Without Reading Leisure Books, One Cannot Become a Carefree Person

In my personal dictionary, "carefree idler" is a term of praise.

On a warm winter afternoon, half-closing the eyes, legs crossed, doing nothing at all, picking up a leisure book, reading and reading until, without noticing, one falls asleep, drool on half the face, the book dropped on the floor, snores rising and soon rumbling like thunder—such a person is a standard carefree idler.

Carefree idlers are lazy, but moderate laziness really ought to count as one of the virtues of the world. Those who, once clothed and fed, ask no more are often mocked as lazybones by the world, but I love their unconstrained ease.

An unconstrained life should regard lords and ministers as dung, never bowing or fawning for fame and riches, carrying an innate, untamed aloofness. Such a life rests on scorning all "respectability," on being content with an unrespectable life; such independence of action takes great courage.

And leisure books are the standard equipment of a carefree idler.

People who love reading leisure books have broad horizons and open hearts; they are not prone to prejudice, to arrogance, or to self-hypnosis and hypnosis by others, and so they possess independent, living souls. A carefree idler with an independent, living soul can cultivate an imperturbable spirit, remaining clear-headed before any life guru and never being brainwashed.

Leisure books, as the name implies, are books useless for making a living. Yet it is precisely leisure books that nourish the human spirit. Those who diligently specialize in their profession are certainly worthy of respect, but they easily become frogs at the bottom of a well, seeing a single tree and missing the forest. So-called specialists are often not only one-sided in ability but also paranoid in character, simply because what they have studied is too narrow.

Life is three-dimensional and pluralistic. A pluralistic life needs rich, colorful leisure books for its cultivation. A full soul holds the whole world, not just one corner of it.

The world is vast, but we often see it as too small; the reason is that we have read too few leisure books. The self is tiny, yet we often exaggerate it; the reason for that exaggeration is likewise that we have read too few leisure books.

A person who does not love leisure books, having learned a bit of professional knowledge, thinks he is the greatest under heaven, not realizing that what he knows is only a tiny patch of skin on the vast world. Such seemingly confident arrogance actually comes from ignorance.

A leisure book is someone else's world; each leisure book is a brand-new world. Turning through one is like stepping into a stranger's world, like a traveler arriving at an unfamiliar site; all that is heard and seen is something never seen before. Reading leisure books broadens the horizons.

The Buddha said: Where the sun and moon shine is one world; a thousand worlds make a small-thousand world; a thousand small-thousand worlds make a great-thousand world; the universe contains three thousand great-thousand worlds.

Indians have never had a head for numbers, and Sakyamuni is no exception. The Buddha described the great-thousand world this way to show that it is vast and boundless, and that the world we inhabit and the world we know are small and closed. Only by letting go of the small world we cling to and stepping into the great world can we nourish our souls so they do not so easily run dry.

Leisure books are the source of a person's spiritual strength. True spiritual strength is not the hype of an adrenaline shot but an indescribable broad-mindedness and ease, a constant calm that stays unruffled. It lets a person regard life's great rises and falls as unremarkable—joy in gain, no sorrow in loss.

Read leisure books long enough, and you naturally become a carefree idler. The multitudes in the dusty world rush back and forth, bustling and noisy, but all of this has little to do with a carefree idler.

The life of a carefree idler asks not for "usefulness," but for freedom from annoyance. However grand life may be, the idler always strolls as if in a quiet courtyard.