On a Saturday afternoon, the gym is at its quietest. Sunlight slants through the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, casting bright patches on the dark gray rubber floor. The air is a mixture of scents—the cold, metallic smell of the equipment, a faint hint of disinfectant, and the subtle trace of evaporated sweat. The weekday evening hustle is gone, replaced by an off-peak tranquility, as if a soothing rest note has been placed at the end of a long, strenuous week.
The initial reason for cultivating the habit of going to the gym was to fight against the body’s inertia and maintain good health. However, as the days turned into months and years of persistence, Lin Song gradually realized it was more of a mental struggle. Modern life is filled with continuous, foreseeable pressure, and the gym serves as a decompression valve for a tightly wound nervous system. Every week, he deliberately schedules a full day of rest, allowing his constantly loaded muscle groups and his “must-deliver-daily” sense of urgency to be released. This is not just a physical regimen, but a necessary spiritual adjustment.
The faces in the gym are often familiar ones. On weekdays, people exchange tacit nods, maintaining a polite distance. But the hardcore enthusiasts, those who engage in heavy lifting year-round, form their own small circles. The bench press, the squat—these exercises that push one’s limits require a partner to assist, to prevent injury from the heavy weights. This mutual watchfulness, built on trust and safety, makes them exceptionally close. Their conversations during breaks always revolve around technique and nutritional supplements.
The most consistent patrons, ironically, are the middle-aged individuals જેને “uncles” and “aunts” by the younger crowd. They aren’t chasing exaggerated muscle definition, and their form may not always be perfect, but their attendance is the highest. For them, fitness is more of a lifestyle, as natural as eating and drinking. In contrast, the presence of young people is always phasic. They often appear at the beginning of a summer, filled with aspirations for a perfect body, and purchase a set of expensive personal training sessions. Their initial enthusiasm is high, but many disappear without a trace before even completing their courses, as if they were never there. Only during the winter and summer breaks does the gym become temporarily occupied by a youthful energy; once school starts, it reverts to its usual calm.
The gym’s owner has changed once in recent years. Fortunately, the new owner is also a fitness enthusiast who meticulously maintains all the equipment, preserving the professional atmosphere of the place. Lin Song still remembers the cleaning master, who had worked through both ownerships. He would always chat with the regulars while he worked, sharing bits of daily life. He had witnessed too many people come and go, and he had seen the desolation brought by the pandemic. After the pandemic, he never returned to work. His departure took with it a piece of the gym’s human-interest memories.
The strength-training clients almost all carry an oversized shaker bottle filled with a carefully mixed protein shake—the cornerstone of their powerful physiques. Lin Song once overheard a novice asking a veteran, “Bro, I didn’t eat enough for dinner, and now I’m starving after my workout. What should I eat?” The veteran, his muscles bulging, answered without looking up, “Don’t eat anything. Endure it. Let your body learn to use its fat.”
This brief exchange struck a chord with Lin Song. Fitness, it seemed, was a form of “self-cultivation” for one’s own body. It requires restraint, endurance, discipline, and a focus akin to that of an ascetic monk. You must listen to the soreness of your muscles, feel the limits of your heart and lungs, and at the edge of every failure, fight against the self that wants to give up. Is this not a conquest of the self, taking place within the confines of one’s own body?
This led Lin Song to contemplate the original meaning of the word “xiuxing” (修行)—a term often translated as spiritual practice or self-cultivation. It’s often said that becoming a monk to pursue this path is a noble and pure endeavor. This is certainly true; the world has its share of enlightened individuals with lofty faith and ambition. However, reality is often more complex. Some people enter monastic life because they have reached a dead end in the secular world and seek refuge. Others might be coveting the tranquility of the temple, the offerings from patrons, or even the hollow fame of being revered by the world.
So, how does one define true self-cultivation? Perhaps it lies not in the form, but in the intention. If we confine the act of “becoming a monk” to a select few, then the devout with sincere faith and the lost souls seeking answers can perhaps be said to be practicing it. But if one is merely coveting something, it runs counter to the core of cultivation. It is simply chasing desires in a different setting.
True self-cultivation, perhaps, requires no retreat from the world at all. Lin Song was reminded of the story of an old American man, which seemed to him the most profound example of secular cultivation he had ever encountered.
The old man was the grand-uncle of Lin Song’s wife, a well-educated engineer with a handsome income who had shared a deep love with his wife, a model couple in their community. Six years after his wife passed away from illness and he had lived alone as a widower, he sold the large house that held a lifetime of memories, along with all its furniture. With only a few boxes of clothes and a computer, he moved in with his son’s family.
His life with his son’s family was a study in minimalism and restraint. He wore a clean change of clothes every day but would let them accumulate for three to five days before running a single load in the washing machine, precisely calculating the use of water and electricity. Once a month, he would drive himself to the barbershop for a practical buzz cut. At home, he was like a silent shadow. He would never initiate a conversation unless you asked him something directly. Even in his replies, he adhered to a principle of minimalism—if a single word would suffice, he would never use a full sentence.
The old man never took the initiative to do any housework, believing it to be the domain of his son and daughter-in-law. However, if assigned a task, he would complete it to the highest standard. His weekly duty was to vacuum the entire house, a task he performed with meticulous care. Every corner of the carpet, every crevice under the furniture, was left cleaner than when the owners did it themselves. He never complained, even when given a task at the last minute. One morning, when his daughter-in-law overslept and he was asked to take his grandson to school, he immediately put down his newspaper, briskly put on his shoes, grabbed the child’s backpack, and got him to school on time, all without a single word of complaint.
His “non-action” was manifested in an absolute respect for others’ domains. If he saw a bottle of soy sauce tipped over on the kitchen counter, he would never set it upright, assuming his son or daughter-in-law had placed it that way for a reason, and it was not his place to interfere. If he saw his grandson’s toys scattered all over the floor, he would simply walk around them. He would turn a deaf ear to family arguments, closing himself in his room. On a typical day, he would sit quietly in his room, reading the news on his computer or playing Sudoku. If it weren’t for the different colored polo shirts he wore each day, his family might have barely noticed his presence.
He never offered his son’s family money, but he had made it clear that he was ready to support his grandchildren’s future education if needed. However, his son, equally respectful of his independence, never asked. The old man’s wealth was managed entirely by his financial advisor, growing steadily. He himself lived a life of near-zero consumption.
But he was not stingy. He made large, regular donations to several charities every year and would put cash in the offering box during his weekly church service. He had prepared his will long ago and informed his son. But his son was unconcerned, saying only, “It’s your property and your will. It has nothing to do with me.”
This old American man—was his life not a profound form of self-cultivation? Through extreme self-discipline, he detached himself from materialism and the entanglement of relationships. He did not seek external validation, impose his will, or interfere in the affairs of others. In the midst of a bustling family, he carved out an invisible monastery for himself, observing quietly, existing silently, and guarding his inner order and peace.
Every one of us is constantly being influenced by the world we live in—the good, the bad; the happy, the sad. In Lin Song’s view, self-cultivation is the process of consciously using one’s own efforts to filter, resist, and change the things imposed by the external world that cause one to sink into sorrow. It is a gentle but persistent personal revolution.
Lin Song sometimes re-examines the books he has read in his life. He has found that many of the grand narratives recorded in history are, for him personally, ultimately “useless knowledge.” What truly brings him lasting joy are the skills that require physical practice to master.
For instance, waking up before dawn to run five kilometers in the park, feeling the synchronized rhythm of his heartbeat and breath. Or after dinner, having cleared the table, sitting at the piano and dedicating an hour of focused effort to conquer a complex musical phrase. Or, on a weekend afternoon, taking his own hand-poured coffee to a scenic spot and quietly enjoying a cup. These activities all require learning, discipline, and patience, but their rewards are an immediate and pure inner joy.
What Lin Song felt most grateful for from his formal education was the ability he acquired to proactively build happiness through learning. Life is certainly not always easy, but as long as one maintains an attitude of learning and practice, the wellspring of happiness will not run dry.
Of all his learning experiences, Lin Song once believed that the most valuable discipline for the world was what he learned in business school. At first, this might sound incongruous with “self-cultivation.” But he later came to understand that a great business school teaches its students far more than just the art of making a profit. Its deeper core is to teach students how to use a powerful “capacity for action” and a restrained “moral character” to engage kindly with this complex world.
It teaches you how to turn an idea into reality through rigorous planning, efficient execution, and relentless effort—a process that is, in itself, a creative form of cultivation. It also tells you, through countless case studies, that great power without moral restraint will only bring disaster to the world. Therefore, a true business leader must be like a cultivator: while pursuing value, they must always hold a yardstick in their heart, knowing what can be done and what must not be done.
This, perhaps, is the ultimate meaning of self-cultivation: it begins with self-perfection and culminates in goodwill toward the world. Whether in a gym, a temple, a home, or the marketplace, the forms may vary, but the core of self-restraint, focus, and striving for goodness is eternal.