When I was a child, I once took a boat to the countryside to visit graves. As I leaned against the window of the boat and watched the endless waves at the foot of the boat, the tumbler in my hand disappeared in an instant, and it was all delivered to the unknowable world.
I looked at my empty hands, at the endless waves under the window, at the sadness of the tumbler, and then at the vast white water behind the boat for a while, and my heart was gloomy with doubts and sorrows.
I wonder what happened to the tumbler and what happened to him, and I lamented the fate of this forever unknown. It may have gone with the waves, rested on the shore, and fell into the hands of a village boy; Maybe he was hit by a fishing net, and since then he has been a tumbler on a fishing boat; Or perk forever at the bottom of the dark river, turn to dirt over time, and never see this tumbler again.
I know that this tumbler must have a whereabouts now, and there must be a result in the future, but who can investigate? Who can know this unknowable fate? This doubt and sorrow lingered in my heart.
Finally, I thought: My father may know what this is, and he can relieve me of this doubt and sorrow. Otherwise, when I grow older, one day I will know what this is and will be able to relieve my doubts and sorrows.
Then I grew up. However, this kind of doubt and sorrow has not only not been relieved, but has increased and deepened with age.
When I went for a walk in the countryside with my classmates from elementary school, I accidentally broke a branch, used it as a walking stick for a while, and then abandoned it in the field, I always had to look back at it several times, and ask myself: "I don't know when I will see it again?" I don't know what happened to it after that. I'll never see it again! Its future is forever unknown! ”
If I go for a walk alone, I have to reluctantly stay when I encounter this kind of thing. Sometimes they have already walked a few steps, turn around again, pick up what they have discarded, say a solemn goodbye, and then abandon it and walk forward.
Later, I laughed to myself at this idiocy, and I knew that these were the trivial things in life; But the sorrow and doubt did fill my heart, and I had to do it!
In a lively place, when I am busy, my doubts and sorrows will also be suppressed at the bottom of my heart, and I will calmly control and choose all kinds of things, and I will not be the same as before.
From time to time, a little doubt and sadness occasionally arise in the action; However, the influence of the masses and the oppression of reality are so great that they are suppressed at once, and it only flashes in my heart.
When I came to a secluded place, when I was lonely, and most at night, they all came to my mind again. Under the lamp, I pushed open the arithmetic sketchbook, picked up the pen and scribbled the poem I had recited during the day on a piece of waste paper: "The spring silkworm is dead to the end, and the wax torch turns to ashes...... and I took it to the lamp and burned the corner of the paper.
I watched the fire spread diligently, and my heart was busy saying goodbye to each one. After being completely reduced to ashes, the complete original form of the paper suddenly appeared in front of my eyes; Looking down at the ashes on the ground, I felt a faint sadness: If I were to see the piece of paper that existed a minute ago, it would be absolutely impossible for everyone to help me find a way to help me find it, whether it is the gentry Dong, the county official, the provincial governor, the president, the power of all the emperors in the world, or the resurrection of all the ancient sages such as Yao Shun, Confucius, Socrates, and Christ! - But I don't have that kind of extravagance.
I just looked at the pile of ashes, trying to recognize the dead remains of each character in the indistinguishable dust, and find out which point is the ash of the spring character and which point is the ash of the silkworm character. …… And imagine that it will be swept away by the servants of this place tomorrow morning, and I wonder what the result will be: if it is scattered into the wind, I wonder where it will fly? Whose house does the ash of the spring word fly into, and whose house does the ash of the silkworm word fly into? …… If it is mixed with the soil, I wonder which plants it will nourish? …… It's all a big question that is unknowable and eternal.
While eating, a grain of rice fell from the bowl onto the hem of my clothes. I looked at this grain of rice, and I didn't want to think about it, but when I thought about it, I aroused a lot of doubts and sorrows: I don't know which farmer planted a batch of rice in which field one day, and one of the ears of rice had grain boiled into this grain on it. I don't know whose mowing and grinding and grinding and whisking and rice have come to our house, and now it is cooked into grains of rice, and it has fallen on the hem of my garment. There can be a definite answer to this question; However, except for this grain of rice itself, no one in the world can investigate and answer.
A handful of copper plates were found in the bag, and it was clear that each of them had a complex and long history. The banknotes and silver oceans passed through the hands of people, and sometimes they were stamped; But there is no trace of the copper plate experience at all. Some of them have been the object of the beggar's prayer on the street, some have been the price of the blood and sweat of the laborer, some have been exchanged for a bowl of porridge to relieve the hungry intestines of a hungry man, some have been turned into a grain of candy to stop the cry of a child, some have participated in the spoils of thieves, some have slept peacefully in the belly of a rich man, some have lived in seclusion at the bottom of the latrine, and some have been busy with all the above experiences. And some of them may not be in my bag for the first time, and I don't know.
If these plates could speak, I would have honored them as guests and listened to their stories of wandering. If they were to record, there must be a book more bizarre than Robinson Crusoe for each copper plate. But they are like prisoners who refuse to confess even to death, and their hearts clearly hide the truth of the merits of the case, but death does not reveal their secrets.
Now I am in Chinese New Year's Eve, and I have been a person for half a lifetime. The weight of the doubts and sorrows in my breast grew; But the excitement is getting weaker, and it is far less fresh and intense than it was before the boyhood. This is the result of my hard work. Because I refer to the attitude of the public, I see that they don't seem to think of this kind of thing at all, and when the food is in the stomach and the money goes into the bag, the world is peaceful, and they don't have a dream. This is really beneficial in life, and I try my best to learn from the people and their happiness.
I am now thirty years old and have not yet graduated. All I learned was that the stimulus of doubt and sorrow had weakened a little, but its weight was still increasing with my experience. Whenever I quit a hotel, no matter how bad the room was or how many bugs there were, I always had to hover and think about it, "Will I ever live in this room again?" He sighed again, "This is an eternal farewell!" Whenever I get off the train, no matter how hard the trip is or how annoying the person next to me is, there is always a special feeling when I leave: "Have I ever sat with this person one day again?" I'm afraid it's for him! But the appearance of these thoughts was very brief and vague, like the dark shadow of a bird passing over the pool, and it really flashed in my mind for a few seconds, and then it was nothing.
I've got time to learn. However, this is all possible in front of the teacher, the public. Once I lost my teacher and lived in isolation, my old self was still relapsing. Now is the time: the spring breeze brings in a white peach petal from the window and falls on my manuscript paper. It was blown down from the white peach blossom tree in my yard, but who knows which branch it was born on? The countless petals on the ground in front of the window are like snow, each with its own branch and calyx, who can investigate their origin one by one and make them return to their original calyx? Doubts and sorrows have come back to my heart.
In short, from my childhood until now, the doubts and sorrows that have constantly hit my heart have never been relieved. The older I get, the more knowledgeable I am, and the more powerful it becomes. The more oppressive the example of the masses is, the stronger its reaction. If I were to recount the cases of such doubts and sorrows that I have experienced over the past 30 years, the volume would certainly be comparable to that of the Siku Quanshu and the Tripitaka. However, it is limited to my experience in a short period of thirty years; Compared to the size of the universe, the vastness of the world, the complexity of things, and the number of events, what I have experienced is really like a grain of sand in the Ganges.
It was as if I had seen a very large account book, which detailed the cause and effect of the past, present, and future events of all things in the universe.
From the fineness of atoms to the enormity of celestial bodies, from the actions of microscopic insects to the catastrophe of chaos, all of them record their origins, processes, and results in detail, and there is no omission.
So my doubts and sorrows can be lifted. The whereabouts of the tumbler, the results of the cane, and the whereabouts of the ashes are all recorded; The origin of rice grains and copper plates can be investigated one by one; The fate of the hotel and the train to me has long been predestined; The calyx of the white peach petals is conclusive.
Even the number of grains of sand in the yard, which I have repeatedly lamented to be unknowable, is recorded, and below it is noted which grains of sand I had picked up with my hands yesterday.
If I were to pick out from the sand piles the sand that I had picked up and seen yesterday, it would not be difficult to explore it in this book. All the things I have seen, heard, and done in the past thirty years have been recorded and verified in great detail; It occupies only a corner of the page, an infinite tenth of the whole book.
I'm sure there must be this big book in the universe. So all my doubts and sorrows were lifted.