Only by Negating the Self Can One Absorb New Knowledge

To a thinker, knowledge is not merely a tool for livelihood; it is also spiritual nourishment that sustains the mind. For more than a decade after I left school I have kept the habit of reading, but I have also been groping for the direction of my thought.

When I first left school I was obsessed with Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Sartre, Freud, and Marcuse; for a while I delved into the Frankfurt School. Later I studied the works of Lu Xun, as well as the philosophy of Kant, Hegel, and Wittgenstein. At the same time I read various works in sociology and psychology, including those of Fei Xiaotong, Max Weber, and Sigmund Freud. Once I had the chance I also read the works of French postmodern thinkers such as Michel Foucault, and later I studied the writings of Bertrand Russell. I once read Russell’s History of Western Philosophy from cover to cover.

Meanwhile, I studied the great works of ancient Chinese thought—the Dao De Jing, Zhuangzi, the Analects, Mencius, the Xunzi, the Han Feizi, the Mozi, the Sunzi Bingfa, and many others. In my early twenties I had read through the Four Books and Five Classics; in my late twenties I began studying Buddhist scriptures.

When young I liked reading essays by Liang Shiqiu, Lin Yutang, Zhou Zuoren, and Feng Zikai, and later I came to like the works of Shen Congwen and Zhang Ailing. Of the contemporary writers I have read in recent years, Yu Hua’s Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum, and Chen Zhongshi’s White Deer Plain left a deep impression on me.

Because of my work, I have also read many of the world’s classics of medicine. When young I could recite the Shanghan Lun and Jinkui Yaolüe. I have read through the Bencao Gangmu, the Wenbing Tiaobian, and the Yizong Jinjian. I am familiar with the works of Zhang Zhongjing, Hua Tuo, Sun Simiao, Liu Wansu, Zhang Congzheng, Li Dongyuan, Zhu Danxi, Zhang Jingyue, Ye Tianshi, Wu Jutong, and Tang Zonghai.

I mention all this not to boast, but to show that my reading range has been very broad. After all these years of scattered reading, by now my brain has absorbed a great deal of knowledge; but as the old saying goes, “one must be broad and profound, extensive and specialized.” My knowledge is now broad and extensive but not deep or specialized. After so many years of learning, I gradually discovered that the key to my growth in thought was not how much more knowledge I could absorb, but how much of the knowledge I already had I could discard, and whether I could maintain an empty, beginner’s mind.

Some people say that my way of thinking is quite like that of Bertrand Russell: good at integrating various fields of knowledge and arriving at my own conclusions. I think this comment is fair. But Russell could still find his place in the history of twentieth-century thought; what can I find? My thought so far has mostly been borrowed; I have not created much that is my own. To make a real contribution to thought, one must not be satisfied with borrowing from others, but must find one’s own questions and methods.

To absorb new knowledge and form new opinions, one must first negate oneself. This negation is not a total rejection, but a putting aside of old ideas in order to make room for new ones. A person full of preconceptions cannot really learn anything. I have met many middle-aged people whose knowledge is frozen; they cannot absorb new things and are content to repeat old formulas. This is because they have not negated themselves.

The most difficult thing in life is not learning, but unlearning. To unlearn is to abandon the prejudices, self-importance, and fixed views one has accumulated, so that one can look at the world with fresh eyes. As Confucius said, “By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is the noblest; second, by imitation, which is the easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest.” Reflection requires negating oneself; imitation requires humbling oneself; experience requires testing oneself. Only after these three can one’s thought mature.

I have now reached a stage where I want to negate myself and rebuild my thought on a new foundation. This requires not only learning new knowledge, but also critically reviewing what I have already learned. I hope that after this negation and reconstruction, my thought will be deeper and more original, and that my future work will be of some use to others.