Go to Nature and Slowly Heal a Wounded Heart

I was once a guest of the hills, by chance come to the human world. Now I drift away with the clouds, wandering out the rest of my days. That afternoon, standing on Purple Bamboo Bridge and looking out toward the Western Hills, I suddenly composed in my heart this clumsy old-style poem to express my feelings.

Recently, every day I have had several moments of lonely gloom with no one to talk to. At such times I wander near home, looking at the withered roadside trees stripped of leaves, the white clouds in the sky, the green pines and bamboos that have not withered in the park, the ice on the lake and the stones along the shore, the unmelted snow in the woods, lingering before the Purple Bamboo Chan Temple in Zizhuyuan Park, reading the couplet before it—"The sounds of sutras and Buddha's names wake the lost traveler in the sea of suffering; the morning bell and evening drum rouse the fame- and fortune-seekers of the world"—quietly licking my wounds. As I walk on, my mood eases a little. I do not demand that I still study and work as efficiently as before during this period; I only hope my inner heart will gradually return to calm.

There are still some after-effects of the car accident. Occasionally I am in a dissociated state. Vaguely, I do not know where I am, who I am, or what year it is; but the symptoms are very mild and fleeting, a phenomenon I never had before the crash. If I do not get enough sleep, I still get headaches. Riding in a bumpy car makes me dizzy. Suddenly hearing a sharp screech of brakes triggers a fright reaction; a few times I nearly cried from shock. I do not expect to fully recover to my pre-accident state in the short term; if I can fully recover within three to six months, I will be very fortunate.

I am now gradually coming to my senses. If this year had not had so many high-pressure events, I would not have had the car accident. I have had various bumps and bruises before, but never have I been in such a terrible state as when I crashed. You reap what you sow; everything I encounter today includes my own fault, and I have no complaints. I only hope that in future I can repair myself from my own side, and that nothing else like this will crush me again. Because we cannot force others—everyone is an independent individual; we can only demand of ourselves, modifying those maladaptive "programs" in our brains to make our lives more balanced.

My mother used to say all the time that in this life I was like a relentless hero, sympathizing with others, bravely taking responsibility for them, working without complaint or bitterness, to the point of forgetting myself. Last year my father also used the same words to persuade me to ease my labors, and even stepped in to adjust my various interpersonal relationships and lighten my burden. Over twenty years ago, when I was in high school, my beloved teacher once said to me earnestly in the corridor: don't always have a savior complex; that way of living is exhausting. A few years ago, my teacher messaged me again, telling me that over these years he and his wife had watched me, like the sun, always shining so warmly, striving tirelessly, and that it pained them; he hoped I could be like the moon, serene and gentle.

The elders in my life who matter most and love me most saw with clear eyes my character flaw of often over-taking responsibility that was not mine, and all tried to help me correct it. They also let me realize what true love is: when you love someone, you cannot help wanting to protect them and keep them from harm. Although such love smacks of favoritism, when I am utterly exhausted I can still recognize that this favoritism has a certain basis.

These behaviors of mine are actually determined by a personality trait. In the Big Five, people high in both agreeableness and conscientiousness have this quality; such people have an ingrained habit of being dutiful and considerate of others. If low neuroticism is added, they will work without complaint or resentment. Because such people, however tired they are, do not pour their bad emotions on others; they rely on their own strong inner heart to digest everything. My Big Five results are: low neuroticism, low extraversion, high openness, high agreeableness, high conscientiousness. This matches me highly; I have the traits of emotional stability, dislike of socializing, open-mindedness, conscientiousness, thoughtfulness of others, and working without complaint.

Once a personality is formed, it is hard to change completely, but if in life we have suffered some pain or nearly lost our lives because of our personality, we will make some fine adjustments. When we are tired and in pain, there is no need to keep shouldering so many loads that are unfair to ourselves; instead, we should think of ourselves a little, reduce our pressure, fight for some fairness for ourselves, and make ourselves more comfortable.

My kind of personality easily attracts dependents. Because my ego is strong, my sympathy and thinking are strong, and I am tolerant and generous, I easily attract weak and confused people who need to cling to others. This is actually the result of the religious education I received early in life. Although I am not a religious person and do not believe in theism, early in my life I did receive religious education from my grandmother. My illiterate grandmother was a devout Buddhist and asked me to teach her to recite various sutras; as a result, I always memorized them before she did.

For a while I talked, at one of the most famous temples in the country, with monks who had been ordained there for years; they were astonished at my Buddhist foundation, because I was more familiar with the sutras than they were—able to quote and recite long passages word for word and deeply understand their meaning. This childhood grounding is something who took up the robes later in life do not possess; that I never shaved my head and became a monk often surprised people even more than if I had.

Now that I have learned some brain science, I know that the reason I came under such powerful religious influence and still remain a science-believing atheist is simply that the relevant regions of my brain are well developed, and no matter how strong the religious education, it cannot shake them. Damage to temporal-lobe-related regions of the brain predisposes people to epilepsy, spiritual experiences (actually transient psychotic episodes), and religious belief. There are always religious believers who refuse to give up and hope to persuade me to believe as they do; but unfortunately people like me are simply beyond their reach.

Atheists more easily find tranquility in nature, because the highest law the atheist believes in is the law of nature. In observing nature, we always come to understand the underlying laws behind all things. If we know that the misfortunes or unpleasant things that happen to us all have their underlying natural laws—laws that do not depend on human will—we accept them much more easily. Knowing that we are merely children of nature and cannot act against natural law, we can accept everything more calmly.

The elderly Mr. Zhou Youguang wrote an article in his hundreds, describing how, too old to go out, he could only observe from his balcony a tree outside and the birds that kept flying from afar to perch in it. He wondered where these birds came from and where they went, feeling the natural rhythm of the four seasons; this small pleasure made the naturalist as happy as an old child. The child of nature need not pray; he only needs to connect himself with nature to be healed by it. This powerful self-healing function is invincible.

Laozi said: "All things arise together, and I observe their return." Here "return" means repetition; what repeats endlessly is the law of nature. All things look complex, but the natural laws behind them are simple. Why an event happens, what pathological reaction a disease causes, what behavior a personality leads a person to commit—behind all these there are inescapable laws. Once we learn and master these laws, our worries diminish greatly, and we gain a more precise predictive ability over our own and others' behavior and even the course of the whole world.

A friend persuaded me to learn divination, because the Six-Lines study is very similar to personality psychology; many hexagrams correspond behind the scenes to a personality model, through which we can predict a person's rough life course. The ancients summed up these laws, so experienced and observant diviners can indeed, through a series of techniques, roughly estimate a person's past and predict their future.

I have studied it a little and know that those who originally set up the hexagrams did indeed study and sum up many natural laws. But I have no intention of learning this kind of thing that combines mysticism with natural law and has low precision. To be honest, using modern brain science we can not only predict a person's life more accurately but also genuinely help them and reduce their suffering; so why resort to ghost-playing and give people vague psychological hints? This conflicts with the fundamental beliefs of my whole life, so I am not willing to waste time on it.

My life has not been exactly tiring, but it has not been exactly easy either. My life has pursuits I never tire of, and also necessities I had no choice but to do. I am an idealist combined with a realist. If you, like me, have once been so poor that you could not guarantee food and clothing, even having begged along the street, then however strong your idealism, you will have to lower your head now and then in real life, safeguarding real life as best you can while still holding to idealism.

People with such personality traits are called "harmonizers." The greatest characteristic of a harmonizer is not being extreme, whether toward the ideal or the real. Put nicely, they are "broad in scope yet fine in detail, supremely lofty yet practicing the mean"; put less nicely, they are a bit of a compromiser. Life is imperfect, and compromise is often necessary; compromise makes the mindset more peaceful, believe it or not.

We must not only compromise with others but sometimes compromise with ourselves. Especially when our life cannot reach the ideal state, when we cannot get what we want, or when we have lost many people and things we once had, we must compromise with ourselves, making concessions deep within. Moderate fullness is perfection; only contentment brings constant joy. Respect the laws of nature and the rules of society, act within your means, and stop while you are ahead.

I know the evening clouds on the horizon can hear my heart, and so can the wind in the pines; the cold cicadas dormant beneath the earth have heard, and so have the wild ducks drifting in the river. The peaks and bridges are silent, but they have heard my heart. They comfort me, saying: at this moment you are not alone; all things are with you. You need only give your heart to us, and we will repair it and return it to you whole. With boundless gratitude, I accepted their generous and free gift.