Editor’s note: On June 21, before Vistopia’s 2023 Shanghai gathering, audio editors Diandian and Xiaxia visited Cheng Qing at Yongfu Convent. They discussed what releasing attachment means and what to do when release seems to produce nihilism. This bonus episode comes fromVistopia Roundtable, Episode 305.。

Cheng Qing: It relates strongly to contemporary development. After extreme scarcity, four decades of economic explosion taught us to gain happiness mainly through material growth, while spiritual and cultural development remained very weak. Concern for social problems, fairness, and justice has only gradually reawakened.

I began in the history of political thought, so I understand that concern. It matters becausestudying Buddhism does not make social injustice disappear. We need more perspectives. The Buddha asked why life suffers, and institutions are only one of many causes.Does individual character not matter? Of course it does. Not every injustice reduces to institutions. Where culture and humane formation are strong, institutions naturally become healthier. Buttrying to restrain minds through institutions alone is frightening: rules grow intricate and cruel and increasingly crowd out normal life.We now trust regulations to solve everything, even requiring endless proof that we work seriously and are good people and citizens. Culture could resolve much of this.

Earlier generations faced the same spiritual questions, but special circumstances made material progress an easier source of happiness. Today young people turn to lotteries and temples for something dependable. Ideals once centered on wealth, society, and institutional fairness; now achieving immediate goals seems to require returning inward.

Turning inward can sound like escape, hiding from the world. Buddhism instead means seeing blind spots, afflictions, and problems within, so attempts to improve others and society can be open and wholesome. Someone unable to face personal problems can hardly solve society’s.

People ask why I still seem cheerful amid bad news. We cannot imagine or bear another victim’s pain. I do not want merely to voice sympathy; I see unavoidable suffering shared by humanity. Another’s tragedy may reach us someday because we are not creators.

If I change my understanding of suffering, I can settle myself and share that method so others suffer less and influence society in turn. This gradual reform begins with oneself. I distrust reform driven by inner antagonism and violence. Gentle influence looks slow, but cultural power must be measured over longer time.

Young people stand at this crossroads. I tell students that the future must again value spirit, culture, and mind—begin now, not only after crisis.

 

Cheng Qing: Releasing attachment is never accomplished at once. Buddhist practice moves from recognizing affliction through subduing and ending it to benefiting others like a bodhisattva. Chan speaks of sudden awakening, but ordinary people cannot hear a few lines, learn a little, and declare themselves unattached. Anyone who does is deceiving you and remains attached.

The decisive test is whether you insist upon one result. If recording this program is ruled by a target, that is attachment. If we participate fully in the present conversation, the process arises naturally from conditions; plays and views emerge later. Strongly predetermining them is attachment.

 

Cheng Qing: Vistopia Roundtable matters because it enlightens and comforts people. Episodes where young colleagues talk together offer mutual consolation; the conversation’s meaning appears naturally.A company may make demands, but inwardly you need not be ruled by them.

Everyone faces demands. Parents demand from children and children from parents; even unspoken demands are imposed upon ourselves. Much pressure comes from failing to see how we wrapped it around ourselves.

University teachers face evaluation too, but I keep my rhythm. If others pursue promotion in three or four years, I may take six or seven. I neither submit nor contemptuously break with the system. Many young people polarize into accommodation, resistance, or escape.

At present I am a teacher and need not sever myself from the profession because it or its surroundings have problems. Instead I ask:how can I find my own rhythm within it?Work may still be tiring, but when external standards do not completely define yours, you gain liberation.

 

Cheng Qing: Buddhist scriptures do not actually use the Chinese phrase ‘put down’; it developed gradually in China.

A famous case tells of Bodhidharma meeting Emperor Wu of Liang, who built temples and ordained monks and boasted of merit. Asked how much merit he had, Bodhidharma replied: none. This became a great Chan case.

Later at Shaolin, disciple Huike said his mind was disturbed. Instead of ‘put down attachment,’ Bodhidharma answered, ‘Bring me your mind and I will pacify it.’ The question returned to Huike: what exactly is disturbed, and why? Philosophy or psychology might ask this today. Huike could not find a formless mind. It wasunease constructed by his own thoughts.He said, ‘I have searched for mind and cannot find it.’ Bodhidharma replied, ‘Then I have pacified it for you.’

Later repetition of ‘put down’ misleads us into imagining a thing lifted and lowered. Buddhism says to see thattension and unease are your own construction: mistaken cognition bound you to those standards.。

With KPIs, you still want to make a good program, but must knowsome things can be influenced and many cannot be controlled.We cannot make ourselves masters of everything. This leads to following conditions, often mistaken for passive waiting. Buddhism meanseveryone has present causes and conditions; effort remains part of them. When they mature, a result forms. You cannot control it, though you help realize it.

Xiaxia first approached me two years ago, but I deferred because the program demanded complete commitment. Could I devote the energy, and would it truly help people? This year I volunteered because conditions had matured and need was visible.

Success in society often depends on observing needs. Markets call them demand; humanistic researchers see social and psychological needs.

Putting down reverses the usual picture: attachment never existed as an object you picked up. You manufactured it and tied standards around yourself. Chan cases ask: Who bound you? Where could dust alight?

A KPI objectively exists, but holding it in mind every day makes every task unhappy and unfree and may obstruct enthusiasm. Even an awkward guest is simply that moment’s conditions.

 

Cheng Qing: During Shanghai’s months of pandemic confinement, I saw students and adults rapidly collapse psychologically under enclosure, revealing intense emotion.

The economy cannot grow forever. We must recognize:the world will not necessarily satisfy our expectations.Economic growth does not guarantee a kinder society. Good and evil coexist. The question becomes:when society and the economy are difficult, how can you first settle yourself?At minimum, do not be defeated inwardly; perhaps remain optimistic enough to help others.

The issue is not that goals suddenly changed but that people must watch how and why environments influence them. During forty years of wealth creation, some older professors remained content in poverty and barely felt money. The difference lies in cognition and values.

Wealth matters today partly through natural greed and partly because society taught us so.Each person should find a place: what can I do well, and whom can I help? Helping family is still service. Yet recent decades pushed everyone toward one wealth goal that many cannot reach. Failure intensifies attachment because society says there is only that road.

Imagine education saying you may do work within your ability, earn modestly, settle inwardly, and still contribute. Doing it well would weaken pursuit of other goals. In other words,our central problem is unconsciously acquiring a single value system from education, environment, and public opinion.

 

Cheng Qing: I studied electronic engineering and worked two years as a data engineer at my hometown telecom bureau. Loving the humanities, I came to Shanghai for history, after editing financial commentary at an international finance newspaper. Across professions I sought work that settled me inwardly. Salary mattered little even when one month’s pay bought a square meter downtown and the paper offered residency. Leaving may now seem reckless, but I am glad those values did not capture me.

Personal distress can be resolved by changing values.Someone may earn less elsewhere but support themselves doing beloved work and feel happier than in a wealth-centered career. We must ask:what are we living for?From Buddhism’s view, a profession is only a label under particular conditions.

Monastics ask where you came from, often not what work you do, and simply serve tea. Your background may emerge later, but profession does not define you. To them you are a person, often visibly burdened, whatever your job.

Modern identification as a professional is part of self-attachment. Jobs sometimes need introduction, but most settings can begin with shared interests.

Social media rarely shows a whole person; some use it only as a professional label. No platform can show everything, yet deliberate packaging to please others becomes self-concealment. The deeper issue is thatself-censorship locks a person into either bearing mainstream values or opposing them extremely, without freedom or ease.

Buddhist practice finally appears as effortless movement among different settings.At a professional gathering you introduce the relevant role, not yourself as someone who loves tea. But you do not display a prestigious identity everywhere. At home you become an ordinary family member.

Attachment permeates life. We present our brightest face and keep performing it at home and among strangers. A person becomes rigid because roles cannot shift.

Releasing attachment means noticing when one label falls away and speaking through another role. One engages different people without a fixed identity. Today I am a relaxed friend recording at Vistopia, not a professor addressing students.

Every exchange with strangers exposes attachment. If someone seems rude, ask why they owe you politeness. The hidden demand is: I deserve respect.

Xiaxia described standing quietly at the edge of a social gathering. Speaking matters less than whether you feel marginalized. Knowing that others view you through their attachments prevents their judgments from controlling you; expression follows the topic, not their assumptions, and coldness no longer unsettles you.

Buddhism changes cognition until observing people becomes interesting. Each sees you through personal values, not simply malice or rudeness. Understanding permits tolerant acceptance and an appropriate response without pleasing or opposing them. Ease comes from discernment and freedom from being bound by another’s view.

 

Cheng Qing:Attend to this mind in the present moment.That is being yourself.

If I listen and participate fully in this conversation, no self needs manufacturing; it appears naturally. I need no label or predetermined achievement. Every invested moment is you.

Once self is solemnly erected, one becomes lost and carries it everywhere. Falling later makes past glory a source of despair. Yet falling into a puddle and reaching a summit are both you.

Life’s rises and falls are interesting changes in conditions, not only regret. As I discussed inEpisode 8,Every Day a Good Day says rain is good, snow is good, Shanghai’s plum rain is good, and today’s sudden sun is good. Without insisting upon one condition, we feel each change rather than being dragged by environment.

Xiaxia’s growth resembles ours: confusion produces a desire to become rich or knowledgeable. Attachment to knowledge is still obstruction when it means performing a learned identity—something academia often displays.

Everyone’s capacities and effort differ. I judge what I can do and work with present conditions without imagining the final appearance. I simply continue until changing conditions make continuation impossible.

I do not delimit life by employment. Temples invite public lectures; after retirement I might teach there more. Life becomes open rather than assigned one task to each career stage. Removing labels feels free.

Technology workers’ greatest crisis is not this wave of unemployment but never imagining another possibility during their growth. Had they known high salaries could not continue smoothly to retirement and developed interests and skills as rounded people, changing course would be easier.

Instead,society gives a false future, attracts everyone into one occupation, then abruptly discards them—a cruel reality.Social cruelty cannot be avoided, but individuals can prepare early.

Some lessons require experience, yet history shows such cycles. Universities need stronger humanities because people are treated as social tools instead of responsible individuals.

For decades, winner-takes-all values reinforced by policy, opinion, and parents have hidden the many possibilities a human life can contain.

Meaning comes from knowing and then realizing oneself: understand what you can do and do it well. Japanese artisan families may make cups or glasses for centuries. That is not merely blocked upward mobility. If China’s economy and mobility narrow, must destruction be the only response? Another way can keep us from destroying ourselves in the tide.

Many young people and children now show self-abandonment short of suicide: surrendering even small personally meaningful goals, lying flat, entering virtual worlds, and escaping reality.

Cultivating humanistic values changes this epistemology. Once human meaning becomes visible, everyone can discover: I do not have to live this way.

 

Cheng Qing: Dropping work for nature or rest offers temporary healing; the size of that need measures how deeply work exploited them. Buddhist practice aims not only at freedom but at ‘the body tires while mind does not.’ Today body and mind are both exhausted because mind remains tied to countless anxieties that one night cannot cure.

Emptiness arises when avoidance replaces wisdom. Giving up still replays earlier wounds and remains unwilling to accept them; that is not release.

Boredom can deny life and society and become nihilism. Buddhism describes a balanced state: body may labor while unbound mind stays light, energetic, hopeful, and eager to serve others rather than swinging between extremes.

Someone may strive, fail, and collapse through the same polarized cognition. A person who understands attachment should meet everything with warmth and enthusiasm. Wisdom judges clearly; compassion faces others. Together they describe an ideal social role: clear-eyed but neither pessimistic nor without hope.

Vistopia is idealistic because it cares compassionately for spiritual and humanistic needs. Binary thinking, however, might interpret insufficient recognition or feedback as failure and sink into frustration.

Buddhism says results mature naturally. A life’s value is not feedback, performance, or income but the expression of wisdom and compassion. Then enthusiasm and hope remain.

 

Cheng Qing: Begin with present life.

At work, notice when a target has become too important. Ask whether it truly is, and why an activity already underway must be ruled by its result. Thought constantly looks ahead and behind; inability to immerse in the act itself increases distress.

Return to daily relations with family, colleagues, and parents. Recognize where cognition is trapped, then gradually change it rather than sinking deeper. Ease grows slowly.

Values do not reverse instantly like a Chan master striking twice.They change little by little through repeated reflection in ordinary life.。

Buddhism calls this subduing affliction, which has degrees. Weakening one trouble even slightly counts; becoming unaffected goes further. Do not expect Buddhist knowledge to solve everything at once. There is no permanent quick fix.

 

Cheng Qing: Suppose someone cuts a subway line. We instinctively dislike it because our fixed order says civilized riders must queue. But can you control everyone? Demanding that would make thought tyrannical.

You cannot impose subjective will on all people, though you can govern yourself. This does not abandon ethics or principle: violations may be reported under transit or public-security rules. The real problem is reporting while unable to release rage.

Each person has vast blind spots and demands that environment cooperate. Your demand happens to be good public ethics, but applying one standard to someone newly arrived from rural life may be unfair.

We pity a dirty laborer too ashamed to sit on the train. Simply speak, explain, or sit beside him on the floor. Then he is no longer merely an executor of public norms, but a person met on the subway. We cannot see the rural background or suffering that conditioned his life.

Amid such ignorance, meet others with less subjective control. Institutions handle what crosses legal boundaries; inward irritation merely poisons oneself.

Discrimination by profession, identity, and status is always present and is part of practice.How can we restore a person to their human form?Entering the subway,we meet a stranger carrying an entire life story we cannot know. Clothes and behavior show only a result; any judgment without the past is highly arbitrary.

Even a wrongdoer sometimes deserves help. American prison chaplains preach or discuss meaning with inmates, while our culture often rejects them as people beyond recovery. That essentializes a person with a lifelong label.

 

Cheng Qing: Of course I have one—my attachment. After teaching a general course for over ten years, I saw society’s ignorance of Buddhist thought. I should popularize it and am suited to do so: trained in Chinese intellectual history rather than Buddhist studies, interested in Chinese and Western philosophy, and familiar with social science, I understand why modern disciplinary backgrounds make Buddhism difficult.

After ten years I feel obliged to clarify an ancient wisdom so misunderstood. I happen to occupy a role capable of doing so.

Buddhism also greatly improved my own psychology and character. I am pragmatic: an attractive idea without positive effect on life has limited value. Changing thought made life lighter, freer, and more positive. Once prone to extremes of pessimism and optimism, I now weather social and everyday changes with less emotional fluctuation. If this healing method is presented well, it can help many.

My aim is not conversion but offering useful thinking that eases pain and anxiety. Benefiting personally makes me want to share rather than hoard it. Many people could solve problems through one change in view.

 

Cheng Qing: Buddhism calls this giving: sharing beneficial things so more people gain. A bodhisattva’s first important act is giving, never keeping good things solely for oneself.

 

Cheng Qing: Recommendations are difficult because Buddhist education responds differently to each person’s condition.

Among publicly available books, I recently recommended Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse’s What Makes You Not a Buddhist, a brief and accessible introduction to impermanence, no-self, and nirvana. For more depth, Sri Lankan monk Nārada’s The Buddha and His Teachings follows the Buddha’s life and introduces doctrine and practice.