Reflections on Zhao's Spiritual Hometown

If you eat a good meal, you will feel happy. What is happiness? Your body, of course. If you read a good book, listen to beautiful music and see beautiful scenery, you will also feel happy. What is happiness? Obviously, it's not your body, so what you have to say is that your heart and soul are happy. Your stomach hurts, you fall, you are bitten by a bug, and your body hurts. However, when you are lovelorn and the person you love dies, you think you will die one day. Or you have been wronged, which part of you is suffering? Soul, of course. It seems that people have a body and a soul. They are very different things. Some philosophers deny that man has a soul. They say that the soul is a function of the body. However, if there is no soul, how can we explain the source of the above-mentioned spiritual happiness and pain? The soul is invisible and intangible. It is not an organ of human body like eyes, ears, limbs, stomach, heart and brain. However, according to people's spiritual life, we can believe it exists. In fact, the so-called soul is just an inner space that carries our spiritual life. The human body is very practical. If it wants to survive, it needs food and clothes. In order to survive better, it has to go to the society to compete for fame and profit. The human soul is not so practical. It pursues ideals and spiritual values such as truth, goodness, beauty, faith, thought and art. We call this pursuit of ideals and spiritual values spiritual life. If a person only knows how to eat and sleep to make money and has no spiritual life at all, we will laugh at him for having no soul and think that he is not much different from animals. It seems that the soul will never be satisfied with the status quo, and it will always pursue a perfect state. Where does this desire for an ideal state come from? When we see beautiful images and hear beautiful music, why are our souls moved and intoxicated? An unpolluted pure soul seems to be born to like beautiful things and hate ugly things. How can there be such a feature? Plato, the greatest philosopher in ancient Greece, explained this. He speculated that the soul must live in an ideal world and see perfect beauty and kindness. Therefore, when it is reincarnated into the body, the imperfect goodness in the real world will make it vaguely recall the ideal world, which will make it excited and happy, and also make it dissatisfied and yearning for the perfect goodness. He further concluded that the source of soul and body is completely different, the body will die and the soul will be immortal. His explanation was criticized by many later philosophers and accused of mysticism. To my surprise, why didn't people listen to Plato's fable? What he actually wants to say is that the human soul yearns for upward, just like a wanderer yearns for returning to his hometown. The hometown of the soul is in a distant place. As long as life is still there, I will always miss, yearn for and walk on my way home. As for where this hometown is, it is an eternal mystery. We should say in the fable that it is a place as beautiful as heaven. Aren't we saying in the same sense that the soul is the divinity in us? When we enjoy the pleasure of the soul, are we farthest from the animals and closest to God? Man's nobility lies in his soul. Pascal, a French thinker, famously said, "Man is a thinking reed." He means that human life is as fragile as a reed, and anything in the universe can kill him. However, even so, man is still much more noble than anything in the universe because he has a thinking soul. Of course, we cannot and should not deny the necessity of physical life. However, a person's nobility lies in his soul life. As a physical person, there is no distinction between high and low. Only as a soul, because of the great differences in the inner world, can we distinguish between noble and mediocre, even noble and despicable. More than two thousand years ago, the Roman army invaded a city in Greece. They found an old man crouching on the beach studying a figure. He is Archimedes, the most famous physicist in ancient times. He soon died by the sword of Roman soldiers. When the sword came at him, he just said, "Don't step on my circle!" " "In his view, the man he painted on the ground is more precious than his life. Earlier, Alexander the Great, who conquered Eurasia, visited another city in Greece. When he met Diogenes, a philosopher lying on the ground in the sun, he asked him, "What can I do for you?" The answer is: "Don't block my sunshine!" In his view, in the face of his meditation in the sun, Alexander the Great's brilliant exploits seem insignificant. These two short stories, which have been handed down through the ages, show that outstanding people in ancient Greece cherish the soul life. They love ideas more than anything, including their own lives, and regard soul life as more noble than anything external, including prominent power. Cherish the inner spiritual wealth more than the outer material wealth, which is the common feature of all Tessa through the ages. Wilde, an English writer, traveled to America. When he entered the country, the customs officer asked him what he had to declare. He replied, "Nothing but my talent. "What makes him proud is that he has nothing of value, but he has artistic talent that cannot be measured by money. It is this arrogant writer who tells us in one of his works: "Nothing is more precious than the human soul, and nothing can compare with it. "In fact, there is no need to cite these famous examples. We might as well pay a little attention to the surrounding phenomena. I often find that even the slightest sign of a humble soul's life will shine with a very touching brilliance under a mediocre background. On one occasion, I go on road trip. The train is speeding, the carriages are noisy and the passengers are chatting and playing cards. Eat snacks. A young girl hid in the corner of the carriage, absorbed in reading. She was so absorbed in reading that she wrote something in her notebook from time to time, as if she didn't hear the noise around her at all. Looking at her quiet silhouette as if bathed in brilliance, I was deeply moved and remembered my childhood. At that time, I was just like her. No matter how messy, I would forget everything as long as I picked up a good book. Now I am a writer myself, and I have published several books, but I envy this girl who is immersed in reading and cherishes the memory of her youth with the same innocent pursuit that has gradually passed away. Whenever the the world famous paintings exhibition is held in Beijing, many unknown young painters come to the capital from all over the country at their own expense. I linger in front of famous paintings. I stand in the exhibition hall, looking at the young faces that are eagerly looking forward to, and my heart will be moved. I said to myself, having pure pursuit of youth is indeed the best years of life. As time goes by, I can't help thinking of the girl on the train and the young people in the exhibition hall, wondering what they are like now. According to my observation, most people are full of ideals when they are young, and they tend to become more and more practical as they grow older. Due to the pressure of struggle for existence and the temptation of material interests, everyone turned their eyes and energy to the outside world and no longer paid attention to their inner world. As a result, the soul shrinks and is empty, leaving only a busy body in the world. There is nothing sadder than this for a person. I secretly wish that they still maintain their pure pursuit and have not embarked on this sad road. Dreams are not illusory. This is a very beautiful true story-in Paris, there was an old cleaner named Misha who once raised a little girl for his friend. In order to amuse the little girl, he often tells her stories, including a story about a golden rose, which he tells her can make people happy. Then this little girl named Susanna left him and grew up. One day, they met by chance, and Susanna was not happy. With tears in her eyes, she said, "If only someone had given me a golden rose. "From then on, Di Shami collected the dust swept from the jewelry store every day, screened the gold powder from it, and decided to turn them into a golden rose. The golden rose was laid, but later he heard that Susanna had gone to America and disappeared. Soon after, it was found that Misha died quietly. Under his pillow, there is a golden rose, wrapped in a wrinkled blue hair band, which smells like a mouse. It is Misha's dream to give Susanna a golden veil. To our regret, he failed to realize this dream in the end. Some people may say: If I had known this, he wouldn't have to sift gold powder in vain year after year. However, I think that even if Misha's dream fails, it is good enough for him to have a kind and warm dream, which adds a meaning to his monotonous life and distinguishes him from ordinary cleaners without dreams. Speaking of dreams, I find it really doesn't mean anything to many adults. They always ask the question: What's the use of dreams? In their view, a thing is useless as long as it cannot be eaten, worn or sold. They are far from the little princes in fairy tales. The little prince fell from an alien into the desert on earth, feeling thirsty and looking for a well. When he looked for it, he found the desert very beautiful. He understood a truth: "the desert is beautiful because there is a well hidden there." "The well in the desert is invisible. We may or may not find it. However, it is the invisible dreams that drive us to seek, to pursue, to discover the hidden meaning of sight, and to feel that the world around us is extremely beautiful. In fact, poetry, fairy tales, novels, music and so on. Are all human dreams. Tagore, an Indian poet, put it well: "If I hadn't heard fairy tales when I was a child, I wouldn't have been so moved by the distant river bank and the vast fields on the other side, and the world wouldn't be so charming to me. "The British poet Shelley must have heard someone accuse poetry of being useless. He retorted that poetry is "useful" because it "creates another existence and makes us residents of the new world". Indeed, a person with a dream and a person without a dream live in completely different worlds. If you travel with people who have no dreams, you will feel bored now. When the moon is in the sky, they say at most that the moon is like a baked wheat cake, and there will be no lofty sentiments of "asking for wine from heaven, when will the moon be there". In the face of the vast sea, they only see a big pool of water, and they will never think of the daughter of the sea like Andersen, or the story of fishermen and goldfish like Pushkin. Well, sometimes I can't help thinking that people who never dream are more like idiots than those who only know how to dream. According to the legend of the Bible, human beings first lived in the Garden of Eden. At that time, people lived carefree and didn't know what distress was, so the Garden of Eden was also called heaven. The Garden of Eden is a beautiful big garden with many trees planted in it. There are two very special trees, one is called the tree of knowledge and the other is called the tree of life. God forbade Adam and Eve, the ancestors of mankind, to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. But it is said that under the temptation of a snake, they finally stole the fruit of wisdom. God was afraid that they would steal the fruit of the tree of life again, so he drove them out of the Garden of Eden. We might as well read this legend as a fable. The difference between God and man is nothing more than omniscient wisdom and immortal life. When people eat the fruit of wisdom, they have already shared the wisdom of God. They don't know everything, but at least they are much better than ordinary animals and know how to think. Once you steal the fruit of life again, you will live with God, just like God. Therefore, God certainly refuses to let people eat the fruit of life. Compared with other animals, human beings are smart enough to know life and death. Only human beings can predict their own death when they are alive, and on the other hand, they will die like all other animals. People seem to escape from the ignorance of the animal world, but they can't achieve the immortality of the sacred world. This embarrassing position has brought people endless distress. Almost everyone has a time when self-awareness gradually wakes up in childhood and youth. Suddenly one day, he must understand that he will die with everyone sooner or later. This is an extremely painful inner experience. Just like an earthquake, the happiness and confidence of life are shaken and even collapsed. Thinking that your existence in this world is only temporary and will disappear one day may lead to fundamental doubts about the meaning of life. However, with the growth of age, most people seem to be numb gradually, but they are actually avoiding it intentionally or unintentionally. I often find that when children ask questions about death, their parents often stop them in panic and tell him not to think blindly. In fact, where is this a fantasy? Death is the biggest problem in life, and ancient Greek philosophers also regard it as the most important philosophical problem, and no one can avoid it. I believe that people who dare to face up to and think about this problem since childhood will often have a deeper understanding and a correct attitude towards life when they grow up. Ever since Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, their descendants have been looking for the tree of life that God forbade mankind to approach. Overcoming death and winning eternal life is a consistent dream of mankind. Since physical death is inevitable, people try to achieve some kind of spiritual immortality. The fundamental motivation for westerners to believe in Christianity is to convince themselves that the soul is immortal, and the soul of future generations can ascend to heaven after physical death. In China, Confucianism emphasizes "moral integrity", "meritorious service" and "making a statement", that is, leaving articles that can be passed down to future generations. " Although it lasts for a long time, it is called immortality. "Taoism pursues a realm of' immortality' that is integrated with the universe. I don't believe that the soul can continue to live after death, and I don't think it's meaningful to leave a reputation. However, it is undoubtedly a positive attitude towards life to turn the perishable body into a driving force to pursue some eternal spiritual value. Whether this spiritual value can really last forever or not, the pursuit of it can make it easier for people to reach a settlement with death, and at the same time give life a meaning beyond the limited physical existence.