Buddhism Studies ⁽⁵³⁾

With Buddhism, there has always been an insurmountable wall between me and it. So although I have read many Buddhist sutras, deeply agree with many of their philosophies, and benefited greatly from Buddhism, in the end I am still only willing to watch it from…

Recently, Pope Francis of the Catholic Church passed away, and many people are mourning him. Although I have no religious faith and have never studied Catholic doctrine, I have great admiration for the spirit of tolerance, mercy, and reform that Francis advocated throughout his life.

Outside the window the autumn rain falls without end. Waking in the small hours, I toss and turn, unable to sleep; the pain in my heart rises wave after wave and will not let go. In the first half of my life I always wanted…

Wang Yangming wrote a line of poetry: "If this mind is not tempered in the affairs of life, where else can it be tempered?" Treating cancer patients is an excellent way to temper the mind. The partings and deaths, the griefs and joys of human…

Every Lunar New Year, the expensive incense in temples sells at a premium; there are truly too many people burning incense and praying to Buddha for blessings. But misfortune and blessing have no fixed gate; people bring them on themselves. If one creates an evil…

February 1, 2021, the twentieth day of the twelfth lunar month, the New Year at hand. Thinking of loved ones far away, my heart surges and I cannot contain it. In the afternoon, alone in my study, basking in the sun, I faced three small…

I like climbing mountains. Every time I reach the summit and gaze into the distance, the buildings far away look like ants, and people are like specks of dust, invisible at all; the human world seems as if it is in some distant other place.

Five years ago I went to see a certain Buddhist monk. By then he had already been tonsured and practicing for several years; he was very humble and had become a deeply cultivated elder. I had known him twenty years earlier, when he had not…

Recently Ethel, a long-lived British woman, died at the age of 114; it is said her greatest trait was a heart free of worry. This is a bit like the late Chinese scholar Zhou Youguang, who died at 113. This old man spent his life…

Recently China and the United States have fought a trade war, and Huawei has been targeted by the full power of the United States; public opinion has boiled over. But Ren Zhengfei's response to the world has left a typical good impression—at once the steadiness…