There are some people who, with beautiful fantasies, weave themselves a fairy-tale-like, gorgeous outer garment, drape it on themselves, and yet never do anything related to it. They live forever in their own ideal world, never caring whether they actually possess that level of ability.
Just by putting on this garment, it is enough to make them shine. Six years ago they bought a thick vocabulary book, and so they had mastered all the vocabulary. They have collected articles from public accounts large and small, and so they have become domestic experts. They have ordered great quantities of books from overseas - genuine ones, pirated ones, brand-new, second-hand, intact, broken, in Chinese, in foreign languages - and so they have become widely-read scholarly authorities.
They live forever in a wonderland with no pain, no sweat, no tears of blood, perpetually maintaining a sense of superiority through the radiance of this dazzling garment, perpetually relaxing their guard. They are praised, they are flattered, they are seen as winners in life.
They will never regard effort and expenditure as something they themselves must give. They want the harvest, but are unwilling to till. They sit and enjoy what others have produced; they sleep soundly without a care.
If they really do encounter difficulty and hardship, they always think of fleeing and shrinking back. Some retreat the moment difficulty appears. Some hesitate for a while, grit their teeth, and then back away. Some find all sorts of reasons for themselves and back away. Some back away in a way that feels perfectly justified. Some back away with a guilty conscience.
In their eyes, fleeing has never been a synonym for cowards and failures.
They know how to handle the world smoothly. They are slick on all sides, getting along everywhere they go.
They trim their sails to the wind, push the boat along with the current, and look after their own skins.
They reduce flight to "rationality" and "good fortune," and wrap it layer by layer into a medal of their own wisdom that they wear forever on their gleaming garments, telling everyone they meet, holding forth to everyone they encounter.
What a great and grand achievement! What a wise decision!
Even when the day of objective and impartial outcomes arrives, they feel not the slightest shame, because they have long since blurred the standards by which shame is judged, and have given out an exclusive interpretation favorable only to their own words. They can never see the weak points and the flaws; they can only see their own wise moves - although even within their own group, the standards by which "wisdom" is judged differ greatly.
They simply admire the success of others, with no jealousy at all, but also with no spirit of striving forward.
They blindly recite the words of others, with no innovative act, yet frequently engage in petty disputes.
They are easily shaken in their views, easily change their stances, because their views and stances are themselves things imported from outside.
They do not know what time is; they easily forget their own missions - in fact most of them do not even acknowledge that they have a mission.
They are cynical and indulgent in nihilistic excess, yet style themselves as having seen through the dust of the world, free of attachments, unbound, unrestrained, untrammeled.
They cower, they shrink back, they numb themselves, finding excuses for themselves.
They make a great fuss over their own little bit of progress. They cry to high heaven over their own little bit of toil. ......
Fortunately, some of them have just awakened from delusion. He no longer wishes to go on living within a barrier of vainglory. Even if the real world has already become a narrow crack - he is willing to squeeze himself into it. Like a lightly-floating sheet of white paper with no words written upon it.