If You Love Them, Do Not Hurt Them

In my youth I listened to rain on a singing-tower, red candles dimming the silken curtains. In my prime I listened to rain in a traveler's boat, wide river, low clouds, a lone goose crying in the west wind. Now I listen to rain beneath a monk's eaves, my temples already flecked with gray. Parting and meeting, joy and sorrow, are always heartless; let the drops on the stone steps fall till dawn.

— Jiang Jie (Song dynasty), "The Beautiful Lady Yu: Listening to Rain"

During the pandemic, a female middle-school classmate suddenly contacted my wife and, on a video call, told her that she had once had a crush on me. The three of us were in the same middle school; over the years I have avoided almost all classmate groups and reunions and have been like a person who has vanished from the world of old classmates. Apart from a few closest friends, no one knows my contact details.

But my wife still keeps in touch with old classmates, and everyone knows I married her, so old classmates can still add her on WeChat. This female classmate later asked to video-call me as well and, in front of my wife, told me she had once loved me, asking whether I was happy to hear it.

After hearing this I felt very awkward. Her own heart must have held no more lingering grudge for her to dare, so directly before my partner, to express her admiration for me from those years. But after hearing it, there was a wound in my heart—not a wound for her, after all, because at that time I had not pursued her, so I can hardly be said to have caused her the pain of a broken heart. I cannot take emotional responsibility for a girl who once had a crush on me, and yet in this life I am not without my own emotional debts.

I am now quite afraid of contact with the opposite sex, because this damn personal charm of mine and this bit of third-rate literary talent always seem to attract the opposite sex, making them fall deeply for me and remember me lifelong. When I say this there is not the slightest trace of vanity; it is a true, heart-wrenching confession. I have been in more than one romance, but I cannot marry more than once, and so I have also broken others' hearts. This has left me with a deep lifelong sense of guilt and has caused me to dare never again to get too close to the opposite sex.

Looking back, more than one woman in this life has hoped to marry me. When I was young I was clueless and did not know how to decline others' kindness or keep a safe distance, and as a result I sowed romantic bonds that could not end in marriage, leaving others to struggle through unsatisfying lives. Whenever this is stirred up in me I feel deeply saddened; this has become one of the knots I cannot untie.

My parents never gave me proper education about love and marriage; they never taught me not to lightly press the button of romance, and they left some regrets in my life. In our country, sex education is treated as a taboo; parents and children do not speak of it, which is truly a great failing. We should be taught from childhood how to choose a partner when we grow up, how to love, and once in love to be faithful to love and marriage—not to hurt others, and not to hurt ourselves.

Now I am careful to keep my distance from the opposite sex, always politely not getting too close to them—especially not to those who are favorably disposed toward me. I very much hope my son will not follow in my footsteps; on the question of love and marriage I am not a good role model.

I hope that in this life he chooses whom he loves and loves whom he chooses; one romance, one marriage, a lifelong promise, and a promise kept lifelong. If a relationship cannot end in marriage, then do not pursue that person—do not even start a romance, give them no illusions, and do not harm them. Of course, this may be too idealistic; after all, for young people it is not easy to fall in love and succeed on the first try.

The Buddha said: "Wife and children and house are worse than a prison; a prison has an end, but wife and children hold no thought of leaving." By "wife and children" he meant wife and child. In today's terms, the Buddha was a marriage-phobe; he regarded family as a burden. In the end he left home to become a monk; his wife and son followed him into the homeless life, and his son Rahula became one of his ten great disciples, foretold by the Buddha as "foremost in esoteric practice."

On this question my view differs from his. I affirm intimate relationships; I do not regard love between man and woman or the parent-child bond as a burden, but as happiness, and I do not reject spending my life with someone I love. So although I too would like to leave home for a while and experience it—after all, that is also a enviable way of life—the precondition is that I accompany my partner and parents through this life; I do not want to cause pain to others on my own account.

In some Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia, short-term monastic ordination is common, and many people have experienced it. But in our cultural environment, doing this easily brings trouble to one's family, subjecting them to criticism and pain. Someone like me, whose six senses are not yet pure and who still worries about family and partner, is not willing to take that risk.

Now that I am middle-aged, I often reflect on the mistakes I have made. I reflect on my faults not only in male-female relationships but also in parent-child relationships. Recently, when traveling with my son, I specifically asked him—because I had once physically punished him when he was small—whether this physical punishment had left trauma on his childhood. I apologized to him and hoped that when he has children, he must on no account use physical punishment.

My son said, humorously, that as a child I only ever physically punished him when he came home crying after losing a fight with his playmates and I forbade him to cry, insisting he be masculine. He described it as being beaten once outside and beaten again at home. But he said, smiling, that it left him no childhood trauma at all; after all, I, as a father, still loved him very much and had given him ample care, affirmation, and protection.

The essence of my present work is mending other people's broken lives. In my daily work, far too many of the people I encounter have been wounded by love—most often wounded by parents and intimate partners, and some wounds are very hard to repair. The reason so many people suffer all their lives is that those who should have loved them first gave them not love but abuse and harm, leaving them with severe trauma.

This nature of my work, on the one hand, prompts me to reflect on my own behavior toward others, and on the other, makes me aware of the importance of education in love. Many people simply do not know how to love their partner and children healthily; they repeat the mistaken ways of loving they inherited from their parents onto others, causing countless people's hearts to break and their fates to run rough. What a regrettable thing this is!