"With a knife and axe pen, with a bodhisattva heart", this is Li Yanzhai's evaluation of the author of "Dream of the Red Chamber", and it is extremely accurate and profoundly highly evaluated. Mr. Cao Xueqin did use a pen like a knife and an axe to cut some treacherous people to blood, but at the same time he had a bodhisattva heart and was full of compassion for every character in the book. However, it is such a person with a "bodhisattva heart" who gives a criticism of Li Feng, who is young and widowed, cautious in words and deeds, and has never made mistakes: "Although life is not subject to old age and poverty, it is also necessary to accumulate children and grandchildren in the shadows." It can be said that looking at the various characters in the Red Chamber, there is no heavier criticism than this.
Many readers are upset about Li Yiming, she is a widow, in the absence of a source of livelihood, it is not easy to survive with her young son, who has the ability to help the children of Jia Fu who are in distress? Mr. Cao's criticism of her in this way is really too harsh.
Yes, Mr. Cao Xueqin, who "has a bodhisattva heart", why is he only so harsh on Li Feng?
In fact, it is not That Mr. Cao is harsh, the reader has this reaction, mainly because he has not figured out what "yin" is. Only by figuring out what a "yin" is, can we know whether Li Feng does not accumulate "yin" and whether he should be scolded.
What is?
In fact, the word "Yin Qi" does not only appear in the fifth sentence of Li Feng, but also appears in the tenth time Jia Zhen relayed Jia Jing's words: "You must say that it is my birthday, and you want to ask me to go to the audience to have some heads, but you have written and carved out the "Yin Qi Wen" that I used to annotate before, which is a hundred times stronger than calling me the head of the audience for no reason." ”
Yes, we can find the answer to what is "Yin Qi" in the Yin Qi Wen.
Jia Jing was a cultivator, and he attached so much importance to the Yin Qi Wen precisely because the Yin Qi Wen was a Taoist exhortation classic.
Now, let's leave "Dream of the Red Chamber" for a while and enter the Taoist culture.
The term "Yin Qi" first appeared in the Shang Shu Hong Fan: "Only the heavens yin and the people." Yin means quietly and silently; yin means stability. The meaning of this sentence is that God silently pacified all nations.
Isn't it still a little difficult to understand? It doesn't matter, there is a more popular saying in the Tao Te Ching that explains: "(Heaven) is born without being, for the sake of not being ashamed, and for the sake of not slaughtering." It is called Xuande. "God's attitude toward all things in the world is this: let all things grow, but do not want to own all things; do something to all things, but do not take credit for it; raise all things up, but do not want to be the master of all things, this is Xuande.
Many people understand it as mysterious, but in fact, this understanding is also correct. The so-called Xuan, the original meaning is to refer to black, extended to yin, such as night, no light, can not see, can not be easy to appear mysterious things? How things come about, can't see, only know the result, this is the mystery.
Therefore, Xuande is Yinde, invisible, quietly and silently, and the corresponding is Yangde, which occurs in the sun, and some people see it, and someone praises it.
People in the world love to do Yang Virtue, and do something good to preach it everywhere, but Taoists advocate Yin Virtue, and do good deeds without wanting people to know, "The world knows that beauty is beautiful, and evil is already evil." Everyone knows that what is good is good, and what is not good is good. (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 2)"
Of course, doing good does not want to be known, does not mean deliberately concealing, but as a daily routine, do not have to deliberately do it.
In people's habitual thinking, they always regard doing good as a big thing that must be paid a lot, which is a misunderstanding. The yin virtue advocated by Taoists refers to the preservation of the goodness of nature, the compassion of compassion. Most acts of good are done with a show of hands, and you can do it with your hands. For example, when we see a child fall, we will naturally help her; for example, if we see a person who is thirsty and finds water to drink, and there is water right next to us, we will naturally hand over a glass of water. When we do these things, we don't feel like we're doing good, or that it's a beautiful thing worth preaching. It is as natural as we eat and drink Lhasa every day, and when we meet it, we stretch out our hands, have money to pay, and contribute powerfully, regardless of the size. Everything we give does not affect our daily lives in the slightest.
We don't ask a child who has fallen to be grateful for helping him, and we don't ask a thirsty person to remember us just because he has given him a bowl of water.
Back to the "Yin Qiwen" mentioned in "Dream of the Red Chamber", which has a sentence about Ji Yinde: "It is difficult to save people, to help people urgently, to be compassionate and lonely, and to tolerate people's faults." "When others are in trouble, they help others when they need an emergency, they are pitied when they are lonely, and others can tolerate their faults. How? There are many descriptions in the text, which are all that ordinary people such as me can do at will, such as "giving up medicinal herbs to save diseases and suffering, applying tea to quench thirst", especially "applying tea to quench thirst", which is really common. Even if nothing else can be done, as long as this is done, it is considered to have accumulated "yin".
Understanding what a "yin" is, we can easily judge whether Li Feng should be scolded or not.
Did Li Feng not accumulate "yin qi"? Should she be scolded?
In the eyes of the people under Jia Fu, Li Yi was like a bodhisattva, the "first virtuous person". Indeed, in the 80 texts, Li Yi is really blameless. As a widow, she was "pure and observant"; as the eldest sister-in-law, she led her sisters-in-law to "read and write, learn needle and thread, and learn the truth", and did her duty; she also did a very thorough job in serving her mother-in-law and mother-in-law. How could such a "great bodhisattva" be scolded by Mr. Cao Xueqin, who has a "bodhisattva heart", as not accumulating "yin dove"?
According to the personality and plot development of the characters, after the defeat of Jia Fu, Li Feng should have indeed done the thing of not accumulating "yin doves", and the process should probably be like this:
When Jia Fu was raided, Li Yi was able to be left alone because his observance of the festival was in line with the mainstream values of the time, and he led his son out of Jia Fu with his savings and found another place to live. The rest of Jia Fu "fell and scattered", and with their social relations and earning ability, they disappeared into different corners like "birds throwing themselves into the forest". At this time, only Jia Baoyu was in a miserable situation, because he had no ability to make a living, and because he was usually too conceited and unsympathetic, no relatives and friends were willing to help him. So he became a beggar and begged along the street. This can be verified by yan li zhai's criticism of "cold winter choking acid, snow night around the broken felt". In the cold winter months, only sour can be eaten, only broken felt can be encircled, in the Taiping dynasty, this is a situation that can only be found by beggars who are too depressed to fall anymore.
It was at this time that she met Li Yi by chance. There are two kinds of situations in this kind of encounter, one is a street encounter, and the other is that Bao Yu inadvertently knocked on the door of Li Yi's house while begging. At this time, after the disaster, the deceased people met, and should have had mixed feelings to complain about cold and warm, but Li Feng coldly pretended not to know, and even refused to give Baoyu a bowl of water to drink, let alone take Baoyu in.
The above analysis has been analyzed, even if it is "applying tea to quench thirst" belongs to the behavior of accumulating "yin doves", the author said that Li Feng did not accumulate "yin doves", indicating that such a simple thing Li Feng did not do. It wasn't that she wasn't capable, it was unwilling.
I think that when the two uncles and sisters-in-law lived together in the Grand View Garden, Bao Yu still had a lot of respect for Li Feng, the eldest sister-in-law, and he couldn't imagine that Li Feng would be so cold and ruthless.
Baoyu, who was treated coldly, continued to beg until he met Jiang Yuhan and the raiding couple, and only ended his begging career, which was also revealed by Li Yanzhai in his comments.
It can be seen from this that Li Feng really does not accumulate "yin dove", which is also a satire on her "first virtuous person".
In the "Yin Dove Text", it is said: "It is difficult to save people, it is urgent to help people, it is difficult to pity people, it is lonely to be compassionate, and it is tolerating people's faults." At this time, Baoyu was difficult, anxious and lonely, a bowl of hot water, a greeting, and it was a great warmth to him. However, how could he not be sad that he had experienced worse in his esteemed sister-in-law? If it weren't for the next encounter with Jiang Yuhan and the attacking couple, he would probably have died on the street due to freezing and starvation.
Therefore, it is not that Mr. Cao Xueqin refuses to give Li Feng a "bodhisattva heart", but that Li Feng has gone too far, and she has completely lost the compassion in her nature, and she really deserves to be scolded.
Here, we can also see Mr. Cao Xueqin's values: being a human being loses the goodness of nature, which is far more hateful than selectively doing evil. Therefore, he arranged for Wang Xifeng, who had committed many evils, to "occasionally yin and his daughter Qiao Jie because of the Ji Liu clan" (Ji Ren's urgency), but li Feng, who did not accumulate "yin doves", lost his son Jia Lan. This is the "need for yin and grandchildren", and the accumulation of yin and yin usually affects future generations.
Silently doing good deeds, making the good deeds of raising hands become habits, so as to achieve "the difficulty of saving people, the urgency of helping people, the loneliness of people, and the fault of people", this is the way mr. Cao Xueqin told us through Li Feng. If nothing else, only for our children and grandchildren to be healthy and safe, like Sister Qiao, even if they encounter disasters, they can also be "peaceful in distress and auspicious in every murder".