As I talked to a friend about "making money," he said, "We should try to make money because it's important; and we make money, ultimately just for — one day it won't be that important to us anymore." The great physicist Albert Einstein had a similar understanding: "I love physics because I know the power of matter." But the more I studied physics, the more I discovered the end of matter, and what stood was the spirit. ”
"Good Solitude" Illustration 1
A student learned from me many years ago that he grew up as a Go enthusiast, and he said that there are two types of people in the game of Go - "winners" and "seekers". The so-called "victory and defeat division" is to take victory as the ultimate goal, and everything serves victory. As British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said during World War II: "One word, 'victory.'" With all strength and all courage, no matter how difficult and difficult it is, no matter how much blood and sacrifice, we must pursue victory. The so-called "Tao-seeking school" is to pursue the artistic realm of Go as the main purpose, they believe that Go is a kind of intellectual gymnastics, and its beauty lies in the continuous "maturity", "perfection" and even "pure fire" of the self-realm: the highest sub-effect (chess efficiency), the most beautiful chess shape (chess shape), the fiercest attack, the most gorgeous move, the most unexpected hand tendon (clever and efficient moves in the chess game) and the most regretless chess game. In every "chess game" and every "chess game", the "victory and defeating master" and the "seeker" will do their best and go all out, and the difference between them is that: "the winner and loser" takes pleasure in defeating others, and the "seeker" takes pleasure in defeating himself; the "victory and defeat master" suffers because of defeat, the "seeker" suffers because there is no self-breakthrough and self-improvement; the "victor and defeat master" lives in the "world of two people", he looks for his own sense of existence and achievement in the conquest of others, and the "seeker" becomes a world of his own. Realize the sense of existence and accomplishment of the self in the inner transcendence of the self.
If we borrow these two concepts, then we will find that in the competitive relationship between people, there are also two types of people, "victory and defeaters" and "seekers". In order to "win," the "victory and defeat division" often does not hesitate to trample on the other party with such "villainous means as "slandering and slandering" and "squeezing and squeezing the right side"; while the "seekers" silently work hard, work, and work, accumulate valuable experience and painful lessons in their work, and slowly but steadily climb upwards. In order to become a "winner", he always has one eye to stare at a fierce enemy with his strength, maintaining a "prophetic" keen awareness of the progress of the opponent and a spring-like response; the "Seeker" is focused on the in-depth excavation of self-potential and the perfection of self-level, for them, "failure", "setback" and "loss" are not encouraging, but they can also be considered to contain some high-cost "truths", which are a roundabout way to achieve success and more outstanding personality to a higher realm.
Similar situations often arise: the same "winner" can be presented as two diametrically opposed "victory" postures. The first type of victors are close to the "victory and defeat division" mentioned earlier, and in order to be invincible for a long time, they often choose to "annihilate on all sides" and "kill all" of the losers. Just like the "Third Punic War" between ancient Rome and Carthage due to provocations in 149 BC to 146 BC, the carthaginian people struggled to resist, but could not withstand the three-year siege blockade, and finally ran out of food and was captured by Rome, and the victorious Roman Senate decided to razed the city of Carthage to the ground. The Romans washed Carthage in blood, searched from house to house, and found and killed all the inhabitants. The port of Carthage was destroyed and the country became history.
The second type of winner tends to be a "seeker", who often chooses to "open one side" and "leave room" for the loser. The typical representative figure is the hero of the Islamic world, Saladin, the first sultan of egypt's Ayyubid dynasty, who showed the "chivalry" that amazed the world in leading the Arabs to successfully resist the Crusades. When the horse of his rival Richard, king of England the Lionheart, fell to the ground on the battlefield, Saladin asked his brother to send him two good horses, and even sent him fruit and doctors when he fell ill; when Saladin's Islamic army finally invaded the kingdom of Jerusalem, in stark contrast to the massacre when the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem 88 years ago, Saladin entered Jerusalem without killing a single person or burning a house, and he even announced the release of all prisoners of war and the infidels to go home without a ransom.
Life is full of competition, but there are different "ways to win". Sometimes, losing the competition wins you. In the contest of strength between the two sides, if you can win the competition is an exciting thing, but more importantly, perhaps to win respect and friendship, win the hearts of opponents, win the world's touch, win the "excellence of the soul". Just as Saladin won not only the war, but also the admiration of the whole world, including his opponents, he was not only regarded as a great man of Islam and the Arab world, but also revered by Westerners as a model of "chivalry". In honor of this romantic hero, the King of Prussia presented a marble coffin to the tomb of Saladin in Damascus. It can be seen from this that "victory" may belong to the victory and defeat division, but "glory" must belong to the Seeker, and long-term victory and glory that are deeply rooted in the hearts of the people will inevitably belong to the Seeker in the end. This is often the case in Go, and Wu Qingyuan (a Japanese Chinese), who is known as the "showa chess saint" and "the first in the world", once said: "The difference in chess strength between first-class chess players is insignificant." The key to victory or defeat depends on spiritual cultivation. "Big things are the same, little things are similar. Another legendary hero, Napoleon, must have agreed with this view, otherwise he would not have said that "there are only two forces in the world: the sword and the mind." In the long run, the sword is always defeated at the hands of the mind." It can be seen that the superiority of people and people ultimately depends on the spiritual realm, personality cultivation, and ideological strength, and this long-term victory belongs only to those "seekers" who go further and ascend higher on the road of self-improvement and self-sublimation, who have not embraced ambitions, but have only worked hard to surpass themselves... By chance, when I looked down, I found the stars shining under my feet.
Illustration 2
The above principles also apply to the competition between "utilitarianism" and "morality", "profit" and "righteousness". If "morality" wants to reverse the current defeat under the confrontation with "utilitarianism", if it wants to win a long-term victory and rebuild its inner glory, it can only take the path of fair competition of the "seekers". That is to say, "morality" should not denigrate "money", attack "material" and belittle "utilitarianism" for its own "victory" to flaunt its own purity and flatter its own nobility. In this way, "morality" has become the unscrupulous "winner" and embarked on the shameful path of "malicious competition". If "morality" does not seek "justice" and only seeks "victory and defeat", it also abandons its innate mission of "seeking the Tao" and violates the essence of "goodness"—but is "morality" or "morality" of "injustice" and "unkindness"?
Excerpt from:
Book Title: Good Solitude
Author: Chen Guo
Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House
April 2017