For All Who Can Get Sick (Part 1)

2008/6/29 9:44:41

If you consider yourself an immortal, then you don't need to read this post.

Let me start with some idle chatter. That old established restaurant that's been revived was indeed excellent yesterday. Of course, there were too many people and the environment was terrible. Generally, truly great food is always found deep in old streets and narrow alleys — that's perfectly normal.

People are the same way.

Last day of IV drip. Once it's done, I'll continue going out to look at houses. This area happens to be where real estate development is most intense and most comprehensive in the entire country. The average level of real estate here is absolutely number one nationwide. All the major developers who come here pull out their best moves. This ID's house-viewing is actually secondary — for understanding the current state and trends of China's real estate market, there's probably nothing better than this kind of on-site observation.

Tomorrow, I plan to leave the hospital for a trip — to go out and travel for half a month. This ID's younger brother always wants to ultimately eradicate this ID's illness completely, seemingly not wanting to let that extraordinary healer claim the credit. This ID has already told him: I'll give him half a month to experiment. If it doesn't work, then it's back to cultivation training.

This ID is particularly interested in all manner of human experimentation. Activities like Shennong tasting hundreds of herbs are my absolute favorites. Those so-called materialists — first learn to experiment on your own body with your own beliefs. In this ID's eyes, the body is an experimental subject that can be experimented on at will. Do this first before spouting nonsense. If you can't even handle experimentation on your own body, and you call yourselves materialists? Go grind walls!

People — birth, aging, sickness, death — these are ordinary affairs. Not getting sick is not enough to be human. Birth, aging, death — for ordinary people, these probably seem too mysterious and uncontrollable, so they fall into superstition. For example, blindly believing the nonsense of materialism, such as the drivel that humans are purely so-called matter and disintegrate into nothingness upon death. Of course, even if these foolish people who parrot hearsay think this way, they still won't disintegrate into nothingness when they die. It merely becomes their karmic force, forever entangling them, until the day it's finally resolved.

But when it comes to illness, because it's so frequent, people have thoroughly seized upon it, and everything from sorcery to science has come in wave after wave.

Illness, at its root, comes down to one idiom: you reap what you sow. To thoroughly cure illness, the only way is to completely eliminate the karmic obstacles corresponding to that illness. Beyond this, there is no other method. Eliminating karmic obstacles involves nothing more than two paths: external force and internal force.

External force, at its root, is the collective karma of all sentient beings, plus one's own karmic affinities. For example, a scientifically comprehensive cure in an economic society requires money to be realized, and each person's financial capacity or financial fortune is their corresponding karmic affinity. As for the scientific method and the specific form of the economic society — those are the collective karma of all sentient beings. Without the convergence of causes and conditions from both, the fruit of being cured by that scientific method cannot be produced.

The vast majority of Buddhist practitioners have severe prejudice against science. A couple of days ago, a relative came to visit this ID — moreover, one of this ID's elders. This ID saw that she had been too severely influenced by deviant teachers in this regard, so I spoke very seriously, saying: I can only speak to her now in my capacity as a Buddhist disciple, without regard for worldly kinship or seniority. She said she could completely accept this perspective. Only then did this ID speak with her. In the end, I also gave her three checkpoints for identifying deviant teachers, and briefly explained the methods of practice. Then I told her to come see this ID again in ten years. Of course, we will still meet as relatives in the meantime, but that kind of meeting is not this kind of meeting — and yet, when have we ever truly not been meeting?

When has science ever not been the Buddha-dharma? Among scientists, how many are great bodhisattvas reborn — do you know?

I'm sorry, as I've been writing this, the car has arrived. I need to go look at houses now. Let's continue tomorrow. And since this is a matter that concerns every single person, I invite you all to ponder it as well.