Only by Breaking Free From Bonds Can One Be At Ease

In the twelfth year of the Kaihuang reign of the Sui dynasty, Sima Daoxin, later honored as the Fourth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, was just fourteen years old and still a young novice monk.

One day this young novice went to pay reverence to the Third Patriarch of Chan, Master Sengcan.

When he first met the Third Patriarch, Daoxin said to Sengcan: "Venerable sir, out of compassion, I beg you to give me the teaching of liberation."

The Third Patriarch countered: "Who binds you?"

Daoxin said: "No one binds me."

The Third Patriarch said: "Then why do you seek liberation?"

Hearing these words, the Chan master Daoxin was greatly enlightened on the spot.

This is a famous case in the history of Chan Buddhism, telling how the Fourth Patriarch Daoxin, guided by the Third Patriarch Sengcan, was greatly enlightened upon hearing a single exchange.

Translated into modern language, the gist is roughly this:

The Fourth Patriarch Sima Daoxin met the Third Patriarch, bowed deeply, and begged Master Sengcan to grant him the Dharma gate of liberation.

The Third Patriarch asked him: "Who has tied you up?"

The Fourth Patriarch answered that no one had.

The Third Patriarch pressed on: "Since no one binds you, what liberation are you seeking?"

Hearing this, the Fourth Patriarch was at once greatly enlightened.

It is said that with just this one question and answer, the Fourth Patriarch Daoxin realized the profound Dharma.

Chan stories all carry a certain romantic charm: they resolve an extremely difficult matter in a few words. Such a light, easy solution is not, for an ordinary worldly person like me, actually workable.

In real life, it is not that a person has no moment of sudden awakening, but rather, does that awakening fundamentally solve one's own problems? Personally, I doubt it.

Throughout a lifetime, being bound is an objective fact. The bonds of law, the bonds of worldly convention, the bonds of family affection, the bonds of friendship, and the demands of the physical body for food, clothing, shelter and sex—all bind us.

For a person to do entirely as he pleases is almost completely impossible.

So, what kind of person is least bound?

Master Hsing Yun gave an answer. Once, in an interview, he said that throughout his life he had never grown too close to any single person, and so he had few attachments and enjoyed a light, easy life.

I feel, to some extent, the same way.

Since my second year of high school, I gradually came to love only reading and writing, and to dislike close dealings with people. After I entered university, this tendency only grew stronger.

After leaving school, I simply settled near the National Library, spending most of my time either in the library or in my own study: reading, studying medicine, writing, preparing medicines, treating patients, planting flowers and grass. Living this way, nearly twenty years have passed in the blink of an eye.

Now I am completely used to this life. There will not be much upheaval in my life; for the rest of my days I will basically follow this same path, living out my years calmly.

So I have very few friends. If I had not occasionally made a couple of friends for life, I might be even more like a lone ranger.

Nowadays even my closest confidants are mostly "at the corners of heaven and the ends of the earth," scattered far and wide; we meet only once or twice a year. It is truly, as the ancients said, "the friendship of gentlemen is as plain as water."

Returning to daily life, beyond work and family, there is year after year of solitude: one person, a pile of books, a phone, a computer.

I believe that most of the bonds on a person's spirit arise from interpersonal relationships. The simpler one's relationships, the fewer the bonds on the spirit.

If a person can simplify his relationships to the point of being friendly to others without being intimate or close—without building for himself a vast and heavy network of relationships, and without seeking meaning in group life—then he is not far from being freed from all bonds.

As for this physical bag of flesh needing to eat, drink, defecate, sleep and have sex, that is simply nature. If one is always at war with this basic nature, one has fallen into a state of obsession, and there is nothing more to say about that.

Of course, to break free even more thoroughly, we still need a broad-minded, accepting attitude toward life, and the wisdom that understands the ways of the world yet keeps a generous heart. Otherwise, after being alone too long, one easily drifts into another extreme through the extremism born of excessive seclusion.

The turmoil of emotions deep within the individual heart is an objective reality.

In my own experience, emotional disturbances arise from nothing other than work being too intense, or from one's thinking not yet being broad and harmonious enough. If one can adjust one's pace of work, read more books, and refine one's personal cultivation, then over time there will be fewer and fewer such emotions.

Having no entanglements or grievances with others, and none with oneself, then one has truly broken completely free from all bonds and lives in ease and freedom.