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Article source | Liang Wendao gave a lecture at the Shenzhen Library in 2006
When these books are in their master's study, they are complete. What does complete mean? These books are a complete expression of the personality, the soul, of their owners.
If a house without a soul is beautiful, what is it like? Like a very luxurious mausoleum.
So reading is a kind of spiritual exercise, reading can change ourselves, reading is not to make people better or worse, but to let us have a deep understanding of human nature.
1 | A man's book is all that man has
The title of my speech is "My Soul My Book", the subtitle is "Reading as a Spiritual Exercise", and "Exercise" means to do exercise and gymnastics. Let me start with a story, I love this story, I don't get tired of telling it.
This is a real thing. One year, an American boy was admitted to Harvard University, studying engineering, and he was very happy.
Harvard's first-year curriculum, like many universities in the United States, has a core curriculum. The so-called core curriculum is that new students enter the school not to take professional classes, but to attend public classes that all students must take. The content of these lessons can be strange and have everything. But all in all, the school believes that any Harvard graduate, any outstanding American college student, should have the field and scope of learning involved. So the student took a course, but he regretted it afterwards. What courses were taken? It is "Middle And English Literature".
If you think about it, a student who wants to study engineering runs to read Middle English literature, so it is very painful. What's worse is that this professor is old, speaks slowly, and does not know how to make up some jokes to make students happy, which is not interesting at all. Middle English and modern English are not the same, so the professor has to explain it boringly when he lectures. The student was very miserable, thinking that this class could not be taken, it was too uncomfortable, so he often skipped school.
After a semester of classes and summer vacation, he was very happy. He had to work part-time to earn money, so he found a part-time job at a used bookstore near the school. What does he do? Such bookstores often get phone calls and are called to go to someone's house to collect some old books and sell them — and he does that. Instead of estimating the price, he went to the door to see how many boxes and how many people had to move the books—and helped with that.
One day, he got a phone call from his boss who sent him to a garden house next to the town of Cambridge, Boston, where Harvard is located— a very nice house— to move books. So he went. An old lady opened the door and led him in.
The old lady's face was a little sad, and after the introduction, he found that this old lady was actually the wife of the professor who taught him the very dull Chinese and English literature course, and it turned out that this professor died not long after the class of this semester. After dying, leaving a room full of books, what about these books? The old lady felt that the books in this room were fascinating, and she could not face them every day. So she decided to sell them all, so she sold them to this used bookstore, and it happened that this young man was sent to collect books.
At this time, the young man realized that the class he had just finished last semester was the last course in the professor's life, and he was one of the last students in the professor's life. Although he didn't like the professor, he felt very heavy at this time.
When he went to see how the books should be moved, he found that on the side of the professor's study, an entire wall of bookcases was full of detective novels, and they were all cheap detective novels. This student laughed, this old guy usually takes classes very seriously, it turns out that he loves to read detective novels the most, and he has this interest? He thought it was ridiculous.
This study is very elegant, behind the study is a large glass door that falls to the ground, out is a small garden, not very luxurious, but very clean, elegant, but also very comfortable and beautiful. When he was looking at the garden, he heard the old lady say, "My husband's greatest hobby in life was to plant flowers and cut grass, and he liked to study this." ”
Next to the glass door in the garden, there are one or two bookcases, which are full of books on gardening, including botanical atlases, and various books that are necessary for introducing plants, raising flowers and plants.
After watching it for half a day, the student made a decision: I will not move these books today! He had come to see how many books there were and then asked someone to come and move them, but now he drove back and said to the owner of the old bookstore, "Boss, I want to buy all the books of this professor myself." Where to buy it and put it away? I don't know, I'm going to live in a dormitory, I'm going to think of another way – I'm going to buy them all anyway. ”
The boss said, "You want all these books!" Can you afford the price? The student said, "All the money I earned from working here this summer goes to you, and I don't have to pay my salary." ”
The boss said, "That's not enough. The student said, "Well, I will come to you for the next three summers to work, and all the wages will be paid to you, okay?" The boss asked him, "Why did you buy these books?" ”
The student said that when he was in class, he only thought that the professor was very dull and academic, and it turned out that this only reflected the professor's side. When he went to the professor's house and looked at his study and his collection of books, he discovered the professor's complete three-dimensional personality.
The professor liked the cheap version of the detective novel, and the detective novel also drew lines to take notes - the notes also wrote foul words: This paragraph is really well written! The professor also likes to plant flowers and grass, the sprinkler on the lawn has just been sprinkled, and there are water droplets on the leaves, which are the professor's favorite things in life.
A person's hobbies, interests, and even proclivities are completely floating in the professor's study. At that time, this student had a strong feeling, and if I moved these books back to the old bookstore, I would have to scatter them, put them on the shelves of the old bookstore, and then sell them. In this way, all the professor's collection collapsed and disintegrated.
And now when these books are in their master's study, they are complete. What does complete mean? These books are a complete expression of the personality, the soul, of their owners.
So this student felt that as long as the professor's collection of books was still there, as long as the books were still intact, the professor was not dead, his soul was still in these books. These books contain some notes, or insert a ticket to a concert, a ticket to a movie — these are the trajectories of a person's life, all reflected in these books.
The student felt sad and sad, and he felt that he should let the professor's soul remain intact—to buy it, not to break them up.
After listening to him, the store manager said, "Forget it, I will sell you these books at a 60% discount, and you will work here for three years." So he worked here for three years. This story is true.
This story shows that what books a person reads and what books a person owns are actually all of a person, that is, this person.
2 | The study will reveal your secrets
I don't know what kind of magazines people usually read, but I often read a lot of popular magazines in Hong Kong, like some weekly magazines, gossip magazines, entertainment magazines I love to read.
Each issue of these magazines usually has some fixed columns that introduce some celebrities and homes. For example, introduce some houses designed by famous teachers, especially elegant, and particularly good, the interior of the houses in these introductions is always clean and very beautiful; the furniture is also very expensive, designed by famous italian and German teachers; if it is the home of a celebrity, the celebrities in the photo are very proud to sit on the sofa and laugh.
I found that after reading magazines for so long and reading so many celebrity home interview columns, I almost never saw the study. There are many rich people in Hong Kong, but I have never seen their study – even if there is a study, that study is only a figment.
It's called a study, it's not actually a study. Why? Inside his study was a desk with computers and documents on it. Are there any bookshelves? Yes, but what's on the shelf? It's all photos, medals, and so on. There are no books, and even if there are, they are not enough cabinets.
According to me before, a man's book is his soul, and a man's entire collection of books is the whole word of his soul. Can I say that I have seen the homes of so many celebrities, rich people, rich people, but they have no soul in their homes, because they don't have a study, or they have a study but there are no books in it.
The owners of these houses are like inviting journalists to see "how nice it is to live after I die!" "This mausoleum is beautiful, but has no soul. So I'm curious about what some reader's home is like, what books he reads, what books does he put away?
Many years ago, I wanted to do this kind of thing, that is, to visit some readers, to go to their homes to see, to take pictures, and ask him to tell him how he got these books. Which books on his shelves are his favorites? Then I could see what kind of person he was.
If he were a writer, I might be able to see something very different from his work. Later, I found out that some publishing houses in Taiwan have done this and interviewed a lot of readers. I thought: Forget it, I don't have to do it anymore, someone is doing it.
Later, I did a special program for Hong Kong Citizen Radio, in which I visited the study rooms of some celebrities, of course, those celebrities are not necessarily readers, look at their books. At that time, I also called and invited some friends, and I looked for Mr. Dong Qiao, a very famous essayist in Hong Kong.
Mr. Dong Qiao has always been very kind to our juniors, and I called him and said, "Sir, this time I am going to trouble you, and I will lead the whole film crew to your house to shoot your book." As soon as he heard it, he laughed: "No, no, absolutely not, how can this kind of thing be seen?" It is even more impossible to disclose. ”
Shrewd, ginger is still old spicy! He knew what I meant as soon as he heard it. He knew all too well, where was the study? The study is a holy place and a forbidden place, and it should not be casually allowed to come in and see. Because it will reveal your secrets, it will accidentally reveal what kind of person you are.
Speaking of which, I think of a very famous German thinker I like very much, Benjamin, who has a famous article called "Open My Collection", in which he talks about himself as a bookworm, very poor, but also loves books - what to do? So he cut back on his clothes and went to the auction to buy the kind of out-of-print books that were particularly precious.
He once said a very famous story, which said: Do you know what is the most noble way for a person to have a book? ——There have been such writers, very poor, like books, often go to the bookstore, but also often go to the book fair, read a lot of books, a look at the title of the book likes, pick up a good book, but can not afford to buy, what to do? So the German writer began a great cause, and when he returned, he wrote another book of his own according to the title of the book.
This is the noblest way in the world to own a book, do you want to own a book? Write it out.
3 | Everyone's study reflects one's view of order
But generally we are not so noble, nor do we have such noble ability, and everyone is more likely to have a book that is too expensive to buy by stealing, borrowing, buying books, etc.
Do you know what kind of behavior it is to buy a book? Benjamin says it well: Buying a book is actually saving a book.
How to save it? If you think about it, in a market economy, a book is actually a commodity, and the price is marked to circulate in the market. If a book is out of print, it may be sold high in the second-hand market because it is a commodity. But when you buy a book home, it is not a commodity, and the meaning of the commodity disappears.
Everyone's bookshelf has its own order, and the reason why I like to look at people's books is to see what order they have. If it is an English book, it is arranged alphabetically, such as in the order of the author's name and in the order of the book title. Some people are arranged according to the publishing house: the row of Sanlian Publishing House, the side of Hebei Education Publishing House. Others may be classified: by philosophy, religion, history, literature, and so on.
Everyone has an order, so everyone's study and bookshelf reflect a person's view of order. If the study room in a person's home is arranged according to the publisher or the series of books, it must look very beautiful, and the books of the same color are lined up together, then it shows that the person will care a lot about the appearance.
So after a book is bought and put in its own order, this order is a universe, a world, which is completely different from the book's position in the market and in bookstores.
Not to mention that you may have some very outlandish ideas to arrange your books. For example, there is a very famous writer born in Argentina who is now a journalist in Uruguay – I like this writer – named Domingoz, who published a beautiful novel a few years ago, called "The Man in the Paper House" (the title of the mainland book is "Paper House").
This book is about the story of the bookworm, how does this bookworm arrange the order of his bookshelf? He had a special consideration. He told his friends that Shakespeare's books could never be put together with Marlow's.
Who is Marlowe? Marlow was a scriptwriter of Shakespeare's contemporaries, a man who died earlier and had a rougher fate. He often accused Shakespeare of plagiarizing his script. Both of them were very popular and went hand in hand, but neither of them looked up to the other. He felt that Shakespeare had plagiarized, not like words. Later scholars supported this school of thought.
These two people were sworn enemies before they were born, so as a responsible reader, it is not right to put the books of the two of them together. Putting it in this way will make them continue to argue on the bookshelves.
Another example that we are familiar with, Han Han and Hong Feng's books must not be put together, otherwise, Han Han may scold Hong Feng on the bookshelf every day: "You beggar, you deserve to beg." "That wouldn't be good, and it would destroy this quiet study world."
So in order for those books not to quarrel with each other, we have to study carefully, what is the relationship between the author of this book and the author of that book? Is there any conflict or non-category between the content of this book and the content of another book?
Everyone's bookshelf has an inexplicable, own order in it.
After this book bought it back and put it in, why is it said that it was saved? That is to say, from this moment on, the book is detached from its commodity face, and it truly becomes a meaningful thing. It is no longer just a book, it is a very important brick in life for a living person, a brick that builds the church of the person's soul.
So Benjamin uses the analogy: We go to the bookstore to buy books and bring them over, which is like the Sultan prince in "One Thousand and One Nights" going to the slave market and seeing a beautiful woman, who is placed there as a slave, and I will buy her back! Then you saved her, like this feeling.
So a person's study, a person's collection of books, is a person's world, the embodiment of his soul.
4 | The book itself has a history
Let's look at the time issue next. If the book embodies a person's soul in space, his interests, his hobbies, and what he wants to hide are all in it. So is there a temporal depth of time for these books for him? I think this is also a topic worth exploring.
The so-called depth of time angle, can be understood in this way - I don't know if everyone has this habit, buying a book back may be signed, there will be a date next to the signature, I believe some people will have such a habit.
Some people even write down when they read the book. Some people are even more special, the book may be bought back when the signature was signed, wrote the date of purchase, and then wrote the date when reading the book, and may not be able to read it at once, may take it out and read it again in a few months, so write down the date. The book becomes a diary, and the trajectory of your reading of it has remained on it over the years.
If you don't do this on purpose, you may also clip some bookmarks, documents, and business cards. A whole bunch of stuff stuffed in, stuffed in, all of this stuff is a record of a process in your life, all kept in this book.
The book is not only a vehicle that expresses and carries a content, the book itself has a history, there is a history of being read, there is a history of being opened, there is a history of being bought, there is a history of being resold, you will see the historical record in every book, when have you seen it? When do you open it? This is especially true of books in libraries.
I used to have a very bad habit in college that wasn't worth learning at all, and that is that I liked to take notes on books in the library (sorry).
Why do you want to do such a thing? At that time, a classmate asked me: "Liang Wendao, how do you do this?" I was proud: "Ahem! What do you know? I'm going to show the points, and I'm going to do it for the good of other readers. I wrote "eyebrow criticism" on the top of the book, and the second reader will know whether the book is good or not, and whether it is worth reading. If I say it's bad, forget it, don't look at it.
Not only do I like to draw lines, I also like to watch other people draw lines. So when I borrowed books from people, a friend said, "You can rest assured I'll make it clean." I said, "No, don't!" You'd better take some notes on it. ”
Why? Because then I can see how he reads. So this kind of reading is a kind of double reading, first of all, I am reading myself; second, I am reading how another reader reads, which is a double reading process.
If it happens that the reader is someone I know, a friend of mine, I'll come and see what you, the reader, notice. For example, he borrowed a copy of "Dream of the Red Chamber" to go back, and when he came back, I found that the most marked page was "Jia Baoyu first tried Yun YuQing", then I know what kind of person you are, and maybe he will still draw the key points on these pages. So it's a fun thing.
Even sometimes I develop it into a kind of conversation. What kind of dialogue? For example, when the library books were borrowed, I saw that someone had taken notes and crossed the line, and I would write another comment next to it: "Who wrote this?" Do you understand? Don't talk about it if you don't understand it at all? ”
It's like having a distant conversation on a book with someone you don't know, someone who didn't know how many years ago. And this dialogue, only the next reader who borrows the book can see very completely: it turns out that in a time that I did not know, between two people I did not know, there was a dialogue that happened in the book.
So buying a second-hand book is a very good thing, to be able to see the background in which it has been flipped, and you will wonder what kind of route the book took to get to us.
So I have the habit that if I go to a bookstore and there are several books in the same book, I will buy the worse one, that is, the appearance is not very good, even missing pages, broken covers, water marks, and so on.
Why? The first is that because of such a book, its history is complicated, it is bumpy, and it has experienced a fate that other books have not experienced. The other books are shiny, beautiful, and clean, but the book is dirty and has twists and turns, and there are a lot of unspeakable things that happen to this book.
Second, it is precisely because of the book's difficult fate that it has created its broken body, so no one will buy it in this bookstore, and no one will ask for it. Unless there is only one last book left, it will be sold pitifully. Do you think it's very sympathetic?
So I imagined myself as a philanthropist of books, my study was an orphanage of books, and I went around adopting "children" that no one wanted, taking them back to my house to look at, trying to see through its history, its experiences, its life trajectory, and then putting it in my world — you were saved by me.
I may not be a good person, I haven't done anything good, but after doing it I feel that I still have a good side.
5 | How to use books to disguise culture?
In fact, many people know the truth I just said, a person's study, what marks in each book, will show your life course and the relationship between these books. If that's the case, can we imagine someone pretending? - Absolutely possible! How to disguise it?
Have you ever seen some people put a whole set of beautiful encyclopedias in their homes, encyclopedias are basically people that no one will read - except for Mr. Wang Yunwu, who is determined to read the Encyclopedia Britannica - basically no one else reads the encyclopedia.
Some people buy these books and put them at home, and they don't read them, just to show off, but this kind of show off is usually considered to be very tasteless. There is no idea that Hong Kong's rich want to show off with books, so there is no problem.
Rich people in many places want to be tasteful and cultured, so they use books to show off and become laughing stocks. For example, the complete works of Shakespeare, the complete works of Lu Xun, etc., you will definitely not read them after you buy them.
That's why a company like the UK offers special services. What service? It is a few young men who are responsible for buying books and organizing bookshelves for people, so as to show the excellent taste of the owner, and they will see what kind of person you are.
For example, if he sees that your eyes are a little melancholy and a little mysterious, he will buy you some books on astrology and find some medieval, mystical pagan thinkers (usually burned on the burning rack) to decorate your home.
But this is not enough, books must not be put together, for example, others buy Shakespeare, you can also buy, but buy Shakespeare a whole set is very stupid. This company is very good at buying, how to buy? If you don't buy one complete set, you buy eight copies. Three of the other eight books are duplicates.
What's going on with this repetition? Because there are several differences in the different versions, and then in different versions there are several experts to help you draw lines on it, indicating that you have seen it, and also imitating some seemingly inadvertent folds. It seems that some people like to wear hemp suits in the summer, hemp suits are very straight, very beautiful, not good-looking, hot a little wrinkled, too wrinkled and not good, what to do? Before going out, iron it, sprinkle some water and pinch it after scalding, so that it is more elegant to wear. The same is true of books, deliberately pleated and then inadvertently stuffed into one or two tickets for an opera concert in London's Gawain Gardens, which means you're buying the book, or reading the book while you're watching an opera.
If you think about it, if you have a study like this, and then you ask a friend to come in —suppose it's a friend of the opposite sex," and you say to her, "Sit slowly, and I'll go get a cup of coffee." "Then I did it for a long time, and I did it for 20 minutes. When you come out, you find her reading your book with a look of amazement. You just smile – oh, that's it. What follows is another chapter of the story.
So I kept thinking that I wouldn't be able to do TV shows in the future, that I was old and faded — even though I didn't have any color right now — that I wouldn't be able to do that, so I started one of those companies. Because I know that China's rich people are paying more and more attention to cultural taste, living in luxury houses and bungalows.
The names of those mansions and bungalows are very church-like, very tasteful, they must need this kind of special service, and I will open such a company to serve them in the future (laughs).
6 | The so-called reading is to let people get free
Back to these books, the history itself is so interesting, recording the trajectory of human life, at this time we are gradually approaching a more central question - how is my life affected in the moment of reading? How can it be changed? How does it relate to it? What exactly is reading?
In fact, the so-called reading can borrow the words of the French thinker Blanqui: the so-called reading is to let people get free, let the works get free.
Why? Almost every one of us has this experience when we read books, and you will find that some books are unreadable, difficult to access, and difficult to enter. I think it's reading in the real, strict sense. If a person only reads books in his whole life, it means that he has not actually read books.
If you think about it, when we learn to recognize words from a young age, when we read the first book, it is difficult, and we all climb step by step. Why, after we're teenagers, we suddenly don't have to have difficulties, just look at something I can understand. Looking at something you can understand is tantamount to reliving what you already know, which is silly.
I advise you to look carefully at the many bestsellers, especially those that are not fictional and non-literary.
There are three rules for bestsellers: the first is to repeat what you already know in terms you don't know; the second is to repeat what you just said and give some more examples; the third is to repeat it again and summarize it, and you succeed — that's bestseller.
So for me it's not really reading in the strict sense, and reading in the real strict sense is always difficult.
The difficulty is that we will find a work, whether fictional or non-fictional, or a philosophical theory—such as Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, or the great literary work Remembrance of The Age of Water—and when we read these works, we hope to organize them into organic things, to read a meaning, to read a world that I can understand and grasp. But you find that this work is resisting this desire and demand of you, and the whole process of reading is actually a struggle, you want to put something on it, make it understandable, give it a framework, a format, a pattern, but it has been resisting. You've just built a castle with a complete structure, and the corner side of the wall starts to grow vines again, and then slowly storms the wall—reading is always the way it should be.
At this point you will find that reading is nothing more than a discovery of our own tenacious will and the invincibility of the work itself. The work is free, in the process of reading you find that it cannot be tamed; you are also free, because you are fully aware of the existence of your own will, your own soul.
You finish a very difficult book, you can't say you understand it all, but your depth is expanded, as if after a long struggle, such a struggle is like doing a very intense sport - mental physical exercise, so that you as a person are transformed.
7 | Reading doesn't necessarily make a person better
Philosophers of the Greco-Roman period placed a great emphasis on reading. They used a word, "drill." When you have time, you can look at plato's Dialogues, or even works that are considered systematic—Aristotle's "The Ethics of Nicomach", and so on.
You will find that these works seem to be very systematic on the surface, but in fact they are not. It even has a lot of internal contradictions, because in the process of writing, the author has an implicit interlocutor, constantly talking to the reader.
The so-called careful reading is that you have a dialogue with this work, and in the process of dialogue you cannot conquer it, it cannot conquer you, and then you and this work together reach a height, and then you are slowly changed - the book will always change people. Books change, will they get better? I was very skeptical.
A few months ago I read in the newspaper that there was a city in Mexico where the police used to be a notorious, gambling, drinking, not doing business, embezzling money transfers, and so on. The local government wants to reform the police, how to reform? A police reading plan was set up and a batch of books was designated. Every policeman had to take a few books back and read them well.
Mexico speaks Spanish, of course, by reading some of the classics of Spanish literature, such as Don Quixote. According to the newspaper, the local government said the plan was very successful.
These policemen have always been big and rude, but after reading books for a year, they have become elegant in temperament, and they are impartial and excellent in their official duties. For example, a traffic policeman who stopped your car on the road in the past directly said: "Take out the documents." Now it will be said: "Excuse me, sir, I know you are in a hurry, but can you show me your documents?" This effect will be achieved after reading a book.
That's why we often encourage people to read because we believe that reading makes a person better. The old saying has clouds: there are poems and books in the belly. Although I am very skeptical, because we have seen more people are getting worse the more they read. But reading does transform people, can make you more evil, and may make you more kind, so not necessarily. The intellectual and spiritual depth of some works makes reading dangerous because it makes a reader more evil than a person who does not. So we try to tame reading into something very simple.
Another reason to encourage everyone to read is to hope that reading will make everyone more cultured, people better, and society more harmonious, but I think this will not necessarily happen, this desire will often be disappointed, so I hate to open the book list.
In Hong Kong, I have some friends who write book reviews who are asked by the media every year: open a book list, summer vacation, give students a little good advice. I don't think the book list can be opened. Why? Because we believe that all really good books, serious books, can play a role in changing people. A book list is actually planning your growth goals, the direction of your life changes, so it is also a life plan. If you think about it, why do we give a life plan, a life process, to some readers I don't know? I don't think that's responsible.
Why should I tell some young people how you should behave? What kind of person should you become? I can introduce some books that I like, but I will definitely emphasize that the books I like are definitely not for everyone. The direction of my life, my plan, can never be applied to all people, that is impossible.
Therefore, it is a very domineering behavior to list some books to go out and promote, and I am against opening a book list.
8 | Read some "evil" books
In addition, there is also a common view that everyone usually has, that is, reading books should read some books that attract people and inspiration. For example, it is recommended to read the biographies of some celebrities, to see how these people work hard, try to move forward, and finally become a generation of great people, etc. I am very opposed to young people reading too many inspirational books.
Why? I found that a person who reads more inspirational books will become a fool, that is, he is determined to overdo it. No matter what difficulties or problems he encountered, he thought of moving forward bravely, overcoming all difficulties, and not being afraid of sacrifice. He didn't think about whether he was wrong, whether his decision was a bit of a problem in the first place. He didn't care, anyway, he was determined and ambitious from beginning to end.
A person who is too ambitious, too confident, and has a very positive outlook on life is actually a little silly. He will become a very one-way, monotonous view of the world, and a simple view of life, that is, only from the positive point of view. He never knew the complexity of the world, the darkness of life.
So I think a person who, when he is young, has to read some "evil" books when he has the opportunity.
There are a few of the greatest works of evil in my mind. "Golden Plum" also has this effect, but "Golden Plum" is not evil enough. Have you ever heard of the Marquis de Sade in France, today we talk about the "SM" of sexual abuse, and that "S" comes from him, because he is the king of sexual abuse. His books are full of unsightly plots: man eating people, eating excrement, gang rape, torture, all the darkest and most terrible things you can imagine, all of which he has in his book, so he was sentenced to mental illness and later died in prison.
But after the mid-20th century, there were a lot of world-class thinkers who were very concerned about this person, there were a lot of famous directors who made his films, and there were people who studied his work.
The Marquis de Sade wrote his book during the French Revolution. What was the french revolution like? Even though the whole society was very rational, do you know how far the most radical revolutionaries at that time talked about reason? They believe that the division of months should be decimal, that is, ten days is a week, because seven days as a week seems irrational and unscientific, and ten days are scientific.
They believe that everything in the world should be rational. Then in such an era of striving for rationality, the French Revolution was full of blood, and all the cruelty and violence imaginable in the world occurred at the same time in this most rational era.
In this era, there were great thinkers such as Voltaire and Rousseau who emphasized reason, but at the same time there were such terrible books written by the Marquis of Sade, what does this mean?
Reason has its dark side, and behind the lofty ideals is often the abyss of endless flesh and blood—the abyss of desire.
So, if you read the works of the Enlightenment thinkers and then look at the Marquis of Sade, you will see the dark side of the Enlightenment. It's like standing on the edge of a cliff, next to a brilliant sunrise, but taking a step back is an abyss, bottomless, and full of temptation.
Sometimes we're scared when we see something bottomless, but you want to know what's underneath? You feel like it's pulling you down, and that's sinful. If a person realizes the darkness and evil in human nature at a very early age, and knows that he cannot control that desire, that kind of motivation, you will understand that life is not simple, very complicated, the world is terrible, there are many accidents, many things that we cannot control. Then you have the potential to become someone with a more peaceful personality, at least you won't be stupid again.
Therefore, we should take the initiative to read difficult things; we should not be careless or shy away from some so-called terrible books; we should not think that spiritual exercises are things that make people better. Spiritual exercises just make us change, make you a different kind of person, and everyone's reading process throughout their lives should be constantly changing.
Some people say that reading to prevent aging, I think it is very correct. Reading can really prevent aging. What does that mean? The most frightening thing about the old man was that he had no chance to change himself. If a person is still very open when he is old, and he reads and accommodates a work with a serious attitude, challenging himself, changing himself, and distorting himself, he still has the possibility of change.
The last moment before going to sleep every day is a book that accompanies me, and the last moment I have a conversation with today is this book, which is constantly changing me, until I go to bed. So when I got up the next morning, I was a new person, different from yesterday, just because I had read last night.
There is a very famous Italian writer who has cancer and is very miserable. Before dying, he asked the nurse to read to him until he gasped. He had the idea that I might die and breathe, but at this moment I still wouldn't give up.
So we all please open yourself up, let reading, reading to change yourself, let yourself become a different kind of person. We still have this possibility anytime, anywhere: although we may not become better people, change itself is the goal of life.
I'll start with that for the time being, thank you!
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