Life Insights ⁽³⁰⁵⁾

Face it, accept it, deal with it, let it go. — Master Sheng Yen In my senior year of high school, because an early romance was affecting my studies, I talked to an old classmate and poured out my troubles. He said to me: "If…

Hong Yi's wife: Master, tell me, what is love? Master Hong Yi: Love is compassion. — Lines from the film One Round of Bright Moon A Christian friend invited my whole family to his wedding, my first time at a Christian ceremony. In the sacred…

Today is Qixi Festival, and it is also my mother's birthday; she has been gone for more than three years. These years I have been constantly negating myself, destroying all my former beliefs, and my outlook on life and values have utterly changed. Now I…

The maxim "Keep your original mind, and you will reach fulfillment"—whose original source can no longer be traced—became popular thanks to Steve Jobs's advocacy. The concept of "original mind" (chuxin) comes from the "initial aspiration" (chufa xin) repeatedly mentioned in the Buddhist Avatamsaka Sutra. Yet…

Ideas make people weak; instinct makes them strong. — Zhang Xianliang After living through some of life's partings and deaths, I have come to love this saying of Zhang Xianliang's. It has cured me of my various "mental ailments" and moved me from idealism toward…

Parted in life at Qingming, parted by death at Guyu At 11:40 a.m. on April 23, 2014, my father-in-law, after suffering his third stroke, passed away despite emergency rescue efforts. When my father-in-law breathed his last, my wife's younger brother and I were at his…

My son spent a month on vacation in my hometown; as the new school term approached, I went back to fetch him to return to school in Beijing and stayed a few days there myself. The second day after I arrived, the father of one…

The ancient Chinese aphorism “profound virtue bears all; poetry and books sustain the family line” is a family motto that has guided the Chinese scholarly class for millennia. It means that a person must cultivate virtue as high and broad as the earth, so that…

To a thinker, knowledge is not merely a tool for livelihood; it is also spiritual nourishment that sustains the mind. For more than a decade after I left school I have kept the habit of reading, but I have also been groping for the direction…

July 17, 2015 A person has two problems to solve: one is his own state of mind, the other is how to get along with others. The way to solve them changes with the times. Solving the first solves most of one’s personal happiness; solving…