How can we live a better life? This is a philosophical question that is difficult to answer, but everyone can say a thing or two. In fact, everyone has their own way of living, and they also have what they think is the best activity, and there is no uniform standard.
In my opinion, the best way for a person to live is to be comfortable, casual, and leisurely in the following three sentences of "Caigen Tan", where you can eat when you are hungry, can sleep, and usually be accompanied by books.
1. Eat when you are hungry and sleep when you are tired.
This sentence is very easy to understand, it is about eating when you are hungry and sleeping when you are sleepy, which has a strong Zen connotation. In fact, it comes from a poem by Wang Yangming called "Answering People's Questions", which teaches us to live in nature and at ease, just like the ancients said, "make at sunrise and rest at sun", and follow the way of heaven and nature. It's a pity that people nowadays are no longer so particular, usually hungry and don't eat, or still overeat when they are not hungry, don't sleep when it's time to go to bed, and work against the biological clock, which seriously overdraws the health of the body, and there are many sub-health phenomena at a young age.
Not to mention anything else, there are very few people who can eat hungry and sleep sleepily, everyone is desperately trying to make money to support their families, pay off car loans and mortgages, and work overtime even on rest days, and stay up late at night. This is not the way life is at all, just to survive, which makes people very helpless.
2. A thousand-year-old encounter is not as good as a good book and a good friend; A lifetime of happiness, only in the bowl of tea stove smoke.
The meaning of this sentence is that a once-in-a-lifetime good thing is not as good as a good book and a friend, and a life of leisure and ease lies in the tea in the bowl and the light smoke in the stove. With books, friends, tea, and cigarettes, isn't this the kind of way of life that many people pursue all their lives?
Everyone has these things, but not everyone has the leisure time to enjoy them. Nan Huaijin has a poem "Ninety thousand miles of enlightenment, and eventually return to the poetry and wine pastoral", which is also the same activity, of course, there is also the mentality of tasting and enjoying, otherwise you will not be able to taste that taste no matter how much money you have to buy wine and tea. In addition, you have to talk about tea with the right people, isn't there a saying that "three cups of wine in the red dust, a pot of tea for a thousand years"? Who drinks this wine, and who drinks this tea, is the question. So I think this sentence is the best way for people to live.
3. Don't be shocked by the humiliation, watch the flowers bloom and fall in front of the court; Go and stay unintentionally, wandering with the clouds outside the sky.
This sentence is almost universally seen, and it means that you are indifferent to all honor and disgrace, and enjoy the flowers in the garden with a normal heart; I don't care about all the gains and losses, and I look coldly at the clouds in the sky.
When you are working hard outside, you have also thought about how pleasant it is to sit in the courtyard of your home one day, and look at the clouds in the sky without debt. It is undeniable that hard work can make life better and is also a part of life, and life without struggle is not worth living.
But when you are tired, or want to rest, you unconsciously think of the days of "watching the flowers bloom and fall in front of the court". Because this kind of life means that you are no longer running for a living, you can enjoy life without worry, and your state of mind has become peaceful.
A "Caigen Tan" teaches people how to behave and do things, and every sentence in it is worth pondering. But in terms of attitude towards life, I think the above three sentences are the best way to live, and if I really do it, I must be secretly happy, what about you?