Text丨Ji Xianlin
As soon as I looked up, I saw that the second hand of the desk clock on my desk was jumping forward. When it jumps, my heart jumps. Confucius said, "The deceased is like a husband, reluctant to give up day and night!" This refers to water. The water never stops flowing, which surprised Confucius. My heart beats, and it's time that beats. Water can be seen and touched. Time is invisible, intangible, and you can't feel its passing, but it's passing. Now I have a table clock in front of me, and its second hand jumps and jumps, so that I can see the passage of time very clearly.
Ancient people were probably very happy. They work at sunrise and rest at sun, and regulate their activities according to the sun's presence. Even if you can feel the passage of time, it is only vaguely. Later, they became wise and called time time according to the passage of sunlight and shadows. Later, people's ingenuity was further improved, and the method of dripping copper kettle was used to show and measure the passage of time, which was an attempt to grasp the invisible and untouched time by artificial. In the last few hundred years, human beings have invented clocks and watches, which clearly put the existence and passage of time in front of everyone. This is a manifestation of the progress of human civilization.
However, as it is often said, "there is a good and a bad thing", human beings have become slaves of time and watches. Nowadays, there are many kinds of meetings, and the meeting must be held at a specified time, what time it is, and it cannot be arbitrarily expanded. If you attend an important meeting and catch up with the traffic jam on the road, no matter how anxious you are, how often you look at your watch, it is all in vain. However, then again, in today's chaotic society, where meetings are uncertain, and like the ancients, "work at sunrise and rest at sunset" and wander leisurely, can today's society still function? Whether you like it or not, becoming a slave of time is a manifestation of civilization.
Whether you realize it or not, nature still hints at people with concrete things about the ethereal time. For example, the sunrise and sunset are used to mark a day, the moon is marked by a month, and the four seasons are used to mark a year. Farmers are most concerned about these issues, and the 24 solar terms of the year are of great significance to their crops. In the eyes of natural scientists and philosophers, time has another meaning. They say that the whole world, all human beings, grow in time and space, and time has no head and no tail, and space is boundless. I'm neither a natural scientist nor a philosopher, and I can't understand the headless, tailless, and boundless. But what if this is not the case? If time has a beginning and an end, what is the beginning and the end of the future? Therefore, it is difficult to understand and has to be understood, and there is no other way.
Life and death also belong to the realm of time. Most people always put life and death in absolute opposition. However, ancient Chinese Taoism advocated that "all things are born and die", which dialectically linked life and death, and accurately stated the relationship between life and death. With the jump of the second hand of the grandfather clock, I myself grew a little bit that I could not express in words. At the same time, it is also a little closer to death.
Not only me, but it is early summer, and the magnolias, weeping willows, and lotus flowers buried deep in the clear pond outside the window have also grown a little bit. Not long ago, the lake was frozen, but now it is "a pool of summer water when the wind rises", and the water is sparkling and the water is colored. The weeping poplars on the shore gradually grew small leaves from their bare branches, and in an instant, a goose yellow appeared, and in a blink of an eye, it was a tender green, and now it was close to a thick green. On the hill was originally a piece of withered grass, "the east wind sends spring warmth overnight, and the mountains are full of February orchids". This year is the big year of February, on the mountain and underground, as long as there is a gap, Februarylan will inevitably appear there, how many tens of thousands of times the second hand of the grandfather clock jumps, Februarylan is about to wither, that is, towards temporary death. All these things are life and death. This is the law of nature and irreversible.
Indians are intelligent, they see time and death as one and the same. The Sanskrit word hāla is both "time" and "death or death". Rama, the protagonist of the Ramayana, after living for a very long time, Hāla comes to the door, which means that he is about to die. Rama dealt with it calmly, neither "drinking hatred" nor "swallowing sound". He knows that this is the law of nature and that human beings are powerless. We know today that this is true not only of human beings, but that everything in the world has a beginning and an end, without exception. "Go with the flow" is the best way to go. I'll talk about it here by the way. In Sanskrit, the root of the verb "death" is mn, but instead of manati for the present tense, the word is used for the passive form mniyati (ti), which means that Indians consider "death" to be passive, and active suicide is in the minority.
Compared with the Indians, the Chinese probably want to strive for immortality. The richer and more powerful the people, the more they want to live, and the ordinary people who lived in misery in the old society will never be willing to live for a long time. And the Son of Heaven, who is rich in the world, fervently hopes for immortality. This is true of several famous British masters in Chinese history. Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty both sought the elixir of immortality or the elixir or something. Even Tang Taizong was poisoned to death after taking the "immortal medicine" of the Indian Brahmins. There are also nerds among the common people who seek to ascend to heaven in the flesh, and even chickens and dogs are brought with them.
I can't figure it out if I really think about it. If there really is such a "day", the number of people will not be too large. What are you going to do there? There will be no bureaucratic bureaucracy, and there is no possibility of seeking promotion through bribery through the back door. There will also be no market there, and there is no place for heroes to get rich. If you want to play mahjong, sing karaoke, sing for a few days, play for a few days, you will still be interested, but let you play forever month after month, year after year, can you stand it? Raise chickens and feed dogs, feed them forever, you can't stand it. "If it is not for unprofitable things, how can it be sent to life!" Stay in heaven for a long time, and you will definitely kill yourself. Su Dongpo said, "Dancing to figure out the shadow, how does it seem to be in the world!" is an insightful statement. Let's stay honest in the world.
If you want to stay on earth, you have to be limited by time. In the face of time, everyone is equal. If you can't figure out the non-esoteric truths I said above, time becomes a shackle and makes you feel uncomfortable at every turn. However, if you really figure it out, dancing in shackles can add some unexpected interest. I think I've figured it out. Now when I look up, I can see the second hand of the desk clock jumping forward, but my heart is not beating. I think it's time to remind me of the value of time. "An inch of time is not light", Zhu Zi's poem is also applicable to me, an old man who is over 90 years old.