Focus your mental energy on a single point; use that point to break through the surface.
This method is called single-minded focus, also known as the flow state—like being aided by the gods.
Traditional and modern ritual practices often worked this way.
Empty your mind and focus on one thing. No matter what you did or learned, it would feel like cheating.
Painting, music, and every other profession—if you could do this, you would surely reach the realm of a master after seven years.
Learn in a flow state while seeing the patterns clearly. That was the cheat-code state of life.
Here, let's talk about passing three trials: emotion, wealth, and injury.
The trial of emotion did not refer solely to romantic love between men and women, but to emotions in their ordinary state.
Family affection, friendship, romantic love—all kinds of feelings were included.
Understanding these emotions simply meant recognizing that they arose from patterns of cognition and habit, and not getting tangled up in them.
As the saying went, immortals were without emotion. But this "without emotion" did not mean truly having no feelings. It meant being compassionate toward all living beings while also knowing that such feelings stemmed from one's own cognitive patterns.
The trial of wealth did not merely refer to money. It referred to the things you possessed, the things you believed were yours. They did not truly belong to you. Even this body was only something you used in this lifetime. When you left, you could take nothing with you. Therefore, all these things were only temporarily under your control; they did not truly belong to you. You had to see that clearly.
The trial of injury did not refer only to physical harm. It referred to the heart finding hope again after being reborn through countless moments of despair. No matter what you went through, you still believed in yourself and were not defeated by anything. You kept going until you broke free and saw clearly that today's suffering was only temporary, that you would not be trapped by what troubled you in the present. Later, you would no longer see suffering as suffering. If you could make this transformation, every breath would feel comfortable and free.
These three trials were also meant to break through cognition. As the saying went, when the heart did not die, the Dao could not be born. Let go, in your thoughts, of the people you could not let go of, the matters you could not let go of, and the things you could not let go of. Once you had let go of them all, you would have passed these three trials.
This did not mean telling you to want nothing, abandon everything, and find a mountain or temple to live in. Wouldn't the human world fall into chaos then?
It meant that your heart would no longer be troubled by those things. Having them was fine; not having them was also fine. You would not let all that messy nonsense disturb your heart.
What I said was simple, but when you truly encountered it yourself, it was hard to pull free. The player was lost in the game.
You had to keep this in mind often, cultivate it slowly, and achieve it bit by bit.
The reason I liked having a little drink was because, after my heart was wounded time and again back then, I kept wine by my side. Later, I gradually became able to quit whenever I wished.
And drinking no longer affected my mind.
Quitting was actually easy. As long as you changed your cognition, your habits would gradually change with it.
What was difficult was that your thinking logic had solidified, making it hard to accept understandings outside your habitual tendencies.
It was like how the public viewed gods and Buddhas. From childhood, they watched mythological stories, television dramas, novels, and all sorts of things. Then they heard legendary tales of seven gods and eight ghosts from those around them.
Over time, people came to believe in their hearts that gods, Buddhas, ghosts, and monsters were things within their own cognition.
You had to know that those were merely stories. And words and language were merely descriptors.
For example, "cup" described the thing you held in your hand to contain water, while "ashtray" described something used to hold cigarette butts and ashes.
If you used a cup as an ashtray, then the cup became an ashtray. If you used a mineral water bottle as an ashtray, then the mineral water bottle also became an ashtray.
Gods, Buddhas, ghosts, and monsters were the same. They described certain energies between Heaven and Earth, and the symbols used to describe those energies were words.
The sun, solar orb, and so on were descriptions of that huge fireball in the sky. No matter what you called it, it was still itself.
We called it this here, while abroad they used other words, other languages, and other sounds to represent it.
We said, "Hello." Those two characters represented greeting someone.
Foreigners said, "Hello." Those letters, or that pronunciation, likewise represented the same meaning.
"What are you doing?" asked what someone was going to do. "Whatcha doing?" also asked what someone was going to do.
They were all descriptions.
In different cultures and different cognitions, these descriptions could represent the same meaning, but because their forms of expression differed, they could not be understood by everyone.
I remembered seeing a video on Douyin. A mother took her young daughter to pet a dog by the roadside.
At first, the dog did not move. The little girl petted its head, and the mother did too. But when the dog finally reacted, it lunged up and bit the mother.
The reason was the same. Under different cognitions, the goodwill you expressed might not necessarily be accepted. When it was not accepted and you still kept going on and on, you would be seen as invading or malicious.
If the one crouching by the roadside had not been a dog but a stranger, think about it. He did not even know you, yet you went up and touched him here and there. Wouldn't he beat you up?
So, whether you were dealing with people or doing anything else, do not treat what you believed to be good as automatically good, or what you believed to be bad as automatically bad. You had to view things rationally and objectively.
Because perspectives differed, understanding was bound to differ as well.
Take getting a girlfriend, for example. Before you got her, you felt that this girl was wonderful and that you absolutely had to have her. Once you truly won her over, you felt it was just so-so.
Then you looked back at other girls, who seemed even better, and so you became a scumbag.
The reason was not that the girl had changed, but that your cognition and thinking had changed, causing you to change.
The same went for girls. A boy treated you well, so you got together with him. Later, you discovered someone who treated you even better, or you saw how wonderful someone else's boyfriend was and felt envious. At that moment, your cognition and thinking changed too, so you were no longer satisfied with the present and believed you could get something better. That was how a scummy girl was born.
All of this was because you treated what you thought as truth, yet did not know that thoughts never stopped; they were always changing.
The root of human suffering lay here. The so-called Six Paths of Rebirth—love and hate, romance and enmity, sorrow and joy, anger and delight—all arose from this.
This was called the summoning of karmic force.
Your patterns of thought were driven by your past karmic force.
Do you understand now?
What this karmic force referred to was the state in which your ordinary patterns of thought passively controlled you.
That was why it was also called the Six Paths of Rebirth.
You could think about it: what were the Six Paths of Rebirth?
The path of heavenly beings, the Asura path, the human path, the hell path, the hungry ghost path, and the animal path.
Those on the path of heavenly beings had no troubles and were free and unrestrained.
What about the Asura path? They possessed things ordinary people did not possess, yet still suffered from vexation and distress.
The human path—we'll discuss that in a moment.
The hell path meant falling into suffering and being unable to pull free.
The hungry ghost path meant never being satisfied, always feeling that you had not eaten enough, and feeling that no matter what you possessed, it was still not enough.
The animal path meant shallow cognition, bitter toil, working like an ox or horse, and spending a lifetime busy without leisure.
The human path was constantly turning through the other five paths, sometimes good and sometimes bad.
This was what was called the Six Paths of Rebirth.