Chapter 5: Enlightenment Is Comprehending Principles
I don’t know if any of you have doubted yourselves like this, I truly refuse to accept it!
Clearly these are my thoughts, why do they automatically rise, fall, and repeatedly control my mood?
What’s most infuriating is that they can make me happy, and they can also make me sad, and sometimes even angry.
My small emotions are completely toyed with in the palm of its hand.
It was from the moment I started doubting the authenticity of my own thoughts that I began to ponder this matter.
Accidentally, while browsing short videos, I came across a video of Master Meng Can telling stories.
Because I like many magical unknown things, every time I see a video of Master Meng Can, I will stop and listen. Sometimes the same is true when I see videos of Master Zhang Zhishun.
Although I absolutely cannot understand what they are talking about, it’s alright when Master Meng Can tells stories. Master Zhang Zhishun talks about cultivation, primordial spirits, and conscious spirits, which leaves me dazed. But I still really enjoy listening.
This time, when I came across Master Meng Can telling stories, I suddenly had a different comprehension than before. Previously, when I listened, I just treated it as stories. There might have been some principles for behaving and acting in them, but this time, I actually heard methods of cultivation within the stories.
How should I put this, I don’t know how to describe it to you.
For example, Master said to look at small animals. Don’t think that just because they look different from you, they don’t have a heart inside. If you harm them, they will be afraid, and they will hate you, and so on.
At first glance, this story might seem insignificant, but if you think about it carefully, if they also have thoughts like humans, apart from looking different, doesn’t that mean they are essentially humans who look different from us humans?
When you look at us humans, apart from not having fur all over, can we say there’s really much difference from animals?
So, isn’t this story talking about a mind method of breaking illusions?
It’s to make you understand that all life is the same, equal, and only the external appearance is different.
From then on, I began to think about things and understand sentient beings according to this cognition.
For example, if I get bitten by mosquitoes a few times at night, I won’t get angry or resentful, because how would a mosquito know it’s biting someone else? It’s just eating.
Think about it, if you were suddenly slapped to death while eating, would you be willing?
So, I was bitten and I was bitten. I’ll just consider it as treating the little mosquito to a meal. Anyway, I’m not angry or bothered.
Also, the kitchen at home is next to the balcony, and rats always come into the kitchen looking for food. I generally don’t keep much in the kitchen, just some dried chili peppers and potatoes. Other dishes are bought as needed.
A rat gnawed half a potato and ate a pile of dried chilies. I didn’t get angry or irritated. I was just afraid it would get sick from eating too many chilies, so one night I muttered to the rat, “Little rat, don’t come here anymore, okay? My home doesn’t have much to eat, and my girlfriend is afraid of you when you come. Plus, you can only gnaw dried chilies when you come, and what’s delicious about that? Don’t come anymore. Haha.”
Since then, I haven’t seen any rats in my house, and it’s been almost a year and a half now.
Fun, right? Magical, right?
From these two incidents, I again gained enlightenment on the power of not resenting. That is, don’t resent anything, don’t get angry, and changing your perspective yields different results.
Actually, I understood these principles before, but I had never thought of them this way or used them this way.
I find that understanding principles is useless if you don’t truly grasp them. If you haven’t gained them yourself or cannot act upon them even after understanding them, no matter how much you know, it will be useless when you encounter situations yourself.
Therefore, people need to attain enlightenment. Enlightenment means comprehending principles, which is the best method of cultivation.
For example, with our writing, if you just write blindly, you can write yourself to death and still not produce anything remarkable. But if you write while comprehending the patterns of writing, and one day you master even one of them, then what you write will see great improvement.
I am always comprehending, but only a tiny bit has emerged so far. I know writing has patterns and techniques, but I haven’t found that rhythmic point. But I’m not in a hurry, I should understand it after looking more.
In fact, in this life, everything has its pattern. As long as you can carefully observe and grasp it, then you have cultivated a kind of Dao.
The so-called myriad Great Daos are actually the patterned nature of all things.
Besides this kind of cultivation, the most important and essential is for people to cultivate their inner Dao. Or one could say, cultivate their inner patterns.
For instance, the human body is like a biological machine, and human thought is the program for this machine. With this program, humans instinctively think about good and bad, right and wrong, black and white, and so on.
Ordinary people, normal people, are passively controlled by this program to run their lives and their entire existence.
They cannot control their thoughts and can only be instinctively controlled by habits, or what are called inertial thinking and habitual cognition.
This is the root cause of human suffering.
Clearly wanting to do one thing, but being unable to. Clearly wanting to do another, but not being able to control it.
Because you are fundamentally not yourself, you are merely a shell controlled by habitual cognition, similar to an NPC in a game. If you aren’t suffering, who is?
If you wish to avoid suffering, you must break the rules, act against the heavens, become your true self, and completely control your thoughts to achieve this.
When I say acting against the heavens here, I don’t mean you should ascend to heaven! What I call acting against the heavens is acting against your own thoughts, that is, against the thoughts formed by the innate primordial spirit’s push from behind, against this cognition.
I don’t know if I mentioned this in previous chapters, but let me clarify here: you can consider the primordial spirit as human subconsciousness, and the conscious spirit as human thoughts and notions.
Cultivation is a very scientific matter. Don’t imagine cultivation to be something magical, although it truly is magical.
If humans can completely control their thoughts, it means they can completely control their emotions, and then by controlling their emotions, they can influence their body’s state.
Because every time humans have a thought, or generate any emotion, various substances are secreted within the body, or the energy within the body transforms into various states.
For example, your body’s state when you are happy, your body’s state when you are sad, when you are angry, and so on.
Cultivation is about completely controlling one’s thoughts, and through controlling one’s thoughts, controlling one’s emotions. Then, through controlling emotions, influence one’s physical health and balance.
For instance, when your body is lacking a certain type of energy, you can directly guide yourself to generate the emotion that secretes the substance you need, thereby achieving internal balance and obtaining health.
