Meditations On Life

A note: this is an essay I wrote in 2012, a little over a month before my mother's death. Today, for certain reasons, I happened to reread it; after reading I fell into long thought. I have decided to repost the original essay as it was, and add a few words at the end. The original follows:

The poet Bei Dao said that returning to his hometown cured his homesickness—because his hometown had changed so utterly that he could no longer recognize the place he had known. Bei Dao's hometown is Beijing, and Beijing has indeed changed greatly over these years. My own hometown is a village in the foothills of the Dabie Mountains; on the surface at least, it has not changed much.

Yet in essence, returning home likewise cured my homesickness. For to my hometown I have already become a familiar stranger; and to me, my hometown has also become a familiar stranger. The dozen-plus years I spent away were exactly the dozen-plus years in which China's urbanization and industrialization raged in full force; both I and my hometown's ways changed enormously.

More than a decade of separation has at last drawn a deep gulf between me and my home. To my hometown I am half host and half guest. Walking along the ridges of my home village, I feel that Zheng Chouyu's line—"I am not one returning, but a passerby"—could not describe my situation and feelings more aptly. It often saddens me beyond words, for this sense of loss makes me feel that my soul has lost its resting place and become a wandering, homeless drifter.

But like Bei Dao, deep in my heart that hometown, deeply branded upon me, has always existed, and it often rises before my mind. Whenever a scene, a passage, or a conversation stirs my nostalgia, the hometown of my childhood unrolls before my eyes like a painted scroll. At such moments I feel how deeply, how bone-deep, homesickness can be.

Sometimes I press myself to the bottom of the question: why do I miss my hometown so deeply? For many years I could find no answer. But as my mother lay about to leave this world, I finally understood that what congeals in homesickness is love, and the countless happy hours lived because of love.

Over the long span of a human life, happiness has always been exceedingly rare. The happy hours of childhood under a mother's care are rarer still. This love nourished me; it is the source of all my spiritual strength.

Through life's storms and stress, the light and energy given off by a mother's love have always played an infinite part. In darkness, it lets you see light; in the cold wave, it lets you feel warmth. It is unmixed with any dross; though, because of differences of outlook, inevitable conflicts often break out between mother and son, behind those conflicts a pure love—never abandoned, never calculating—flows on like a great river. Gurgling, vast and sweeping. If you only feel it with your heart, you will deeply realize how great it is. In the mortal world, no other love can take its place.

In Yu Guangzhong's poem "Nostalgia" there is this passage:

"Later on, nostalgia was a small low grave.

I was outside,

Mother was inside."

Unhappily, just after I turned thirty, I had to experience this very feeling described in Yu Guangzhong's poem. It often brings tears to my eyes. Especially when I could clearly feel my mother's fierce will to live yet was helpless to act, this feeling cut me to the heart. Watching the footsteps of death draw near, I could only struggle in agony and despair, helplessly letting time cruelly slip by as the moment of farewell grew closer little by little. As the Buddha said in the Sutra of Forty-Two Sections, a person's life lies only between one breath out and one breath in. In a sudden instant, breathing stops, and one takes leave of this world forever.

My mother made me face death directly, letting me for the first time truly realize: life is fragile beyond compare, and impermanence can arrive at any moment. It forced me, in my pain, to think about the essence of life and about how to face death. No matter how I could not let go, illness would take my mother in the end. My mother's life was one of loving-kindness; she successively cared for and raised five children who were not her own. That was very hard for a rural woman.

Bearing bitter toil meant for my mother not only physical hardship but also spiritual exhaustion. Whenever I met with a major difficulty, I would always think of how my mother had clenched her teeth and walked her own rough road through life. Loving-kindness, patience, perseverance, diligence, tolerance—perhaps countless other fine virtues together formed my mother's spiritual defense line, helping her overcome crisis after crisis in life.

But my mother was inevitably caught up in the various traps the Creator has laid for humankind: fretting over countless trivialities in the mortal world, caring more or less about empty fame and gain. All this made my mother no different from the mass of living beings. Drifting with the tide through joy and sorrow, with worry and with fear, she was knotted into a life in which pain outnumbered happiness.

I often pity my mother, for she enjoyed little in life and suffered much. A childhood of toil and hunger, an unhappy marriage, family relations that were estranged early and broke down in later years, a husband of violent temper, two rebellious sons, relatives who repaid kindness with ingratitude—all these once left my mother utterly drained.

Fortunately, my mother's character had an inborn anti-depressive quality. Her unscheming nature was popular with the neighbors, and her honest yet kind way of dealing with people won her many friends. Throughout her life, my mother never had a dispute with any neighbor outside her own family; she always lived in harmony with those around her.

In the eyes of her neighbors, my mother was a joy-bringer; people liked being with her for amusement. This shared enjoyment made my mother forget countless sorrows, and her suffering often dissolved in a few words from the neighbors. I am deeply grateful to these neighbors who brought my mother joy and comfort. This simple human warmth has continued to this day.

But what I regret is that my mother could not take one more step: letting go of all worldly attachments, viewing the disputes of the mortal world lightly, and thus moving toward a higher kind of happiness, unburdened by any worldly fame or gain. That un-taken step bound up countless worries without cause, so that throughout her life there were still countless moments lived in greed, anger, delusion, pride and doubt. Countless hours were wasted in affliction and pain; and in the end these very afflictions and pains made her ill and caused her to suffer torments.

Life is like treading waves; there is never a moment without surging. A stormy world never spares anyone. God did not favor my mother, and God has not favored anyone. As Laozi said: "Heaven and earth are not benevolent; they treat all things as straw dogs. The sage is not benevolent; he treats the people as straw dogs." We who live in this world—none can escape the fate of being a "straw dog" (a sacrificial offering).

The Creator played a very malicious joke: without asking anyone's consent, it brought them one by one into this world. The rules of the human world then force everyone who makes the trip to leave bruised and battered. However correct you think all your actions are, God never lets every wish be fulfilled. Before God, no one is a favorite. Life may be colorful, but whose life is not filled with pain?

Walking the roads of my hometown, I often feel the inspiration of two people: Sima Daoxin, the actual founder of the Chan school, and the Medicine King Sun Simiao. For both are deeply connected with my home.

Sima Daoxin was the Fourth Patriarch of Chan. According to Chan history, before Sima Daoxin the patriarchs had no fixed abode and taught disciples according to conditions, so the number they could guide was limited. It was not until Sima Daoxin that a fixed place was established as a teaching site and a sizable monastic community formed, allowing Chan to shine brilliantly and become China's most influential religious school.

Sima Daoxin's birthplace is less than fifteen kilometers from my village. The mountains and waters there nurtured him once, and nurtured me as well. The final site Sima Daoxin chose for his teaching was near his own home—today's Sizheng Zhengjue Chan Temple.

Sima Daoxin's father, Sima Shen, had been the county magistrate of our county; at that time the county was named Yongning ("eternal peace"), and from the name one can see that both rulers and people placed deep hopes in it: may it forever be at peace. Today Yongning has become history, the only trace being an Yongning Avenue in the new county town.

Sima Daoxin was extraordinarily bright; he lost his father and mother in childhood and thus formed an indissoluble bond with the temples. Daoxin left home to become a monk young, then traveled widely seeking teachers, finally mastering Confucianism, Daoism, medicine and Buddhism, and ultimately taking refuge in Buddhism. He inherited the robe of the Third Patriarch Sengcan; after roaming widely he returned home, built a temple and settled down, and finally formed a monastic group said to number over five hundred. For a time, Buddhists at home and abroad all looked up to him as the foremost. It was here that Chan Buddhism was carried forward.

Because of Master Daoxin, temples were built throughout the mountains of our county; his followers built hundreds of temples nearby. The county thus formed an indissoluble bond with the Dharma, and its name was once changed to Guangji—meaning "the Dharma is vast, universally saving all beings." Historically, Guangji County was once called the "Little Western Heaven."

After Master Daoxin's death, his successor Master Hongren observed three years of mourning for his teacher at the Fourth Patriarch Temple, then went to neighboring Huangmei to found a new teaching site—today's Huangmei Fifth Patriarch Temple. There he gathered disciples widely and carried forward Daoxin's work, at one point having over a thousand followers. Among them were Huineng and Shenxiu, who later became the towering figures of the Northern and Southern schools of Chinese Chan.

In my hometown, Master Daoxin's influence has endured for over a thousand years without decline. The incense at the Fourth Patriarch Temple still burns strongly. Master Daoxin's attitude toward life set a most beneficial example for later generations.

After he firmly leapt out of the mortal world and became the most influential Chan master of his time, Emperor Taizong of Tang three times summoned him to the capital; the master was unmoved and politely declined the emperor's favor. On the last occasion the emperor steeled himself: if he does not come again, bring back his head. The master calmly stretched out his neck to receive the blow. The envoy, of course, did not rashly strike off the master's head, but reported the truth to the emperor, who at last was won over.

Another person of such noble character was Master Huiyuan, the eminent Eastern Jin monk who once resided at Donglin Temple on Mount Lu, a river away from this place. Their radiance complemented each other, so that the light of the Buddha has shone over the Kuang-Lu region for over a thousand years; countless later people, inspired by their great character and spirit, have within the forests where they once resided let go of all worldly attachments and taken refuge in the Buddhism of the four great elements being empty. Tasting the bliss of a life saved through the liberation of wisdom—free of greed, anger and delusion, free of worry and fear, externally apart from all marks and internally apart from all disturbance—in a state that is both samadhi and wisdom, they have left the sea of suffering that the multitude of beings cannot escape, and idly watch the flowers bloom and fall before the gate.

Such people can break free of the ridiculous rules the Creator has set for humankind, return to nature, and no longer be controlled by this super-sized cage of the mortal world; freely soaring in the sky, they care only for the essence of life and no longer for the fame, rank and wealth that everyone so envies.

As Laozi said: "When the world knows beauty as beauty, there is ugliness; when it knows good as good, there is evil." Once "beauty" and "goodness" become prizes people must fight over with spears, swords and halberds, such beauty and goodness are indeed no longer worth praising. If you get them, you gain nothing but others' meaningless envy; if you do not, what a loss! And in the chase, so much must be given up—integrity, dignity, time, and peace of heart.

I often hoped my mother would, under the influence of the Dharma, enter a world of clarity and no longer be burdened by affliction. Unfortunately she could not. Although my mother also burned incense and worshipped the Buddha, in her mind that Buddha was a savior who rescued suffering and disaster, a god who grants wealth when wealth is sought and blessings when blessings are sought, who removes illness and calamity for people—a guardian deity whom countless rural women hope will bring blessings to their families. An immortal who could be bought off with a little incense and paper, just like an official in the real world who can be lobbied.

The Buddha has no such supernatural powers and cannot satisfy people's endless desires. I believe that when my mother, like countless other rural women, knelt before the statue of the Buddha to pray, the Buddha's heart was full of bitterness. The Buddha said one should not see the Tathagata through sound, fragrance, touch or form, nor through doctrines; yet the multitude of beings wish to see the Tathagata as a god. The Buddha pointed at the moon to teach people to look at the moon, while the world looks at the finger and thinks of drawing close to the Buddha's finger. Could the Buddha not shake his head?

The Buddha's Pure Land can be experienced directly only when one turns inward to contemplate one's own mind and stills every competitive thought. Beyond that, there is no shortcut to drawing near the Buddha.

My mother, of course, did not understand this. Therefore her life was spent, in ignorance, through countless painful hours. The various wounds these pains inflicted on her are the real reason I grieve so deeply over her life. We cannot expect life to be perfect, nor expect the deep understanding of the world; the only thing we can master is our own small mind. When the mind is unmoved, what can the outside world do to me?

The Medicine King Sun Simiao is another person who had an enormous influence on my hometown.

At festivals and holidays, the temple with the strongest incense in our area is the Medicine King Temple. It is less than two kilometers from my home. Legend says Sun Simiao once lived and practiced medicine here; later generations, grateful for his virtue of saving the people, built a temple to him and offer sacrifice through the seasons.

Today the Medicine King Temple is presided over by a Shaolin warrior monk named Dewu. Dewu does not understand Buddhism, and the Medicine King himself is not any Buddhist deity; yet they are combined in this incongruous way. Monk Dewu works hard at collecting alms, raising millions in donations, and has built the Medicine King Temple into a lavish place; behind the main hall he built an auxiliary hall—the Mahavira Hall—housing statues of Shakyamuni Buddha, the Bodhisattvas Manjushri, Samantabhadra and Guanyin, and the Eighteen Arhats.

Half the county's people come to worship at the Medicine King Temple during festivals. I was no exception. When my mother was well, every first day of the Lunar New Year she would take the whole family to the temple to burn incense, praying that the family would have everything go well that year, making vows before the Medicine King and the Buddha; if all went well that year, at the end of the year or on the next New Year's Day we would return to fulfill the vow and contribute some incense money to the object of our prayers. This incense money, needless to say, all ends up in the pockets of the monks and the government.

I am sure Sun Simiao really did stay here, because when I seek medicinal herbs around my hometown, many herbs I cannot find elsewhere can be found on the hill behind the Medicine King Temple. Perhaps the Medicine King planted them himself for convenience when he practiced medicine here.

Sun Simiao's life spanned Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism and medicine, culminating in medicine. He was serene and detached, indifferent to fame and rank. He practiced medicine among the people, widely collecting earlier physicians' books, drawing on the strengths of many, and wrote Qianjin Fang (Thousand Golden Prescriptions) and Qianjin Yifang (Supplement to the Thousand Golden Prescriptions) to bequeath to the world, benefiting countless people. Sun Simiao mastered the classics and saw through the mortal world; though his name was made in medicine, he also had deep attainment in Buddhism and Daoism. He enjoyed a long life—said to have lived over 130 years—a true elder of longevity.

The greatest achievement of Sun Simiao's life was overcoming himself: overcoming his own desires and the selfish, narrow side of human nature. The word "human nature" is very complex; because we live among people, what we call human nature is actually acquired by being immersed in a crowd.

According to Malinowski's anthropological explanation, the reason human beings possess such complex human nature is that society, for its own development, forces people to acquire it; it is a structural-functional necessity, the basis for human reproduction and the continued existence of society. This view is hard to disprove. People are brought into the world unconsciously and involuntarily, and finally merge into this society. Every action of a person is inseparably linked to the environment; the environment is like a giant net, enmeshing all members of society, reaching everywhere.

Precisely because of this, those who can break free of this giant net are exceedingly rare. Sun Simiao was one of those rarities. He "widely studied the inner canon," cultivated himself, and finally trained his body and mind to purity. He no longer hunted in the worldly preserve for the fame, rank and wealth that everyone desires; like a small boat vanishing into the vast rivers and sea, he took saving the world and healing people as his calling.

In his temple I often feel my own pettiness. An ignorant ordinary person, prostrate before a sage who has transcended the mundane, the soul cannot escape being questioned: what am I really here for? Must I really live my life this way? What do I pursue? Is what I pursue worth pursuing? Is my goal a piece of rotting flesh? Am I weaving a cocoon around myself? Who has caused the countless pains in my heart?

When I try to stand at the height of Sun Simiao and Sima Daoxin to look down on life and contemplate myself, I feel that my thinking about the meaning of life has truly found direction. I can, layer by layer, peel away the various dogmas that bind me; I can stand outside self and things and contemplate the world, contemplate myself, contemplate the mother who bore and raised me, contemplate the countless suffering beings on this land, trapped in greed, anger and delusion. And further reflect on my own conduct. Wisdom is thus not far from me.

We will all leave this world, without exception. Today it is my mother's turn to go; tomorrow it will be my own. To this world I am only one of the beings who passed through. This stinking bag of skin of mine, after drifting in this world for decades, will turn to dust and return to nature. My mother's is the same. Among living beings, who is not? Only the mountains and rivers remain, as Du Fu sighed: "You rascals shall perish body and name, yet the rivers and mountains flow on forever, undiminished."

Everything in the mortal world need not be clung to or grieved over. The boundary between life and death is not so clear. Tomorrow we shall become the nourishment plants need, absorbed by them from beneath the ground and grown into part of green grass and trees. No one has ever truly left, and no one has ever truly come. We have always been in this world; only the way we exist keeps changing.

All is illusion. It is not worth suffering for illusion. Life has no fixed goal, nor fixed choice. If one must choose, then choose to leave the mortal world and return to nature!

Mother, you shall return to the earth, and suffering shall leave you. And I too shall return to nature, unstained by the mortal world.

Written March 24, 2012.

Postscript: A little over a month after this was written, in the early hours of May 3, 2012, my mother passed away. Before writing this essay I was living with my parents in my hometown. My mother had been in Beijing, but after that year's Spring Festival she asked to return to her old home, so I often stayed there to care for her, writing prescriptions, buying and decocting medicines for her.

One night just before the Qingming Festival, the wind raged and the rain beat down; the floor of our old house creaked and banged in the gale. I slept in a second-floor room, my mother on the first floor; her condition was worsening day by day, her time short. In the latter half of that night I dreamed that my mother stood by my bed, tears streaming, saying to me: "Son, save me!"

I woke from the dream sobbing uncontrollably. My cries alarmed my father, who dressed and came to my room, asking: "Son, did you have a nightmare?" I did not know how to answer. I only felt as though a knife were twisting my heart, tears raining down, bitterly hating that my medical skill was worthless and could not save my own mother. And all those achievements I had once been proud of were so absurd and ridiculous, of no use at all at the decisive moment.

The next day my mother said to me: Son, go to the fields with your father and plant the peanuts, go with your third uncle and sweep the ancestral graves, then go back to Beijing. Don't linger at home; you have a wife and child, and cannot give up your own career and family for your mother. I planted peanuts with tears streaming down my face.

Over a month later, the peanut seedlings had come up. My mother was buried in the very field where I had planted the peanuts. At that time I wanted to give up everything and build a small hut beside her grave, spending the rest of my days keeping her company. But in the end I could not have my way.

My mother, at the end, had in fact come to terms with life and death; compared with other tumor patients she did not suffer much, because I had kept her well maintained. Two days before she died she could still go out and play at the card table. She went rather suddenly; it was more like she died of a second stroke.

She fell suddenly into a coma and passed away. Only in the last few hours, knowing the die was cast, I held her and wept aloud. My mother had long lived with me and felt deeply for me. At that time, though she did not recognize others, she could recognize me. My weeping grieved her, and she sobbed too until she died. In those hours, mother and son parted between life and death, each heart torn apart. After my mother stopped breathing, I fainted away for a time.

Six and a half years have passed; I have gradually walked out of the pain of losing my mother, and out of my attachment to life and my reluctance toward death. Now I feel I should not have let my mother go through so much distress; she was such an open person, able even to smile and arrange her own affairs before death—why should I have made her suffer?

I have also changed my attitude toward life. Living, I would be as splendid as summer flowers; loving, I would love purely; dying, I wish to be as quiet and beautiful as autumn leaves. I have come to accept my own death at any time, in any place, from any cause, truly reaching the freedom the sutras call "abandoning life, certain of death."

However I die in future, I think I shall pass away with a smile. I do not loathe living, but I do not fear death. In peacetime, how many people can be as familiar with death as we physicians who face cancer patients every day? Death is so close to me, and such a natural thing—why take it too much to heart?

Rereading my old essay, my heart is unchanged. I have only gradually moved from that earlier urgent state into the state of the "Middle Way." So many years of treating and saving people, my whole heart set on saving lives. But in the process I have also witnessed and experienced many extreme events, understood the limitations of medicine, and my mind has grown increasingly calm, my handling of medical affairs increasingly skillful.

Now I am almost wholly immersed in medical research, and am writing the medical work I wish to leave behind. Joyful, I forget worries; when the cold has ended I know not the year, nor that old age and death are drawing near.