Reflections on Dream of the Red Chamber By Liu Zaifu

At this time, I have approached one of the deepest pools in the vast river and, at the moment when my life encounters the river and my soul vibrates with it, I experience the greatest joy of life.

4.

I often feel grateful to my spiritual teachers who have nourished me since my youth, grateful to Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, to Tao Yuanming and Cao Xueqin, to Zhuangzi and Huineng, to Lu Xun and Bing Xin, and to all the thinkers, writers, and scholars past and present who have provided me with spiritual nourishment as well as those sages and philosophers who have taught me how to get close to real life. I am grateful for the books and articles they write with care, for the comfort, warmth, and strength I get from reading these books and articles. I am also grateful to the absolute purity and the deep mystery in the blue sky, starry night, and the whole universe that I admire from the bottom of my heart, grateful to the great order, gauge, and vision that exist beyond reality, grateful to the little flowers and grass that I have admired since childhood, to the faraway mountains and forests as well as the small stream that, with its limpid waves, gurgles in front of my house. All these beckon my life and enhance my life, helping me keep what is the most innocent in my heart.

5.

As I have stayed in foreign countries in the past thirteen years, I have always felt that my soul is filled with the fragrance of the grass, paper, and ink from my homeland. I have come to realize that my homeland is the traces of emotions that accompany me all the time. Wherever I go, The Classic of Mountains and Seas, The Tao Te Ching, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, and Dream of the Red Chamber follow me. It turns out that my homeland lies in the pictographic Chinese characters, in the hands Nuwa uses to patch up the sky, in the green branches Jingwei uses to fill the ocean, in Laozi’s flowing beard and Huineng’s carrying pole, in Lin Daiyu’s poems and tears, and in Jia Baoyu’s infatuation and naïveté. It also lies in my mother’s silky white hair.