The Practical and the Ideal — Friendly Version¶
What Does "Practical" and "Ideal" Mean?¶
In Chinese, the two terms are wù shí (務實) and wù xū (務虛).
Pursuing the practical means focusing on the basic necessities of material life — food, shelter, clothing, safety. Most people spend most of their lives doing exactly this.
Pursuing the ideal might sound vague, but in the Lifechanyuan framework it has a precise meaning: seeking faith, ideals, and values; cultivating your spirit and character; elevating your LIFE toward a higher plane of existence.
Put simply: - Practical = working to stay alive - Ideal = working to truly live
Why Is "Pursuing the Ideal" Often Seen as Foolish?¶
In today's commercial world, being "practical" is praised as smart. Being "idealistic" is often dismissed as naive, impractical, or even a waste of time.
Xuefeng addresses this directly:
"Striving for faith through the ideal is regarded as foolishness and abnormality in a commodity-dominated society — but from the perspective of life's answer sheet, it is in fact entirely normal."
In other words: from worldly eyes, the ideal is a dead end. From the perspective of what your LIFE actually needs to grow and evolve — it's the only rational direction.
Even Laozi said: "The common people are bright; I alone am dim." He wasn't being self-deprecating — he was saying that going against the crowd's practical orientation is wisdom, not weakness.
You Need Both — But the Balance Matters¶
The practical and the ideal aren't opposites you have to choose between. They need each other:
- Without the practical: No stable survival, no foundation. Poverty is genuinely difficult.
- Without the ideal: At best you stay exactly where you are. A pig will always be a pig; a human will always be a human.
Xuefeng uses a sharp analogy:
Two people of the same age — one goes to school, the other works daily. The student earns nothing at first; the worker earns every day. But the student's future is bright; the worker's life stays the same.
Pursuing the ideal is like going to school. The returns aren't immediate. But the long-term transformation is incomparable.
The Pig Who Read Books¶
Xuefeng told a parable that captures this perfectly:
In a pig pen, one pig is reading. The others can't understand it: "We have plenty to eat, our keeper takes care of us — why bother with books?"
The reading pig explains: "Without reading, we'll always be pigs. We can have pleasure, but never happiness. Pleasure is short-lived; happiness is lasting. And let's be honest — once they fatten us up, the slaughterhouse is all we have ahead of us. I need to read to escape that fate."
The others laugh it off: "We're pigs — being slaughtered is our destiny. Just enjoy it."
The reading pig says with conviction: "You enjoy your practical life. I'm pursuing the ideal. I refuse to stay a pig. I want to become human — because only humans can have true happiness."
And its advice to the one pig willing to listen:
"While we still have food and shelter, seize the time to pursue the ideal."
The message is clear: when basic survival is handled, shift your attention to what will actually elevate your LIFE.
The Higher Your LIFE Level, the More You Pursue the Ideal¶
This is how the Lifechanyuan system maps it:
The lower a being's level, the more it pursues the practical. The more it pursues the practical, the lower its LIFE quality.
The higher a being's level, the more it pursues the ideal. The more it pursues the ideal, the higher its LIFE quality.
The progression looks like this: - Ordinary person: Whole life devoted to the practical, the ideal neglected - Wise person: Both are balanced — neither neglected - Celestial being: Survival is already handled; most time and energy go to the ideal
You don't need to wait until you're "wealthy enough" to start pursuing the ideal. The question is whether you're deliberately making space for it — for faith, for reflection, for inner growth — each day.
A Practical Question for You¶
Think honestly:
Are you toiling for survival — or for living? If only for survival, that's a great waste. (New Era 800 Human Concepts, 4th Ed. · Concept 223)
The two are not the same. Survival means keeping your body going. Living means growing into something greater — experiencing genuine happiness, elevating your LIFE quality, and moving toward the kind of existence that makes this brief human life worth having.
The practical is necessary. But it was never meant to be the whole point.
Pursuing the practical secures survival; pursuing the ideal elevates the quality of LIFE toward higher existence. The practical enables conditions for the ideal; the ideal shapes the qualities of a celestial being.
— Xuefeng (Chanyuan Corpus · Wisdom Chapter · The Practical and the Ideal)