Ease Without Transgression
Confucius said that at seventy he could "follow whatever the heart desired without transgressing what was right." I believe only six or seven parts of this saying. At seventy, it is actually hard to follow whatever one desires—the body does not permit it, and often the will is stronger than the strength. Not only can a seventy-year-old not fully follow desire; even vigorous young people can hardly do so. The heart can gallop through the heavens, but for a person to follow the heart's desire is exhausting. Moreover, according to modern brain science, human free will is in fact pitifully small; most of the time we act only under the drive of instinct and habit. How much possibility of following desire is there really?But I strongly endorse the principle he raised of "not transgressing what is right." Living in this world, whether or not one is a free spirit, one must always observe certain rules that must be observed. These rules should be as simple as possible; if too cumbersome, they are neither easy to follow nor pleasant. I would slightly adapt a sentence from the Analects to describe this "rule": "Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire; and tell others what you yourself do not desire." Confucius advocated "do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire"; this is somewhat subjective. What we do not desire, others may well desire; and what others do not desire, we may not fully perceive. So one must communicate with people, understand what they truly do not want, not touch their bottom line, and not take on work that cannot meet their needs. At the same time it is best to show one's own bottom line, telling people what one does not want. Only thus can unnecessary disputes be avoided; if one's life can be made less disputatious, vexation diminishes greatly.Provided one has avoided disputes with others, doing within one's ability anything harmless to others is beyond reproach. What I personally pursue is not following whatever the heart desires; I am not so sure of my own heart. For example, if I see someone else has a fine villa and garden and feel envy, I cannot force myself to slog away to earn such a villa and garden.Desire is boundless. Some desires are harmless, others very harmful. Many people in this world live in agony precisely because they have too much desire in their hearts. So the ability to control what the heart desires is important; controlling desire, keeping it within a range we can bear and that brings us pleasure, lets us live happily rather than under pressure.For my own material desires, I follow the principle of increasing income and reducing expenditure—working and earning as much as is within my ability and will, because a life of charity dependence is too passive; at the same time I economize to the greatest extent, so that what I have exceeds what I need, and my heart is always at peace. What I pursue is not affluence but surplus. The two differ by one character, yet their meanings are utterly different.Affluence has no boundary, but surplus is easy to achieve. If my daily life needs only ten or twenty yuan—and I indeed live on the equivalent of ten or twenty yuan at current purchasing power—and I have a hundred yuan, I feel very much in surplus. But if affluence were the standard, then even a hundred million might be only a small goal. Achieving such a small goal would be enough to crush me; a hundred million cannot crush Wang Jianlin, but it can crush me. Although I do not have a hundred million, I have a hundred, so I am also content.Compared with following whatever the heart desires, I prefer the state of zizai (ease/at-ease). Zizai is a concept borrowed from Buddhism; Buddhism has a Bodhisattva called Avalokiteshvara the Contemplator of Ease (Guanzizai Pusa), and the Heart Sutra is the insight of Guanzizai Pusa while practicing the deep Prajnaparamita. Through the ages, countless Buddhist and philosophical masters have offered all kinds of explanations of Guanzizai; I do not negate any of them—perhaps they are all right.Even so, I would still like to offer my own definition of the zizai I speak of in this essay: by zizai I mean a state in which a person's cognition is highly coordinated with their lived state at every present moment; such a state of ease leaves a person free of inner conflict. In such a state, whether his life looks to others to be poor or rich, in favorable or adverse circumstances, he remains serene and content. The key to ease is in fact human adaptability; if our life circumstances change and our expectations for life change with them, we are free from the suffering of unsatisfied desire.Such ease looks like a lofty realm, but it is in fact human nature; most children are in this state. Why it changes after growing up is mainly that, in the course of growing up, one deviates from this state to some degree. Perhaps the angle of deviation is small, but continued deviation over a long time produces a large deviation. It is like a plane flying from Shanghai to Beijing: if it deviates only slightly from its route, after a flight of some time it may end up in Harbin or Urumqi.The great majority of factors in life are uncontrollable and cannot be changed by us; the only thing we can change is our cognition. As long as we are willing to learn and reflect, we can learn much wisdom from others and realize much wisdom ourselves, and internalize it as our cognition. Cognition differs from mere wisdom; cognition is the spiritual force that guides our life, some of it in conscious awareness and some in the subconscious. The driving force behind our every word and deed is our cognition. The greatest difference between people is the difference in cognition. When a person's cognition is sufficient to master the various circumstances of life, they are not far from ease.