83. All beings are without fault
The Buddhist view is that all sentient beings are without fault. Why? Even in the highest Buddha realm, one is willing to accompany sentient beings, slowly guiding them and giving them opportunities to correct their mistakes. No matter how dirty, how rotten you are, or even if you've reached the 18th level of hell, if you're the worst of the worst, one is still willing to give you a chance. The overall idea is that all sentient beings are without fault. From the Buddha's perspective, and from the perspective of higher-level deities, most sentient beings in the lower realms are essentially no different from children. Compared to a Buddha, or a person with perfect mind, an ordinary human being's physical body is mature, but their mind and cognition are far from mature, so the possibility of them not making mistakes is almost zero. Since the Buddha hasn't given you perfect cognition, hasn't freed you from the influence of mind and karma, and hasn't even properly trained you in rules and behavioral abilities, and you are still influenced by external factors—the possibility of not making mistakes is very small. When the Buddha understands sentient beings, he simply sees all sentient beings as being in an infantile state, and all their mistakes are understandable. Do you know why a Buddha or a great Bodhisattva can infinitely tolerate a sentient being making mistakes? Because that's no different from a child making a mistake. He doesn't even know where he went wrong, so how could he not make mistakes?
84. Compassion for all beings
From the absence of faults in all beings to compassion for all beings. If you possess the mind of a Buddha, when you face everyone, you will see them no differently than you would your own children. The two characters for compassion are written separately; in ancient times, each character represented a different meaning. The character for compassion has a lid on top and two horn-like lines at the bottom—what the heart is focused on, that is called compassion. Compassion is the mind that is not what you want or hope for—that is the mind that is not what you want. My heart is focused on you, and I always care about you—that is compassion. Then, when you do many things that are wrong and incorrect, I feel very sad—that is compassion. Compassion is a combination of these two states, and it generally appears in the feelings of parents towards their children. This world can completely avoid the method of sexual reproduction to have children; you can even self-divide. Higher levels do not involve sexual reproduction at all; self-divide is sufficient. But why must you experience this through having children? Your own upbringing of your child is the only way for all of humanity, including the entire realm of sentient beings and the animal kingdom, to maintain compassion. Because you have not evolved to be compassionate towards all sentient beings, you can only be compassionate towards your own flesh and blood—you are born with it. The sacrifices you make for your child: You expect nothing in return—and it's very difficult to expect anything in return. You give so much, but their feedback is so little. Any mistake they make, because they are your child, you can tolerate almost indefinitely and are endlessly willing to give them chances. The only thing you hope for in your child is that they surpass you—you always hope your child will exceed you, be better than you; this is the desire for achievement. These three things constitute compassion. If you understand these three things and can generate them for all sentient beings, you will generate compassion for all beings.
85. What is the transformation into the sea?
When you reach perfection, the ultimate goal is to transform into the ocean. Transforming into the ocean means accepting all rivers—you must accept pure water, and you must also accept excrement. If you accept too much excrement and become a stinking ditch, you are merely a collection of stinking ditches because you lack the ability to purify. Transforming into the ocean means accepting all rivers, and also purifying and accommodating them. You must be willing to accommodate them to transform into the ocean. To truly transform into the ocean, you must be able to accept all sentient beings, accept the bad in all sentient beings. All the bad in front of you, all the mistakes made by sentient beings, all the things they do, are merely the various errors made by a child due to insufficient intelligence and understanding during their growth. You are willing to accept them, treating all problems as the price they must experience in their growth process. You are willing to walk with them, even knowing that things will definitely go wrong, you are willing to accompany them through their mistakes, allowing them to grow through their errors—only then can you truly feel the beauty of reincarnation, the beauty of sentient beings, and the beauty of all things. Everything in front of you is gradually moving towards beauty, simply an evolutionary process from beauty to beauty. All the mistakes and problems before you are merely the trials and tribulations experienced by all beings in their process of self-evolution and self-growth. If you can understand this, you will see beauty in all beings—they are not making mistakes, they are simply growing. They just don't know how to grow, so you must teach them how, accompany them through the experiences and lessons they don't know, and help them better apply all the rules. When they can apply and understand all the rules, believe that all beings will become exceptionally excellent. When you believe that they are gradually acquiring their own abilities, supernatural powers, and the five eyes and six supernatural abilities, and can see all the rules from the Buddha's perspective, there will be no bad people in this world. There will be no bad people, no more mistakes, and all beings will simply be in the process of evolution. You will then discover that the entire cycle of reincarnation is actually just to help beings ascend. However, it is almost impossible for them to grow on their own, so there needs to be one person, or a group of people, or countless people, willing to accompany them like I have, willing to help them grow—this is true transformation. Transformation requires accepting everything. If you cannot accept everything, you cannot transform; you will still be critical. I can say with certainty that even a great Bodhisattva couldn't achieve this. Although he is much more capable than me, he can't get rid of the defilement and can't transform into the ocean.
86. Rule Feedback
The most important practice within samsara is called rule feedback. When we benefit all sentient beings, when we are willing to help all sentient beings achieve enlightenment, remember: when you are willing to help all sentient beings achieve enlightenment, all sentient beings will inevitably be willing to help you achieve enlightenment. Whether they are willing or not, they must follow this rule—that's called rule feedback. Just like someone who is fickle, if they want to have a complete love in samsara, that's impossible. This is also called rule feedback. When you sincerely face love, you may fail once, but you will definitely encounter sincere love in samsara. When you sincerely face everyone, you may fail once in samsara, and it may not be easy to encounter good people, but under the great rule of rule feedback, as long as you persist, you will definitely be like this. When you are positive, the feedback you receive will definitely be positive. When you love and respect your teachers, love and respect everything that can help you in wisdom, character, and cognition—even if it's a child, and their actions in this life remind you, and you are willing to respect and love them—the teachers you encounter in samsara will definitely not be bad. When you look down on this or that, you will inevitably be despised by all beings in the cycle of reincarnation. Many things are actually the opposite; you can think of it as cause and effect, but in reality, it's more of a law, or a rule of feedback. When we are willing to help all beings achieve their goals, whether they are willing or not, ultimately, within the laws of reincarnation and the laws of the universe, all beings will inevitably help you achieve your goals.
87. What does it mean for a low dimension to have no solution?
By showing you so many past-life stories, you'll discover a crucial point: many things are unsolvable in lower dimensions. For example, if someone kills you or your family, do you seek revenge? This includes the American concept of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"—if reporting to the authorities doesn't work, you take matters into your own hands. This understanding seems correct in the human realm, but it's actually meaningless because it will only entangle you both further down the same path. Even if you argue with your wife, you might feel you're right, and your wife might also feel she's right. Like Palestine and Israel, who is right and who is wrong? If you try to trace it back 2000 years, it becomes even more impossible. Many human issues are called unsolvable at a lower level—in lower dimensions, you can't find who is right and who is wrong; everyone can say who is right and who is wrong. But you'll find that many contradictions and many things, if viewed from a higher level, a higher dimension, reveal a clear cause-and-effect relationship. Many of the stories we tell, if you look closely, are almost all unsolvable in lower dimensions. If a person gets stuck in low-dimensional thinking—for example, living in a three-dimensional world—and their thinking is limited to right and wrong, their perception remains within that three-dimensional realm, they cannot live a good life. Because many things require struggle, grabbing, fighting, competing with others, and simply surviving, many problems become unsolvable in this low-dimensional world. Why talk about past lives? Using past lives to understand things elevates your thinking to a higher level. We cannot define exactly which level causal thinking is at, but it is certainly more advanced than our current thinking. Understanding present events from a higher-dimensional perspective allows you to let go of many things, resolve many inexplicable hurts, and find peace with many things that happen to you. If you can't find answers in a low dimension, you must look for them in a higher dimension. If you possess higher-dimensional cognition, your thinking won't be confined to a single point, and you won't get caught up in a struggle over a specific issue. When your vision and cognition cannot transcend dimensions, your understanding of the world will inevitably be narrow, and you will be thinking about the world from a low-dimensional perspective.
88. Rule Error
After studying many things about cause and effect, I've found that sentient beings seem to be constantly making mistakes; almost all sentient beings are continuously making mistakes. Have you tried to understand what a mistake is? The mistakes we can understand are all retrospective mistakes—the event has produced a result, and you think it's wrong. You will feel wrong, and at that moment you will feel pain, sadness, failure, and all sorts of negative emotions. Mistakes themselves exist in all worlds woven with rules; any mistake represents an imperfect application and understanding of the rules. These are all called rule-based mistakes. Almost all sentient beings are making mistakes; it's just that very excellent sentient beings can remain error-free for a relatively long time, but ultimately they will still make mistakes—this is because your control and understanding of the rules is problematic.
89. The Causes of the Mistakes of All Beings
First: Cognitive Errors. ① Errors in Rule Cognition. This refers to the understanding of all rules, all things, and everything in all experienced and existing spaces. Over 60% of errors stem from this aspect—you don't know the rule, and not even knowing the rule leads to errors. For example, when two people fight, they often fall into human cognition. "He insulted me, so I hit him"—this is human thought, but the law is different. The law defines this matter from a legal perspective. If you want to solve a problem legally, you must collect evidence from a legal perspective. Collecting evidence from a human cognitive perspective is useless. You are easily tricked if you don't understand a certain rule. ② Errors in Mental Cognition. Problems at the cognitive level mean—he has a problem but doesn't even know he has a problem. This is the most terrifying aspect of cognitive error. When a person's cognition hasn't reached a certain level, he doesn't know he's done wrong; he's completely unaware. If no one points out your mistake at the cognitive level, you won't know you're wrong. The vast majority of my clients are ordinary people. Their emotional intelligence, understanding of interpersonal relationships, and control over human nature are all at a very low level. They're not much better than their parents—they didn't teach them how to behave, so it's highly unlikely they'll evolve and break through to understand interpersonal relationships like ordinary people. Parents and environment have a huge impact on this. Even in arguments between spouses, truly well-managed families can resolve any problem without emotions. You haven't seen a way to solve problems without emotions, so you subconsciously use emotions to solve problems. You can be in a state of emotional turmoil for 10 or 20 years, only to end up with nothing—nothing is actually solved, only making yourself worse. But she won't think she's wrong, and that's the biggest problem. ③ Errors in understanding the natural order. Humans cannot acquire knowledge they don't know, and humans cannot imagine things they don't know.
Second: Behavioral errors. Behavioral errors are unavoidable, but can be improved through more practice. Schools make you do a lot of practice problems precisely because the more you do, the less likely you are to make behavioral errors. When we fully understand a certain level of knowledge, we can solve it through extensive practice.
Third: External Influences. External influences are somewhat uncontrollable—even if all your perceptions and actions are correct, can mistakes still occur? Yes. We live in a world like a Russian nesting doll; it's impossible to infinitely understand all the rules that influence something, only to infinitely approach them, never to completely control them—complete control is only possible for a Buddha. There will always be some spaces and rules that we cannot predict. In the past 200 years, every 20 or 40 years, some black swan events that affect the entire world will occur, breaking the pattern. Humans cannot control everything, especially external factors. Since we cannot control them, we must have backups. Even if we lose everything, we have someone to back us up, a reserve force to turn the tide.
Fourth: Mind and Nature. Almost all sentient beings are prone to making mistakes stemming from these four. The first, cognitive error, accounts for the vast majority, and mind and nature also play a significant role. What is spiritual practice about? Since we are practicing, shouldn't we first discover our own mistakes? The first step in spiritual practice is discovering our mistakes; only after correcting them can we continuously improve.
90. An Ancient Divine Beast: Feichongyi
It's been incredibly hot in Thailand lately. The small swamp next to my neighborhood has dried up drastically, and the ground is cracked. Later, we discovered it was caused by an ancient mythical beast—there's something called the "Fat Insect" in the Classic of Mountains and Seas. It resembles a snake, has four wings and six legs, and wherever it goes, there's a great drought. The person who drew this picture is highly skilled; they must have seen it with their own eyes. What I saw was something like a gecko, with wings somewhat like a dragonfly's (thin wings), a detail not mentioned in the original Classic of Mountains and Seas. Its head was black, not green, and it looked quite cute. This thing isn't harmful; it comes from the demon realm. After it arrived, the whole of Thailand felt like it had been roasted in an oven. Eventually, we found someone to remove it. They removed it in the morning, and it rained immediately in the afternoon. Recently, Thailand has been very cool, with rain every day.
91. Zhulong
I recently encountered a descendant of Zhulong. The Classic of Mountains and Seas describes Zhulong as red, but the one I saw had a purplish tinge. You can't say the Classic of Mountains and Seas is wrong—it might just be a different species. Just like humans, they all have one head, two eyes, one nose, and one mouth, but there are Europeans, Africans, and Asians. Zhulong's open eyes represent daytime, and its closed eyes represent nighttime; quite impressive.