No-Self

If you did not disperse this light within your heart, the great path of immortality would shine with brilliance!

If it was for all living beings under heaven, then you could give some thought to this power of yours.

What else could break through your defense? What else could stop your spear?

In life, in living, no matter what hardship you encountered, no matter how lost your heart became, as long as you held firm to your faith in the greater good.

You would surely sweep through all opposition, peerless beneath heaven!

Did you find that a little hard to believe?

Go investigate, go take a look. Those descendants of revolutionary forebears who grew up in military compound courtyards—look at that kind of awareness they possessed.

If they had not inherited their forebears' righteousness soaring to the clouds, how could they have become renowned across the land today?

Wasn't there a saying? People who came out of military compound courtyards supported half the arts and entertainment world.

Why was that? Because they inherited the traits those people of the previous generation carried within them—different from the crowd, a Spirit Soul that feared nothing.

You could not merely look at how good others were. Only by studying things from the root could you understand.

Look at their boldness, the effort they gave for a single goal.

And their resistance to all oppression—that was to say, the state of mind of possessing an independent self.

You told him learning welding was good; you told him driving was good. He said no, I just want to write.

No matter what you said, there was nothing you could do. You could not change him.

Whether you were his parents or anyone else, no matter how much you wanted him to live as you envisioned, it would not work. He could still persist in carrying out his own ideas.

But when facing the great righteousness of the nation, he had his bottom line, as well as the awareness passed down from his forebears.

That was what made them different from ordinary people.

Look at ordinary people: this person told you that you should do things this way, that person told you that you should do things that way. In the end, you listened to a few words from this one and a few from that one, until you confused yourself senseless and no longer knew how you ought to live.

Once you grew a little older and had achieved nothing, you began lamenting society's injustice and the unfairness of your circumstances.

You even began blaming Heaven and faulting others, saying your country was no good. In truth, you simply had not lived as yourself.

Early on, you had been too obedient and had no self.

Later, once you had a self, you had no greater righteousness. You had utterly become an empty shell.

You spent every day drifting with the current, yet sighed over the fickleness of worldly affairs and complained that everything was so unfair.

Forgive this poor Daoist for speaking bluntly: you're fucking nothing. You are not even yourself, so what the hell are you babbling about Heaven's Dao being unfair for?

First become yourself, then clearly see the laws of society and the laws of human nature before you start talking.

You could not even see the patterns of your own habits. You heard the wind and called it rain; you saw a leg and called it a donkey.

You were already living in a world imagined by yourself, so what the hell were you arguing with me for? Did you star in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio or something?

You could not even decide your own thoughts or emotions. You could read scriptures for eight hundred years and copy allusions for ten thousand years—what fucking use would that be?

You had never even become yourself. Did you think your words were credible? Were they not all perceptions born from the patterns of your own habits?

If you had been raised by dogs and told me eating shit was right, should I believe you too?

If you had been raised by monkeys and told me humans ought to climb trees, should I believe you too?

If I believed even one sentence of yours, would I not fucking become you? Then I might as well stop being myself. You could be me, and I could be your father or whatever.

Those who cultivated had to cultivate no-self. No-self did not mean that I, this person, ceased to exist; it meant that the perspective of individual cognition ceased to exist.

With self and others, one could be called a worthy person; without self, one was a sage.

If one could achieve no-self, if even the self was gone, then where would troubles come from?

This no-self meant removing the trait of viewing things from the angle of the self.

Viewing problems from the angle of the self was called attachment to self, or an attached heart. Removing this attachment to self was the so-called true self.

Then you would leap beyond the Three Realms and no longer remain within the Five Elements.

Of course, I was not talking about zombies. I meant that this state meant you had already become an immortal or a sage.

You would not suffer the pain of the Six Paths of Rebirth, nor would you fear life and death.

The reason a true heart did not die lay here; the reason for eternal life and indestructibility also lay here.

Without self, how could I be extinguished? Without self, how could I die?

This no-self was the state after attachment to self had been removed—the state of this heart.

Why did some cultivators say nothing at all? Because speaking represented a personal viewpoint, and a personal viewpoint was attachment to self.

But if they said nothing, they had no way to teach living beings. That was why the term expedient teaching came to be.

So-called expedient teaching meant borrowing forms such as speech and writing to describe the process and state of cultivation to you.

Of course, everyone's realizations were different, so what they cultivated was different as well.

Some people thought attachment to self meant "I don't think so," or "he doesn't think so," but that was completely wrong.

As long as you stood at any angle to view a problem, it was called attachment to self.

Even if you spoke from outside your own cognition, it was still the same, because once it was spoken, it represented the self.

That was why many people said, "The Buddha said this." Or they said an immortal said it, Lord Lao said it, or some representative figure said it.

Because he could not say he himself had said it or thought it. Only when he said the Buddha said it, or someone else said it, would people believe and submit.

They borrowed this method—or rather, this wondrous application—to save people.

So when you saw all those so-called grand masters and lesser masters, you would feel it: why did what they said and did seem no different from ordinary people? Why did they charge money for this and fees for that?

Because their state of mind was not sufficient. While helping you, they also wanted to gain benefits from you.

There was also the greatest flaw of ordinary people: the notion that cheap goods were never good goods.

Because of habitual cognition, ordinary people did not cherish things obtained easily and for free. Instead, they cherished things gained only with difficulty.

Sometimes, when certain masters lacked sufficient cultivation or had not escaped attachment to self, they would also spin a string of lies to profit from people, or use the idea that you had to give before receiving a return to save people.

When you could not see through it, you would find it extremely strange.

And many people used human nature to swindle money and sex, possessing none of the bearing a cultivator ought to have.

What did benefiting living beings mean? It meant I sought no repayment!

If I sought repayment, would that be benefiting living beings? At any rate, I did not think so. That was merely an exchange or a transaction.

Think about it. You gave me twenty thousand and asked me to help you with something. I took your money and helped you. Then whom did I benefit? Was it not still myself? Was I not still seeking something from you?

If I sought this or that from you, was that not still because there was an "I" in my heart?

Since an I existed, what fucking grand master or dog master could I be?

What was a master? One who transmitted the Dao, imparted knowledge, and resolved doubts. There was no point about receiving benefits.

A grand master was simply a master whose cultivation was comparatively profound, so there was even less of such a point.

You trusted me, and then I used that trust to demand your money, claiming it was for this patriarch or that patriarch.

Yes, I did indeed buy incense for the patriarchs, and a small portion of the money was used for construction.

But did I not spend most of it on myself, on my own food and drink? What fucking grand master was I, then? Was I not a great swindler?

Spending your money while acting like your grandfather in front of you—sorry, but I did not have such a twisted mindset. Nor did I want you to possess such a humble, servile nature!