A Month of Reading Behind Closed Doors: Looking Back, the Hills and Rivers Are All in Autumn

Unwittingly, Zizhuyuan Park had already filled with autumn colors. The autumn chrysanthemums were in full bloom and fallen blossoms lay scattered; nature's autumn dress was gorgeous and beautiful. I often trudged back and forth along the two-point line between home and the library, backpack on my shoulders. As I crossed Zizhuyuan, I would walk along admiring the autumn colors by the road and the blue waves in the river, and a faint sense of well-being would rise spontaneously. Although I had already passed forty, from time to time I still felt as if I were living in my childhood: the outside world seemed far away, and I preferred to observe all things between heaven and earth in silence, to ponder the principles by which things run, to converse with myself, and to commune wordlessly with heaven and earth, letting thought and language flow freely.

I should thank fate: it has given me food to fill my stomach, clothing to keep me warm, and, above all, an enthusiasm that never fades. It has let me spend most of my life immersed in all manner of reflection and exploration, free of sorrow and anxiety, untiring, and unaware that old age is approaching. Occasionally my brain, out of fatigue, will shift into self-protection mode, leaving me unable to concentrate on study and thought. At such times I take a leisurely stroll, let my mind go blank, and rest a while; but most of the time my brain does its work lightly, happily, and diligently.

When I encounter all sorts of thorny problems, it shifts into focus mode. With every problem solved, an indescribable pleasure flows through every cell of my body. It is as though these problems stimulate my body to secrete some specific, euphoric signaling protein, which carries that euphoria to every cell and leaves them all in a fine state. This is a deeply personal experience of life; only the person inside it can feel it, and others cannot perceive this happiness at all.

There was a Daoist figure of the Northern and Southern dynasties named Tao Hongjing who depicted this feeling exquisitely in a poem: "What is there on the mountain? On the ridges there are many white clouds. They are only for my own delight; I cannot hold them out to you." The joy deep within a person's heart can really be understood only by himself, or by those who share his tastes and experiences; it is hard to share with others.

What is honey to one man is arsenic to another. What I enjoy to the full may taste like wax to someone else, and what others tirelessly pursue may be worthless in my eyes. Thus everyone's happiness can be entirely different, and the world ought to be diverse. Whoever has mastered the knack of being immersed in his own happiness naturally has the ability to shut out the outside world. What is the sea of suffering? In my view, a monotonous, all-the-same world is the sea of suffering; to sink together with countless people into an utterly clamorous world must be the most bitter experience on earth. For living that way, more or less, makes one feel as if kidnapped, unable to follow one's own will, helplessly driven along.

Tao Hongjing also devoted his life to medical research, and he may even be counted as one of the earliest chemists. He not only observed that, under certain conditions, some substances react to form others, but personally carried out many of the most primitive chemical experiments. He did not know what chemical bonds or valences were, yet he truly, with his own hands, changed the chemical bonds and valences of many elements. I seem to share many of his tastes; no wonder his poetry resonates with me.

I seem gradually to have drifted out of touch with society, with almost no social life; but I am not a lonely island—I have my circle of relatives and friends, and my family affection is wholly intact. I do not like to join in any trendy topics, but this causes me no inner discomfort, so it is not worth worrying about. As a member of the living world, I hold that my being alive is itself the meaning, and living interestingly is the value; beyond that, I need no extra labels. I have almost no desires; whatever I have obtained has come by following conditions. Today's gain is not worth rejoicing over, nor tomorrow's loss worth grieving. Gain or loss, I remain always myself: no gain, no loss; no increase, no decrease; no joy, no sorrow; no worry, no fear.

I have almost forgotten the passage of time, and most of the time I overlook the changing of the seasons—the cold has ended and I know not the year. I see, and then forget; I remember, and then forget. Everything outside is like a stranger passing by: encountered now and then, eyes meet, a faint smile, and the smile is forgotten at once, leaving no trace. Friendly and polite to the outside world, yet always keeping a sufficient boundary from it, my inner world is no longer so clamorous.

When a person's heart is not filled with so much noise, he can immerse himself in what he loves. Such immersion lets him forget the endless strife of the human world, stay far from all manner of inexplicable anxiety and sorrow, not envy fine clothes and prancing horses, not covet luxury cars and mansions, be unmoved by praise or ridicule, and ignore the high and low of status between people.

Whoever we are, we shall all return to dust. Before returning to dust, we are merely continuously exchanging matter and energy with the outside world; turning and turning, it is only a number of elements constantly changing their form of existence—there is no great difference. Even the difference between life and death is not so great. We multicellular organisms are made of numberless cells and microbes; after we die, some of our cells die while some microbes still live on, and the elements that made up our bodies will, in a marvelous way, enter the cycles of other lives. The so-called greatness and baseness, glory and shame in the human world are all things the Creator regards as a joke—devices by which humans deceive themselves. The Creator has merely given us life and one chance to experience it; when the great limit comes, whatever must be returned will be returned. If we cling to those trivial external things, we are, without doubt, living in a dream.

I once loved literature, philosophy, and religion; now I love medicine and the natural sciences more, loving their plain, unadorned attitude and their perspective that reduces all things to the simplest essence. When human thought reaches this level of the essence of things, it is no longer dizzy with gratitude and resentment, love and hatred, joy and sorrow, nor does it cling so tightly to birth, old age, illness, and death, to parting from loved ones, or to the unattainable. As everyone knows, the troubles that give most people headaches are just these trifles. They are like clouds and mist; a gentle puff and they vanish without a trace.

The savor of life lies in quiet joy. In the end, the only thing that can nourish our souls lastingly and harmlessly is this faint, quiet joy. And what this quiet joy depends on is not external praise or the material wealth we possess; it is a program the Creator long ago installed within our bodies, a program that naturally starts up at many moments of life. From childhood to the day we breathe our last, we will often perceive it. We need only let nature take its course to see it. If we are wise enough to know what to choose and what to forgo, then most of the rest of our lives we can abide in this state.