There is a thesis: a person lives as long as he has a desire. To overcome, to achieve, to set records, to carry out qualitative changes of oneself and the surrounding world, to become older, smarter, richer.
An amazing fact: not everyone thinks so. For example, the philosophical doctrine of the ancient Chinese political and public figure, the writer Lao Tzu states: going along the path of the consumer, in the eternal struggle with oneself and the world, it is impossible to find happiness.
The wise Chinese left behind hundreds of labors, but we will confine ourselves to four wise maxims, which, as it seems to us, will allow by abandoning the minimum joys of life to find peace, well-being and learn to enjoy this very life.
Desire for revenge
In case you have suffered evil, do not create revenge. It is better to find a quiet place on the banks of the river - and very quickly you will see how its waters will carry past the corpse of a sworn enemy. In the European Christian tradition, an analogue of this saying can be considered the idea that evil is punishable in all cases.
Ibn Sina wrote that the one who sows evil reaps similar products. And he's right.
The cult of things and the desire to possess them
Give away the thirst for possession.
It is not easy for a modern person to explain that excesses in terms of things take away from us a valuable resource: energy. Westerners believe that the joys of life are not deprived only of those who possess – attachments and love, potential and opportunities, material resources.
The Chinese argue that the true wealth is in the satisfaction of the position that you occupy. Only in this case a person acquires genuine joy and craving for life, and all the others are engaged in running in the squirrel wheel until the complete depletion of personal resources. Bobik ran – Bobik was dead.
Having a large number of friends, you doom yourself to treason and deception. The same story with love - you call adultery, infidelity and an unhappy marriage. If you want to find integrity, be content with a state of separation. Do you want to fill your soul? Take the void. Do you want to take possession of everything? Drop and let go.
Many knowledge in the interpretation of Lao Tzu is nothing more than a lot of sorrow: an excess of property is associated with suffering because it loses value and ages before your eyes. Being does not give more than man should possess. Therefore, not all gold that shines and rings like a precious metal. Samples are fake.
Desire to do everything
Now everywhere in a hurry and in a hurry. Children are sent to school from the age of six. They marry up to twenty-five, as if there are happy and long early marriages. The construction of a career and scientific reputation must be completed by the thirtieth anniversary - if later, you will definitely be a loser.
Meanwhile, the great Russian scientist, historian and bibliographer Joseph Lvovich Belenky came to science well over forty, and his supervisor and pestun Grigory Krichevsky graduated from the university in 1967, having been an associate professor there for five years.
Further more: tourist "resume" to forty should bypass your fingers on hands in number. At the same time, you should certainly see the main sights and the greatest paintings, re-read classical literature, appreciate the delights of the opera and spend the night in a sun lounger by the sea.
A wise Chinese reminds that nature does not tolerate vanity, but is never late. Nature and the way of human life are not characterized by the eternal pursuit of goods, they are more inherent in laziness and contemplation. And we run and fuss only because it happens around us.
This topic should be closed once and for all. You are not destined to do more than what is programmed by fate – as it is not destined to be late to where you should be.
Desire to conform
When you measure your successes by other people's praise or critical censure, you lose your peace.
To find peace will not come out as long as you live according to other people's patterns. In order to become an object of admiration, you must learn to appreciate yourself. Or choose a difficult path - and by the age of thirty to get a wife with the proportions of Pamela Anderson, the third million dollars in a bank account, an aspen waist and a charitable foundation.
Even then, there will be those who are dissatisfied!
You are the perfection created by God and nature. The lizard is not destined to grow wings, and the crane is not destined to dissect the foam ridges. The falcon will remain a predator, and the mockingbird will remain a herbivorous warbird. You should not change yourself, and it will not work.
