Original link: https://weichen.blog/letters/65/
Hello friend!
one
I don’t know if you feel this way, knowing that your distress is no big deal, but it’s hard to pull yourself out of it. And thinking about those who can endure greater suffering, how capable they must be, are they too weak?
But take a step back and think, from the perspective of human feelings, is there really a difference between big and small?
Frank’s metaphor in Living the Meaning of Life is vivid: “A person’s suffering is like poison gas. If you pour a certain amount of poison gas into an empty gas chamber, the gas will spread out completely and evenly, no matter how big the room is. The same is true of human suffering, which completely occupies your soul and consciousness, no matter how large or small. The ‘quantity’ of human suffering is completely relative.” 1
Even in the misery-ridden concentration camps, people can still practice the arts of living, such as developing a sense of humor, he said. In the same way, even the most trivial things can bring great joy.
two
So why does our heart fill up whenever there is some distress?
Sometimes when relationships are tense with others, or after a tiring day at work, we say, “Ignore me, leave me alone, I’ve had enough.” What have we had enough?
If someone brought you a cup of fragrant milk tea, you would probably gladly accept it. In this way, you are just fed up with that one or some things. Your heart still has room for other things.
The reason why we feel overwhelmed is because our hearts cling to that emotion and cling to it. To use Frank’s confined space analogy, our hearts encircle themselves and nothing else can come in.
In fact, our heart always has room for more things because it is infinite in itself.
In the words of meditation teacher James Low:
“When we are trapped and feel powerless, we are disconnected from our surroundings. The world is always big. Even when something sad happens, someone you love leaves you, and the birds on the branch are still singing. If You will be in a much better mood if you have room in your heart to hold that bird. But because you killed the bird in your heart, you have to live with your grief and live with bitterness and resentment. This didn’t have to happen.
The world is open, and our hearts are open. If they are allowed to meet, if awareness is kept open, the richness of the world brings about a self-regulating, self-balancing movement. Even if you are surrounded by darkness, the light is still there. It is our inner activity that blinds us to see only the darkness, as if all the good had receded, but the good is always there, like the shimmering dew on the leaves in the morning, the beauty is always there, only We turn a blind eye to it because we are too stubborn. ” 2
three
It sounds simple enough to think of something beautiful when you are sad. Recently, I flipped through the diary of my student days. At that time, I often reminded myself to be busy, so that when I was busy, I would not have so many thoughts.
But I just realized that it was just an escape. It’s as if someone travels to escape work and life, or paralyzes themselves with alcohol on weekends. There is no escape, and the mood is like a parabola. The short-term happiness is exchanged for the same or even worse mood.
If you just use one thing (to make yourself less painful) to replace another thing, the thing that was forcibly squeezed out will eventually come back to your heart.
But opening the heart is different. It is not a simple replacement, but an expansion of the inner space. An open heart can accommodate both troubles and beauty, and can feel both pain and beauty. This is an acceptance. Acceptance means a little bit of initiative, but more of it is to let the world flow through you as it is.
Four
This sounds abstract, but the experience itself is not complicated.
I had brunch with a friend the other day at a small neighborhood shop. I sat out, looking through the large windows inlaid in the wooden frame, the sun was shining brightly, and the autumn wind was blowing the red leaves falling. Suddenly I felt like I was on a movie set.
My awareness is no longer just me—my food expectations, what I have to deal with today, my troubles, my joys—but also the friend in front of me, his troubles and joys, and the surroundings of customers and waiters, as well as people buying coffee and walking their dogs outside the window, and blue sky and autumn leaves.
You can also experience it: you are reading a script prepared by the crew, everything around you is deliberately arranged, the camera is hidden in a hidden place, the people around you will assist you, and you just need to improvise.
You will immediately feel the shift in perspective. Most of the time, we look at the world from a first perspective, projecting our inner joy and troubles, and our heart determines the world we see. But don’t forget, we also live in this world. No matter what fills the heart, the world remains the same as it always has been. To see the real world, you need to peel off the layers of the self.
If this still sounds confusing, you must have had a moment of ecstasy—whether touched by love or overwhelmed by the majesty of nature—the moment when you opened your heart completely and accepted the world naked. In other words, your heart is just like the world, infinite.
five
Mindfulness in Plain English has this description of mindfulness:
“Mindfulness adds nothing to awareness, nor does it take away from awareness. It’s just pure attention, being aware of what comes up. And deliberate thinking attaches what is perceived to our experience, burdening us with concepts and ideas. , drowns us in a maelstrom of plans, worries, fears, and fantasies. When you’re mindful, you don’t play that game. You just pay attention to what’s rising from the heart now, and then, the next.” Ah, this…and this…now this.” Mindfulness is really simple.”
six
However, our real life is far more complicated than a movie or a novel.
There is a narrative device called “The Chekhov’s Gun “, which means “If you say there is a gun hanging on the wall in Act 1, then in Act 2 or Act 3 the gun must be fired, otherwise it will not be fired. Gotta hang there.”
Fictional stories have clear cause and effect, and we love to watch them, but things that happen in life don’t follow this pattern. Not because there is no cause and effect, but because we often fail to see cause and effect. Fortunately, seeing the cause and effect is not so important .
There is a story that takes this truth to the extreme:
Legend has it that a man was shot in the chest with a poisoned arrow. The doctor rushed to save him. But the man refused. He wanted to know first who made the arrowhead and what kind of wood was used. He also wanted to know the motive of the man who shot him, and the name of the horse he was riding. He also wanted to know about all sorts of other things that had nothing to do with his current pain, whether he would survive or not.
If you’re not living the way you want, do you need to know 10,000 reasons, or can you just start changing now?
seven
Sometimes too much thinking is not only unhelpful, but harmful. It’s better to open your heart, feel the moment, and let the world flow through you.
It’s not that thinking isn’t important, but the art of living is often about balance . There is a quote from the martial arts novelist Huang Yi that I have always liked:
“Life is interesting because we lose a lot of things, but also get a lot of things back. There are moments of joy, and there are days of grief.”
See you next week,
Wei Chen
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Living the Meaning of Life, by Victor Frank, translated by Lu Na, Huaxia Publishing House↩︎
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Translated from Constellations of Thought , James Low, Waking Up app ↩︎
This article is reprinted from: https://weichen.blog/letters/65/
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