When You Settle Down to Enjoy Life, the Outside World No Longer Matters

Life, to me, is a thing in which pain and joy coexist. A large part of the reason I chose to study medicine and read widely in the humanities is that I can almost be described as a person beset by a hundred illnesses. I have been tormented by all kinds of diseases since childhood, without living a single comfortable day. Studying medicine and reading can ease the suffering of my body and soul.

Illness has not robbed me of my interest in life. I used to think I would hardly live past forty, but now I have not only passed forty but am living happily. Visually, my body is healthier than it was at twenty, and I won't be dying anytime soon.

At twenty, I was thinking about what kind of life I actually wanted. Perhaps very few people think about such questions at that age. My body was not that healthy, nor was my mind; at twenty I could almost be described as a psychiatric patient. So I had a deep understanding of the Buddhist saying that "life and death are swift, and the affairs of the world are impermanent." If I did not want to waste my precious and short life, I had to think about which things were meaningful and worth doing, and which were meaningless and not worth doing.

The conclusion I reached at the time was that routinely completing higher education and then finding a job was not the life I wanted. I wanted the freedom to choose my own life; I wanted to enjoy my short life in the way I liked. How did I judge what I liked? I did not know, so I could only focus on my present feelings; whatever I liked in the moment was what it was, without thinking too much.

With this idea, I was no longer willing to muddle along in university, so I made my own choice: give up university, do whatever I liked, read whatever books I wanted, and not care about diplomas. This was a bold decision at the time, and I was almost besieged with opposition. But an innate stubbornness and my then-destitute situation saved me. I finally got my wish and embarked on the life path I had chosen: reading at the National Library of China for twenty years, while making a living in various ways.

Now many people are discussing the value of knowledge. According to this fashionable view, perhaps it is the value generated by the knowledge I acquired that has allowed me to survive. But when I initially chose such unconstrained reading and learning, I had not thought at all that this knowledge would create income for me. At the time I was like the Buddhist expression "as if saving a burning head"—a metaphor meaning that one should be as urgent about rescuing oneself from knowledge as about putting out a fire on one's own head.

As everyone knows, young people around twenty have many worries. I realized at the time that only the pursuit of knowledge could resolve the various confusions in my heart, and only when those confusions were untangled could my mind find peace. So whatever book interested me, could solve my physical and mental problems, or could make me forget sorrow and pain, that was the book I read.

Reading like this, twenty years passed before I knew it. Twenty years later, I discovered that I had developed some deeply ingrained habits in the process: reading and writing, for example, and frequently reflecting on myself. If a day passes without thinking, without reading, or without writing, I feel completely ill at ease, and the worries of yore have been thrown to the clouds. As for the fact that many people are willing to pay because the knowledge I have learned is beneficial to them, that is truly a by-product of my learning. Even now, I do not like forgetting what I truly want because of a by-product.

A university classmate of mine discussed the meaning of life with me today, discussed the pursuit of knowledge, and discussed the value of experience and insight. He has recently begun to love learning, and learning has made him perceive his own ignorance. This is a bit like Socrates, who said: "I know that I know nothing." Only a sincere seeker of knowledge is willing to say this; most truly ignorant people feel that they know everything.

Perhaps he feels that my life, compared with his, appears less conventional and has something he can learn from, which is why he came to discuss these questions with me. He now has his own business in Australia and is doing quite well. But after forty, he has become less and less interested in making money and more interested in some previously ethereal questions about life and the universe.

This old classmate of mine was very healthy in university and was an athlete who knew how to have fun. So at twenty he would not have felt, as I did at twenty, that life was short; back then he had no mind to think about the ethereal questions I had been pondering.

But now that he is over forty, he too has realized that life is short, so he has begun to think about some ethereal questions unrelated to making a living. He has developed a strong interest in philosophy and science, which have nothing to do with his current money-making career. As he studies, he feels that what he knew before is too limited and that his ignorance is frightening.

Then he discussed the importance of knowledge and experience with me. I told him that my life is a different kind of experience. I feel that whether one is ignorant or knowledgeable is not important, nor is experience important. As long as one settles one's heart and enjoys one's own life, all of these are optional things. If we happen to love the pursuit of knowledge, then pursue knowledge, because for someone who loves it, seeking knowledge is enjoying one's own life. If one does not love knowledge but loves growing flowers, then grow flowers; some people also enjoy life by growing flowers.

When a person settles down to enjoy life, the outside world no longer matters. The greatest characteristic of a person who is enjoying their own life is that they do not drift with the tide or change their mind at the sight of something new. They firmly love their own life; the outside world cannot tempt or influence them. As the saying goes, "Though the river may be three thousand torrents, I take but one ladle to drink." One ladle of water is enough; why envy the vast ocean?

Recognizing that life is short is the beginning of being able to "settle down." The current pandemic can make many people realize that life is short. Boccaccio's famous work "The Decameron" tells of stories told by ten men and women who took refuge in a country villa during the plague outbreak in Florence, Italy. These stories are full of philosophy; they are profound reflections on the meaning of life under the circumstances of "life is short, and the days gone by are few." These reflections once enlightened many people. I suggest that some people who are lost in the pandemic might give it a read; perhaps there are some soul-stirring sentences in "The Decameron" that will make everyone suddenly see the light.

There are many people in this world trying to "set the rhythm" for us, but when we recognize the meaning of our own life and immerse ourselves in the joys of our own existence, we become immune to all kinds of "rhythm-setting" remarks. Not only that, but we can also be indifferent to shocks from the outside world.

The ancients often spoke of "things external to the body," a phrase I have always found a bit odd. In fact, the "body" itself is not something worth fretting over. When a person is enjoying their own life, neither "things external to the body" nor the "body" matter. My "body" suffers at every moment, but when I am immersed in reading and thinking, when I am writing, all the suffering my body endures vanishes into thin air, and I do not perceive my body's existence. If the body itself does not matter, how much less do things external to the body?

Buddhism often speaks of blessings. I feel that the greatest blessing in life is when a person finds the meaning of their own life and wholeheartedly enjoys it, without wasting a single moment of time on sorrow. This kind of blessing is truly "sublime."