Chapter 7: Wonderful Application Of Discernment
Remember, if a cultivator truly wants to help you, they won’t care if you have money. They’ll only see if you’re worth helping and if your character is good.
For a Great Cultivator, money is just a piece of paper, a product of its era designed for convenience.
Cultivation is about seeing through illusions and letting go. Once one enters enlightenment, they let go of everything. However, some people who have been cultivating for over a decade are still stuck in worldly ways; their bodies may have left the secular world, but their minds remain in it. Sometimes, they are even more formidable, taking those worldly ways and showing them off in Buddhist or Taoist sects. They must truly recognize this before they can truly let go.
Otherwise, they will remain trapped in the illusions of cognition, being tossed around by circumstances.
Some might say that cultivators shouldn’t have a discriminative mind, right? Actually, not having a discriminative mind doesn’t mean being unable to distinguish anything. If you can’t distinguish anything, haven’t you become foolish from cultivation? Our true nature inherently has the function of discrimination. So-called non-discrimination means to clearly discriminate but without a discriminative thought, that is non-discrimination.
For example, consider a cup. You can’t say it’s a basin, can you? If you pour me a cup of water, I can drink it, but if you pour me a cup of urine, I can’t drink it, can I?
Therefore, many things in cultivation that are not understood clearly will lead many people down detours. A discriminative mind without a discriminative thought is non-discrimination.
Don’t dwell on this; nothing is truly mine, yet everything can be used by me.
When I want to drink water, it doesn’t matter if it’s a cup, a basin, or a large bowl, as long as it can hold water.
When I want to eat, it can be corn or sweet potato, but I won’t eat shit.
A non-discriminative mind doesn’t mean being unable to distinguish anything, but rather that when the results are the same, the process doesn’t need to be dwelled upon.
This is similar to the incident with the mosquito that I mentioned before.
A normal mosquito bite would make you perceive that it has harmed you, but you actually know that being bitten once will heal quickly and isn’t a big deal.
If you dwell on this point and distinguish good from bad, you will be pulled into this matter and become irritated.
But if you switch your mindset and think from the mosquito’s perspective, you won’t harbor resentment, you’ll naturally accept it, and you won’t dwell on the bite. After a while, you’ll find that the bite inexplicably heals.
So, you might ask, did I discriminate in this situation? In fact, I both discriminated and did not discriminate. I discriminated that the mosquito is still a mosquito and that it bit me. I did not discriminate in that I didn’t treat it as just a mosquito, but rather as a life form to be considered.
This is called wonderful application. The illusion was that the mosquito truly bit me, yet I stood in the mosquito’s position to consider it. It is real because by thinking this way, I was not irritated or troubled, and I attained freedom.
The discrimination and non-discrimination in life are not always fixed.
If you are walking in the desert and run out of water, you can change your mindset and use urine as water with non-discrimination, with the purpose of quenching your thirst.
If you live in a city with ample water sources, you can distinguish between water and urine to avoid feeling nauseous from drinking urine.
Therefore, both discrimination and non-discrimination can be used as wonderful applications. In different environments, arrange different cognitions for yourself to achieve the ultimate purpose.
In other words, if a person can step outside of their own mind, see the patterns of their own thinking, and then, through methods, skillfully and casually change their cognitive perception, they can use this way to achieve freedom.
This is colloquially called self-understanding, self-guidance, and self-persuasion.
A person may not necessarily be persuaded by others, but they can definitely persuade themselves. If one can manage their own thoughts, then all problems become stepping stones that help you cultivate.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine theory, the regulation and balance of emotions are very important. TCM believes that emotional fluctuations affect human health, and by regulating emotions, one can achieve the goal of treating and preventing illnesses.
Among these, joy can overcome sadness. Through immense continuous joy, happiness, and a sense of well-being, sadness is resolved. This is a method of emotional self-regulation. This method is based on TCM’s theory of the five emotions counteracting each other, meaning anger can overcome worry, worry can overcome fear, fear can overcome joy, joy can overcome sadness, and sadness can overcome anger. Through this cycle of counteraction, emotional balance and regulation are achieved.
In addition, from a psychological perspective, positive emotions like joy can help people emerge from negative emotions, improving their mood and motivation. Joy is a positive emotional state that can stimulate people’s positive emotions, help them see problems from different angles, and thus find methods to solve them.
Therefore, by cultivating a positive mindset and finding ways to increase joy in life, people can overcome sadness and other negative emotions, achieving emotional balance and health.
A cultivator is one who cultivates to the point where they can mobilize whichever emotion they desire.
In my own words, the process of cultivation is: breaking illusions, awareness of thoughts, changing thoughts, transforming thoughts, breaking thoughts, controlling thoughts.
Then, one can achieve awareness in every thought, where every arising thought is perceived by oneself at the very first moment.
Awareness without thought; after a long time, one doesn’t need to deliberately observe their thoughts; they will be perceived instinctively and automatically.
Awareness of no thought; later on, one doesn’t even need the thought of awareness; they can directly observe their thoughts.
From deliberately practicing at the very beginning, it becomes a habit, and one operates with that habit. This cultivates a kind of way, which is a pattern.
However, this pattern is contrary to human nature, so it can be said to be defying heaven.
Some people might feel this sounds fantastical. Before truly achieving it, I would have thought the same. But once you truly achieve it, you will understand that this is the most awesome divine ability; any other divine ability is secondary to this state.
After reaching this state, you will gradually be able to see the patterns of many things, as well as the patterns of human nature.
From a person’s eyes, physique, and expression, you can completely know what that person is thinking. This is called mind telepathy.
Being able to see these patterns is clairvoyance. Being able to know what they are about to say is clairaudience, and so on.
Moreover, you can completely change their cognitive perception without them realizing it.
Just like when I was working at a factory in Guangzhou, an older sister asked me if I had any abilities after cultivating.
From the moment she asked me that question, everything she said was guided by me, yet she didn’t notice.
Hahaha, what divine ability do you think that is? Isn’t being able to control what a person thinks and says considered a divine ability?
Also, there was a period when my throat was very sore, so I shifted my thoughts to other things, forgetting that my throat was uncomfortable.
Then, by shifting the attention of my mind, I truly could not feel the discomfort in my throat.
Isn’t this a divine ability?
It sounds simple, but it’s difficult to do.
It sounds like everyone can do it; isn’t this just shifting attention?
But you can try it. When your body is uncomfortable, can you control yourself not to pay attention to it?
I cannot explain all the wonderful applications at once.
I can only slowly explain them to you all. I hope those with affinity can gain inspiration from this and thus obtain the method for liberation and freedom.
Namo Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva.
