When we came out of the abbot's room, it suddenly started to rain. It was pitter-patter, pitter-patter, and it was getting heavier and heavier. Slowly, the sky and the earth were as dense as a line.

Looking at the sky, Chen Yuyi said: "Looking at the intensity of the rain, it is not convenient to go down the mountain. Zen Master Fa Deng has agreed to go down the mountain to perform rituals, so we will stay in the temple all night. When the rain stops, we will go down the mountain tomorrow."

Wang Xiaolie nodded: "That's fine."

After hearing this, Zhike did not dare to neglect. A small courtyard was arranged for Wang Xiaolie to stay not far from Zen Master Faleng's Zen Monastery.

There is a small pavilion by the bamboo forest outside the courtyard. The monks in the courtyard and Wang Xiaolie's entourage are there to tidy up. Wang Xiaolie and Chen Yuyi stood in the small pavilion, watching the rain, each thinking about their own thoughts.

Chen Yuyi was shocked today. He had been with Wang Xiaolie for two years and didn't think there was anything strange about him. He had a gentle personality and rarely spoke harshly to the people below him. He also always cared about the lives of his subordinates. Everything was arranged in an orderly manner and he was very kind. Far-sighted, and mostly effective.

The most obvious thing is to train troops. Which general today doesn't want to train troops? But there are very few who can train troops well. Not to mention the thieves all over the world who defeated the troops, there are many generals in the imperial court. But those who can really There are very few people who can unite people's hearts and form a stable army. Apart from the four ZTE generals, Zhang Jun, Han Shizhong, Liu Guangshi, and Yue Fei, there are only Wu Jie, Wang Yan, Yang Zheng, and Yang Yi. Just killed a few people.

In two years, he trained tens of thousands of troops and was able to fight in battle, which is unmatched by any current general. In the past, Chen Yuyi didn't think anything was wrong. He participated in it and knew everything, so there was nothing outstanding about him. Thinking about it now, I feel that it is not that simple. Wang Xiaolie just divided things into pieces and assigned people to be responsible for them. The things that each person did were not complicated, but together they were not the same thing.

Extraordinary people should do extraordinary things. Chen Yuyi chewed on these words, with an indescribable feeling in his heart. Zen Master Fa Deng is famous all over the world, and he is an eminent monk. When it comes from his mouth, you cannot take it lightly.

Chen Yuyi raised his head and looked at Wang Xiaolie beside him. He saw him standing under the pavilion, looking at the heavy rain between the sky and the earth, his expression indifferent. But his brows were furrowed, not knowing what he was thinking about.

What could he be thinking about? Wang Xiaolie was also thinking about the scene when he met Zen Master Faleng just now.

Wang Xiaolie doesn't believe that this Zen master has any supreme supernatural power, that he knows his origins and can even predict his future. But he does not belong to this world. It's hard to say what makes Zen Master Fa Deng so special. There may be Zen Master Faleng’s enlightenment in his words, or there may be some falsehoods he added himself. You must not believe it, but you must not believe it completely.

Watching the rain falling, Wang Xiaolie felt a lump of air in his chest. He wanted to vomit but couldn't, and it made him feel uncomfortable.

What is this world like and what is human society like? This question has been asked by human sages and philosophers for thousands of years. Different civilizations have different answers, and different answers have different results. However, is there a unified answer to this question? ?I’m afraid it may not be possible.

From the Chinese perspective, there are two answers that have the greatest influence in the world. One is the European and American answer, and the other is the Chinese answer. The European and American answer is the existence of the Creator and the existence of a rational world. The world And human society is divided into two parts, one is the secular world, and the other is the world of gods. If you are an atheist, then one is the material world, and the other is the world of consciousness, or the world of rationality.

The famous Chinese physicist Yang Zhenning said in an interview that he believes in a creator. Of course, this creator is not a personal God, but closer to the first driving force of physics. This idea and this answer are very Western.

China’s answer is heaven, the way of heaven. What is the way? The way can be said, but it is not the way. The name can be named, but it is not the way. Heaven, or the way, or the way of heaven, if you say it, it is not the way of heaven. How to understand? Just

Able to understand. If you understand, you understand. If you don’t understand, you don’t understand.

There is a similar saying in Buddhism. When the Tathagata talks about the world, it is not the world. It is called the world. When the world is spoken, it is no longer the world.

Why? Because both the speaker and the listener are part of the way of heaven and part of the Buddhist world. No matter how wise the speaker is and how smart the listener is, they are only part of the way of heaven or the world.

It is not as good as the whole. If you want to summarize the way of heaven from this kind of fragmentary knowledge, you can only rely on human understanding.

If you want to talk about the way of heaven, you must give a name to all the ways of heaven. Connect the names one by one, classify them, and use metaphors and extensions, so that others will know what you are talking about. When naming names, they are given by people, which is no longer the way of heaven.

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For example, I pointed to a hard thing on the ground and said it was called a stone. The name stone is different from the actual stone. The stone is hard and white, so is the stone hard or white? In fact, it is neither. Later I found out

Some things that are black and soft should also be called stones. This problem is extended to the famous Li Jianbai problem.

Human knowledge is to give various names, add various relationships, various causes and effects, various logics, various inductions, and various deductions to form a system. This knowledge system is similar to reality, but it is

Not the same. Shi Yigong, a famous Chinese scientist, once said in a speech that human scientific knowledge is actually wrong. Because it is only the knowledge we have about the world, not the way the world is. The development of human science is

New knowledge is constantly coming out to replace old knowledge.

The names of everything in the world are given by humans, rather than just being there and picked up by humans. The knowledge formed by these names is humans’ understanding of the world and society. If there is a God, it will be like the omniscient and omnipotent God in Europe and America.

The Creator, or the rational world, would know that all knowledge thus formed is inconsistent with the facts and is wrong.

Is wrong knowledge useful? Does it need to be learned? Of course it is useful and of course it needs to be learned. Because this knowledge is correct in human understanding. Human understanding and the way of heaven are not the same thing. Yes

If people get confused, they will get confused.

European and American knowledge systems pay special attention to concepts and definitions, requiring that definitions must be accurate. Hegel once said that Chinese is a bad language because concepts cannot be defined accurately and there are differences between classical Chinese and spoken language. Of course, in later generations

It seems that what Hegel said is wrong. In fact, it is more than wrong. It is more like a backward civilization system pointing fingers at an advanced civilization system.

Human beings give names to everything in the world, or define and set concepts. It seems to be a description of the world, but it is actually an approximation. This approximation becomes more and more accurate with the development of human beings. But fundamentally,

Similarity cannot become reality.

This is what Wang Xiaolie said to Zen Master Faleng, the world is like this, the world should be like this, the world is like this. How humans understand, describe, and transform such a world is a matter for humans, not the reality of the world.

How to understand such a world? How to understand the way of heaven? This is an important method in Taoist thought. Tao follows nature. By understanding the nature of the world and the nature of human society, we can understand the world and society. Through this understanding, we can transform human beings themselves.

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It must be understood that European and American civilization is not this system. They set up a system by establishing their own concepts and logic. Then they transformed the world and human beings to adapt to this system.

Human beings entered industrial society, and Chinese civilization fell behind. Why did it fall behind? There are various opinions and various analyses. Are these statements and analyzes reliable? Most of them are reliable. But are they correct? Almost

Everything is wrong.

It is a fact that China has fallen behind in modern times, and there are many reasons. It is necessary and valuable to analyze the reasons and transform our society. But if these reasons cause China to fall behind, if some places or places are changed, it will be enough.

Avoid falling behind. Most of these remarks are worthless. Being behind is a fact. What you should do most is to learn, change, and imagine that if you were yourself, you would never be like this. Most of them are delusions.

In addition to learning about the Industrial Revolution, China also studied Western culture and ideas on a large scale. From Newton and Einstein to Socrates and Plato, there were also Freud, Spinoza, Hegel, Kant, and Sartorius in between.

Te, Descartes, Euclid, many characters

.Some people even use a famous saying from these people to show that they are well-informed, just like the ancient literati's poems about Confucius. More people say that if a certain person appears in China,

Anyone who has some ideas early on will never fall behind.

Reality tells us that these foreign saints and sages have much to learn from their thoughts. Learning the strengths of others and transforming one's own shortcomings is an excellent quality. But more people simply don't know where to learn from.

I don’t know what to learn, but I just stamp my feet and beat my chest. Why don’t we have such people in China? Why?

There are so many reasons. Because China is China, and foreign countries are foreign countries. China has its own saints and sages, and foreign countries have foreign ones.

Since the Qing Dynasty, China's backwardness has caused many Chinese people to lose themselves. Some people want to learn European and American science and technology, and some people want to learn their governance theories. After learning a lot about science and technology, the governance theories they learned are increasingly being questioned.

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In fact, it’s not surprising. China lags behind the West in terms of science and technology, and also lags behind in many aspects of ideology and theory. But before science and technology catches up with the West, all other aspects will be dragged down. Even if it is advanced in ideology and theory,

I can't believe it myself.

To understand the world, or even to understand the way of heaven, human beings are like elementary school students. When we first entered elementary school, we knew that the earth is round, that the earth revolves around the sun, and that the moon revolves around the earth, so we felt that we knew everything about astronomy.

Now that we know that frogs are transformed from tadpoles, we know that

When you find out that cicadas don’t drink dew, you know why kites fly into the sky, and you know that water boils at 100 degrees, you feel that everything in the world is under control. Adults just smile when they see you looking happy. Children think it is a compliment, adults

In fact, it is just encouragement.

When China lags behind the West for hundreds of years, some people think that everything in China is wrong and that China must learn everything from the West. If there are adults in this world, I am afraid they would just smile.

China has been defeated by foreigners many times. For example, the Song Dynasty defeated the Jin Dynasty, later it defeated the Mongols, and later the Ming Dynasty defeated the Manchu Qing Dynasty. At this time, many people believed that the Song Dynasty was wrong in everything, and they had to learn from the Jin Dynasty in everything.

What’s so strange about learning?

Lin Piao once criticized Lin Piao and Confucius. When he criticized Confucius, many pamphlets were published, telling the sins of Confucius. What is the spokesperson of the big slave owners? He hates the working people and the progressive forces. One by one, it seems that Confucius is a heinous person.

Human beings are the same. This is very bad. What's the use of a brilliant civilization, because the later generations have fallen behind, and they turn over the past history and criticize the ancients as useless?

People often say that if China were not a Confucian civilization, for example, if it were Mohism, Legalism, and Taoism, then what would China's history be like? It would not fall behind, and it would not be bullied. Only we would bully others. Many people

They agreed, and they all imagined such a world. But they didn’t know that the greater possibility is that even this

A splendid civilization was gone. Because of this idea, some people even wrote books, saying that when Qin merged with the six kingdoms, the people of Chu fled to Qin one after another. I don’t know where the Chu rebels came from in the troubled times at the end of Qin.

This is the author's imaginary world, not the real world. Only the real world can inspire future generations.

People often say, what would happen to me if I went back a thousand years ago? Some people want to learn from Britain, which is a constitutional monarchy, and a constitution can cure all diseases. Some people say that they should learn from France, a bourgeois republic, which is the most advanced. Others want to learn from France.

The United States wants to learn from Germany, wants to learn from Russia, and wants to learn from Japan. But no one thinks about it. In reality, China has been bullied for hundreds of years, and various countries have tried to learn from it, but none of them have. Why?

?Because China is China, not a foreign country. It is not a prop that can be used to interpret based on one's own imagination.

Among the great Confucianists in China after the Song Dynasty, no one can compare with Wang Yangming. However, historically, Yangming's philosophy of mind did not have a great influence in China. Instead, it blossomed in Japan. In modern times, because Japan industrialized earlier and became more advanced, many people

This is heartbreaking. This is China’s

Why, a great thinker, did not get the status he deserved in China, but was learned by the Japanese? Is China’s backwardness in modern times related to this? The sudden rise of Wang Yangming’s philosophy in modern times is largely related to Japan. Many people think

This is a missed opportunity for China.

China is China and Japan is Japan. These are two different civilizations. What the Japanese like, China may not like. What the Chinese like, Japan may not like. Is this strange? Marx is also a celebrity in his homeland, but not in China

Such an unparalleled status. Wang Yangming is also a great scholar in China, but he does not have the same status as in Japan. He is very sad about this issue and feels that China has missed Yangming’s philosophy, so it did not enter modern society in time. This is because intellectuals do not understand civilization enough.

performance.

Chinese civilization is unique in the world and cannot simply be compared with the journey of other civilizations. For civilization and traditional culture, we must abandon the dross and carry forward the essence. Only then can this civilization continue to flourish. I think about what I learned today every day.

It is immature to bury all your own traditions after learning the truth of one country and the truth of another country tomorrow.

Each civilization has its own unique features that distinguish it from other civilizations. The advanced places and successful experiences of other civilizations can become the objects of your own learning. But in the process of learning, you must not forget that you are a different civilization.

Don’t lose sight of yourself. Thinking that there is an advanced system and you have to fit yourself into that system is a conclusion drawn from the thinking on the other side of European and American rationality. If your own civilization is not the same, then don’t force yourself into it. If not,

It may very well become a twisted and strange society.

Starting from Japan two hundred years ago, to South Korea, to China, there are no particularly difficult obstacles for East Asia to enter industrial society. This is a blessing for China, and we should be grateful for the civilization left to us by our ancestors. Don’t be a scholar just because you were once backward.

You have to put forward your own set of opinions, from ancient times to the present, from inside to outside, and make arbitrary comments. You should first understand your own civilization, be familiar with your own civilization, and mature your own civilization.

Leaving aside the colonial continent of Africa and the cut blood vessels of Latin America, the larger civilizations in the world include Indian civilization and certain civilizations between Asia and Europe. They are still looking for a way out for industrialization in their own civilization systems.

It's just that this way out is very difficult to find. We have fallen behind before, and we should understand that being behind for a while means nothing. When they find a way out and reform their own civilization, they can still develop.

How difficult it is for these civilizations to find a way out of industrialization! Even if there are various theories, many role models, and even help from countries large and small, they still can't find a way out. What theories and policies do you think you can rely on?
To be continued...