Chapter 8 children

Thinking back to four months ago, I felt like I was escorting prisoners. I suddenly dragged a group of children like little swallows out of the rented apartment in Shanghai, put them on the train, sent them back to the countryside, and locked them in a small bungalow.I still returned to the concession in Shanghai and lived alone for four months.What is the purpose of this move, what is the plan, and now I think about it, even I don't believe it.In fact, wills and plans are all vain and self-deceiving. What are they actually good for in life?It's just to win the sophistication of the world, play a few times of happy and sad feelings, and increase the scars in my heart!

At that time, I went back to Shanghai alone, walked into the empty apartment, and these two lines of Shurangama scriptures kept floating in my mind: "The emptiness of the ten directions is in your heart, just like white clouds pointing in a clear place; besides, the worlds are in emptiness! " In the evening, I tidy up the room, and donate all the baskets, utensils, surplus salary, surplus rice, and other household items used in the past three years in the kitchen to the nearby small shop who came to help me as a part-time worker. son of ri.There were only four pairs of worn-out children's shoes (for some unknown reason), which I did not give away, but neatly placed under my bed, and I often felt a nameless pleasure when I saw them afterwards.It wasn't until a few days later that a friend from the neighbor came over to chat and mentioned that the little shoes under the bed were sinister, and I realized my stupidity, so I took them off.

Friends say I care about my children.I do care about my children, and there are times of suspense more often in solitude.But I think that this concern and suspense seems to contain a stronger flavor besides instinct.So I often ignore my own painting skills and poor writing skills, and I describe them at every turn.Because my children are all children, and the oldest is only nine years old, part of my concern and concern for my children is my concern and concern for children—children all over the world.How will I treat them when they are adults?I can't know it now, but I can infer that it must be different from now, because it no longer contains that kind of flavoring.

Looking back on the leisurely and quiet life of living alone in the past four months, I also feel quite lovely and grateful.However, once I returned to the flat house in my hometown and was surrounded by a group of children, I couldn't help but hurt myself again.Because my kind of life, or sitting, meditating, or studying, searching, or perfunctory, entertaining, compared with their innocent, healthy, and active lives, is obviously abnormal, sick, and disabled. One hot summer afternoon, I came home.In the evening of the second day, I took four children—nine-year-old Abao, seven-year-old Ruanruan, five-year-old Zhanzhan, and three-year-old Awei—to sit under the shade of the pagoda tree in the small courtyard. Eat watermelon on the ground.In the purple of the evening, the red smell of the sun gradually fades away, and the green smell of the cool night gradually intensifies.The breeze blows the children's hair like filaments, and the sweat on their bodies has disappeared. When they feel happy, the children seem to be full of joy in life, and they must vent.At first it was the performance of the music of a three-year-old child. When he was satisfied, he smiled and swayed, chewing watermelon while making a sound like "miaumiau" when a tabby cat steals food.The performance of this music immediately aroused the sympathy of the five-year-old Zhan Zhan, and he then published his poem: "Zhan Zhan eats watermelon, sister Bao eats watermelon, Ruan Ruan eats watermelon, Awei eats watermelon." The performance of this poem immediately Prose and mathematical interest were aroused in the children of seven and nine years old: they immediately summed up the meaning of Zhan Zhan's verse and reported the result: "Four people eat four pieces of watermelon."

So I became a judge, criticizing their works in my own mind.I think the three-year-old Awei's music expresses the most profound and complete expression, and the most comprehensive expression of his joyful feelings.The five-year-old Zhan Zhan has already discounted the translation of this joyful emotion into (his) poem; however, it is still a molecule with rhythm and melody, and there is still an active life flowing out.As for Ruan Ruan and A Bao's prose, mathematical, and conceptual expressions, they are more superficial in comparison.However, judging from their attitudes, no one is fully engaged in the matter of eating watermelon. Their clear minds are much more complete than what adults have seen.The eyes of the most healthy people in the world are only children's property, and only children can see the truth of worldly things most clearly and completely.Compared with them, I really have been blinded by worldly wisdom and dust, lost, and I am a poor disabled person.I really dare not be called "father" by them, if "father" is revered.

I temporarily set up a small table under the south window of the bungalow, on which manuscript paper, letter boxes, pens and inkstones, ink bottles, paste bottles, time watches, tea trays, etc. are arranged in a certain order, and I don’t like others to move them around at will. This is my habit when I live alone.I—our grown-ups—have always behaved cautiously, attentively, carefully, and politely.For example, grinding ink, placing pens, pouring tea, etc., are done with care, so the arrangement on the table remains the same every day, and will not be damaged or disturbed.Because the tendons of my limbs have already developed a vigilant inertia due to repeated physics lessons.However, as soon as the children climbed on my desk, they disrupted my order, destroyed the composition on my table, and damaged my utensils.They picked up the fountain pen and flicked it, spilling ink spots on the table and skirts; they dipped the nib in the paste bottle.They pulled out the copper pen caps of the writing brushes vigorously, knocked over the teapot with the back of their hands, and smashed the lid on the floor... This really made me impatient at the time. Small cheeks.However, I immediately regretted it: after snorting, I immediately smiled, after taking it, I immediately returned it twice, and the hand that pricked my cheek softened halfway, and finally changed from praising to caressing.For at once I realized what was wrong: how perverse it was for me to ask my children to behave like myself!I—we grown-ups—be cautious in our behavior because the muscles in the limbs of the body have been convulsed by the pressure of various realities.The children still retain their gifted and sound skills and their simple and lively vitality, how can they be as poor as us?The courtesies of grown-ups, such as bowing, advancing and retreating, guiding, and judging, are like instruments of torture, all of which can kill the thief's natural and sound skills.Thus active people gradually turned into crippled with paralyzed limbs and hemiplegia.How perverse is it for the crippled man to expect the able-bodied to behave like himself!

How are my children related to me?I was never prepared to be a father in this world, so I was always puzzled and felt very strange.I and them (now) are completely different world people, they are much smarter and healthier than me; yet they are my children.What a wonderful relationship this is!People in the world consider having children under their knees to be happy, and hope to have children to perpetuate themselves. I really don't understand their psychology.I think that the most natural and reasonable relationship between people in the world is friends.The relationship between monarch and minister, father and son, brother and sister, and husband and wife is nothing more than a friendship in a broad sense when it is very natural and reasonable.Therefore, friendship is the foundation of all human relationships. "Friends are also of the same kind." People who are raised together on the earth are friends of the same kind and are children of nature.People in the world forget their big parents and only know that they have young parents. They think that parents can produce children, and children are born of parents, so children can perpetuate the ego of their parents and make them last forever.So those who have no children lament the ignorance of the way of heaven, those who have unworthy children hurt their destiny, and rush into the things in the cup.I really don't understand their psychology.

Recently my heart has been occupied by four things: the gods and stars in the sky, the art and children in the world, this group of children like swallows, the children who have the deepest relationship with me in the world, they occupy the gods and children in my heart. Stars and art have the same status. In the summer of 1928, it was painted in a flat house in Shimen Bay.