Cultivating Buddhism meant cultivating awareness; cultivating the Dao meant cultivating the laws.
Using the power of these two points to fill oneself with spirit Qi was what cultivation of immortality meant.
The term "cultivating immortality" had first originated from ancient ideas of health preservation. The era when people widely practiced Qigong was during the Wei and Jin dynasties; it was a method of self-cultivation founded upon the awakening of one's self-awareness and directed toward one's own life.
It referred to the awakening of the deepest layers of the subconscious in dealing with sexuality and sensibility, a fundamental transformation of one's fate. Longevity and enduring through the ages, becoming one with the Dao and returning to truth, were its ultimate pursuit and yearning. Whether calming the spirit and nurturing one's nature, or cultivating truth and comprehending the Dao, all sought to reach the supreme, perfect realm of immortal beings who neither died nor perished.
Simply put, it was the mutual entanglement between consciousness and subconsciousness: there was me in you and you in me. The two influenced and reflected one another. Whoever could stand between them and alter their changes as they wished was what people called an immortal.
Because if you could actively influence your subconsciousness, then all those minute energies within your body that the Physical Eye could not perceive—cells, Qi and blood, fungi, these tiny living entities—would change accordingly. If they developed in a good direction, you would naturally cultivate longevity and remain in this world for a long time. Otherwise, illness and pain would pile upon you.
But this was not absolute. Some people who were born with severe leakage of innate Qi also died prematurely.
After they were born, they would generally display traits unlike others. In other words, they seemed extraordinarily intelligent from childhood and possessed exceptional talent in certain matters.
Because they leaked too much innate Qi too early, they lacked staying power and were often sickly.
People of this kind either did not live long, lost their spirituality after growing up, or displayed extraordinary ability in only one particular aspect while being pitifully weak at everything else.
This was what they called the fairness of the Heavenly Dao: while opening a door for you, it also shut a window.
Where there was gain, there had to be loss; where there was loss, there had to be gain. In the unavoidable gains and losses, the ordinary became sparse.
Mr. Guo's godson was a typical case of excessive innate Qi leakage. At a very young age, he displayed a unique gift for Peking Opera. If things had followed their normal course, then upon reaching adulthood, after his voice changed, he would have suffered unprecedented blows, along with the harm caused by how others judged him.
In plain terms, however glorious you were at the time, after that stage passed, the greater the backlash you would face.
But he had been fortunate enough to meet Mr. Guo. Mr. Guo cherished talent and could not bear to see the youth face that kind of evil persecution from the outside years later.
So he made arrangements beforehand. At the time, he used his own energy to fend off those selfish, ugly faces and endured countless insults.
The Karma that should have fallen upon that child prodigy was all taken onto Mr. Guo himself.
This was a classic case of helping another avoid Heavenly Disaster and man-made calamity.
It was like how, after a youth displayed astonishing brilliance beyond the ordinary in his younger years, the lightning tribulation he faced during Tribulation Crossing would be fiercer than anyone else's. If he could not overcome it, his body and Dao would both perish.
But before the period of Tribulation Crossing arrived, the gentleman behind him directly triggered the lightning tribulation in advance, bore everything in the youth's place, and protected him all the way to adulthood.
As for that Yang Wei or whatever his name was, there was no need to say much. Just from his facial features, he was not the sort of person who valued loyalty and righteousness.
Of course, Mr. Guo could not be blamed for misjudging him. Even donkeys had moments when they nodded off, let alone people.
Knowing someone's face but not their heart was a common thing.
Though Mr. Guo was not without flaws of his own—no man was a sage, and no one was perfect—that was not a reason for others to betray their master and forsake their ancestors.
What kind of person could forcibly change "a teacher for one day, a father for life" into "a teacher for one day, a payer for life"?
In all of China's thousands of years, such a vile rascal had never appeared before—wobbling his big frog head around and forcing ghost stories down your throat in front of the camera.
Sorry. By rights, we cultivators should not comment too much on worldly affairs, because we can see the factors of Karma and right and wrong, and it is inconvenient to become overly entangled.
I was only using this as an example. It was mixed with some experience from past worldly perceptions. That could not be called a good thing, nor could it be called a bad thing, because only by integrating worldly laws—that was, worldly rules or worldly understanding—could one better express what one wished to say.
Otherwise, if I started tossing out archaic phrases and saying, "The Great Tathagata said this and that," you would be even more confused.
As for Mr. Guo's former disciples, Xiao Wei or Xiao Jin, the benevolent saw benevolence and the wise saw wisdom. If you were on good terms with him, you would see where his strengths lay. If you stood against him, you would see his shortcomings as well.
As cultivators, do not look at problems too much through personal perspectives or personal views. Look at their essence and root; that is, directly face the laws of human nature and see straight through to the human heart.
Adding too much personal opinion brought a hundred harms and not a single benefit. Remember this, remember this.
As the saying went: "Wine and meat may pass through the bowels, yet the Buddha remains in the heart. If worldly people imitate me, they enter the demonic path." That was what it meant.
Do not look at me like this, and do not learn to be like this, because I knew why I was like this, and I understood how not to be like this.
Do not use your personal will to judge why all living beings were as they were.
The Dao, Dharma, and Tathagata were unfathomable.
Here, I shall imitate Mr. Ding from the Heavenly Dao and use the wisdom that somehow slipped through the net of my nine years of compulsory education to force out a poem:
"Passerby"
A guest within emptiness by birth, I happened to fall into this mortal world.
Smiling at the many players in the mortal world, I counted as one myself.
Shameful, shameful.
Though I understood the ultimate truth of the Great Dao, I still ended up being vulgar, unable to resist sighing and showing off before all you fellow Daoists.
Ahem~!
In truth, many methods of genuine cultivation lay within ordinary life. For example, there was that saying you had heard since childhood: do not look with your eyes; look with your heart.
Though this sentence was simple, what it truly meant was that your eyes were merely organs. They could not distinguish right from wrong, black from white, good from bad. What helped you distinguish them was your habitual cognition. Do not take the good and bad, right and wrong that habitual cognition told you as truth. Instead, stand outside it and view things with your true heart and Innate Nature. Only then could you truly and solidly see the original face of things.
The Great Dao is Simple for this very reason.
Some said thinking too much was bad; others said thinking more was a good thing.
In truth, thinking too much about irrelevant matters was no good; it was a bad thing.
But thinking more deeply about the fundamentals was certainly a very good thing.
Because then you could clearly seize the crux of the matter and face it with composure.
Some said the impermanence of life was constancy; others said life was both impermanent and constant.
From my personal perspective, both were right. It was a matter of angle.
If you regarded impermanence as constancy, then it was constancy. If you regarded constancy as impermanence, then constancy was also impermanent.
Only true ease and freedom were humanity's fundamental freedom.