The Great Supreme (1)

1 A man equipping with the following conditions, we say that he is eligible to be called the man of perfect practice: He exactly cognizes the real operation of Universe and knows how and why it comes into being, how it develops into the status quo and its destiny in the future; simultaneously he recognizes man’s mind, conduct, life habit and inherent weakness and moods such as greed, anger, obsession, worry and fear, and understands that form, sensation, conception, volition and consciousness all are vain and empty; he masters the dharma of mind and the body sensation, and experiences the truth of life such as suffering, origination, cessation and path.

2 Knowing the real operation of Universe results from an inborn gift, which is the knowledge of non-learning skills and it comes to the man of practice with the sound
, peaceful and tranquil heart. The great wisdom is suddenly enlightened when his self-nature, Buddha-nature, calmness and refinement are aroused. It is not from study or research.

3 Some of the intellectuals know that mind, conduct, and life habit are knowledge which is taught by teacher, learned from book and formed from studying and thinking. After they become learned, they know well that their knowledge is insufficient and the secrets of Universe are infinite so they are modest, prudent and abiding. They know through love, one has no fear; through not doing too much, one has amplitude; through not presuming to be the first in the world, one can develop one’s talent and let it mature. You may say that they are learned scholar though their knowledge is defective; however, their awareness of ignorance makes up for it.

4 The knowledge within our consciousness is limited. For example, the knowledge out of the field of material is beyond our imagination. The boundless field is far beyond us, just like pupils to profound calculi. They can’t understand and discuss it, let alone questioning. The secrets of Universe are the same to us. They totally are out of our reach.

5 How do we know a man may be a Universe? The universe is similar to a man. The difference between them is the space. The judgment and identification like these only a man of perfect practice can do.

6 What kind of men are the men of perfect practice? In general, they think that everything is of value in spite of its small size. They know a small hill may contain the whole truth of Universe and it may be the habitat of millions of creature.

7 The men of perfect practice are not so admirable to the worldly achievements, such as great artist, successful entrepreneur, or locally dominative careerist. They know that an artwork is far worse than the beauty of a butterfly. Those provincial richest entrepreneurs’ lives are mortal. How many do those traders of official background survive now? How many emperors and ministers in Chinese history of thousands year do you remember?

8 The men of perfect practice don’t care the seriousness, the right and wrong of the worldly affairs. They resign themselves to the adversity, not requiring, not refusing, not conceiving and not chasing of the worldly affairs.

9 They are like a mirror that devotedly reflects thing. If thing moves away from the mirror, they forget it and let it be.

10 The mirror reflects everything for good and lets everything comes up and moves away from it. They don’t regret the past and fully react to the status quo; however, they don’t think they can possess them forever. For this reason, they don’t conceive or chase anything would come to them in the future.

11 The men of perfect practice to this level can adapt themselves to any environments, never losing their soundness, peace and tranquilness. They can enjoy the environments which are hellish, inclement, ahead worried in others’ opinion.

12 The men of real successful in practice don’t dream in sleep. After sound sleep, they are vigorous and unperturbed, without a touch of worry.

13 They don’t care food. They eat the food on hand. Their breath is slow, weak, deep and so sound. The ordinary people’s breath seems from the throat but theirs seems from the heel.

14 The people with malicious aforethought his talk is bitter, stinking and sour. Those who have much desire and lose themselves in chasing it are shallow and mediocre in gift and talent. They have no artistic awareness.

15 The men of real successful in practice cherish the every moment of their lives and have no intent to escape death. They are calm to his life and death. Their coming and going are quick and degage. They will not forget what they have made up their mind in practice, but don’t care what the outcome of their practice will become in the future.

16 They delightedly accept their lives and patiently wait for the moment of passing away without any worry.

17 This kind of attitude of life precludes people’s mind from misguiding the operation of the Nature and the arrangement of Tao. Whoever can adhere to this principle is regarded to bear the fruit of practice.

18 Men who bear the fruit of practice are active and broad-minded; they don’t hold on some concepts and self-righteous ideas as unchangeable; they are not stubborn and inflexible.

19 Their attitude is amiable, composed and couth.

20 Another special point is that their forehead is somewhat protruding like a senior player of inner Kongfu.

21 Their attitude sometime is silent and depressive, like the bleak autumn while sometime is warm and harmonious, like the spring wind. Their mood totally follows the season’s environment. They are harmonious with the universe, abandoning private and personal concepts. Therefore, they will leave you profound and enigmatic impression.

22 A man of perfect practice, in some cases also resorts to arms for conflict solution, but he is different from the politician. He may defeat a country’s army and occupy its territory; however, he will gain the local people’s morale. The people of the occupied country will support him instead of against him.

23 He exerts bliss to benefit people widely, which he thinks as his natural personality. Therefore, he doesn’t think it is the lofty and indiscriminately loving.

24 The man of perfect practice persists in the principle of mirror. He would not do as others who carefully observe the situation and give themselves a full play when an opportunity comes. Despite of opportunity and time, he is always calm. He never does as pulling up the seedlings in order to help them grow faster and never complain anyone. Whatever the objective condition is, it never threats him.

25 Those who take risk of losing selfness and chase fame and wealth are bad officials.

26 Those who easily commit suicide and fudge their responsibility are the one of defective practice.

27 Therefore, the right attitude to fame and wealth is not to importune and not to shuffle them.

28 For instance, Hu Buxie living in the age of Yao threw himself into river because of refusal of Yao’s demising to him.

29 Wu Guang lived in Xia Dynasty. Tang wanted to demise to him but he rejected and threw himself into river. He was stupid.

30 To refuse the food from Zhou Dynasty, Boyi and Shuqi finally died from fast.

31 Qizi who was the King Zhou’s uncle, was thrown into prison due to his loyal admonishment.

32 Xuyu and Bigan died from heart being dug out, also due to their loyal admonishment.

33 Jita sneaked to seclude himself nearby Kuan River because he was afraid that Tang consigned throne to him. Hearing Jita gaining reputation in society for his seclusion, Shentudi become mad to throw himself into the river and his only purpose to do so was to got the reputation as Jita got.

34 These people lost their lives for the objective conditions or hurt themselves because of others’ actions. They are of defective practice.

35 We should prevent the objective conditions from hurting ourselves and should keep our self-nature, Buddha-nature, calmness and refinement in soundness, tranquilness, coziness and peace.

36 The man of successful in practice gives others an impression of as a towering huge statue. Huge as it is; however, its center of gravity is very low and stable. The ordinary people can’t trip him up.

37 He is courteous and modest in associating with people and business as if he knows nothing, but in fact he seldom pleads for others for something.

38 He doesn’t drift with fashions; however, he is not like the arrogant person who set very severe standard that makes people around him unfit. He adapts himself to various conditions and lives freely and elegantly but he is not like the Hippie who is unconventional and unorthodox.

39 His face wears smile as if he is happy in something. He is not like the people of Archer horoscope bustling here and there all the time.

40 His attitude is composure, elegant, sound and peaceful, which naturally derives from such personality as confidence and goodness.

41 He is inward adherent to his principles and outward harmonious with the environment around him. He is thought a big shot with broad-minded; on the other hand, he is thought to give no handle or a way to control him.

42 His consistent attitude to life is like a firmly locked door which nobody can open. He is apathetic without any comment to the tempting world as if he was a dumb.

43 His governance of the country entirely conforms to the state-of-arts' law, the convenance, the public opinion and moral. With those tools he keeps the society on the right rail.

44 The law is state-made, so even killing criminal will be accepted by the public. The convenance is the code of conduct, which all accepts. The consensus represents the public interest which he follows as the right way to govern.

45 The policy is public-made. Abidance by the custom and moral precludes the daily life from trouble. Living and acting on the public-accepted custom prevents frequent blaming and then, everyone can live as free and easy as climbing a mound.

46 It is easy to govern a country if those principles are applied. The perfect practice who governs his country in good order, which is thought a great engineering or splendid achievement, actually, it is not a difficult jab if one follows the four principles in governing his country.

47 We care the integrality that consists of components. As far as a component is concerned, it is integral itself. Hence a whole is an intact pattern and its component also is an integral and a pattern.

48 For instance, human’s body is an integral pattern. As far as a red cell is concerned, it is an integral pattern too. Similarly, human is an integral variety and each person is also an integral individual. In this view, we become God when act on the human interest; we are man when act on the personal interest.

49 A person narrows the gap that source from the two views and the gap of views from the God and the man. We regard him as a perfect practice.

50 The shift of life and death is the inevitable natural law. Their sequence is like the shift of day and night, both of which are under the God’s controls. As regarding to the worldly affairs, they are out of our reach too. We should not interfere with its natural development.

51 A man prays in Church or temple, taking God as his father. To the nature we should keep the same attitude. A man would like to sacrifice his life for his lord; to the nature we should do the same.

52 When the pond becomes dry, fishes in it spit spittle to each other to survive. From the appearance, they depend on one another to live, looking close and amiable. Which is better on earth: let them linger on and live close or let them back to the river and the full pond where they don’t know each other but live free.

53 Nature endows us with our body. He takes care of our body all our life. When being young we work diligently, when senile, we are arranged to return to the dust. Who arranges us to come to the world is the same one who calls us back. Under his looking after why we are afraid of the coming inevitable death.

54 Those that live nearby the lake all have a small boat as vehicle. It is a problem to park it when it leaves unused. Common residents hide it in the bush nearby the stream or in the obsolete place of marsh. However, at night it is easy to be carried away by others.

55 Most of us don’t understand that small thing hidden in the big environment is easy to be stolen no matter how carefully we hide it. The only way to prevent it from stealing is to hide thing belonging to the universe in the whole universe, namely, to hide thing of its original visage in the environment, from it there will be no losing.

56 We all love joy which we are afraid of losing or missing. How should we preserve and keep it as our inexhaustible treasure? Where should we hide it?

57 Above mentioned is ‘hide thing belonging to the universe in the whole universe’? Our joy is from the heart and the ego. Therefore, just hide joy in our body.

58 Human did countless evolution from protozoan into the status quo. There still will be endless evolution. Whatever human evolves, there still would be a body. So, the men of wisdom would hide their joy in the heart and body, not the place out of them. In the wake of that their joy would be there forever.

59 It is very real that Tao exists. We can get the evidence from the operation of Nature whereas we can’t understand clearly its operation and can’t see its forming.

60 Tao keeps sending signals and issuing orders. It can’t be heard clear like the sound but we can’t disobey its will. We can’t see it but we follow its steps in accordance with its direction.

61 Tao depends on nothing. It not likes our life which depends on the food, air, water and sun.

62 Tao is self-supported and exists before the universe.

63 It is immortal, without the beginning and the end. It stays eternally. The powers of god and ghost are from his authorization and the heaven and the earth are its production.

64 As far as Tao is concerned, nothing is more senior than it while nothing is more junior than it. It exists before the birth of cosmos. Therefore there is nothing elder than it.

65 Tao is a supernatural power. Of all ages those who gain, conform to and make use of its power all have demonstrated wonderful achievements.

66 Xii Wei Shi obtained Tao, and so set the universe in order.

67 Fu Xi obtained it, and was able to reveal the secrets of immortality.

68 Wei Dou obtained it, and never blundered from its course in his life.

69 The sun and moon obtained it, and have never ceased to revolve.

70 Kanhuai obtained it, and made his abode in the Kunlun Mountains.

71 Feng Yi obtained it, and safely toured around the country.

72 Jianyu obtained it, and built Mount Tai as his inhabitation.

73 The Yellow Emperor obtained it, and soared upon the clouds to heaven.

74 Zhuan Xu obtained it, and dwelled in the Deep Palace as a king.

75 Yu Qiang obtained it, and established himself at the North Pole.

76 The Western Queen Mother obtained it, and settled at Shao Guang, since when and until when, no one knows.

77 Peng Zu obtained it, and prolonged his life. He lived in Youyu from the time of Shun until the time of the Five Princes, totally over eight hundreds years.

78 Fu Yue obtained it, he at first became the Minister of Wu Ding and later on extended his rule to the Dongwei star and the Qiwei star, and finally became the emperor of Heaven.