Wisdom and Faith - Zhou Guoping's Philosophical Essays

Author: Zhou Guoping
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: I enjoy thinking about life's questions. By "enjoying thinking," I don't mean deliberately pondering them, but rather when the questions come to me on their own, and I can't escape them. I have too many confusions about life, which can be summarized into two main categories, using Buddhist terminology, as "form" and "emptiness." "Form" represents emotional confusion, including issues like love and loneliness, men and women, desire and emotion, love and marriage. "Emptiness" represents confusion about the meaning of life, including issues like life and death, happiness and suffering, the body and the soul, the secular and the sacred. These two types of questions, no matter how much I think about them, still leave me confused, and I can't arrive at a clear conclusion. However, the advantage of thinking is that it gives a sense of direction even in confusion, and the search within confusion forms human spiritual life. Because of the temptation of "form," men turn toward women, and women turn toward men, entering each other's hearts, moving from form to emotion, and thus love is born. Because of the confusion of love, humanity cries out to the world for its true nature, calling upon the divine, moving from emptiness to enlightenment, and thus philosophy and religion arise. Human spiritual life unfolds along these two directions: one is emotional life, which points toward people and is essentially the spiritual connection between individuals, anchoring us in the mortal world; the other is contemplative life or life of faith, which points toward the universe and is essentially the spiritual connection between humans and the universe, giving us a pursuit of transcendence. Success is not the highest standard for measuring life's value. More important than success is: a person must possess inner richness, their true nature and genuine interests, and things they truly enjoy doing. As long as you have something you truly enjoy doing, you will feel fulfilled and grounded in any situation. Those who swear to do something try hard to guess the other person's thoughts. What they swear to do is not what they truly want to do, but what they think the other person wants them to do. If they guess the thoughts of the divine in heaven, that is an act of desecration.