A Grave Illness Reveals Character

2008/6/8 10:16:37

Judging the market is not easy, but reading people is far harder. One major illness has yielded much, and among the gains is a deeper ability to read people. At the threshold of life and death, all pretense and hypocrisy shed their disguises — whatever intestinal machinations people harbor become perfectly clear. This time, quite a few people revealed their true colors upon hearing the notice that this ID had only three months to live. I am speaking here of people in real life. What a splendid drama — all the masks of the human world, stripped bare. Once the masks are gone, true friends and companions unto death naturally emerge, and those previously unknown become known.

The dark night grants dark eyes to search for light; a grave illness bestows great wisdom to discern genuine feeling. Between misfortune and opportunity, it all depends on how you transform it. If a grave illness first knocks you flat, then what does "gaining great wisdom to discern genuine feeling" have to do with you? A person must first stand on their own — stand up and face everything squarely, and wisdom will naturally surge forth. To equalize life and death, to regard misfortune and fortune as one — without such breadth of spirit, one can only be an unrooted leaf, blown about by the red dust.

The illness is my illness; illness and I are one. "I" is that which is ill in me. Without I, how can there be my illness? The root of disease lies in self, not in others. This body-and-mind of mine is the source of ten thousand illnesses. Begin with body and mind, and naturally ten thousand illnesses can be eliminated. Yet most people separate body and mind, set body and mind in opposition — and naturally ten thousand illnesses entangle them, never to be liberated. Body and mind as one, body and mind mutually purified — this is the universal path to resolving ten thousand illnesses. Practice it, and it becomes manifest.

All things achieve completion through the conjunction of many conditions; lean one way, and success or failure becomes easy. Success and failure often hinge on a single thought. To act recklessly without perceiving this is the common malady of human life. Most people are perpetually within the disease yet do not know it. Delusory sensation, delusory imagination, delusory action, delusory consciousness — all manifest the color of disease. The color-disease deepens or shallows in accordance with these, and when the four delusions are entirely removed, the color-disease has no more conditions to arise.

A grave illness reveals character. All people are bound up in self. Knowing the illness of self leads to knowing; knowing the illness of self leads to its elimination. Knowing people, knowing self, knowing illness — then a grave illness has not been in vain. Transform the cause of grave illness into the fruit of holy wisdom. Cause and effect are not to be trifled with — remember this, remember this!