Essays ⁽³⁴⁹⁾

After two and a half months at school, I live a three-point-one-line life between classroom, cafeteria and dormitory. This afternoon the school organized a fire drill. To escape such a tedious event, I slipped out of the campus and wandered around for the afternoon. I…

A monk once recited the Kashyapa-Buddha's Sutra Bequeathed Teachings at night; his voice was mournful and tense, and he felt regretful and wanted to retire. The Buddha asked him: "What was your occupation when you were a layman?" The monk replied: "I loved playing the…

The school had to register student status and create student files; in the section for important family members, information on parents and other close relatives had to be entered. When I filled in my mother's information, in the "details" column I wrote the words "deceased."…

Two months into the semester, our study group submitted our first set of knowledge-point summaries, each written by its own member. To my surprise, while I had submitted a 10,000-character article, the most prolific male member of the group submitted one of over 15,000 characters.

All beings take ten things as good, and also take ten things as evil. What are the ten? Three of body, four of speech, and three of thought. The three of body are killing, stealing, and lust; the four of speech are double-tongue, harsh speech,…

After riding various vehicles for more than four hours, I finally got home. This busy week has finally come to an end. When I took a taxi from school to the high-speed-rail station, the driver told me a very funny joke on the way, which…

The birds roost and the fish stir not, the moonlight shines on the deep night river. Nothing outside the body matters; in the boat there is only the qin. The seven strings are my good friends, my two ears are the discerning listeners. When the…

Last night I was chatting in another boy's dorm room in our class with a student who wanted to join the study group I had formed, and I forgot to check my phone. After we finished talking I glanced at it: the class group chat…

"Stop memorizing vocabulary—I want you to keep me company." When I got up this morning and, as usual, took out my phone to recite words, my wife immediately stopped me. I smiled, put the phone down, and talked with her. We have been together for…

The British philosopher Bertrand Russell said that if George Washington were to return to life in the 1900s, he certainly would not have liked the already prosperous and developed America of that time, but would most likely have come to China, which was then in…