Lesson 16 Prose Two

Lesson 16  Prose Two

A Life of Permanence

Yan Wenjing

       Time that has passed never comes back. When a man reaches the edge of his thirties, he will find that he has lost something: a molar, a piece of appendix, some hair, a little taste for joking with people, which means he has lost the greater part of his youth. The finite years can only be owned by you for a time, and since they are gone, they will never return. There is nothing a wise man can do about it! Personal life is not like a shirt, when you find it dirty and torn, you can take it off to wash it and mend it again. The sorrow that existed, you may be able to forget, but you cannot cancel the mark it left behind. We are all very miserable!

      And yet one should not be pessimistic about it. We do not have time to be pessimistic. We should see the magic of life itself, life flowing and immortal forever. The grasses on the ground, they are so humble, so tender, and after each severe winter, they still burst out of the soil one by one, joyfully welcoming the spring wind, as if the cold that just passed never existed. It was so 10,000 years ago, and it will be so 10,000 years from now! In spring, we look at the calves on the hillside with the same moving eyes, jumping and bouncing, showing off their golden fur all over. Forever a calf, forever a golden fleece!

      Thanks to the miracle of life, which is temporary apart, but permanent together. It is a traveler who does not know how to get tired, always staying in which individual for a while, and then leaving again. Those individuals fade away, but it exists forever. It is full of hope, never-endingly multiplying and spreading, declaring its joy and power everywhere.

      My friends, our hearts should be soothed. Those tyrants can kill many, many people, but they cannot destroy life. Let us praise life, the life that cannot be destroyed! We will praise it with silent love. Life lives on in those flowers that are finally fading, constantly giving color and fragrance to the world.

      Fading and immortality are mixed into one, and that is the miracle.

What I live for

Russell

       The desire for love, the quest for knowledge, and the unquenchable sympathy for human suffering are three pure and overwhelming feelings that have dominated my life. Like a hurricane, these three feelings blew me around and around like a hurricane on a deep sea of suffering, blowing me to the brink of despair.

I seek love, first of all, because it brings me ecstasy, so strong that I am often willing to sacrifice everything else in my life for a few hours of pleasure. I seek love, secondly, because love relieves loneliness - it is a trembling heart, on the edge of the world, looking down into the cold, dead, unfathomable abyss. 

       I seek love, finally, because in the union of love I see the mysterious epitome of the fairyland imagined by the sages and poets. This is what I sought, and though it seemed too good for life, yet in the end I got it.

       I sought knowledge with the same enthusiasm that I wish to know the human mind. I wanted to know why the stars shine, and I tried to understand the power of the Pythagorean idea that numbers govern the flow of all things. I achieved some success in this area, but not much.

       Love and knowledge, as far as they could, led me to the clouds, but compassion always brought me back to the earthly world. The echoes of the cries of pain echoed in my heart, the hungry children, the victims tortured by the oppressors, the helpless old people considered as burdens by their children, and the whole world full of loneliness, poverty and pain, all of which were a mockery of the life that human beings should live. I long to alleviate these misfortunes, but I am powerless to do so, and I suffer from them myself.

This is my life, and I feel that I deserve to live it. I would gladly live it again if I had the chance.