My Pendulum

I often feel that my life resembles a pendulum. At one end is engagement; at the other, withdrawal. At its best, the first can mean initiative, optimism, and resolve; at its worst, greed, anxiety, and fixation. The second, at its best, can mean detachment, clarity, and serenity; at its worst, nihilism, pessimism, and passivity. More often than not, I move too far toward engagement, sinking ever deeper, until some chance event turns me inward and brings me back into withdrawal, where I take a searching look at myself. Then, little by little, I forget again. Drawn by things of every kind, I make my way once more toward engagement. Round and round I go, in cycles that never quite come to rest. This resembles Schopenhauer’s theory of the pendulum, though it is not quite the same: life swings like a pendulum back and forth between pain and boredom. The point at which my own pendulum most closely resembles his lies in one word: desire. That has been at the center of my recent reflection.

The occasion is this: my achievements have grown, and the opportunities I have been fortunate enough to receive have multiplied. They are far from comparable to those of truly exceptional people, yet for someone as obscure as I am, they have been considerable. As I enjoy these unexpected gifts, my ambitions and desires grow with them. My eyes turn toward loftier goals, and I run wildly down the crowded road. Reputation, accomplishment, wealth, and position all seem to lie before my feet, close enough to seize. What others have attained begins to feel as though it too might be mine, as the saying goes: “What others have, I shall have as well.” With enough effort, heights once visible only from afar now seem climbable. My pendulum swung almost to the farthest end of engagement. In the rush, I sank deeper, unable to stop amid the fervor of striving. Then one day, I encountered an obstacle on that road. Worry became unceasing, and the anxiety was difficult to shake; day and night I was troubled and exhausted. For several days, it was nearly unbearable.

At the edge of despair, something I had heard long ago rose from the depths of my mind: “Until the worldly mind dies, the Dao-heart cannot be born.” In that moment, I saw the knot of it all. I had become a slave to desire, carried along by it without realizing. As I advanced, my desires were met, and I too enjoyed the ascent, pressing forward at full stride. At even the slightest setback, that desire became a venomous snake striking at my heart, tearing at me until I felt that, unless it were fulfilled, everything would be ruined. More concretely, when my pendulum reached the extreme of engagement, I came to believe that everything could and must be achieved through my own efforts. I would surely remain on an endlessly rising road and delight in it; no obstacle or downturn ought to occur, nor could it be accepted. When either did occur, I fell into utter desolation, yet still thought I had to push myself even harder to fill the gap and force my way across it. Like a moth to a flame, driven by desire, I took on a near-impossible ordeal of self-denial and pressed myself to the brink.

And so, in that instant, my pendulum swung abruptly toward withdrawal. The haze of greed that had obscured the principles I had learned, the lessons I had received, and the purpose that had guided me began to disperse. Once again, I could see the more authentic side of myself, and a glimmer of a way out of what had seemed an impasse.

First came the teachings I have studied over the years. Every tradition has spoken of renouncing greed and desire. Once one is caught in their grip, there is no end to wanting. In Buddhism, greed, anger, and delusion are the three poisons, with greed foremost among them. It is the hardest barrier to overcome and one of the most harmful. When I was young and knew little of the world, I once made grand declarations that fame and gain were merely external things, not worth pursuing. But at that time I had scarcely entered the world; I had not even formed a real understanding of fame or gain. Such cool detachment was easy to profess. Only when one truly confronts these temptations and desire takes hold do those words acquire weight. The same is true of all the principles one learns: only by finding oneself in such circumstances does one know that they are not merely a matter of speech, but of genuine practice. Of the many great truths I have heard, the one that moves me most is this: knowing is easy; doing is hard.

Then came the lessons I have had to learn more than once. A full decade ago, I already understood that there are always greater heights beyond any I had yet reached, and no end to what one might achieve. I had come to believe that only by enjoying life while there was still time, and by reaching a state of fullness or even freedom from care, could I avoid having squandered my years or lived this life in vain. Yet over the years my pendulum has repeated its circuit. As the journey lengthens, I forget the point of it all and begin to chase what lies beyond it. Then some event brings a sudden awakening, as the lyric puts it: “I searched everywhere, only to lose it; what I never hoped for was already in my hands.” Though I have gone back and forth in this way many times, I have never fully absorbed the lesson. What has happened will happen again; what has been done will be done again. It is like Lyu Weifu’s observation: as a boy, he saw a bee or fly startled from a spot, only to make a small circle and return to the very same place, and found it both laughable and pitiable. Watching those insects circle about, I fail to notice that I, too, am circling.

Finally came the purpose with which I set out in life. Why do I continue to live in this world? Or, put differently, how would I answer Camus’s question of the absurd? For years now, my answer has been simple: to find a quiet place in which to enjoy life, and to experience all that the world has to offer. Yet when greed takes up residence in me, that answer becomes distorted. I try to scale ever-higher peaks and gather every form of achievement, fame, wealth, and status. As I climb, I am never satisfied: enjoying what I have gained while greedily pursuing what I have not. I am plainly standing among beautiful mountains, yet insist on fixing my eyes on the sky beyond the sky. Looking back now, where I stand has long been enough for me to fulfill my original purpose and live according to my nature. What more could I ask? Social Wisdom says, “What is meant to be yours will in time be yours; what is not, do not force.” I am no adherent of determinism, yet I know that human effort has limits; one cannot force matters indefinitely. As Su Shi wrote: “When your strength is spent, the mountains grow lovelier still; do not spend the finite chasing the infinite.”

Looking at the present, ours is an age of rapid industrial, technological, and informational expansion. Individuals are swept along in the currents of the world around them, more apt to forget their original purpose and drift with the tide, becoming a single drop amid the great waves without knowing what they seek. I work in a particularly fast-moving field, and I feel this keenly; this latest swing to the extreme of engagement is proof enough. Tao Yuanming wrote, “Ride the waves of the great transformation, without joy or fear.” Only by remaining rooted in one’s original purpose and looking inward again and again, neither trapped by form nor enslaved by things, can one be self-possessed and self-sufficient. Living in the ordinary world, one cannot avoid dealing with things. But if we can master things without being mastered by them, we may still “learn the Zen of forgetting home while remaining at home”. As these reflections settled in my mind and cleared away the haze that had long shrouded me, I felt a sudden sense of clarity in body and mind. The burden pressing upon me and the unseen hand driving me forward dissolved in an instant, replaced by an unencumbered calm. That long-missed peace from within has an effect far greater than any external tonic or medicine.

This turn of the pendulum has been both fortunate and unfortunate. Unfortunate, because it trapped me in needless distress for several days. Fortunate, because once again it brought me back toward withdrawal, and once again let me see where I stand. I know that my pendulum, like the turning seasons, may continue to move between these two poles. But with this awareness of the pattern, I may at least avoid being wholly lost in the future. The Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng says: “The gentleman discerns the moment; the wise understand destiny.” May I too, through the pendulum’s countless turns, learn to discern the moment and understand my destiny.

I have written these words as an admonition to myself, a reminder to which I can return. I have not written for a long time; my writing is rusty and my thoughts are scattered on the page. I ask only that the meaning come through. To anyone who recognizes this struggle, I hope we can take heart from one another.