Chapter 36 postscript

I have been writing "Killing Zen" for seven years. After aspiring to become a novelist in college, the first novel I conceived and wrote was "Killing Zen".During those two years in the student cafeteria and library coffee room of City Polytechnic, I often stared at the void and thought stupidly, and then wrote quickly on the manuscript paper stained with cheap coffee, writing page after page without knowing whether there was a chance published text.As a result, by the time I graduated, I had accumulated a total of 150,000 to 60,000 words (at least two revisions from beginning to end during the period were not counted) and one third of the story had not been finished.It would be great if these things could be converted into credits.In retrospect it was a time when I was most able to enjoy the sheer joy of writing.

The original concept of creating "Killing Zen" is very simple: put all the darkest and evil things in the world that I understand, hear, read and even see (mostly on TV) into the story, let a person who has never touched Worldly protagonists go through it all.At that time, I was full of literary ambitions, and I firmly believed that: those who have not been in the world of mortals cannot see through the world of mortals; those who have not seen the ugly face of the world cannot improve the world. "Killing Zen" is as frightening as some ferocious gods in Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism, so that practitioners can accept fear, overcome fear and gain enlightenment.

Today my worldview has changed.I found that the so-called justice and evil, ugliness and goodness are often not easy to distinguish; I found that there is indeed a color called gray between darkness and light; Often the most profound and huge; I found that many of the absolute values ​​​​that I believed in before were actually only relative values... As a result, "Killing Zen" has also changed. In fact, this transformation began to appear when I wrote "Demon Killing Array".The most important thing is that I try my best to avoid directly expressing moral and value judgments in the novel.Of course, the author and the work must have their own values, but I just want to express certain concepts through the story and the fate of the characters, so that readers have the space to think and judge for themselves, instead of preaching in the novel from an omniscient and detached point of view .I firmly believe that the truth cannot be obtained by learning and memorizing, but must be understood by oneself.This point is probably the closest my thinking is to "Zen".

I am not a Buddhist. The "Zen" in "Killing Zen" also has no religious meaning.That's just a symbol.In my understanding, "Zen" is a process of "seeing through".I also hope that "Killing Zen" can make people see the true face of the world.There is a so-called "Zen of Joy" in the world, but there should also be a Zen of killing, right?Sex and violence have always been two major issues for human beings. In the book's promotional text, there is this sentence: "Real power is visible: violence".People who firmly believe in the goodness of human nature may not agree with it?But if you think about it carefully, all the tribes and countries in the world and in history have only one basic purpose: war—whether it is self-defense or aggression.At the most fundamental level, the government and the law are supported by force.As long as a person has private force stronger than the national army and police, no matter what crimes he commits, even the most sacred and just laws of that country will never be able to sanction him.Maybe you want to question whether there are such people in the world.That's because you are too naive.

Readers who have read "Killing Zen" may think that I am a gloomy and pessimistic person.In fact, I'm just a typical Aquarius, too keen to pursue the truth of the world (but paradoxically, my personal life often falls into the trap of fantasy).And when people grow up, they know more things than before, and realize that there are too many people who are optimistic for no reason in this world. It happened to be my birthday when the first volume of "Killing Zen" was published.In 1997, I was twenty-eight years old, the same year as Yu Runsheng. Qiao Jingfu January 7, 1997