Seek One Gain Each Day; Ensure It Is Practical

It is college entrance season again; in a blink, twenty-one years have passed since we finished the exam. Last night after dinner, the family went out for a walk. I asked my child's mother: "If you could choose, would you rather keep everything we have now, or give up everything now and go back to twenty?"

My child's mother thought it over and said she would keep everything we have now and would not want to start striving all over again. I, on the other hand, would choose to lose everything and go back to twenty. If I were given another twenty years, I would use them more steadily, learn something properly, and never waste the years.

But time cannot flow backward. I can only make my lifespan as long as possible, manage my time more efficiently in daily life, and have more time to study and work. This way I can accumulate more scholarship and avoid wasting this lifetime.

Before, facing a mountain of medical classics and the various thorny problems I encountered in clinic, my heart was more or less impatient. Now I have gradually calmed down, because I have realized that a person's ability and energy are limited; self-growth can only proceed gradually through the accumulation of days and months, and one cannot force the seedlings to grow by pulling them up.

For a time I also sighed like Zhuangzi: "My life has a limit, but knowledge has no limit; using the limited to pursue the limitless is perilous!" Now I feel Zhuangzi was not entirely right. Life indeed has a limit, and knowledge indeed has no limit, but using a limited life to learn limitless knowledge is not necessarily "perilous." As long as the mindset is calm, not seeking to learn everything at once, learning a little each day, not letting a single day pass empty, and moving forward every day, it can also be a very pleasant thing.

So I set myself a goal that is not really a goal: seek one gain each day, and ensure it is practical. Every day, no matter how busy I am, I must learn something practical and must write something. Learning the spirit of Master Baizhang Huaihai—"a day without work is a day without food"—I will cultivate the daily study and writing into a daily habit on a par with eating and sleeping.

As for what fruit will come of doing this, no need to think about it. Just enjoying to the fullest the confidence and self-sufficiency that this full life brings is enough.

When my mother was alive, she repeatedly admonished me: "Diligent, diligent—there will be rice and dishes; lazy, lazy—you will shiver and starve." Looking back now on my mother's teaching, I feel that this kind of plain, constantly repeated, catchphrase-style education, though it sounds like nagging, is actually the best character-education method.

Personally, in educating my children, what I now value most is character education. Once a person cultivates a diligent character, the goal of "having rice and dishes" is really easy to achieve. From my own experience, once a diligent character is formed, what a person gains is not just a life of "having rice and dishes," but also an unbeatable self-confidence.

Because my past life experience has told me that although I may temporarily have nothing, as long as I persevere in my efforts, study and work diligently, my limited needs will never go unmet.

Master Baizhang established the monastic rule of "a day without work is a day without food"; in the final analysis, it was also to cultivate a person's diligent character. In this world, there are few difficulties that a diligent person cannot solve. Though a thousand mountains and ten thousand rivers are distant, as long as one is willing to step forward and walk, accumulating steps to make a thousand-li journey, one will eventually reach the destination.

I have also begun to become nagging in front of my son, every day checking and urging him to tidy his desk, urging him to read some good books, urging him to do some housework, urging him to do every task completely and well, leaving no "unfinished ruin projects" for his parents to clean up.

Fortunately, although my son has personality, he is not so rebellious as to be completely indifferent to his father's teaching. It is hard for me to cultivate him into an outstanding person in a day or a year, but I can, during his growing years, cultivate in him some habits that will benefit him for a lifetime.

The power of habit looks weak, but because habit can influence a person's whole life, the energy this seemingly weak power can ultimately accumulate is astonishing. A person, with the power of habit, accumulates a little each day; over 365 days a year, the accumulation is substantial, and over a lifetime even more.

I regard this spirit of "seek one gain each day, ensure it is practical" as one of the family instructions, repeatedly instilling it in my son, hoping that in this life he can inherit the diligent family ethos.

In character cultivation, apart from this constant repeated nagging, there really is no better way. Because repetition and nagging, though lowly-looking, are the best way to strengthen memory.