If you ask me now what success is, I would say that being more compassionate, wiser, more loving and tolerant today than yesterday is a kind of success.

Don’t give up your dream of flying even when you are at the bottom of your life.

My life almost starts from the bottom. I grew up in a place with almost no culture and civilization, and my family was very poor. I didn't go to any good school, and the teachers in the school were very inexperienced. For example, the teacher who taught us English actually only took up the job after a few months of short training. But this did not hinder our growth.

This teacher taught us to use Chinese characters to remember English words, "mound" is today, "also mound" is yesterday, and "tomorrow" naturally becomes "Tuma Road". So, I memorized these words and understood a truth: "It doesn't matter if it is a mound of dirt today, it doesn't matter if it was a mound of dirt yesterday, as long as it can become a dirt road tomorrow."

When I was 17 years old, I decided to leave my hometown. Before leaving, my mother gave me something, a glass bottle with something black in it. My mother said, don't underestimate it. There are three important things in it. One is the ashes from the incense burner used to worship ancestors, the other is soil from the farmland, and the third is water from the well. The ancestors of southern Fujian would take this with them when they left their hometown. They said that if you take this with you, you will not be acclimated to other places. And with them, wherever you go, it will be your hometown. This bottle is still on my desk. It makes me understand what hometown is.

Because I had no money, my life after leaving home was very difficult. I once worked as a waiter in a restaurant, a dock worker, a street vendor, ironed clothes in a laundry, and even butchered pigs. After killing the pig, I go home, wash my hands, and continue writing, becoming a writer. I was 17 years old at the time and began to publish works one after another, and was regarded as a "genius" by some readers.

I have always insisted on writing, hoping to become a successful writer. There has not been a writer in our place for hundreds of years. I know that in order to realize my ideal, I must work harder than others. Since I was in the third grade of elementary school, I have stipulated that I write five hundred words a day, regardless of wind or rain, whether I am in a good or bad mood; in middle school, I wrote a thousand words of articles every day; in college, I wrote two thousand words of articles every day; after graduating from college From now on, I will write three thousand words of articles every day; it has been 40 years now, and I still write three thousand words of articles every day.

In the era when I grew up, it was difficult to be a writer because royalties were very low. I also have a habit of never talking nonsense. If I can write 3,000 words, I will never write 5,000 words. If I can write 500 words, I will never write 1,000 words.

Being a writer is not that easy. In order to survive, I started working in a newspaper office. I had a strong desire for success. Like all young people at that time, I wanted fame, money, and influence. I worked very hard, so I was promoted quickly. I became the editor-in-chief in the sixth year. I also wrote 18 columns in newspapers, hosted programs, became the manager of a TV company, and also produced the radio program "Lin Qingxuan Time", which was very popular for a while. Stand out in the limelight and become a successful person in the eyes of the public.

Up to now, I have written more than one hundred and seventy books in a row, which are taller than my height. At that time, there was a magazine in Taiwan that selected "Successful People Under 40", and I ranked first.

Enlightenment is "learning to see my heart"

I believe that success should be very happy and should bring a "mysterious smile" every day. But in fact it is difficult, because you have to hold 7 or 8 meetings every day from morning to night, and you have to date and socialize with many people you don’t like. In the end, the time and space in your life are squeezed, and you find it difficult to I stopped to write an article, but my humor and romantic spirit disappeared, and I lost interest in the things I longed for when I was young.

One day, I was waiting to read the sample issue in the newspaper office. When I was bored, I opened a book. The first sentence in the opening chapter said, "When you are 30 years old, you must devote all your time to Enlightenment. If you haven't awakened by the age of 30, you will die step by step." I was shocked at the time because I was over 30 years old at that time and had no idea what enlightenment was. I started thinking about what enlightenment is. Soon after, I quit all my jobs and went to retreat in the mountains to practice meditation and think. I began to enter the world of Buddhism. The meditation lasted for 3 years. This is why there were many references to religion in my works later. element.

Three years later, I feel that I have gained a lot of understanding. I understand that "enlightenment" means "learning to see", "enlightenment" means "my heart", and "enlightenment" means "learning to see my heart". "Heart", because I was in love with the mortal world, I decided to go down the mountain.

I passed a fruit stall at the bottom of the mountain and wanted to buy some fruit. The boss was not there at the time, so I waited beside it. At this time, a passerby came over and asked me how to sell the fruit, mistaking me for the boss. My first reaction at the time was, "I have practiced spiritual practice for three years, and no one can see that I am very wise?" Then I realized that enlightenment and spiritual practice will not change a person's appearance, but only create a revolution in his heart.

The reason why we talk about enlightenment is because in modern society, many people cannot see their own hearts. We divide life into two parts, one is important life and the other is emergency life. We will find that many people are living in emergency and going with the flow instead of important life.

What is important in life? Walking with your lover, lying on the grass and watching the stars, does a child have a sense of humor? Do you understand love and tolerance? These are important. And rushing to go to work, study, and take exams every day is urgent. When people are busy with urgent matters all day long, "playing music, chess, calligraphy, painting, poetry, and wine" will turn into "firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, tea". You must learn to make some space and enter the "important life".

There was one of the richest doctors in Taiwan, named Wang Yongqing. He passed away at the age of 92 while inspecting factories in the United States. I was very sad to hear the news. I thought if I was 90 years old and had a fortune of 500 billion, would I go to inspect factories? The answer is definitely not. The king's descendants are still fighting over property, which is very sad because they don't realize what is important in life.

There is also a rich man named Guo Taiming. Although he has a lot of property, he finally married an ordinary dance teacher. I asked him, why did you choose her? He answered me that the best thing about my wife is that she doesn’t smell of money. This shows that for a person who chases money all day long, the lack of money is the greatest advantage, which means that this person has not fallen into the quagmire of desire.

Success is being more compassionate, wiser, more loving and tolerant today than yesterday.

No matter how difficult it is, never lose your awareness of the true value of life

How can we become enlightened? You must do the following 4 things:

1. Try to reserve all your time and space for important things.

There is a very remarkable person in history named Lu Yu. He was an outcast. When he grew up, he named himself Lu Yu, which means a feather drifting on the land. He determined to drink tea and water all over the world, so he has been traveling since he was 9 years old. I later followed his journey of drinking tea, and I deeply realized how difficult it was for him. There were so many tea areas across the country, and he visited them all one by one in the days when he only relied on walking. He also wrote the "Tea Classic" " has become a classic that no one has surpassed in the past 1,300 years. What supports him is the power called dreams. He understands what is important in a limited life.

2. You must realize that worldly affairs are not priceless.

What is priceless? It is the spirit of romance. Once I went to Shanghai to give a lecture, and I stood by the Huangpu River with my friends to enjoy the breeze. I felt that the Huangpu River at night was particularly beautiful and very romantic.

At this time, my companion bumped into me and said, "Hey, do you know how many people commit suicide on the Huangpu River every year?" Ha, it's really a sight.

What is romance? "Wasting time to eat slowly, wasting time to walk slowly, wasting time to drink tea slowly... these are all romances." Romance actually means creating a time and space, a feeling, a yearning, and an ideal in your life. A rose blooms on earthly soil.

Even if you are bound by the world, even if you are at a low point in life, you must always maintain a romantic spirit. Proposal does not necessarily require a house, a car, money, or a big diamond ring. I just wrote two lines of poetry, "Even if I am famous in the world, I will be with you forever." My wife was so moved that she married me.

3. Don’t lose your awareness of true value.

In modern society, many people no longer have a clear understanding of value.

Once, I walked through a department store in Shanghai and saw a bag hanging in the window, priced at 1 million yuan. It was a Hermès crocodile leather bag. I was surprised, who would spend 1 million to buy this bag? But obviously there are sales because there are people buying them.

Many people are bound and seduced by these famous brands and spend a lot of money on food and clothing, but in fact, what they value is not the value of the item itself, but the price. When I go to the mall to buy clothes, I always ask the waiter if there is anything without the brand. Only by tearing off the brand will the object return to its own value. Because what I hope to find is the value of life.

I know a rich man in Beijing who is a mining tycoon and earns more than 10 billion yuan every year. The floor of his house is made of glass, and there are koi fish in the pool below. These koi carp are all selected according to standard, and the unqualified fish will be thrown away or given to big fish to eat.

Some koi are destined to a miserable fate at birth because they do not meet certain standards. Later, I bought those unqualified fish back and raised them to be particularly unique. If people only know unified and fixed values, they will actually be very pitiful. Fortunately, people are not koi. Even if they are born humble, they can still find the value of their lives through their own efforts.

4. We must realize that the world is diverse and not monolithic.

The scary thing about this world is that most people are trained to be single people and live according to the standard procedures of going to school, taking exams, working, getting married, etc. This is worth reviewing.

Look at the world, the hottest thing is chili, the most sour thing is lemon, the bitterest thing is bitter melon, and the sweetest thing is sugar cane. If you raise them on a piece of land, there are two outcomes: they all die, or only one survives. They originally lived in different lands and had different growth experiences. If they were forced to be put together, maybe the pepper would eventually turn into a bitter melon.

People need to develop their own characteristics, but they must also tolerate the differences of others, so that the world will be wonderful. Therefore, parents should not always compare their children with other people’s, because peppers do not need to be compared with eggplants, as long as the peppers are spicy enough.

People have to discover from an early age what they are most suitable for and what makes them happiest. My whole life I have always wanted to be a writer and that has never changed. When Tsinghua University was a hundred years old, a student asked me, you have written more than 170 books, will you continue to write? My answer is, if I die in the afternoon, I will write until this morning; if I die tomorrow, I will write until tomorrow morning. I have been writing for more than 40 years, and I have always thought that my best work is yet to be written, and I have to keep working hard.

If you ask me now what success is, I would say that being more compassionate, wiser, and more understanding of love and tolerance today than yesterday is a kind of success. If you are successful every day, together they are one A successful life. No matter where you come from or where you are going, life is just like this. Pursue to become a better, more spiritual and spiritual self.