhou Youguang, who died at 113. This old man spent his life tirelessly studying scholarship, and even when locked up in a "cowshed" during the Cultural Revolution he remained free of care. With such psychological endurance, it is hard not to live long.

It is not easy for a person to keep a heart free of worry. Last year a centenarian in our village also passed away. My father said this old woman was one of the poorest in our village, her children were not very filial, and all her life the household didn't even use an electric light, let alone other appliances. Yet she never worried; whether life was good or bad, she didn't take it to heart. Any ailment she just endured; she never went to the hospital at all.

My own constitution is not very strong; I was diagnosed with hepatitis B twenty years ago. I think I probably caught hepatitis B as a child through shared needles used for various vaccinations, because I have lived without isolation with my family for forty years and none of them caught hepatitis B from me; in my own household, besides me, not a single person has hepatitis B. So it can't have been mother-to-child transmission, nor can it have come from living together with my family.

Having studied medicine, I know myself that roughly one in three hepatitis B patients will eventually die of liver cancer or cirrhosis, so for many years I have not smoked or drunk, and I have not dared to overwork.

After the age of thirty my personal emotions have been very stable and my psychological endurance is strong. Few people can make me angry; I owe this to the many humanities and social-science books I have read over the years, which have let me understand worldly affairs thoroughly, so that things rarely stir my inner feelings.

I have no wish to be anyone's enemy; when others provoke me, I try my best to keep my distance. I am not a rooster and have no need to be so combative. Since I entered medicine, almost every month there have been various consultors who scold me out of misunderstanding (and all of them never paid). No matter how ugly they scold, I treat them with courtesy and never answer back; but once they have opened their mouths to scold, I never pretend to be compassionate and keep them—I always delete them completely. Forgive my selfishness; I cannot keep company with such people, and I won't do things that shorten my life.

In my public account people also often try to stir up quarrels; I just block them all. In life there are too many things far more important than arguing with others; anyone with a rooster-like combative nature, I keep away from.

Getting angry, for a patient with liver disease, is a stupid form of slow suicide. Arguing only wastes life. One important reason I have persistently studied medicine is that I myself am entangled with several illnesses; I hope one day to solve my own health problems, or at the least to be able to take care of myself and not add trouble to my family.

The articles I write are often plagiarized; even photos I post of my study are stolen by other TCM doctors and passed off as photos of their own studies to promote themselves. Although I know (because patients who see their Moments tell me at once), I can't be bothered to argue.

For one thing, this is hard to avoid in the Internet age; for another, these plagiarists have already, through their plagiarism, become objects of ridicule and contempt in many patient groups. Given time, the bitter fruit will ripen and fall on its own. I know these people who plagiarize my articles read everything new I write every day; I hope that when they see this article, they know where to stop and quit in time.

Faced with slander, abuse, doubt and plagiarism, silence is the best response. Shutting the door to live an ideal life, and opening the door to compromise with reality—this is my basic attitude. The world is not perfect; if you face this real world with a demand for perfection, you will inevitably damage your inner peace.

For me, the most important things are solving my own health problems, solving the health problems of my relatives and friends, solving the health problems of my patients, and perfecting myself. Everything else is trivial. After striving for so many years, I have not only helped many cancer patients but also cured some hepatitis B patients; while curing them, I have also found hope for myself.

Of course, among hepatitis B patients my condition belongs to the very mild "small three positive" category; as long as I don't ruin my own body, it is unlikely I will die of hepatitis-B-induced cirrhosis or liver cancer.

In this world it is truly too hard to avoid falling ill, but falling ill can also prolong life, and one can even do many things with abundant energy. Master Xingyun of Taiwan suffered from many severe illnesses, including diabetes, yet this old man lived both long and with high quality.

To achieve this, a person must distinguish the important from the trivial, be able to take things up and put them down. As long as you let go of the unimportant things in life, most people can save more than half their energy—think of how absurd it is that we humans foolishly spend more than half our energy on things that simply don't matter.

The Huangdi Neijing (Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon) says the key to nourishing life is "do not shake your essence, do not overwork your form." This means: do not drain your jing-qi-shen too much, and do not overwork your body. These few words pinpoint the essence of life-nourishment.

"No many matters in the heart, always a book on the desk." These ten words are the epitome of my own life. Studying medicine and saving lives is a heavy burden, but if one can "be outwardly detached from all appearances and inwardly free of turmoil," one can bear heavy loads lightly. As long as a person is willing to read and willing to stay away from right and wrong, no matter how heavy the burden of work, he can still live with ease and contentment.