Emotion and experience

Author: Zhou Guoping
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: The silence of the wise is a deep spring; the language drawn from it may be little, but each drop is crystal clear, necessarily containing profound wisdom. In contrast, the verbose talk of the mediocre is like a blocked sewer, overflowing endlessly, merely polluting the environment. If happiness is a paradox, then its resolution lies in the process of striving for it. There is struggle and suffering in it, but as long as hope remains, there is happiness. 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 avoid them. I have too many confusions about life, which can be summarized into two main categories, borrowing from Buddhist terminology, as "form" and "emptiness." "Form" represents emotional confusion, including love and loneliness, men and women, desire and emotion, love and marriage. "Emptiness" represents confusion about the meaning of life, including life and death, happiness and suffering, the body and the soul, the secular and the sacred. These two categories, no matter how much one ponders them, ultimately lead back to confusion, without a clear conclusion. However, the benefit of thinking is that it gives a sense of direction in confusion, and the pursuit within confusion forms human spiritual life. Because of the temptation of "form," men turn toward women, and women 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 essence, calling upon the divine, moving from emptiness to enlightenment, and thus philosophy and religion arise. Human spiritual life unfolds along these two dimensions: one is emotional life, which points toward humanity, its essence being the spiritual connection between people, anchoring us in the mortal world; the other is contemplative or faith-based life, which points toward the universe, its essence being the spiritual connection between humanity and the universe, giving us a pursuit of transcendence.