Lietse (3)

1 Slaying dragon is a traditional old feat. For special reasons, Zhili Yi still possessed of this precious technique.

2 Zhu Pingman heard that Zhili Yi had the feat but the tuition was high, so few people learnt it. Zhu Pingman considered that a thing was precious because it was rare. The feat was valuable just because nobody could do it. So, he did spare all his money to learn it. After three years, he finally accomplished the study.

3 Nevertheless, after he came back, he found that the “dragon” had died out for several hundred million years. His feat of slaying dragon became useless. Thus he died from poverty and annoyance.

4 A man of perfect practice never arbitrarily holds that a thing is sure to develop in a certain way.

5 So, when the development of a thing diverges from his original expectation, he won’t get angry and correct it by force.

6 Only he, whose self-cultivation is not enough, will doggedly make things to develop in his expected way. Such development is artificial and is done by force so conflicts become more and inevitable.

7 He uses an arbitrarily force to change the natural development of things at his own will. There will be a resistance accumulated due to the change of development. Misfortune will befall him when the accumulation reaches a level.

8 Common people care for nothing but trivia and classified knowledge, establishment and maintaining of human relation and so on. These complicated issues make them fatigue and exhausted.

9 How shallow is their conduct! Nevertheless, when they become interested in practice, they also want to save common people from suffering and improve environment, which can only be done by nature. Surely, their efforts are vain and wasted. Shortsighted, they are confused and at a loss when they use limited knowledge and experience to confront vast cosmos.

10 How can they know the source and truth of cosmos?

11 Men of perfect practice use a totally different way to know cosmos and understand nature. They are industrious to practice Yoga and sit in meditation. In Samadhi his self-nature melts into nature, being a part of it. They thereby realize the essence of nature and the truth of cosmos.

12 Men of perfect practice know that self-nature is from nature. Nature is like Yangtze River while self-nature is like little creek. Water that flows out of Yangtze River forms me in this world. Some day self-nature flows back to Yangtze River, being a part of it again. Men of practice should make it clear and practice hard. In life they can let their self-nature shuttle freely between the river and creek. Then they will completely understand the truth of cosmos.

13 Common people exhaust their energy on trivia to learn about nature, which is impossible as if the blind touch an elephant. They can’t learn about the comprehensive one. Such vain effort is something like that made by Zhu Manping to learn slaughtering dragon with all his family property.