Dictation / Wu Xiaobo (WeChat public account: Wu Xiaobo Channel)
01
If you ask everyone how you have lived during this time, I am afraid that the answer you will get is one word, which is difficult. If it's two words, it's hard. If it's three words, it's very hard. China's economy and the lives of many ordinary people are likely to enter the lowest period in the past 30 years.
At this moment, you may be an ordinary citizen who is sealed in the community and repeatedly stares at an egg and sighs, you may be a truck driver who is stuck in the road, you may be the restaurant owner who is about to close his small shop, you may be an executive of a company, and you are worried about the resumption of production lines, the recovery of supply chains and layoffs.
You feel a huge sense of powerlessness.
Worst of all, you don't know how long the outbreak will last. What people are most afraid of is not hell, nor is it eighteen layers of hell, but you don't know how many layers of hell there are.
Suffering for everyone, there is an end called a test, an endless called torture.
But life goes on, and tomorrow the sun will still rise as usual. What kind of mentality should we use to face the current dilemma and tomorrow's challenges?
A professor at a conservatory in Shanghai, when discussing this topic with me, said that he was a Christian and had been reading a prayer called "Serenity Prayer" every day for two days. He calmly sent me this text:
God, give me peace of mind to accept what I can't change, give me courage to do what I can change, give me wisdom to tell the difference. Don't worry about tomorrow, enjoy every moment, see suffering as the only way to peace...
There is also a passage at the end of the prayer that asks Jesus to bless His people so that they can live happily in this world.
Although I am not a Christian and do not place my hopes in the gods, the great power revealed in the Prayer of Tranquility inexplicably touched me.
The prayer was written by the American theologian Rein hall Niebull. Born in 1892 and died in 1971, he witnessed moments of human suffering such as the Great Depression and the two world wars. The Serenity Prayer was written in 1934, during Roosevelt's New Deal, when the U.S. economy was slowly beginning to recover; in the rugged European region, Hitler began to take power, and war was on the verge of breaking out.
Niebüll has a book called Moral Individuals and Immoral Societies. He believes that the essence of God is the true essence of man, and that people in society are incompatible with their own character and are in an insurmountable state. He said: "The higher the aspirations of man, the more evil demands that come with it... One can save oneself from the demands of sin by admitting that one cannot meet the demands of sin. ”
The Prayer of Tranquility is the embodiment of this idea. Three key words appear in this short prayer.
The first key word is "calm mind." There are often a lot of things that happen in this world that you can't change. Not every obstacle in life can pass, so you have to have a calm heart to accept those things that cannot be changed.
The second key word is "courage." When you learn to face the bleak life with a calm heart, you must have the courage to face suffering and try to change the current predicament. Regardless of how the change ends, whether it's better, worse or not, you still have to try to change it.
The third key word is "wisdom." Between acceptance and change, you need to clearly distinguish the difference between them. When in a difficult situation, one thing is already bad, and we try to change it, but if there is no proper way, we are likely to fall into another dilemma in the change, or even a bigger dilemma. So change is not an impulse, but an expression of reason.
Today, in the face of a great sense of powerlessness, we are angry every day, drowning in depression and grief. Even if we successfully get out of the predicament, although your body does not collapse, it may collapse in your heart first. In fact, there is no need to transform the faults of others into the source of your own grief.
I am not a professional counselor, I can't give specific adjustment methods, I only hope to pin the power of a little fragmentary text to soothe our hearts a little. As the Serenity Prayer expresses:
To maintain a calm heart and cope with a more uncertain tomorrow with a better mindset and rational behavior.
02
The Prayer of Tranquility conveys the meaning of calm in Christian culture. And two years ago, when great fear and uncertainty hung over everyone for the first time, we also had a feeling of powerlessness, hoping to calm down as soon as possible. I told a story of Chinese Zen Buddhism.
During the northern Song Dynasty literary hero Su Dongpo's tenure in Guazhou, Jiangbei, one day, he suddenly felt that his realm had made great progress, and immediately composed a poem: "In the first day of the day, the light is great, the eight winds cannot move, and he sits on the purple lotus." "On the surface, I praise the Buddha and the Bodhisattva, but in fact I praise myself for being of a high realm and not being trapped by the world.
After writing it, Su Dongpo felt quite Zen, so he transcribed it and summoned the book boy to cross the river by boat and give it to the monk Buddha seal of the Jinshan Temple on the other side. After the Buddha seal opened the poem sent by the book boy, he smiled slightly, and then wrote two words under the poem manuscript, carefully folded it, and returned it to the book boy.
After Su Dongpo received it, he opened it with great interest and looked at it, what exactly was written in the Buddha Seal? Two words: fart. Su Dongpo was furious and immediately got up to cross the river to find the Buddha Seal Theory.
Unexpectedly, the Buddha Seal was already waiting for him by the river, and said leisurely: "The eight winds can't blow, and a fart crosses the river." It means that Su Dongpo said that he "can't blow the eight winds and sit on the purple lotus", but just need the word "fart", Su Dongbo will hit the river.
The "eight winds" mentioned by Su Dongpo refer to "praise, ridicule, destruction, reputation, profit, decline, bitterness, and happiness." They are the root cause of our lives in the world, day and night entangled, suffering from gain and loss.
We hear praise and radiance, and we hear evil words against each other, and we hold grudges. When people encounter good times, they rejoice and rejoice; when they enter into bad times, they are miserable and miserable. And even if you think that your cultivation is successful, you are still angry when you see the word "fart".
Today, in the face of sudden challenges such as the epidemic, can we achieve "eight winds can't blow, sitting on the purple lotus"? It seems quite difficult. The blowing of the eight winds of "praise, ridicule, destruction, reputation, profit, decline, bitterness, and happiness" disturbs our hearts at all times. For thousands of years, countless philosophers in the East and the West have tried to find a way to calm the "eight winds" in people's hearts.
Chinese emphasize positive cultivation, while Westerners often think backwards. Heidegger said, "Live to death," thinking about the worst-case scenario first, and then thinking backwards about every journey from birth to death.
Everyone in the world can not escape death. Everything will eventually be destroyed, and there is no truth, a policy, or a method that can rule everything for a long time, so we must live in the present moment and see the tricks.
Perhaps, the feasible way is to go back to our hearts and ask ourselves what is the present moment and what is the most important thing? And the most important thing at the moment, what can be discarded? Take anything back to its fundamentals and smallest units, and on the premise of this, "live to the death" and begin a life of active adventure. It is difficult for us to destroy desire, but we can discover desire, manage desire, and even coexist peacefully with desire.
Why is "chicken soup" suddenly mentioned today? Because we hope that through some powerful words and sounds, we can bring some companionship to you in the depths of psychological difficulties and get out of the difficulties together. As a financial writer, Teacher Wu Xiaobo occasionally talks about non-financial topics in the daily program "Hearing Wu Xiaobo Every Day" - some philosophical stories, the wisdom of some celebrities, some life experience, and hopes that we will live both emotionally and rationally.
Teacher Wu especially likes to draw simple and ancient truths from some seemingly childish children's books.
For example, in 2020, Teacher Wu's summary of the first half of the year was "unbearable to look back", but the more unbearable it was, the more unforgettable it was. He tells the story of a "tabby cat" (from Yoko Sano's "Cat Who Lived 1 Million Times"):
There is an arrogant tabby cat that has died 1 million times and been resurrected, and finally fell in love with a white cat and felt love for the first time. However, after the death of the white cat, he finally cried for the first time in 1 million cycles of life and death, cried 1 million times, and finally died in front of the white cat and was never resurrected.
He said that the white cat in your life may be a lover, or a job, or a career, it can bring you a new experience and a burning feeling, even if it fails, these things can bring a complete life experience... In the epidemic, each of us is like a tiger cat dead and alive, some people are abandoned by luck, some people are in trouble, but it is not an opportunity to find new paths and possibilities. Nothing in the world can destroy us, the key is whether we have discovered a new self in every life and death.
For example, Teacher Wu said that the fox in "The Little Prince" calls love "domestication". What is domestication? It is that you begin to accept something for which you can give up your self-esteem, consume your time, and even be willing to sacrifice your life. When people and things domesticate each other, a special relationship is formed. The opposite of the word domestication is rebellion and solipsism, which also means that when you accept domestication, you also say goodbye to your youth and become a mature person...
In these "chicken soups", we can also see his adherence to his outlook on life and values.
Teacher Wu once said that the most talented person he had ever met was the economist Zhang Wuchang. However, Zhang Wuchang was extremely diligent, using dozens of boxes of materials when writing "The Theory of Tenant Farmers", and even doing street research on Christmas Eve. Because behind those different things, its manufacturing process is actually very boring, repetitive and requires patience.
Teacher Wu has always believed in the power of simplicity and repetition. He says professionalism is about being able to do something over a period of 10, 20, 30 years, on a continuous, rhythmic basis. On top of your talent and inspiration, there must be a bigger cornerstone – you must be able to consistently deliver your product. As Drucker said, an entrepreneur is judged to be mature by one thing: whether he rejects drama and whether he focuses on a stable, sustainable growth.
To this end, we have compiled nearly 40 audio sessions of healing the soul and sharing life insights from more than 1600 issues of "Hearing Wu Xiaobo Every Day" into a course package. It will be updated continuously.
Teacher Wu also chatted about the following topics▼
Audio curated | Xu Tao
Audio operations | Chang Xiujuan | editor-in-chief | Zheng Yuanmei