When Observed in Stillness, All Things Are Fine—Why Rank Them One, Two, and Three?

In a lecture titled "Feng Zikai and Master Hongyi," Feng Zikai remarked: "I believe human life can be divided into three layers: the first is material life, the second is spiritual life, and the third is soul life. Material life is food and clothing. Spiritual life is academia and the arts. Soul life is religion."

Mr. Feng Zikai believed that his teacher, Master Hongyi, was the kind of person who had ascended to the third floor of life.

Both Mr. Feng Zikai and Master Hongyi were celebrated cultural figures, and Master Hongyi was moreover a great patriarch of Han Chinese Buddhism. This is why Feng's words have been so influential and widely quoted. I too was once influenced by them and took them as a guide for self-improvement.

Now that I am older and have seen more of the world, I no longer accept ideas uncritically as I did when young. Reflecting on Mr. Feng's words today, I feel they are deeply problematic.

Mr. Feng divided life into three layers, and correspondingly divided people into three layers; in his view, those who pursue soul life have reached the highest tier. Doing so is, in my view, both narcissistic and unnecessary. No matter what kind of life a person leads, as long as he harms no one and harms no world, there is no hierarchy of levels.

In the past I too once hoped to elevate myself, but now I find that so-called elevating one's own level is nothing but self-deception. Whether a person is devoted to material life, spiritual life, or soul life, the level is the same; all beings are equal.

If a person regards the realm he pursues as lofty and the realm others pursue as low, he has lost his sense of equality and sunk to a base state. Moreover, people with such a conviction usually harbor, deep in their bones, an arrogance born of prejudice.

Ordinary people, from every walk of life, each have their own pursuits and their own loves. No one has the right to hold a ruler over all living beings. I suspect that those who are forever holding rulers up to measure others and passing judgment on people are a crowd of narrow-minded, self-important souls. From this angle, cultural celebrities like Feng Zikai are no exception. Of course, using my own spear against my own shield, my judging Feng this way is also wrong.

Master Minghai of Bailin Temple wrote an essay titled "A Monk's Religious Experience," in which he described two religious experiences of his.

The first occurred when he was in college. On one occasion he visited a temple presided over by Master Jinghui, and when he heard the cantor's aged, solemn chant of "Na-a-a-mo—" his body and mind were greatly shaken, and in an instant the thought of becoming a monk arose in him.

The second occurred years later, after he had left home and gained a certain standing in Buddhist circles. Once, riding home to Bailin Temple in a dilapidated bus, each passenger sat in his own place, nobody paid him any mind, and he did not strike up a conversation with anyone; all the way he quietly watched the people filling the bus. Master Minghai was suddenly struck by a feeling, and he wrote:

"They are all ordinary people, living ordinary lives, with the joys and sorrows that all people share; at times they even show traces of 'lowbrow tastes' and 'poor breeding,' but nothing excessive. Their faces all seem dusted with a layer of dust, their expressions relaxed and vacant, without much sense of purpose. They carry about them an aura—what can truly be called 'the breath of life,' emanating out of life itself.

Everything is natural and real. This is what life is like, this is what the world is like. In my heart I offer heartfelt praise to all of this."

This was an utterly ordinary affair, yet in this utterly ordinary affair, Master Minghai—who had once pursued spiritual liberation—suddenly returned to the state of an ordinary person. It was precisely this ordinary state that touched off his religious experience.

Real life is just like this: ordinary and plain, undisturbed by waves. The true self is the same, mixed in with the multitude of living beings; you are no nobler than I, and I no nobler than you. Everyone is simply being the self who, "seeking benevolence, attains benevolence." Why lift oneself up over the heads of others?

Master Yinguang, an eminent monk of the Republican era, said a thought-provoking thing: "Everyone is a bodhisattva; only I alone am an ordinary mortal." The religious experiences of these two enlightened masters, Minghai and Yinguang, are identical: they released the arrogance in their own hearts, recognized that they are one among the multitude, and gave birth to a true mind of equality.

Contemplated in stillness, all things are fine; why divide them into one, two, and three? A human being is an undivided whole. Feng Zikai, who forcefully split life into three layers, was truly meddlesome.

It is lamentable that many people, at some stage of life—such as the dull-witted person I once was—fall under the influence of such ideas, chasing after so-called higher forms of life and seeking to transcend themselves. In the end they instead lose the ordinary, balanced mind of a common mortal, and become neither fish nor fowl.

In The Scholars (Rulin Waishi) there is a pedantic Confucian named Wang Yuhui. When his son-in-law died and his daughter resolved to starve herself to death in martyrdom, vowing to be a chaste widow, Wang Yuhui—sadly steeped in feudal-ethical ideas—far from comforting or dissuading her, instead praised her conduct to the skies. In the end his daughter starved to death, alive.

When we read such stories, we laugh at people like Wang Yuhui as spiritual slaves of feudal ritual. But in laughing at him, we are really only the fifty-pacer mocking the hundred-pacer; more often than not, our own conduct is no different from his. The foolish things we do, driven by some conviction in our hearts, would make descendants centuries hence laugh their heads off too.

We often say the power of example is infinite, but few think that the harm of example is infinite as well. Because a so-called role model is always assumed to be superior to everyone else. In truth, no one is superior to anyone else; every living being is unique. Why force one person to chop his feet to fit the shoes in order to imitate another?

People love to fashion role models, and movements to deify others have never vanished from the human world. No sooner does a student enter school than he is repeatedly told to take so-and-so classmate as his model; upon entering society, he unconsciously seeks idols for himself, and sets life goals according to the image of the idol he idealizes. In the end most lose their original selves in this pursuit.

As long as no harm is done to heaven or reason, every self is fine; there is no need to deliberately imitate others. No one needs to remold himself to live according to the molds carved by the sages, and no one is entitled to feel that his character or his pursuits are loftier than others'.

One need not undervalue oneself, nor be full of self-importance. True peace comes precisely from this plain state of mind, neither arrogant nor inferior.

Once, in an idle moment during a debate with someone, I wrote a verse; I append it here to end this rambling piece.

The Three Realms are no burning house; the dusty world itself is the Pure Land.

If the bodhi-mind is attained, why seek the pagoda?

Only this tiny square inch can give birth to great awakening.

Strive not over high and low; thereby you are free from all suffering.