Occasionally I write some words that make no sense at all.
Literati and recluses of old have always had a special fondness for “retiring to the mountains and forests.” Though I hardly count as a man of letters, in recent years I too have developed an increasingly strong hankering for seclusion and withdrawal from the world.
Of course, I am still young, and have not even yet stepped into this “world”; how could I talk about escaping it? It is only idle fancy. I will always have to go wild in this world for a while, and only after I have played to my heart’s content will I go in search of a quiet place.
And this quiet place is not something I actually go out to seek; rather, I look for it within my own heart. I would never really run off to the wilderness to build a thatched hut. Only at the right moment would I build, inside my own mind, a secluded retreat, and seek nothing more than a spiritual seclusion.
Recently I have been thinking: what exactly would such a life of spiritual seclusion look like? I do not much want to live, as tradition has it, a “pastoral life.” Being a farmer would of course not be bad, but I seem to yearn more for a Western-style life of retirement from the world—becoming a fisherman or a shepherd.
By fisherman I do not mean the sort by the river, but the kind who keeps company with the sea; not the sort who risk their lives hunting whales and sharks in the deep sea, but the sort who cast nets and haul in fish in the shallow offshore waters. And by shepherd I do not mean the sort who raises pigs by a farmhouse, but the kind who keeps company with the grasslands, tending cattle and sheep.
By comparison, I am more inclined to be that fisherman. Fishermen are rather leisurely; the saying “three days fishing, two days drying the nets” is about them. In reality, it is probably much the same. Fishing has its own season; fishing too often is probably bad for ecological balance and leaves harm for one’s descendants, so it is best to follow the laws of nature: cast the net when the fish are plentiful, take the big ones and let the small ones go, and do not be greedy. In the eyes of people who chase fame and profit all day long, that fisherman really does seem lazy, but this laziness is precisely what makes him graceful. The contrast between the busy man and the idle man is made very clear in the fable of “the fisherman and the rich man.”
That shepherd is even more remarkable: they move with the water and the grass, and the whole world belongs to them. It is both an escape from the world and a roaming through it. They deal with the customs and climate of every place, yet belong to none of its soil or water; free and unbound.
In China, the shepherd is in the West, the fisherman in the East; they are not easy to encounter. What would happen when that leisurely fisherman meets that untrammeled shepherd? I only know that in the Promised Land, when those several fishermen met that one “good shepherd,” something utterly extraordinary happened.
I wait for those fish, and I also wait for that shepherd who will lead me away from the seashore, so that I may carry that gospel abroad.
November 8, 2006
Bifengtang
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UNIC
2006-11-08 01:22:00 [Reply]
“In China, the shepherd is in the West, the fisherman in the East; they are not easy to encounter. What would happen when that leisurely fisherman meets that untrammeled shepherd? I only know that in the Promised Land, when those several fishermen met that one ‘good shepherd,’ something utterly extraordinary happened.
I wait for those fish, and I also wait for that shepherd who will lead me away from the seashore, so that I may carry that gospel abroad.”
Hehe, unfortunately I still can’t be sure about the lines above; my comprehension is limited.
Still, speaking of a life of retreat from the world, I too very much long for it. To tell the truth, when I was doing my homework just now, I even let my mind wander for a little while, hehe.
For a very long time now, I’ve loved the grasslands of Ireland, the bagpipes, and the leisurely, honest people there. Though to be precise, “Ireland” may not be quite right, because what I especially love is a kind of feeling about that place that I’ve arrived at through my understanding and experience of the bagpipes—a very FANTASTIC feeling of the local atmosphere there.
I’ve always thought that when I am old, I would very much like to go to such a place, have my own wooden cabin, something like the one at Walden Pond, and live quietly by myself or together with my beloved, painting, writing, listening to music, fishing, growing vegetables… and spending long, long hours thinking about life.
As for spiritual seclusion, it seems to be the inevitable lot of youth. People who think about philosophical questions, perhaps 80% of them feel this way?
Gu
2006-11-08 18:29:16 [Reply]
If one spells it out plainly, metaphorical things become uninteresting, but I can roughly mention two points here:
Thinking of fishermen and shepherds is obviously something I got from reading the Bible: the Twelve Disciples were mostly fishermen, and the “good shepherd” naturally refers to Jesus.
Whether in love, friendship, or an academic partnership, my first impulse is always to wait and keep watch; my second is always to be willing to become an apostle.
Second, the fisherman and the shepherd respectively symbolize Greece and Hebrew: one is science, the other religion, and these are precisely the two things China lacks.
“When science meets religion” — this is one basic concern running throughout my thinking.
unic
2006-11-09 21:56:15 [Reply]
Wow!!
So that’s it!
Whether in love, friendship, or an academic partnership, my first impulse is always to wait and keep watch; my second is always to be willing to become an apostle.
Do you mean being passive forever?
“When science meets religion” — this is one basic concern running throughout my thinking.
I have to remind myself to think about this often too….
Gu
2006-11-09 22:21:30 [Reply]
Is the fisherman’s act of casting a net “being passive forever”? Deciding where to cast the net is active; deciding when to haul it in is active too; only waiting for the fish to enter the net is passive watchfulness. This kind of passivity is of course completely different from “waiting by the stump for a rabbit,” depending on how you understand it.
dingding
2006-12-20 09:18:06 [Reply]
Whether in love, friendship, or an academic partnership, my first impulse is always to wait and keep watch; my second is always to be willing to become an apostle. Waiting, while walking one’s own road. Thunder, rain, and dew are all Heaven’s grace. Not bad.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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