Releasing Grievance
All beings take ten things as good, and also take ten things as evil. What are the ten? Three of body, four of speech, and three of thought.
The three of body are killing, stealing, and lust; the four of speech are double-tongue, harsh speech, lying, and frivolous talk; the three of thought are envy, resentment, and delusion. These ten deeds, not in accord with the holy way, are called the ten evil deeds. If these evils are stopped, they are called the ten good deeds.
— Excerpted from the Sutra in Forty-two Sections Spoken by the Buddha
During this week's spare time I have been mediating conflicts among a group of young men and women. Either I talk with them heart-to-heart, or they come to talk with me. The young people's world is actually fairly simple, and they are highly moldable and can accept some advice, but talking with them is not easy either.
Before the class-committee election, people in the class were restless; some who wanted to be class cadres inevitably competed, openly or covertly, and campaigned for votes before the election. After the election, before the results were announced, this competition persisted, and it eventually brewed into a fierce quarrel.
As an onlooker I saw everything and originally meant to stay on the sidelines, taking no side. My nickname in the class group chat is Linghu Chong, and Linghu Chong is not a person who is fond of political struggle. But the situation gradually slipped out of control, and seeing a campus-violence incident about to erupt, at the critical moment I still stepped forward and suppressed the parties involved.
In handling such matters there is no solution that satisfies everyone; one can only end it in the way that minimizes sacrifice. I firmly required everyone to stop arguing and took restraining measures against the two boys who were at the head. One of the boys was very unconvinced afterward and came to reason with me, accusing me of favoring the girls and being unfair and unpersuasive.
I apologized to him, but this apology obviously could not fully dispel the discontent in his heart. Fortunately this boy has always gotten along fairly well with me and is also in my study group, so afterward, through other means, our relationship was repaired.
Since ancient times in China there have been generals who, before battle, beheaded soldiers or junior officers; they used this method to handle mutinies and restore military discipline. The modern General Li Zongren was one of them. We cannot know the inner feelings of other generals after doing such things, but General Li Zongren left behind the Memoirs of Li Zongren, in which one can see his inner voice; this memoir was compiled by the renowned oral-history scholar Mr. Tang Degang.
In the Memoirs of Li Zongren, General Li Zongren recounts how, during wartime while commanding troops, he had shot one of his own fellow townsmen in order to restore military discipline. In his later years, when General Li lived in the United States, whenever he recalled this matter he could not help but feel guilty. Li Zongren was a fierce general of the War of Resistance against Japan; his troops were known as a force of tigers and wolves. The Nationalists' first victory over Japan, the Battle of Tai'erzhuang, was won under General Li Zongren's command. If General Li had not had this decisive, resolute will to strike, the army he led would never have had such fighting power.
War and riot are both extraordinary states; when quelling them, one must act decisively and swiftly turn the chaotic situation around. So in extraordinary states, there is no solution that satisfies all parties. When a girl is besieged by more than twenty puberty-aged peers, and the momentum shows a trend of growing fiercer, the fair handling that boy wanted was an extravagant hope. In that moment, protecting everyone's personal safety was an urgent matter. I think this truth the boy will take another ten or twenty years to fully understand.
This incident left all three parties involved hurt. After it happened, the girl was filled with fear, afraid to interact with classmates, trusting only me. The two boys also had their grievances, which I know. After the quarrel subsided, it was necessary to calm their inner feelings, repair their relationships, and rebuild the atmosphere of unity and friendship in the class. These matters are very trivial and require enough patience to handle well.
The frightened girl kept close to me for several days in a row—running morning runs with me, going to the library to study with me, and going to the laboratory with me. Her sense of security at school was gone. At every opportunity I encouraged and enlightened her, so that this matter would not leave a shadow on her heart. I also urged her to be more tolerant and generous, to reconcile with all the classmates who had jeered that day, and to rebuild good classmate relations with them. I also told the other classmates to take the initiative to go and play with her, and arranged some group activities inviting her to join, so that she could rebuild trust in the classmates around her.
On Thursday, when I urged her to forgive the classmates who had been hostile to her and to take the initiative to make up with them, she said it would be too awkward. I gave her a whole lecture of reasoning, encouraging her to bravely face all this and improve her relations with her classmates; otherwise it would be too miserable during her time at school. The girl was somewhat moved.
Friday morning, after we ran together and went to the cafeteria for breakfast, I helped her analyze things in the cafeteria: among the classmates who jeered that day, some had merely thought it was all in fun and bore no malice. Moreover, out of the 130-plus classmates, only a very few had participated; the others were actually quite friendly to her, so she should not see danger everywhere. I hoped she would regain her courage and spread her wings to fly, rather than collapse and lose heart.
At the same time I told her the Buddhist theory of "dependent origination and the emptiness of inherent nature," explaining to her that the reason everyone has formed their present character is the influence of heredity and environment, and not that they voluntarily grew into this way. The essence of a person is actually a blank sheet of paper, and everything encountered in the process of growth is beyond their control. In this sense, everyone is rather pitiful. Understanding this, one can forgive others at the deepest level. After hearing these words, the girl said to me, "Uncle, I understand; I have forgiven them all now. I will listen to you."
Some of these young men and women had already developed feelings of admiration for one another, and had even nearly entered into romantic relationships before; because of this incident, the relationships suddenly broke. I worked hard to help them repair their relationships, creating opportunities for them to let go of grievances, shake hands and make peace, and be reconciled; those who should be in love continue to be. Although they are not my children, as their classmate and elder I still hope to see them grow healthily and live happily after weathering the storm.
I especially hope to see them grow more tolerant and more compassionate, because this is the proper character of a healer. When talking with one of the boys involved, I admonished him with great principle. I told him, since you have chosen to study medicine and chosen the profession of a physician, you must conscientiously uphold the spirit of humanism. You must not isolate any classmate; put yourself in another's place and you will know how cruel and cold isolation is. Nor may you spurn others because they have shortcomings you dislike; rather, you should cherish and help them—this is the very essence of the humanistic spirit. These words touched the boy's heart; a few hours later, he took the initiative to go and talk with the girl, apologizing and making peace.
The other boy's emotions were hard to calm quickly, so I took a roundabout approach: I praised his strengths and tried to create opportunities for him to bring his strengths into fuller play and show them to everyone. I let him gain more affirmation on other occasions, soothing his mood and slowly dissolving the injustice in his heart. After all, we still have a fairly long stretch of days studying together, and there will be many later opportunities to slowly persuade him and guide his growth.
At my age, going to school with a group of eighteen- or nineteen-year-old young men and women, I do not even know how to define my identity. With classmates I am both a fellow student and an elder, and to some classmates perhaps also half a teacher. The school's instructors and some young teachers call me "Uncle," and some teachers call me "Big Brother." At the start I thought I would perhaps spend most of my time alone, buried in study in a corner of the classroom or library. But after arriving at school, imperceptibly, I had unexpectedly once again become one of the people at the center of attention.
At first, many people at school, hearing that I had come to study at such an advanced age, regarded me as a curiosity. Gradually, through daily interaction, they began to place their trust in me and began to be influenced by me. When the head teacher handles some thorny class affairs, she also hopes I can lend a hand. I am by nature warm-hearted and very much want to see everyone around me doing well, so of course I am glad to help her.
My beloved high-school teacher said to me before I went to school, "Once you go, you will influence your classmates again." In high school, the classmates in our class were influenced by me; perhaps the whole school was influenced by me at the time. I think he may have overestimated the influence of his student; after all, I am old and there is a generation gap with new classmates. But in less than two months of school, his words were confirmed—truly, no one knows a disciple like his own teacher.
But I am no longer as lost as I was when young. Now, when I truly can influence others, I do not think of dodging. I will use my own abilities as much as possible to help and guide them toward a life path that can make the world a better place. In my youth I once dreamed of building a Great Commonwealth world, but after more than forty years of worldly experience, I know the dream of the Great Commonwealth is still far off.
China's economy has developed rapidly over the past forty-plus years, yet more than half of the children in our class had never used a computer before entering university. In the first microcomputer lab class, in the classroom, all the classmates to my left and right did not even know how to turn a computer on or off, and they all turned to me for help. Last week I had already brought four computers to school; this week I have continued bringing computers in one after another. I no longer limit my sights to my own study group, but give them away as the karmic conditions arise to classmates from poor families. In the information age, if their horizons are still so narrow, when they later return to the grassroots to become doctors, their help to patients will be very limited.
Every time I return to my hometown, the villagers know I am back and someone always comes to me for medical care; sometimes I am busy until late at night. They have many diseases for which seeking treatment locally has failed. I now have a slight reputation in my hometown, so they hope I can help relieve their suffering. On those bronze-colored faces I see the likeness of my own parents, and sometimes my heart breaks for their pain. Because they often remind me of my mother's seeking of medical care during her lifetime, and the image of my mother weeping in my arms on her deathbed—there is no pain in the world greater than that.
I have had more than ten years of clinical practice and often encounter wealthy and powerful patients; a few of them hope I can concentrate on serving them exclusively and promise rich rewards, all of which I have politely declined. With my business ability, if I gave up medicine to devote myself to business, few of them could make money better than I; if I needed money to satisfy myself, why should I depend on others' favor?
What I always find hard to let go of is that grassroots common people like my mother, once they fall ill, cannot find good doctors to help them. Now I study in the same hall with a group of young medical students who will later return to the grassroots. My greatest wish is that these classmates around me can grow into compassionate physicians, with medical skill sufficient to save the world and rescue people, and that after graduation they will return to the grassroots to help their fellow villagers. If, in this process, I myself need to do something, I will do so willingly and with untiring delight.