This Monday through Friday, I spent my mornings dropping the child off and my evenings picking the child up on Monday through Thursday. In total, those trips already surpassed all the pickups and drop-offs I handled during Coco’s more than nine years from kindergarten to elementary school graduation. Work has been busy, of course, but being present for a child’s growth leaves me feeling fuller inside, and also freer.

The week was busy in a very ordinary and unavoidable way. On Monday morning I also went to Hongguang Police Station. It was time to have blood drawn for the DNA record, so it can be stored for future use ... Yesterday, on the way back to Pixian District with my mother, I brought it up again. My mother was obviously saddened, but she still agreed to go with me to the police station another day. The renewal for her residence registration is due this year as well, and we need to handle that next week.

Over the past two weeks, I also moved the 169+30 broadband plan to 199. Old customers are never treated especially well, but complaints do still work. I won’t go into the process; the result is that starting in October the package will be 199, including one main line and five副 lines, gigabit broadband, 60G with a 3.1 speed cap, and continued unlimited data. The monthly 30% phone subsidy that had not yet been fully returned will remain, and I’ll also get two years of 500 calling minutes per month plus 50G of data. In short, that’s how things stand: moving forward, unhurried, just as they are.

Time really does move quickly. It is already the end of September. I can only yield to the changes of time and to the reality in front of me. You could call that surrender, or you could call it acceptance; either way, it is the same thing. The mind of the past cannot be found, the mind of the present cannot be found, and the mind of the future cannot be found. Even if everything is like a dream or a bubble, we still have to act without clinging to action, think without clinging to thought, and do without clinging to doing. When something arises, let it fall at once—nothing kept, nothing stored, empty, yet not empty.

On the way to school, I always seem to catch beautiful scenery: a blue sky, white clouds, a feeling of ease and leisure. With Kugou Music or Ximalaya playing in my ears, I walk to work naturally, right on time.

This week I reread Meet the Unknown Self. Over the years, there have been very few books I’ve picked up a second time. Compared with how I felt the last time, in 2018, I now sense things more deeply. The self, the “I” — if the first reading was mostly about understanding the inner logic, this time it is understanding that logic through lived experience, which leads to a more profound recognition, or perhaps a greater agreement with the author’s ideas.

Maybe this is what it means when people say you only realize the depth of a thing after trying it yourself. Whether it is the book’s idea of the true self, or the Diamond Sutra’s teaching of not dwelling in forms, both point to the same question: who am I, and what is the self?

Once we start peeling away layer after layer, we may discover that this “I” is actually nothing in particular, a kind of chaos, vast solitude, without boundary or limit. We need to separate ourselves from external things, from our emotions, from attachment, and even from time and space. Separation helps us know the self better, but it cannot be absolute; otherwise it becomes a discriminating mind. In truth, everything is internally connected, and we are part of everything. How can there be any real separation?

So in the end, there is no need to divide things too rigidly. Everything can be infinitely divided, yet at the same time it all exists within one system. It is unified. Work is the same. There are divisions of labor, endless ways to make responsibilities clear and specific, but that can never become absolute. The premise of division is cooperation; division exists so that cooperation can happen more effectively.

So do what you should do, without obsessing over what heaven may decide. That reminded me of a couplet from Wenshu Monastery: “Once you see it, do it. Once you’ve done it, let it go. What is there that cannot be finished? Wisdom arises from awakening; awakening arises from freedom. Life after life is still no birth.”

And as the Diamond Sutra says: those who bring forth the mind for anuttara-samyak-sambodhi do not speak of annihilation in the Dharma. How true that is. If there is no origination, where would annihilation even come from?