Enlightenment is to comprehend the principles

I don't know if any of you have ever doubted yourselves, but I truly refused to accept it!

Clearly, these are my own thoughts, so why do they rise and fall and go back and forth, affecting my mood automatically?

What's most infuriating is that it can make me joyful, and it can also make me dejected, and even sometimes angry.

My little emotions are completely toyed with in its palm.

It was from this point, when I started doubting the authenticity of my own thoughts, that I began to constantly ponder this matter.

By chance, while scrolling through short videos, I stumbled upon a video of Master Meng Can telling a story.

Because I'm fond of many mysterious and unknown things, I would stop and listen every time I saw a video of Master Meng Can. Sometimes, I would do the same for videos by Master Zhang Zhishun.

Although I couldn't understand what they were talking about at all, Master Meng Can's storytelling was fine. But when Master Zhang Zhishun talked about cultivation, about the Primordial Spirit and the Conscious Spirit, I was completely bewildered. Still, I really enjoyed listening.

This time, when I saw Master Meng Can telling a story, I suddenly had a different realization than before. In the past, I just listened to it as a story, thinking it might contain some principles for how to live and conduct oneself. But this time, I actually heard a method of cultivation within the story.

How should I put this? I don't know how to describe it to you.

For example, the Master said, "Look at these little animals. Don't think they're different from you; they have a heart inside too. If you harm them, they will also be afraid and hate you, and so on."

At first glance, this story might seem insignificant, but if you think about it carefully, if they have thoughts just like humans, aside from their outward appearance, doesn't that mean they are essentially humans with different appearances?

And when you look at us humans, aside from not being covered in fur, can you say there's much difference from animals?

So, is this story talking about a mind-cultivation technique of "breaking appearances"?

It's about making you understand that all life is the same, equal, with only external differences.

From then on, I began to think about things and understand sentient beings according to this perspective.

For instance, if I get a few mosquito bites at night, I won't get angry or resentful, because how would a mosquito know it's biting someone? It's just eating.

Think about it, if you were suddenly slapped to death while eating, would you be okay with that?

So, I just let the bites happen. I just considered it treating the little mosquito to a meal, and I didn't get angry or annoyed.

Also, my kitchen is next to the balcony, and mice always find their way into the kitchen to look for food. I generally don't keep much in the kitchen, just some dried chili peppers and potatoes. I buy other vegetables as I need them.

A mouse gnawed half of my potato and ate a bunch of my dried chilies. I wasn't angry or annoyed. I was just worried it would get a stomachache from eating so many chilies. So one night, I said to the mouse, talking to myself: "Little mouse, why don't you stop coming here? We don't have much to eat here anyway. My girlfriend is scared of you, and when you come, you can only gnaw on dried chilies. What's so good about that? Don't come anymore. Haha."

Since then, I haven't seen a single mouse in my house, and it's been almost a year and a half now.

Isn't that fun? Isn't that magical?

From these two incidents, I also realized the power of not resenting. That is, not to harbor resentment for anything, not to get angry. Changing your perspective leads to a different outcome.

Actually, I understood these principles before, but I hadn't thought about them this way or applied them like this.

I've found that understanding principles is useless. If you haven't personally realized them or if you understand them but can't put them into practice, it's as if you understand nothing. When you encounter a situation, you won't be able to use that knowledge.

Therefore, people need to attain enlightenment, and enlightenment is the process of comprehending principles. It is also the best way to cultivate.

Just like writing, if you just write blindly, you can write yourself to death and still not produce anything remarkable. But if you write while also understanding the principles of writing, and one day you grasp even one of them, your writing will greatly improve.

I am always trying to gain insights, but so far, I've only seen a tiny glimmer. I know there are rules and techniques to writing, but I haven't found that rhythm yet. But there's no rush; I'll understand it after looking a bit more.

In fact, in this life, everything has its own rules. As long as you can observe them carefully and master them, you will have cultivated a form of the Way.

The so-called myriad Great Ways are actually the inherent patterns of all things.

Besides the Way of cultivation, the most crucial and important thing is for people to cultivate the Way of their own hearts. Or, you could say, to cultivate the internal patterns of their own minds.

For example, the human body is like a biological machine, and human thought is the program for this machine. With this program, humans instinctively think about good and bad, right and wrong, true and false, black and white, and so on.

Ordinary people, normal people, are passively controlled by this program to run their lives and their entire existence.

They cannot control their thoughts; they can only be compelled by habit, or what is called inertia of thought, habitual thinking, and habitual cognition.

This is the root cause of human suffering.

You want to do one thing but can't, you want to do another but can't control yourself.

Because you are not truly yourself; you are merely a shell controlled by habitual cognition, like an NPC in a game. If you aren't suffering, who is?

If you want to end suffering, you must break the rules, go against the natural order, become your true self, and gain complete control over your thoughts.

When I say "going against the natural order" here, I don't mean defying heaven! What I mean by "going against the natural order" is going against your own thoughts, that is, the thoughts and cognitions formed by the push from the innate Primordial Spirit.

I don't know if I mentioned this in previous chapters, but let me clarify here: you can think of the Primordial Spirit as the human subconscious, and the Conscious Spirit as human thoughts and ideas.

Cultivation is a very scientific matter. Don't imagine it to be some kind of magic, although it truly is quite magical.

If humans can completely control their thoughts, it means they can completely control their emotions. By controlling their emotions, they can then influence the state of their bodies.

This is because every time humans have a thought or experience any emotion, various substances are secreted within the body, or the body's energy transforms into different states.

For example, your body's state when you are happy, when you are sad, when you are angry, and so on.

Cultivation is about completely controlling your thoughts, and through controlling your thoughts, controlling your emotions. Then, by controlling your emotions, you influence your body's health and balance.

For instance, when your body is lacking a certain type of energy, you can directly guide yourself to generate the specific emotion needed to secrete the substances you require, thereby achieving balance within your body and attaining health.