Life Insights ⁽³⁰⁵⁾

What is the soul? The soul is an independent subject that adheres to the body, but the bonds the body undergoes cannot bind the soul. The soul is the core, deepest part of a person's whole spiritual world. The body is perishable, but the soul…

Life is like the ebb and flow of the tide, always spent amid rises and falls. After great winds and waves, the heart returns to calm. Having gathered one's composure in calm, one must still set out again and step back onto the breaker, not…

It is said that Li Ka-shing's desk has not a single scrap of paper; whatever must be done that day is done that day, leaving nothing to linger in the heart overnight. That a businessman so successful could be this composed is no wonder that,…

Goethe called the "insight" in discussing art: "able to enter, able to encompass, able to penetrate." To encompass is to be unbiased; to penetrate is to be unobstructed; entering yet able to exit, one may then avoid being blinded by insight. —Qian Zhongshu, Limited Views…

On May 16, 2016, after a fifty-day long meditation on the various problems of life, I suddenly realized that, without my noticing, I had cut off all sensual desire. This does not mean giving up sex from then on, or abandoning my wife and children,…

Seeing an object and thinking of the person, seeing a scene and feeling emotion—this is human nature. But the ways of the world are always changing; as times pass and places remain while people change, one must know how to let go. Separation from the…

In China today there is a strange phenomenon: lofty, noble feelings have become objects of ridicule. This is a manifestation of the decay of our whole society's spiritual civilization. We envy Westerners—their orderly social order, the strong sense of social responsibility of their business people,…

Today is my son's eleventh birthday. On May 13, 2005, my son was born at Peking University Third Hospital. That day was the day my mother smiled most brightly; when she saw her plump, fair grandson in the maternity ward, she beamed from ear to…

Knowing all appearances are not appearances, yet wishing to be passionless while still feeling. — Li Shenzhi Nothing but heart-rending pain can crush the four maras; nothing but gut-breaking sorrow can extinguish the five poisons. The eight sufferings of life—birth, old age, illness, death, parting…

1. A person's attachments are always seen through and let go of in the process of repeated setbacks. 2. Be grateful to those who bring us to understanding, and to those who bring us to awakening; whether or not the name of teacher and disciple…