The Benevolent Heart Is Moved

Look at your big brother here—when people hear I've dated seven or eight girls, they call me a scumbag.

Bullshit. Every single time, I was sincere. I gave them every bit of good I had.

That was precisely why I saw it clearly: the more you spoil people, the more rotten they become.

At the start of every relationship, as long as I put in a little effort, things went great. But once I devoted myself wholeheartedly to treating someone well—

That person would start feeling unsatisfied and even treat your big brother like some lapdog.

Fuck, what kind of nonsense was that?

I found that some girls these days seemed to have been poisoned by all that chicken-soup-for-the-soul nonsense. A lot of them had nothing, yet naturally felt they were charming little princesses. They thought anyone treating them well was only proper, and saw themselves as television drama heroines, always fantasizing about marrying some rich young master from an Aristocratic Clan.

With that tiny scrap of brains—good lord—what rich family would raise a huge idiot who'd fall for you?

When people chose wives, they wanted grace, looks, education—whatever they wanted, she had it. And the woman herself didn't lack spending money either.

Now look at you. Four-foot-six, thick waist, short legs, big ass, round face, with a not-too-bright head on your shoulders—why were you always daydreaming?

And there were some who were still young, spending every day playing around, drifting here and there, shouting that once they'd had enough fun, they'd marry an honest man and demand three or five hundred thousand in bride price.

Were you crazy, or was someone else crazy? The man you married—was he really an honest man? Were you sure he wasn't just a fucking colossal idiot?

An honest man meant someone who didn't sleep around. It didn't mean he had a lump in his brain!

Although I was a cultivator, I'd actually long since gotten used to seeing this sort of thing. I just found humans pretty interesting.

Back then, I'd done plenty of wrong too. When I didn't have a girlfriend, what big bathhouse wasn't I always visiting?

What else was I supposed to do if I didn't go? Before cultivating, who could guarantee they weren't lustful?

Besides, when I had a girlfriend, I didn't mess around. I only went wild when I was alone.

But that was a long time ago. Look at me now—even if women took the initiative to ask me out to play, I wouldn't go.

First, because I had a girlfriend now. Second, even if I didn't, I wouldn't be interested in fooling around.

Because there was no real point to it. I wasn't saying that just because I'd been there and done that.

It was genuinely boring. It was nothing more than going out to eat, drink, and have fun, then getting laid. If you had money, who couldn't you get laid with?

A couple days ago, I saw a news story.

Some guy married a wife, and after doing it just once after marriage, he got HIV.

Fuck, the most infuriating part was that the guy had gotten a premarital medical exam, but the doctor never told him the woman was sick. The doctor even said there was nothing wrong and that she was perfectly healthy.

Wasn't that screwing him over? After they investigated, they said that woman had had HIV for ten years.

Ahem, ahem. Stop showing off. Fooling around carried risks; getting laid required caution.

Of course, I wasn't saying all this coldly just because I'd had enough fun. I just felt that life couldn't have no pursuit beyond making humans. How was that any different from a breeding boar?

At the proper age, do the proper things. My heart was no longer the heart it had been back then, and what I pursued had changed too.

I wasn't saying that once people cultivated, they stopped being lustful or lost those needs. It was that they could control themselves well.

They were no longer drained of the fighting spirit their hearts ought to possess by those simple pleasures.

Before I awakened to the Dao, what week did your big brother not go wild seven or eight times? After awakening to the Dao, those urges gradually lessened.

Oh, right. Let me teach you a dual-cultivation method here, one that could improve your endurance in battle.

That was to keep your heart from getting overly excited. As for how to control it, figure it out yourselves.

Only what you realized yourself was truly yours. If someone else told you, but you didn't understand the principles, you couldn't do it.

As the saying went, one sentence conveyed the true teaching; ten thousand scrolls conveyed the false.

Back in the day, your big brother could easily last an hour.

Nowadays, I could casually go forty minutes too. Whether it was earlier or later still depended on my mood.

Doing this for too long got tiring. Men didn't find much fun in it anyway; women could still find it somewhat entertaining.

All right, let's talk about something else. If we kept going on this topic, it'd get tiresome.

I especially liked something Mr. Guo once said: if you had nothing, you could lose anything; if you had everything, you could lose nothing.

In cultivation, there was no self. If even the self was absent, what was there to fear?

Fear existed because of this perspective of "self." My feelings were hurt, so I suffered. My friend was gone, so I suffered. The little dog at home died, so I suffered.

Without this perspective of self, where would suffering come from?

Some people couldn't help crying the moment they entered a temple. Some got headaches as soon as they entered. Such people often believed it was some kind of spiritual response, some kind of karmic affinity.

But that wasn't so. Think about it: who was crying? Who was hurting? Wasn't it still because there was an "I" in their hearts?

Even if it was a physical sensation, since you could feel something, then your heart must have been moved.

Speaking of a moved heart reminded me of a story.

When Dharma Master Yinzong was sitting on the dais teaching the Dharma, he once posed a question: when the wind blew and the banner moved, was it the wind that moved, or the banner?

Two young monks argued without end.

One argued that the banner moved; the other argued that the wind moved.

The one who said the wind moved claimed that the wind blew the banner into motion, so it was the wind that moved.

The one who said the banner moved said the wind couldn't be seen at all. All that could be seen was the banner moving, so it was the banner that moved.

At that moment, Sixth Patriarch Huineng stepped forward. He said, "Neither the wind moves, nor the banner moves. The benevolent heart is moved."

From these words, it wasn't hard to see that—

Whether it was pain in the body or suffering in the heart, if the heart did not move, where would suffering come from?

To know bitterness, to know sweetness, to see the wind, to see the banner—all were the heart in motion.

If you didn't believe it, let's do an experiment. Think of something you considered very happy. Think about it with all your heart. Didn't you grow happier the more you thought about it, perhaps even laughing out loud?

Then did that thing actually happen? No. You were only thinking about it. When you thought, your heart moved; once your heart moved, you gained happy emotions.

Likewise, if you thought of something painful, then whether it had happened or not, your heart would still feel pain. That too was the heart in motion.

From this experiment, it wasn't hard to discover that a person's happiness and pain had absolutely nothing to do with whether something itself happened. It had to do with what the heart was thinking at that moment.

Some friends might say that when something bad happened, they would certainly feel sad. It wasn't as though they could simply decide not to be sad and stop being sad. Then let me ask: when that thing happened, who was it that began thinking in the direction of sadness?

And after you started thinking in that sad direction, could it change the outcome of the matter?

If it couldn't change the outcome, yet you kept turning it over and over in your mind until you suffered, even falling ill because of it, wasn't that pain upon pain, suffering upon suffering?

Did you know why, when an elderly person passed away, a crowd of people around them would say that they had gone to enjoy good fortune?

That was helping people free themselves from painful thoughts and encouraging them to think in a better direction.

By the same reasoning, if the nature of an event would not change in any way because of human thoughts, then negative emotions usually brought a hundred harms and not a single benefit.

This wasn't cold-bloodedness. It was Prajna wisdom.

Also, when someone died, wherever you thought he had gone, that force of thought would link with his soul and send him there. If you only thought bad thoughts, he might be flying up to heaven over there, but while you wailed and clung to death without end over here, you'd drag him back down again.

Longing was longing, and missing was missing. If you longed for someone's goodness and missed someone's goodness, how could you possibly suffer? All you would gain was an intense sense of happiness.

Those two things had nothing whatsoever to do with pain. You only added pain into them, which was why you felt pain.