Ethereal and Self-Sufficient, Free Beyond the Bonds of the Body

These past two days, my Moments have been flooded with the news that Li Yong, the famous CCTV host, has died of cancer.

May Brother Yong rest in peace! A public figure dying of cancer is a collective lesson in cancer prevention for the public; this was the sunny Li Yong's final, and greatest, contribution to society.

I feel that these celebrities bowing out of life in this way has another effect: it mocks all the shrill, strange tunes about life's success that have clamored in recent years, and satirizes the pseudo-masters who, one after another, peddle all manner of life philosophies and values.

I am forty this year, ten years younger than Li Yong. I do not know whether I will die of cancer at fifty or even younger. Having dealt with cancer for so many years, I know it too well. Some cancers are preventable, but others cannot be guarded against; so I dare not boast that I will not get cancer.

Old Mr. Ji Xianlin said that in the past it was normal for people not to live past forty. Now that I have already lived past forty, dying at any time would be no regret. Once I visited the Peking Man site at Zhoukoudian and read the text there saying that the average age of the Zhoukoudian Peking Man was only fifteen or sixteen. In the past it was often said that seventy years of life were rare since antiquity. So we modern people are truly already very lucky; most people live to over seventy.

What does it feel like to have lived past forty? In these forty years of mine, I have experienced both the collective hardship and kindness of the seventies and eighties, and the restlessness and complexity of the last twenty years. Over these years, the prevalence of fatal diseases like cancer has exploded, much like nature's revenge and warning against humans who do not know the height of heaven or the depth of earth.

Restless human hearts, under the onslaught of material desire, seem colorful, but are mostly at a loss. Before the powerful environment, people are tiny and pitiful; everyone is abducted forward by public opinion, and behind the glamour is unspeakable bitterness. Only a very few can break free from their environment and exist independently.

One could even say that, through the ages, not many people have lived with ease and freedom; Zhuangzi is one of them. A copy of Zhuangzi has accompanied me for more than twenty years. From second year of high school, when, guided by my beloved teacher, I read Mr. Liu Shahe's Modern Version of Zhuangzi, to now, Zhuangzi, that open-minded and humorous sage, has played an important role in my life.

So I think, if I must be classified as someone's disciple, I would call myself a disciple of Zhuangzi. Mr. Qian Mu believed that Zhuangzi was the true founder of Daoist philosophy, and that the book Laozi appeared later than Zhuangzi. And, unlike the historical Zhuangzi, whether Laozi actually existed is doubtful. (On this, see Qian Mu's Zhuang Lao Tongbian.)

Zhuangzi was an ethereal, self-sufficient person, free beyond the bonds of the body—open-minded, interesting, thoroughly understanding the essence of life, utterly unafraid of death, yet deeply loving life. I like this flavor.

I always feel that once a person passes forty, he has, more or less, a sense of having survived disaster. Because by forty, most people have personally experienced the death of a close relative. A real death is enough to shake the heart like a catastrophe.

Although people die in this world every day, the dead belong to other families, not to those bound up with us; so most people are numb to death. But when one's own close relative passes, the feeling is completely different.

While keeping vigil for my own mother, I saw with extraordinary clarity the impermanence of life and the nonsense of human relations. A thin coffin separated a mother and son who had deeply loved each other; beyond the heartbreak, I also felt that all life's pursuits were truly nonsense.

When Zhuangzi's old wife died, Zhuangzi sang while beating on a tub. Zhuangzi's friend Hui Shi reproached Zhuangzi for being heartless. Zhuangzi said: when my old wife first died, how could I not grieve? But thinking that she has already returned to nature, while I am still here wailing, I feel it is truly foolish. After all, a person is merely a child of nature, coming from nature and returning to nature—how normal.

When Zhuangzi was about to die, his disciples discussed how to bury him. Zhuangzi, finding it laughable, told them to wrap him in a straw mat and dump him anywhere in the wild, using heaven and earth as the coffin. That would be enough.

The disciples felt it would be bad to leave their teacher's remains exposed to be pecked by vultures. Zhuangzi said: burying in the ground is nothing more than changing my remains from vulture food to ant and mole cricket food; why favor one and disdain the other, favoring the ants and mistreating the vultures?

Only someone as open-minded as Zhuangzi could truly be ethereal and self-sufficient, free beyond the bonds of the body. Whether emperor or commoner, in the end all return dust to dust. Some foolish people always think they are a bit more remarkable than others. But the clear breeze and bright moon do not care what people think; they only know that "you and your names alike shall perish, yet the great rivers flow on, eternal."

In life, necessary needs are unavoidable for everyone; excessive possession is pure pathology. Having been in a pathological state for too long, all manner of bizarre cognitions sprout. With respect, from a medical point of view, these bizarre cognitions mostly belong to the manifestations of mental illness.

Nowadays I increasingly do not want to be the slave of any kind of idea. Just thinking that my life may have only a short tail left, yet still having to live according to circles drawn by others, feels so stupid.

So, just play on this way while waiting for death! Be happy oneself, and just do not give others a hard time.

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