Because public perceptions—or rather, differing cultural traits—were different, people's understanding of the same thing was never entirely the same.
There was common ground, but never complete identity.
After Daoist cultivators achieved some success in cultivation, their masters would assign troops and horses to their disciples for them to command and dispatch.
After Chuma practitioners achieved some success in cultivation, they too would be assigned all sorts of immortal households to follow them.
In truth, it was fundamentally the same thing; only two different perceptions had created the differences between them.
Traditional Daoism did not actually have gods. The immortals and deities people worshipped were all figures who had become famous in some era, then, after they passed on, were canonized by later generations and worshipped as gods.
Chuma, meanwhile, combined some similar practices while adding Buddhist statues, animal immortals, Qingfeng spirits, and the like.
Buddhism itself was originally atheistic. The translated meaning of the word "Buddha" was awareness and awakening; it described someone who had awakened.
The reasons temples were established were, first, to better spread Buddhist teachings, and second, to use ordinary people's desires to guide all living beings in a better direction.
When someone had lost confidence but believed in Buddha, they would go to a temple, buy incense, and pray for Buddha's protection. Because they believed in Buddha, they rebuilt their confidence.
The same principle applied in Daoist temples and Chuma incense halls.
When someone was at a loss, their heart hung in the air. They needed a method like this to settle it.
Once the heart settled down, everything began to change.
Human beings themselves were already powerful beings, possessing incredible healing abilities. Much of the time, when people saw doctors and took medicine, it was not the medicine curing the illness. The medicine adjusted the body's condition, allowing the body to recover faster.
For a long time, whenever I caught a bad cold, no matter how much medicine I took or how many injections I got, I would not get better. So I would say, fuck it, whatever. I'd knock back a little beer—damn it, I was going to enjoy myself and do whatever the hell I needed to do. In the end, I found that I would fully recover within a couple of days.
Later, I also wondered why drinking alcohol whenever I got sick seemed to make me better. After turning it over and over in my mind, I understood the reason: every time I drank, I urinated more often, and my body heated up. In a sense, that accelerated my metabolism and expelled certain viruses from my body more quickly. (A friendly reminder here: everyone's condition is different, and this method varies from person to person. Do not imitate it. I am only talking about what happened, not teaching people to drink. Some people who drink while sick may actually worsen their condition, so do not imitate this.)
To me now, whether I saw eminent Buddhist monks, great Daoist masters, or old Chuma immortals, they were all ordinary people. Their patterns of understanding were simply different from those of ordinary people.
For example, someone might have a headache and fever, run to all kinds of hospitals, and still fail to get cured. With no other options, they would seek help from those who cultivated mystic arts. Such people might drive out ghosts for you, perform rituals for you, and so on. In truth, the principle was to change your body's energy state through words, suggestion, and ritual actions, thereby helping treat the patient. People like that were similar to old-fashioned psychologists.
For instance, if you loved someone so deeply that you could not pull yourself free and sank yourself into pain, you might go to a hospital and be diagnosed with depression.
But if you found a ritual master, and the master told you that person was incompatible with you, that direct approach could help you escape your predicament more quickly.
Cultivators often compared Negative Energy to invisible energies such as ghosts and demons.
Sometimes they even borrowed certain props to help settle people's hearts. Look at those selling ritual implements online—Mountain Ghost Coins, Fifth Master items, and the like.
But the moment those streamers went live, they started gritting their teeth, farting, burping, and popping like corn kernels. If you looked at people like that through ordinary eyes, you would think they were simply sick in the head. If you looked at them with belief, you would think they were miraculous.
Yet what you could not deny was that the things you bought were not made by them. They came from factories, retailers, or wholesalers. Then, in front of a deity statue, they burned some incense, spat some water, knocked on a table, stomped their feet, and gave those ritual implements different meanings.
Then they sold them to you at prices ranging from tens to hundreds or even thousands.
They instilled in you the idea that you were not buying them, but inviting them home, making you firmly believe after spending the money that the things you bought possessed miraculous energy.
Do you understand now? Buying ritual implements was the same principle as burning incense and worshipping gods and Buddhas.
I could not say what they did was bad, because from another angle, they truly were helping people. But from a normal perspective, these Seven Great Immortals and Eight Great Deities were really doing the same thing as product-selling streamers, only wrapping themselves in another layer of clothing. The benevolent saw benevolence, the wise saw wisdom. If you believed it was real, then it was real; if you believed it was not, then it was not. That was why perceptions differed.
People also often used a common saying to describe this: believe, and it exists; do not believe, and it does not.
In other words, the more you believed in something, the more it existed. Yet disbelief was also another kind of belief.
Why was disbelief another kind of belief? Look—being absolutely convinced something was fake and being absolutely convinced it was real, were those not the same thing?
Could you understand it when explained this way?
Why cultivate? Different people had different goals. Some wanted to become immortals or Buddhas, some wanted liberation, and others wanted to go to Heaven or the Pure Land after they departed this world.
The positive term for it was aspiration, longing, or something similar. On the negative side, it was desire, obsession, and so on. It was the same thing: the heart wanted something.
In plain terms, it was: I wanted this, I wanted that, and for the sake of that goal, what should I do now?
In fact, everyone in this world was cultivating, though they did not know it. Every stirring of thought was a kind of cultivation and reincarnation. Every thought was a cause, and every thought was also an effect.
That was what habits—or habitual energies—created.
To break free from the restraints of this pattern, one needed special training, such as Cultivating Buddhism and understanding the Dao.
I myself only began walking the road of seeking the Great Dao after using Buddhist methods to shatter appearances.
Before I began cultivating, I was no different from all of you. I did repetitive work, and all sorts of messy thoughts would constantly spring up in my mind. Sometimes I would remember something happy and grin foolishly; sometimes I would remember something troubling and be unable to sleep.
It irritated me terribly. Clearly, there were many things I did not want to think about, yet I could not stop. Those thoughts appeared automatically.
I found that impossible to understand. I began to suspect that my thoughts were not the real me. In other words, this thing called my mind—the thing I had always believed was the soul—did not seem to be the real me. If it truly was me, why was it not under my control?
If it really were me, then should I not be able to form a thought whenever I wanted and refrain from forming one whenever I did not?
Perhaps my thinking was unusual, but I truly thought that way.
If my thoughts were me, then they should have been completely under my control and direction, rather than passively arising in such great numbers to torment me.