Continuing the practical chapter of the cultivation of love—not long ago…

My words are very easy to under­stand and very easy to put into prac­tice. Yet no one in the world can under­stand them, and no one can put them into prac­tice.
                                                                  
——Laozi

   
The pre­vi­ous arti­cle talked about mar­riage and child-rear­ing, which can be seen as a kind of love prac­tice (Chat­ting about the prac­tice of love》);
 
   
In my hum­ble opin­ion, the fam­i­ly ver­sion of spir­i­tu­al prac­tice requires a vow to cre­ate a hap­py and har­mo­nious fam­i­ly atmos­phere (A hap­py fam­i­ly is the breed­ing ground for a per­fect edu­ca­tion or “Some sug­ges­tions on being a good father”…》);
 
   
As for spe­cif­ic edu­ca­tion­al meth­ods, I always feel that they are minor. It seems that the worst method may also bring good results. The cause and effect must be explored deep in the heart. Love is the foun­da­tion, which is the basis of prac­tice (“Con­tin­u­ing the sto­ry of the cul­ti­va­tion of love: a sto­ry about a father who beat his child… 》);
 
   
Edu­ca­tion is exis­tence itself.
   
I often hear peo­ple ask: How do we edu­cate chil­dren? How can we ensure that so-and-so (usu­al­ly fathers) are not absent from our chil­dren’s upbring­ing? And so on. But I often won­der: What sin­gle thing do we do that isn’t rel­e­vant to rais­ing chil­dren? Even a sin­gle thought or idea in our hearts isn’t rel­e­vant? Just give me an exam­ple, and I’ll tell you it’s actu­al­ly rel­e­vant, even if it’s a long, wind­ing road. Just try it, O(∩_∩)O~
   
Accom­pa­ny­ing chil­dren is edu­ca­tion, not accom­pa­ny­ing chil­dren is also edu­ca­tion; hav­ing chil­dren in mind is edu­ca­tion, not hav­ing chil­dren in mind is also edu­ca­tion; quar­rels and fights between hus­band and wife are edu­ca­tion for chil­dren, cold wars between hus­band and wife are also edu­ca­tion for chil­dren, and har­mo­ny between hus­band and wife is also edu­ca­tion for chil­dren; how we treat our par­ents and sib­lings is edu­ca­tion for chil­dren; how we treat work and life is edu­ca­tion for chil­dren; how we deal with the rela­tion­ship between our­selves and the world is also edu­ca­tion for chil­dren; even what we think in our hearts, but don’t say out loud, and don’t turn into actions, is also edu­ca­tion for chil­dren… As long as we exist between this world, how can we escape this cir­cle of edu­cat­ing and being edu­cat­ed?
 
   
Bud­dhism says that all things are born from caus­es and con­di­tions, and that to prac­tice, one must believe in cause and effect, and in kar­ma. Although I am not a Bud­dhist, I think this is a very con­ve­nient way of say­ing it, and it con­tains great wis­dom. The oth­er day, when I was sort­ing through the life of an Amer­i­can writer, I came across a bunch of gos­sip sto­ries that made me sigh. Isn’t that a cen­tu­ry-long chain of cause and effect that hap­pened in a fam­i­ly? — Sci­ence may say that it is genet­ic inher­i­tance; soci­ol­o­gy may say that it is the rela­tion­ship between the envi­ron­ment and peo­ple; dialec­ti­cal mate­ri­al­ism says “where there is a cause, there must be an effect, and where there is an effect, there must be a cause”… Every­one just has dif­fer­ent con­ve­nient ways of say­ing it. The prin­ci­ple is very clear and can be under­stood with­out say­ing. (“Con­tin­u­ing the Gos­sip Chap­ter of Love Cul­ti­va­tion — A Sto­ry of a Moth­er Who Aban­doned Her Child…》）
 
   
So the prac­tice of love that I’m talk­ing about is every­where. Every word, every action, every thought, every con­sid­er­a­tion can­not escape it.
 
   
There­fore, the sto­ries about spir­i­tu­al prac­tice are basi­cal­ly as calm as water, far less excit­ing than the gos­sip sto­ries. Don’t be sur­prised :)
 
 

 
 
Not long ago, it snowed heav­i­ly. A father and his daugh­ter went down­stairs to play in the snow, and they were very hap­py.
 
It was a won­der­ful snow­fall, ankle-deep and unmelt­ed for days. My daugh­ter asked her father, “How about we build a snow fort?” He said we need­ed some tools. So, he found some pro­fes­sion­al tools for shov­el­ing, paint­ing, and cleaning—they were quite handy for play­ing in the snow.
 
   
After a busy after­noon, father and daugh­ter final­ly con­struct­ed a spec­tac­u­lar snow fortress in a seclud­ed area of the com­mu­ni­ty. The fortress itself is mas­sive, with tun­nels extend­ing in all direc­tions. A snow slope serves as a wall, and tow­ers sur­round it. The entrances to the fortress are locat­ed at the three tow­ers, each divid­ed into a life gate and a death gate. Enter­ing through the life gate grants sur­vival, while enter­ing through the death gate will result in a snow sculp­ture, eter­nal­ly unmelt­ed. Rumor has it that this fortress was built by alien vis­i­tors, and the mod­el is the shape of an inter­stel­lar bat­tle­ship. The base was built on an ice island in the Arc­tic Cir­cle, in the first year of the Snow Fortress. Lat­er, the aliens, home­sick, evac­u­at­ed overnight, but a few, secret­ly attached to Earth, remained, pre­serv­ing the fortress for future com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This fortress holds many mys­ter­ies. The only thing built in this com­mu­ni­ty is a mod­el.
 
It was­n’t until dusk that the father and daugh­ter final­ly returned home, hav­ing enjoyed them­selves to the fullest. From then on, they made a dai­ly detour to vis­it the snow fort dur­ing their walks. Thank­ful­ly, while the mod­el has shown signs of weath­er­ing and occa­sion­al attempts at van­dal­ism, it has remained large­ly intact to this day. It seems even those ras­cal­ly chil­dren would­n’t have the heart to dam­age it.
 
Dai­ly walks in the snow demand­ed con­stant cre­ativ­i­ty. Of course, the most ancient of these was to bend down, pick up a snow­ball, or even roll one your­self, and throw it at each oth­er, euphemisti­cal­ly called a “snow­ball fight.” When­ev­er they ran out of new ideas, father and daugh­ter resort­ed to snow­ball fights. But the daugh­ter was no match, so while it was called a fight, she was real­ly just a tar­get. But there was one rule: avoid hit­ting the head, espe­cial­ly the eyes.
 
That night’s walk, the father was real­ly tired, and he was also think­ing about sev­er­al home­work assign­ments that need­ed to be hand­ed in urgent­ly. He was inevitably a lit­tle anx­ious and just want­ed to fin­ish walk­ing the dog and go home quick­ly. So he said to his daugh­ter, let’s not play snow­balls today, let’s just take a walk and go home. The daugh­ter felt bored and went to play in the snow by her­self. She found that although there was less snow now, there were more hard snow blocks. She picked up a piece, rubbed it care­ful­ly, and turned it into a per­fect snow­ball. So she chased after her father who was walk­ing in front, and shout­ed, “Dad, look!” The snow­ball flew out of her hand. When the father was about to turn around, he felt a blunt object hit him behind his ear. With a buzzing sound, blood rushed to his head. When he saw that it was the snow­ball attack, he imme­di­ate­ly became furi­ous and scold­ed him harsh­ly. Unex­pect­ed­ly, the daugh­ter was even more angry and shout­ed, “So what! Did­n’t you hit some­one on the head too?”
 
Dad was so angry he was speech­less. What the hell was going on? If you want to have a snow­ball fight, you should at least declare war in advance. And the rules say you can’t throw it at the head. An acci­den­tal hit is anoth­er mat­ter. And as a father, how could he have the heart to throw so hard? Even a slight hit would be a minor blow… It’s like a schol­ar meet­ing a sol­dier, with no clear rea­son­ing. It was real­ly unfair. He’d been teach­ing his daugh­ter to hit a tree with per­fect aim these days. If it had been a tree, her aim and strength would have been top-notch, and she’d have got­ten full marks. But she hit the back of her head! Isn’t that unfair?
 
The father was so angry that he stormed all the way home, still feel­ing a pain behind his ear. The daugh­ter was not to be out­done, she also turned her head away and ignored her father, and went home on her own.
 
When the moth­er saw the two guys com­ing back in a huff, she did­n’t know what had hap­pened and want­ed to try to per­suade them, but she did­n’t know where to start.
 
My daugh­ter sat on her bed, ignor­ing every­one, picked up “The Adven­tures of Tintin” and read it silent­ly, look­ing annoyed. — Pause! Speak­ing of this, I’d like to insert a com­ic adver­tise­ment. I believe that peo­ple who love read­ing comics will live longer. From this scene, we can see that at least chil­dren who love read­ing comics are bet­ter at reliev­ing their neg­a­tive emo­tions. Let’s con­tin­ue -
 
Dad also returned to the study, turned on the com­put­er, and pre­pared to do his home­work, but he could­n’t write it. Think­ing about his daugh­ter next door who was watch­ing comics to relieve her bore­dom, while he had to endure the headache and con­tin­ue to work, the more he thought about it, the more angry he became — why did­n’t this child feel any guilt at all? At least say­ing sor­ry would be enough. Is there some­thing wrong with the usu­al dis­ci­pline method? For­get about respect­ing teach­ers and elders. Even if he acci­den­tal­ly hit an ordi­nary per­son, should­n’t he say some­thing soft­ly and apol­o­gize? Although what is said in the “Dis­ci­pline for Chil­dren” is a bit too much, look­ing at his daugh­ter’s cur­rent state, isn’t the oppo­site too much?
 
The father became more and more angry, so he delib­er­ate­ly walked out of the study and wan­dered around the house, hop­ing that his daugh­ter might have a change of heart and come out to admit her mis­take.
 
But noth­ing hap­pened! It was unbear­able…
 
How­ev­er, Dad thought again, did it real­ly mean “noth­ing hap­pened”?
 
No, in fact, what hap­pened, “noth­ing hap­pened” is the same as “some­thing hap­pened”. It’s con­fus­ing, right?
 
Come to think of it, my daugh­ter usu­al­ly starts to enjoy her­self after read­ing com­ic books like The Adven­tures of Tintin after a while, but why is she so qui­et now?
 
The father glanced over there and saw that his daugh­ter was look­ing at the book with a tense face. She had nev­er been so seri­ous even when read­ing text­books, let alone comics.
 
Alas, when my father’s heart soft­ened, he turned back to his study in bore­dom. Just as he was about to close the door, he sud­den­ly remem­bered the words in a book:
 
“Courage is being the first to make peace after an argu­ment!”
 
Yes, as a father, think about it: why do you find it so dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile with your child first? Because she’s your child. That close­ness makes it seem even more dif­fi­cult. If it were some­one else, would­n’t you be more like­ly to be mag­nan­i­mous? On the oth­er hand, why does­n’t your daugh­ter apol­o­gize to you? Isn’t the rea­son the same? You’re her father. If it were some­one else, a com­plete stranger, she would have apol­o­gized pro­fuse­ly long ago. Would­n’t your child know that?
 
So the father came to his daugh­ter’s bed, sat down, opened his arms and said: “Okay, let dad­dy hug you, be hap­py. If you are unhap­py, hit dad­dy twice.”
 
At this moment, my moth­er came over and took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to say: Okay, let me help you hit him a few times!
 
Bang, bang, bang—okay, the snow­ball tar­get has been changed into a box­ing sand­bag again.
 
This sto­ry tells us that being a father is not easy!
 
That’s the end of the sto­ry.
 
Sto­ries like this hap­pen almost every day. Each direc­tor, screen­writer, and pro­tag­o­nist (unfor­tu­nate­ly, there are no sup­port­ing roles in this kind of dra­ma) are dif­fer­ent, so the plots are nat­u­ral­ly very dif­fer­ent. But if you look close­ly, they are basi­cal­ly the same.
 
Hav­ing said that, “Con­tin­ue to Talk about the Prac­tice of Love” is about to come to an end.
 
Final­ly, I’ll share a lit­tle tid­bit: there was sup­posed to be a sequel to the father-daugh­ter snow­ball fight, but the screen­writer ran out of time and had to slap one in. It’s actu­al­ly quite excit­ing. In the sequel, the daugh­ter miss­es her shot again, and this time it’s even more impres­sive, hit­ting her father in the right eye at close range. This time, the father rushed home and applied a warm com­press. For­tu­nate­ly, the eye was fine, just a black eye. This time, the daugh­ter also showed improve­ment. She actu­al­ly came back and hugged him and said “I’m sor­ry,” which real­ly touched him. That blow was worth it~(@^_^@)~
 
 

 
 
A said: good friendMr. An LanHe once said a very won­der­ful thing:Home is a place to express love, not a place to rea­son.——This state­ment res­onates deeply with me.
 
Anoth­er friend dis­agreed, sug­gest­ing it should be revised to read: “Home is a place to express love and a place to rea­son.” When this was brought up in per­son, I could only smile and remain silent.
 
In my opin­ion, these are two dif­fer­ent lev­els of under­stand­ing. The for­mer is an ide­al, while the lat­ter is rel­a­tive­ly real­is­tic. Admit­ted­ly, most peo­ple sim­ply can’t man­age to be unrea­son­able at home. I can’t do it right now, but I vow to achieve it in the future. With­out aspi­ra­tions, how can one tru­ly cul­ti­vate?
 
So, why can we just talk about love with­out rea­son­ing? Because true love, as art, is imbued with immense vital­i­ty and bound­less tol­er­ance. It pos­sess­es a pow­er­ful force that allows us to see the truths we already know. If we still have to rea­son with it, it means that love is not strong enough, not pure enough.
 
In real­i­ty, we often have to resort to assist­ed rea­son­ing. But have you noticed: the same prin­ci­ple can be under­stood by some peo­ple but not oth­ers, and the same per­son can some­times make it work but some­times not. Why? The rea­son is sim­ple: it depends on whether the per­son mak­ing the argu­ment is gen­uine­ly invest­ed in it and whether they have estab­lished a bond of affec­tion and trust with the per­son being rea­soned with.
 
There­fore, the truth must be explained when one’s realm is not high enough, but it is not the truth itself that real­ly works.
 
   
Since we have to rea­son right now, there is no need to wor­ry. Just regard rea­son­ing itself as a form of prac­tice.
 
   
Okay, I real­ly need to stop here. I’m going to pick up the kids now–
 
   
Sigh, pick­ing up the kids is such a chore — but I also con­sid­er it as spir­i­tu­al prac­tice, and I feel much bet­ter — although I still feel a lit­tle annoyed O(∩_∩)O haha~
 
   
Trou­ble exists.