Right?
What Guan Zizai spoke of was constantly observing one's inner heart, thereby attaining freedom.
To perceive was to look inward and see one's own heart.
The five aggregates being empty referred to the aggregate of form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness, corresponding respectively to material and mental phenomena. That the five aggregates were all empty meant that all phenomena of arising and ceasing in this world did not truly exist, but were empty.
Emptiness did not mean that nothing existed. Rather, it was seeing through the essence of "existence"—existence was only nominal existence; if you believed it existed, then it existed, and emptiness was likewise only nominal emptiness. Emptiness was used to shatter our mistaken attachment to "existence." Once one could perceive that the five aggregates were all empty, humanity could naturally transcend all affliction and pain.
The state of the five aggregates being empty was not a state at all, but a fact. It meant that people could not correctly and completely understand things; what you saw, thought, and concluded from experience was all incorrect and incomplete.
Do you understand?
Emptiness was not true emptiness, nor was existence true existence.
Use emptiness to shatter attachment to existence.
Simply put, it meant breaking the attachment to the self, removing the habit of viewing and thinking about issues from the perspective of "me."
Once you achieved that, you could break through all suffering and calamity.
If you did not understand this principle, then copying scriptures and reciting Buddha all day could not be said to be entirely useless, but you would never understand what you were cultivating, or how one should truly cultivate.
You would only think that copying scriptures had divine power, and chanting scriptures had divine power.
Copying scriptures and chanting scriptures were meant to keep your heart pure and free of stray thoughts. They made you focus on one thing, so as to dispel the disturbance of stray thoughts. They were not meant to make you a Buddha.
If chanting scriptures could make one a Buddha, wouldn't a repeat player have become a Buddha long ago?
If copying scriptures could make one a Buddha, wouldn't a photocopier have become a Buddha long ago?
Recite one sentence of Amitabha to a pig—if the pig could understand what the hell you were saying, that would be a miracle!
Reciting Amitabha to a pig meant sending out waves of goodness through the thoughts in your own heart, not that those words themselves possessed some enormous divine power.
If those words had divine power, then how were mutes who could not speak supposed to cultivate?
If words had divine power, and you recited Amitabha with your mouth while thinking evil thoughts in your heart, could that accomplish anything? Could you cultivate successfully?
If your heart was kind and good, then even words that cursed others would still convey goodwill.
Look at all those friends who joke, laugh, curse, and bicker with one another. When have you ever seen any of them get angry?
Wasn't it because no one took it seriously in their hearts?
Only by understanding this principle could you understand why I taught you to slap ghosts across the face in the previous chapter.
The more you feared it, the more it bullied you!
Ghosts also served dishes according to the person at the table. That was why ghosts feared wicked people.
Because wicked people had fierce fire in them, they were vicious! That fire was a kind of energy. When your energy was sufficient, ghosts did not dare make a move.
And butchers—after slaughtering pigs and sheep year after year, they carried killing intent all over them. Ghosts were afraid when they saw them too. Why were they afraid?
It was very simple, because killing intent was also a kind of energy.
What those cultivating through my book absolutely had to cultivate was dominance!
Dominance was fiercer than the other two kinds of qi!
What was dominance? You were fierce with me? Heh heh, I would go right up and give you two hard slaps, teaching you which was the big joker and which was the little joker.
You had killing intent toward me? I'd fire up the wok and heat the oil—tonight, I'd have oil-fried ghost with my liquor. Just watch and see whether I ate you.
Was that fierce or not? Was that dominant or not? With that attitude, which ghost wouldn't be left muddled when it saw you?
Which ghost wouldn't hurry up and run when it saw you?
Most of the time, when people saw ghosts, they were either groggy, asleep and dreaming, or extremely terrified when they saw them.
Because ghosts were formless and had no physical bodies.
You could only see them when your energy frequency reached a particular band. Normally, you could not see them.
Let me tell you a few true stories.
Before I attained enlightenment, a good buddy and I lived in a factory dormitory. Our bunks were beside the door, one above the other. I slept on the top bunk, and he slept on the bottom.
One morning, I saw that he was listless, his eyes dull, looking as if he had not slept well, so I asked him what was wrong.
He said he had dreamed of a ghost. In the dream, he saw a woman with a child sitting on top of him, pressing him down. Then he could neither move nor speak.
I told him it was nothing, that dreams were nothing to take seriously.
Guess what happened? Fuck, that very night, I dreamed of them too. I dreamed of a woman in a long red dress with long hair, and a little girl with two pigtails, sitting on top of me.
The two of them were one in front of the other, the little girl in front and the woman behind. Their four hands pressed against my chest, and their eyes stared straight at me.
I hadn't attained enlightenment yet back then. That scared the fuck out of me—I nearly ascended to heaven on the spot.
I forced myself to stay calm. When I realized I could not open my mouth to speak, I used my thoughts to ask whether they needed any help. If they did, they should say so; if I could help, I definitely would. I told them not to keep pressing down on me.
I asked twice, but they ignored me both times. In the end, they pissed me off. My temper back then was terrifyingly bad. I rarely got angry, but once I did, fuck whoever it was—nobody could do a damn thing about it.
The moment my temper flared, my eyes flew wide open, and I cursed in my heart, "Fuck your mothers! If you've got something to say, say it; if not, get the fuck out! Keep fucking pressing me down, and I'll eat you!"
Just like that, I instantly woke from the dream. After calming down for a while, without thinking much about it, I fell asleep again.
After work, I cheerfully asked that buddy of mine whether the woman in his dream had worn a long red dress, had long hair, and looked to be in her twenties or around thirty.
The child was about six or seven, with two pigtails on her head and big eyes.
Then the two of them sat on top of him one in front of the other, the child in front and the woman behind.
Their two pairs of hands pressed against his chest, their eyes staring straight at him.
After hearing that, he was stunned. He asked me how I knew.
I first burst out laughing to lighten the mood, then finally told him that I had dreamed of them too.
I also taught him how I had broken free, and told him not to be afraid—they probably would not come again.
After that, we truly never dreamed of them again.
That was the strangest case of sleep paralysis I had ever encountered in real life. Two people had actually been able to have exactly the same dream.
Thinking back on it later, perhaps we had only recently started work, had not rested well, and our energy frequencies were too low. It just so happened that the mother and daughter were looking for someone, and the two of us ran into them.
Something similar happened after I attained enlightenment, but it was no longer scary. Instead, it became rather fun.
For example, one night, as I lay in bed sleeping, I felt a black shadow slowly approaching me.
I did not know whether any of you had ever had that feeling. Anyway, I had had it since my teens: clearly, I was asleep, yet I could sense what was happening beside me and choose whether to wake up.
This time was the same. I quietly narrowed my eyes and waited for it to come closer.
When it got close, I instantly sat up and grabbed it by the throat.
It was a middle-aged woman with short hair. After I grabbed her, her eyes were full of terror.
I asked who she was and why she had come to my home.
I had thought she was some fucking thief.
She hurriedly explained that my partner had opened the door and let her in.
I turned around and saw that my partner was still asleep, so I nudged her and asked whether that was true. She said it was.
I said that next time, she should not casually open the door to strangers. It was the middle of the fucking night, and this woman had come wandering around our home.
Cursing all the while, I dragged the woman out by her collar and threw her outside. That was only because she kept begging and promising not to come again; otherwise, she definitely would not have escaped a vicious beating.