Author: Zhi-Juan Guo

Bitterness

Published on by Zhi-Juan Guo

The little girl ran off in a rage because she cannot accept that she lost paper rock scissors.

It certainly is unpleasant to lose, as it is unpleasant to be ignored, as it is unpleasant to want and not get.

If you walk on a street and look at the faces of people, it is often to be observed, that most of the adults, to say the least, are not cheery. We the adults seem to be in an unstated agreement that: life is not easy, and there is much bitterness in store for all of us.

In Buddhism it’s said there are eight “bitternesses” in life, and among them there are 生苦，老苦，病苦，爱离别苦，怨憎恨苦, 求不得苦。

生苦: the bitterness of being born, mercifully none of us remember the first cry (or many cries following that) as we came into this world. Forgetfulness here as a bliss protects us from it. (Who said the secret to happiness is good health and bad memory? )

老苦: the bitterness of aging, in the very long history of Chinese feudalism, there are, this is said by an amateur of history, numerous emperors’ obsession had been finding a herb, a medicine that could enable them to live forever. Dao, for all its wisdom, has branches that go into alchemy and believe they can, if they tried hard enough to just find the right drug, escape aging and death.

病苦: the bitterness of illness, it’s needless to explain health is happiness and illness misery.

死苦: the bitterness of death.

爱离别苦: the bitterness of separating from the loved.

怨憎恨苦: the bitterness of associating with the unbeloved.

求不得苦: the bitterness of wanting and not getting.

But there are also “sweetness and light”, life would be hardly bearable otherwise. In long patience we learn good humor, sweetness of temper; in struggle and suffering we learn understanding and enlightenment. There are many laughters to even out the first cry; there is an appreciation of health after illness; if aging is bitter, then there must be a certain compensation that at least for some, they can look at an experience with well-earned wisdom; there is the happiness of reunion with the loved; and…..But enough of this, life is a thing that cannot be summed up in a few words. It is sufficient to realize it is good to be living and suffering. It is good to know there is gold in a child’s laughter.

The little girl came back, and we went on with our lesson. Because she has let out her anger, she now can carry on with a clear and bright mind.

Ambition

Published on by Zhi-Juan Guo

If ambiton is often deemed as something evil in the Christian world, it has, in Chinese, two opposite sides. And I wonder if the ambiguous nature of Chinese philosophy, the Chinese way to see the world, a lack of accurary and absoluteness—the qualities that science and technology requires—one of the reasons that made this at one time the wealthiest countries in the world lagged so pitifully behind in the run since the age of Industrial Revolution.

Ambition for the Chinese could be 雄心, heroic heart, or 野心, savage heart. Much as the Chinese and the West would disagree over the character of Mao, to say that Mao is an ambitious man certainly would win both sides’ confirmation.

It’s said China now is at The Age of Ambition, the whole country is dashing forward, sometimes with the madness of a full-speed train gone off the track, and everyone in the country, under the influence of this energy, rushes on themselves. One hesitates to commend this. Certainly New York itself is a city charged full of a similar energy.

A hero’s heart, a hero aspires to something that’s out of the common run of life. 雄心壮志, is a word stirs the blood and brings in the images of the epics of Homer. No Chinese could hear this word without at once popping up in their minds various characters in the swordsmen novels.

A savage’s heart, a savage (though the word “savage” now, even compared to two decades ago, takes on a different meaning that’s quite different from the long period that the west had, undoubtly still now, in the complacency of their “civilized society”.) a savage with much rage and discontent, wants land, wants power, wants money. 野心勃勃, is a word comes with the image of war and destruction under a tyrannical will.

As no one could sum up French Revolution with one word, and there will be forever dispute as to what a man Napoleon really is, the complex of the world and human nature is thus that it’s no longer easy for us to say “this person is a good guy and that person bad” once we grew out of childhood.

And it might be in a man to be both 雄心壮志 and 野心勃勃, as French Revolution started with heroic ideas for human race and soon turned into horror and blood shed.

If the Chinese is paying heavily for its ambiguousness, for its reluctance to go to absoluteness and extremities and cut off the innate connections in everything—“there is no beauty without ugliness to contrast it; we know goodness because there is evil to contrast it”—there is hope that this way of seeing the world, this philosophy, will finally pay off: For everything by nature is connected, and when science and technology play out, it ultimately is us, human, our mind to grasp the world thoroughly and comprehensively as a whole that wins us the game in the long run.