Of course, this loving-kindness also included a heart that embraced all things. Knowing that the ignorance, thoughts, and perceptions of sentient beings arose merely from the Discriminative Mind of individual cognition, one did not fuss over them and could tolerate them.
And compassion included precisely this: feeling sorrow and sadness for sentient beings.
Study and reflect well, child. If you did not understand this principle in this life, it would be difficult to understand it again in the next.
As Master Meng Can said, obtaining a human body was no easy matter. With a human body, one could better hear the Buddha's teachings.
Here, the Buddha's teachings referred to the method of becoming a Buddha.
In other words, Enlighten the Mind and See the True Nature—the method of seeking one's true self.
Being able to read this book for free on this platform was an immensely great opportunity in your life.
If you did not believe it, go look online, go look in everyday life. They would ask you for money—often a great deal of money.
Of course, they could not be blamed for this, because things obtained too easily were often not cherished.
What was hard to obtain was what people treasured instead.
It was like this: if no money was charged, you would not listen attentively either. It was free anyway, so if you slacked off, you slacked off. At worst, you could come back and listen again—it was all free anyway.
But what if they charged you? Charged you ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a million? Then you would think: I must listen carefully to this lesson. Even if I had to beat myself into it, I had to listen, because this was hard to come by. Within it lay the truth of life; within it lay methods of cultivation. This was the sorrowful side of human nature.
Things that were clearly very simple became complicated because of the complexity in one's own heart.
That was why saving others was difficult; saving those who did not have to spend money was even harder.
This was also the helplessness of Buddha and Bodhisattva.
Some masters charged money to save people because they wanted money. Some masters charged money to save people purely out of helplessness.
If I did not charge you, you would not believe me. Tell me, what was I supposed to do?
If I saw that you sincerely sought the Way and taught you directly, you would start imagining all sorts of things. Your mind would not focus. Yet if I demanded a great deal of money from you, you would become serious instead.
Your principle of not believing too easily made you unable to distinguish true from false, right from wrong, or genuine cultivation from fake cultivation.
In truth, there was no such thing as genuine or fake cultivation. If you felt that what someone said helped you understand, opened your heart, benefited you, and helped you grow, then it was good.
It had nothing to do with fees. It was only that some people deliberately instilled in you the idea that you had to spend money, and that spending too little would not do. They made you believe that cultivating and studying the Way required money, that you had to be wealthy.
This opened a door for some people while closing a door for others.
Whether a door was closed or opened, ordinary people saw both benefits and drawbacks.
Today, I talked with a friend who had set up an incense altar about some matters of cultivation. He surprised me greatly.
Because for many people who had formed certain understandings, breaking through them again was very difficult. But his comprehension and insight were excellent. When I guided him to consider certain questions, he could grasp the principles within them.
But precisely because of that, it would be difficult for him to awaken. Do you know why?
Because he heard the Buddha's teachings too easily. He did not understand that what he had realized was the Buddha's teachings and the Dao's teachings, nor did he understand that he was breaking through appearances.
It would clash powerfully with his own understanding, even causing his mind to go blank, leaving him not knowing what to do.
Because once his previous understanding was shattered, he would discover that what he had once thought right and what he had once thought wrong were both not right. Even the gods and Buddhas he believed in would take on different forms.
Ordinary people could not accept that all at once. And I had shared too many things with him that differed from his previous understanding, so inwardly he would resist. He would become both curious and resistant.
Sometimes, simply explaining things for free did not work. Yet I did not want to charge money either. It was like taking money from my own pocket just to praise myself for being awesome—very boring.
So the place where I most liked to discuss scriptures and the Dao was still within books.
I did not need to explain the principles behind everything. I needed only to write it for you to read, and you could realize it yourself. Whatever you realized was yours alone.
Only reading could lead people into deep thought. In conversation, before one topic had been thought through, the discussion had already moved to another.
So in the end, although you clearly felt that you knew a great deal, you remembered only a tiny bit.
Let me speak frankly: after setting up an incense altar, trying to break through appearances again was harder than climbing to the sky, because you had benefited from it. The more you benefited, the more correct it would feel.
This was perfectly normal common sense. Someone told you that you could pick up money by going out, so you went out to pick up money—and you really did pick some up.
Then someone else told you that the money had originally been yours; they had merely told you to go retrieve it. You definitely would not understand those words.
It was like many people nowadays: the moment they had psychological or physical problems that could not be detected through examinations, they sought someone to look into their affairs. Then they were told that they carried an affinity and needed to establish an altar and settle a Household.
Why did they all say the same thing? If one person said it, you would not believe it. But if everyone said it, would you believe it then?
And whose Household was the Household they told you to settle? Was it not the Household of your own heart?
Did they establish for you a Household that allowed you to believe in yourself?
Look—you did not believe in yourself. You had no courage. You feared this and feared that. Sometimes you could not even sleep, tossing and turning as wild thoughts churned through your mind, until you made your body sluggish and weak.
After they settled a Household for you, your heart settled down. You had gods, immortals, and a powerful patron to rely on. Even if you did not believe in yourself, you had to believe in gods, immortals, and the Buddha, right?
Once you believed, your heart became settled and quiet. Would not all those ailments in your body naturally get better?
Why did your heart still stir up trouble as you continued believing? Because what you believed in was not yourself. You were borrowing a framework of understanding, borrowing the names of gods, immortals, and Buddhas. Deep down, you still lacked confidence.
And there was another matter: you placed the gods and immortals you imagined in your heart, and treated your own ability to communicate with your heart as a Supernatural Ability.
You treated your original heart as someone else. You would still feel uneasy, as though someone were controlling you and watching you. Tell me, how could you not be troubled?
Whenever you thought of something or did something, you always felt that the old immortals would punish you. You felt guilty and afraid. Fearful, you dared do nothing; after doing it, you became afraid again.
In truth, you had imagined all of that yourself.
Would gods and immortals concern themselves with the affairs of mortals? Who did you think you were?
Just because someone said you carried an affinity, you thought the gods had to watch over and bless you?
There were 1.5 to 1.6 billion people across the country who all wanted that. Do you think they could possibly manage it all? Were you that special? Was Jack Ma not far more special than you? Was Li Ka-shing not more special than you?
You were someone who found even going to work difficult, so lazy that you did not want to do anything, with no goals and no dreams—yet you thought gods and Buddhas had an affinity with you?
Did you believe that yourself?
Since you possessed such immense divine power and such a powerful realm, why were you still an ordinary person? Why could you still suffer, still feel irritated, still be so overwhelmed and exhausted by life's endless turmoil that you could barely divide yourself in two?
Let me tell you the truth: perhaps you had never even seen your most authentic self.
If you did not believe it, look back and think. At every stage of your life, your thoughts and condition at every stage, you had constantly wandered and changed within the habits of cognition.
Not for a single moment had you remained steady.
Do not become someone ruled by the desires of self-cognition. Become a strong person who ruled yourself.
Redefine yourself. Reset your cognitive program. Become a god yourself; unite the true self and the false self, and use the true self to control the false self.