5 Philosophical Lessons to Cure Modern Burnout

Once we stop learning in order to pass

exams or to impress daunting people, we

are ready for the best kind of

education, the kind that's done for our

own sakes, to strengthen us for the

difficulties of our lives, to make us

feel less sad and less alone. And it's

here that we stand to derive much

benefit from classical that is preodern

Chinese culture. In particular, its

painting, poetry, ceramics, and

philosophy. Despite the barriers of time

and language, we are liable to discover

many friends and familiar emotions that

can illuminate neglected important

corners of our own deep selves. Here are

five big ideas that the classical

Chinese kept stressing for their benefit

and now may serve our own. Firstly, how

very small we are. The great Chinese

artists never allowed themselves to

forget that we are infinitesimal beings

in a vast and mysterious universe and

that this frightening thought

well-handled is in fact the route to

salvation. They constantly show us vast

landscapes against which humans barely

make a mark. We have to search for them

amidst gigantic mountains, rivers,

boulders, and forests. We loom so large

in our own imaginations dayto-day. But

under the wise tutilage of the Chinese

masters, we are returned to more

appropriate and more manageable

dimensions. We relearn how little we

matter. We can gain relief from seeing

just how puny our ego-driven plans are

in a world that's so much older, more

majestic, and more incomprehensible than

we ordinarily recall while under the

spell of our illusory ambitions.

What does it matter who is famous and

who obscure? Who celebrated and who

disgraced when we are as earthworms or

twigs next to the mighty southern

mountains whose peaks are constantly

shrouded in fastflowing mists? Can we

continue to care about personal

achievement when nature is so resolutely

indifferent to everything that we are

and attempt to be? The artists of

classical China were committed to

tempering our distressing egoism and

vanity by contemplating us from a new

fairer perspective.

Secondly, sadness. A redeeming air of

melancholy suffuses classical Chinese

culture. Here, unlike in our own era and

societies, we no longer have to smile

when we prefer to cry or be mute. The

Chinese did not aggressively repudiate

their own grief. They understood from a

Buddhist and Daoist perspective that the

ingredients of life are inherently

rather than accidentally pretty serious.

The gap between our aspirations and

reality will always be vast. We will

love those who cannot love us back. Our

friends and lovers will die. Our own

bodies are fast decaying.

Far from making us sad, the sadness of

the Chinese sages helps us to feel less

alone and less persecuted with our own

range of sorrows. We have not been

handed some especially cruel fate. This

is the way existence is in and of its

essence when we are ready to throw off

sentimental illusions. Here is the poet

Wang Wei reflecting on the passage of

time. The poem is called Lamenting White

Hairs.

Once a child's face, now an old man's,

white hairs soon replace the infant's

down. How much can hurt the heart in one

lifespan?

The favorite seasons for the Chinese

sages were autumn and winter, time when

nature reminds us all of our adherence

to nature's life cycles. Here is sushi

drawing appropriately melancholy

thoughts from this.

The sunset clouds are gathered far away.

It's clear and cold. The Milky Way is

silent. I turn to the jade plate. The

goodness of this life and of this night

will not last for long. Next year, where

will I watch the bright moon? Death is a

constant in Chinese culture, and it rips

at all our plans for tenderness and

love. Here is Wang Wei giving way to

sadness for an old friend.

We followed you back for your burial on

Mount Shilo, and then through the greens

of oaks and pines, we rode away home.

Your bones are there under the white

clouds until the end of time, and there

is only the stream that flows down to

the world of men.

Thirdly, openheartedness. There is

something immensely touching in how

emotionally vulnerable the great figures

of Chinese culture allowed themselves to

be. We might imagine older societies to

wear a stiff military upper lip. Surely

back then they didn't cry over small

things. They were not as soft-hearted as

we know we are deep down. But far from

it. The Chinese knew how to speak with

near childlike honesty of what made them

cry. And it was much the same as what

makes us cry. Here is Wang Wei in the

8th century AD writing with a cute,

entirely modern, cleareyed sensitivity

about his emotions on watching a young

man leaving his family to study in a far

away city.

Green the willowed road. The road where

they're separating a loved son off for

far provinces. Old parents left at home.

He must go or they couldn't live. But

his going revives their grief. Tears

dried, he must catch up with his

companions. At last the carriage passes

out of sight, but still at times there's

the dust thrown up from the road. I too

long ago said goodbye to my family. And

when I see this, my handkerchief is wet

with tears.

Fourthly, we can cope with simple

things. The classical Chinese lived in a

highly unpredictable world. In the

capital, the emperor in his court could

be the route to vast riches and status.

But politics and business were

especially treacherous, and reversals of

fortune were common. In order to calm

themselves, the classical Chinese

artists emphasized the satisfactions

that were already available on a modest

salary. Not in order to negate every

kind of achievement, but in order to

quieten their worries and comfort

themselves with the idea that even in

infamy and exile, there would still be

much left to appreciate.

There was a long tradition of people

who'd fallen out of favor in important

circles leaving town and going to settle

in remote provinces. This wasn't

depicted as a punishment pure and

simple. In many ways, it could be a

liberation. Artists depicted materially

bare lives unfolding in unshowy,

uncostly small huts set within the

majesty of nature.

Chinese culture chose to celebrate

simple elements like birds, rabbits,

bamboo forests, flowers, and the sight

of the moon. No less a figure than the

12th century emperor Huiong gained

relief from painting vast numbers of

finches in his palace garden. In order

to make the most of their simple

pleasures, Chinese artists invented

particular rituals. For example, moon

gazing, whereby one would sit perhaps

with a friend and contemplate the moon

for hours at a time on a verander of

one's house. And one might in a similar

manner contemplate the eb and flow of

the tides. Fifthly, a cult of calm and

simplicity. The Chinese had an extremely

turbulent history. Civil wars regularly

broke out. Invaders came from the north

and west. In the midst of turmoil, they

like we longed for calm. They wanted

emptiness, purity, rest, everything

their own lives had too little of. And

one of the places they went to look for

calm was in an arena that can powerfully

move us to this day, pottery. The

ceramicists of classical China could,

when the occasion demanded it, create

noisy, highly decorated pieces full of

dragons and phoenixes. But what they

really loved and what we in turn loved

them for are those occasions when they

created exquisitly pure empty pieces of

pottery in which we can bathe in

expanses of milky green or bluey silver

or playful yellow and attenuate some of

our sorrows, confusion and anxiety. To

our surprise perhaps we suffer today

much as the Chinese suffered in their

classical era. And we can look to their

ingenuity and kindness to still our

anxieties and appease our sense of loss

and regret. We should study them not for

knowledge's sake but with the highest

ambition as a form of therapy.