I. Living in the Present in Practice
I. Living in the Present in Practice
Living in the present is a state, not a means. Everyone has experienced it, just as everyone has experienced oneness with heaven and humanity, tranquility, and supreme joy. Among China’s tens of millions of students and its population of over a billion, the light of each person’s true nature works quietly within the difficulties of their lives.
(I) Seeing and Recording the Present
- Allowing and accepting.
Allow all pain and emotions.
Allow distress, mediocrity, low energy, a low level of spiritual attainment, avoidance, and procrastination. Allow despair (suffocation, fear, anxiety), embarrassment (awkwardness, discomposure, struggle, admitting mistakes), and bewilderment (mediocrity, loneliness).
Life’s only challenge is the distress of the present. Distress -> feeling small and unworthy -> narcissism/self-attack: this is a chain reaction of karmic obstructions that begins in infancy.
Fromm: Happiness can also be defined as a person’s capacity to accept reality, their ability to experience the real world and their real self, and to interact with them sincerely.
Present distress is the only issue. The inability to contain and be aware of distress is the sole source of karmic obstructions.
When everything is allowed, nothing remains disallowed.
Stop regretting: the person you were then did their best. Accept the present as it was in the past. Do not reject or avoid the present or yourself.
Allow, see, become aware of, and record pain. Keep a diary, recording your daily life and the rises and falls of your state. In moments of high energy and tranquility, see that your true nature has always been there; see life as dark, glowing lava, as a lotus in the mud.
The central issues, pain, difficulties, and trauma of the present.
Connection with, care for, and gratitude toward yourself. See a direction through both reason and feeling.
Most personal problems are social problems. Engage in less self-attack, withdrawal, and regression.
The karmic fire of ignorance
People often feel an “unnameable karmic fire”: distress that is difficult to become aware of or describe, a familiar gloom and sense of collapse. “Here it comes again”—a return from tranquility to pain. Psychology says that seeing it brings relief.
Avoiding the dark side
Disallowing your own emotions and avoiding your dark side means breaking your connection with yourself. The karmic obstructions in one part of the libido are avoiding those in another. Conceit avoids inferiority. The spiritual practitioner’s ego and the observer’s ego avoid karmic obstructions; control avoids loss of control.
But avoidance is also a positive mechanism: it is self-protection. Conceit prevents inferiority from reaching the point of collapse and dissociation; people-pleasing serves survival; control seeks safety. Avoidance is a very good mechanism, but health requires it to be accompanied by fully opening up again and accepting. It is like leukemia: white blood cells are originally a good thing.
Suffering a second time
Pain and bewilderment arise naturally. Karmic obstructions cannot accept this naturalness. We are in pain, and we also cannot accept our pain. Like being unable to resist scratching an itchy wound, this is suffering a second time.
In “Yielding the Throne,” from the Miscellaneous Chapters of the Zhuangzi, Prince Mou of Zhongshan says: “Although I understand this, I still cannot overcome myself.” Zhanzi says: “If you cannot overcome yourself, then follow your inclinations. Let your spirit feel no aversion to this! To be unable to overcome yourself yet force yourself not to follow your inclinations is what is called injuring yourself twice. Those who injure themselves twice are not among those who live long!”
Being at peace with pain is also being at peace with fate
What I bear is the pain particular to my fate, against the background of the pain shared by humanity at this stage of history. Buddhism speaks of the suffering inherent in conditioned existence. Pain is part of fate, while my divine nature always pulls me out of the mire of hell.
Marx, Engels, Commander Peng, Zhuangzi, and Su Shi also had to be at peace with the pain in their fates.
Treatise on the Transcendence of Contemplation:
Question: If someone who has just begun to study the Way suddenly encounters circumstances in which another person intends to harm them, how should they respond in accordance with the Way?
Answer: If you can avoid it, avoid it. If you cannot avoid it, let it be. If you can bear it, bear it. If you cannot bear it, cry.
Question: If they cry, how are they any different from someone who holds a view of a self?
Answer: It is like a striker hitting a bell: the sound comes forth naturally. Why must there be a self in it? If you stubbornly clamp down on your mind, grit your teeth, and endure in silence, that is preserving a very great self.
Question: I have heard that sages cannot be wounded by weapons, bent by suffering, affected by sensory appearances, or moved in their minds. What does this mean?
Answer: If you understand that all phenomena are without a self, then making a sound and making no sound, moving and remaining still, all accord with the Way and present no obstruction. - The moment of rejecting and loathing the present, of dissociating from it, is the most painful, lowest point.
The moment of nonacceptance, resistance, rejection, and dissociation from the present is already the lowest point, when karmic obstructions are most severe and helplessness is greatest.
The moment a child cries out that they do not want to go to school is the most painful moment of their day. But it will eventually pass.
What is difficult in life is plunging into a cesspit or crawling into a mine, yet this is the daily routine of most of humanity. Alienated, cursed humanity on this blue planet: karmic obstructions rooted in private ownership, on the scale of historical materialism. How powerful and luminous humanity’s true nature is. Yet day after day, it continues to endure and illuminate these karmic obstructions and cesspits. - In this moment, do not force yourself to accept.
Rejecting and loathing the present, dissociating from the present and yourself, is also part of what arises naturally and cannot be fought.
Controlling yourself and demanding immediate acceptance is also a form of disallowing.
Losing control means that your capacity to contain the experience is insufficient. Insisting on control is only another deluded thought. - Allow yourself to be unable to live in the present; allow disallowing.
Being aware of and allowing loss of control is also a way of containing it. This is the final lesson in accepting your dark side and making peace with yourself.
The Oxhead Zen Treatise on the Transcendence of Contemplation asks: “What is called the mind? How does one put the mind at ease?” The answer: “You need not establish a mind, nor need you force it to be at ease. This can be called ease.”
Allowing is part of awareness, and is itself something that cannot be achieved through effort. Become aware that you are unaware. Only upon waking do you know you were dreaming.
Letting go of the fixation on living in the present
People become fixated on presence, mindfulness meditation, spiritual practice, living in the present, becoming a master, and enlightenment. Often, this is still the spiritual practitioner’s ego, wanting to know everything about oneself, to be all-powerful, and to control everything.
The Platform Sutra dispels fixation on spiritual practice (the delusion of purity, fixation on purity): “Human nature is originally pure. Deluded thoughts obscure suchness; without deluded imaginings, one’s nature is pure of itself. When you set your mind on purity and cling to it, you give rise to the delusion of purity. Delusion has no location; the clinging itself is delusion. Purity has no form, yet you establish a form of purity and call it practice. Those who hold this view obstruct their own original nature and become bound by purity.”
When I allow myself to be unable to live in the present, I find that I am living in the present.
Reading my diaries from earlier low periods moves me. I see each version of myself living in the present, even though at the time I disliked myself for failing to do so. I witness the natural unfolding of my true self. - We are always accepting, and ultimately do accept, so let things take their natural course.
We will eventually find our way through. Ultimately, we are always accepting; ultimately, we have never departed from fate. Like the children who do not want to go to school but eventually go, our past, more vulnerable selves ultimately accepted moments that were harder and more intense than the present.
We will eventually face the cesspits and mines directly. Life will follow its course. When it is time to eat shit, do not chew. The resistance before eating shit is the hardest stage.
We will eventually move naturally through this stage of nonacceptance and disallowing.
The experiences of countless people who have become disabled through accidents show that ordinary people’s capacity for psychological recovery, adaptation, and adjustment exceeds their own expectations.
The Recorded Sayings of Mazu: “You yourself are already in adamantine concentration. There is no need to make a further deliberate effort to collect your mind and attain concentration.” - Keeping a diary is the true channel for communicating with spirits and paying homage to the Buddha.
Record countless present moments at different levels of awareness, for reference in future present moments. During periods without awareness, communicate with your aware self, your high-energy self, your true nature, and your Buddha-nature. The mind itself is Buddha. This is a person’s true channel for communicating with spirits and paying homage to the Buddha.
This seems to be one of the few genuine techniques of “spiritual practice” available to humanity.
Effort is a false concept. We find it quite difficult to learn the skill of keeping a diary. Habit cannot be established by force; it is itself a deep connection.
Why do people not keep diaries, or fail to achieve this effect when they do? They lack the awareness, capacity (mental energy, avoidance of pain and the dark side), or habit. Only after repeatedly becoming aware, during moments of “awareness,” of the wonder of keeping a diary do they continue with it—a result of growth, rather than its starting point. - “The Ego’s Narrow Present VS the True Self’s Real Present”
The lighter the karmic obstructions and the smaller the ego, the less entangled one becomes in the narrow present. For example, various social clocks and forms of social discipline. Of course, circumstances are shaped by the mind, and the urgent present experienced by the ego is also an “objective” present (circumstances being shaped by the mind is materialism, not idealism). But that is a constricted present. The true self’s connection with the real present is the source of strength, warmth, and healing. Oneness with heaven and humanity.
(II) Doing Small Things in the Present
The key to doing small things is their smallness, rather than the “doing.” Do not become fixated on huge, dramatic changes.
Rest in the present. Care for yourself. Adjust, consolidate, enrich, and improve.
a. Gentle, small acts of healing:
All change happens naturally. Look forward to and cherish small changes rather than huge ones. Expecting huge changes often comes from greed, aversion, and delusion.
Stroll, visit parks, keep a diary. Record both pain and light.
“On Strolling”: Strolling means following your inclinations. There is no effort, spiritual practice, or deliberate striving. Strolling means allowing. Allowing all negative emotions. Allowing all positive connections. Strolling is living in the present, doing small things, gathering your energy, and connecting broadly: it contains the entire essence of living in the present.
Do some small task for your work or side business, register a social media account for publishing your own content, clean your home, and so on. Small changes are a link/stage in huge changes. Quantitative change leads to qualitative change.
Recently, I began feeling better and had more mental energy -> decided to limit sugar and eat healthily -> began feeling better in more areas of life.
b. Gathering your energy
The opposites of gathering your energy, meditation, and mindfulness are dissipation, distracting thoughts, and agitation. Decluttering, separating what is yours to deal with from what belongs to others, minimalism, tranquility, and nonaction.
Many people are immersed in anxiety about issues outside the present, but its root is still an issue in the present.
Often, what you refrain from doing matters more than what you do. For example, when experiencing AI anxiety and political depression, quit social media.
Some concrete situations for gathering your energy: plans succeed through discretion; cultivate your work quietly. Be practical rather than preoccupied with abstractions; do not let language and thought become overactive.
Be grounded and composed rather than agitated. Take good care of yourself: gathering your energy + connection with yourself. When your energy is very low, take a quiet stroll.
Gathering your energy, following the right path, and having confidence means living in the present, in connection with yourself and the world.
Only by focusing on the right path can you find the support that comes to those who follow the Way, and meet fellow travelers on that path. Do not lose yourself among distracting people, thoughts, and paths.
Value investing reins in speculation and ignorance: investing in the value of yourself, your mental resources, and your energy. Marxism brings focus to the social sciences and amateur philosophy. Psychology, Zhuangzi, enlightenment, and innate wholeness bring the mind into focus. Afterward, follow nature, your gifts, and your fate.
(III) Connection
The light of a person’s true nature makes connections naturally; exertion is useless. The question, then, is why connection breaks and which karmic obstructions obscure it.
Observe the state of connection across the five elements: studies, career, yourself (body and mind), and others.
Connection with yourself: the body (sensations, exercise, diet, sleep) and the mind; connection with your past self (trauma, doing your best) and your present self. “How to Connect with Yourself”: taking good care of yourself is a key—gathering your energy + connection with yourself.
Connection with your true nature: seeing your true nature, connection with your past self, recent examples of the light of your true nature (deep wisdom).
Connection with mindfulness: oneness with heaven and humanity; gratitude and appreciation of your blessings; light, truth, goodness, and beauty.
Connection with the present: the central issues of the present, small changes, your present self, true nature, the deep mind/libido, feelings.
Connection with studies and career: connection with core conditional confidence and a flow of high energy, rediscovering a sense of competence at work and professional confidence. Publishing your own content also increases confidence and a sense of connection.
Connection with others: not indiscriminate socializing, but publishing your own content, reading good books, and being selective in socializing. A renewed understanding of relationships, and appreciation and gratitude for the people around you.
Connection with the people/society/history/the world/nature/the universe.
Marx: The essence of the human being is the sum of all social relations.
We have all experienced the above. Everyone experiences happiness, tranquility, and high energy every day; the moments are simply brief and overlooked.
Connection is unconditional and always present. The lighter the karmic obstructions and the more deeply you rest in the present, the more deeply you feel it.
“Connection VS Entanglement: Our Relationship with the World”
Connection and Seeking Truth from Facts
Seeking truth from facts is an expression of good connection with the present, yourself, and others.
Without a good connection with yourself: dissociation and bewilderment.
Without a good connection with others: fantasies, greed, aversion, and delusion; overstepping the boundaries of what your present circumstances with them allow.
Without a good connection with the present: resistance and agitation.
II. Resting in the Present
A state, not a means.
When busy, be busy; when free, be free; when sleeping, sleep; when in pain, be in pain. Rest in the present, rest in fate, rest in yourself. Seek nothing outside yourself, feel no aversion toward yourself, and connect with the light of your true nature. As for the people and events you encounter, be at peace with what fate arranges. Only those who first become still can truly rest in the present.
- Criteria
Criteria: self-soothing, holding yourself -> feeling safe and at ease -> confidence and freedom within yourself -> contentment.
The Record of Linji: “Your mind, in a single thought, can free itself from its bonds and find liberation wherever it is. This is the practice of Avalokiteshvara’s concentration.”
When you are not resting in the present, you are disconnected from the present and your present self. The self collapses; dissociation follows. Distress, panic, despair, bewilderment.
When the present feels uncomfortable and unsettled, you escape and seek outside yourself, becoming entangled in the past and future, which also feel uncomfortable.
When you rest in the present and feel comfortable in it, you also feel more comfortable and optimistic about the future and the past. - One essential aspect of engaging with the world is relaxing amid raging currents and muddy waves.
The present often contains intense upheavals and challenges, emotions and dejection that swallow and engulf you. Tension and panic do not help.
Steadiness, composure, relaxation, responsiveness, and going with circumstances.
At root, it still comes down to whether you are at rest: a deep confidence. - Every ordinary person has experienced resting in the present.
Tranquility and supreme joy, innate wholeness, and resting in the present—these ultimate farther shores and complex concepts are things everyone frequently experiences. The moments are simply brief, and we fail to connect with them. This is one facet of innate wholeness. Or the “spiritual practitioner’s ego” becomes fixated on finding a method to control things and achieve the state immediately.
The criterion for enlightenment is a profound experience of “innate wholeness.” There is no need to feel it at every moment or always remain in the light of your true nature.
Resting in the present of “being unable to live in the present” is also a form of resting. - Take working for a living as an example:
People often change jobs repeatedly and complain, imagining that there is a perfect job and boss, or that they can awaken to some advanced philosophy and become an exceptional person or master, earn some qualification, find poetry and faraway places, or fulfill some condition that will save them.
This does not mean changing jobs, complaining, or leaving is wrong. Rather, people later come to understand that the eventual “liberation” and transcendence arrive when, finally, after some job change, in some present moment, we become at peace with the present—even though, in others’ eyes and even our own, the work and the time are ordinary, and daily life remains full of pain, with both a dark side and a bright side. Wherever this heart is at peace is my home.
Within that peace, we settle, grow, and evolve, and connect the scattered moments of the light of our true nature along the way. Our careers enter the next stage; we understand and accept ourselves more, learn to balance work and life, learn to care for ourselves, and realize that we have gone from 25 to 29. Every ordinary worker quietly finds some rhythm.
We realize that we have been quietly growing and evolving all along, that our deep true nature has always been quietly at work. Who could have expected true nature to possess innate wholeness? Who could have expected true nature to give rise to all phenomena? We are simply coming to understand it more. Gratitude to our past selves; gratitude to our present selves.
(IV) Being at Peace with Fate
The currents of the times and fate cannot be predicted or resisted by human power. Having done all that is humanly possible, we are at peace with heaven’s decree. We did our best in every present moment, so we can also rest in every present moment.
Liezi: “Farmers follow the seasons, merchants pursue profit, craftspeople pursue skill, and officials pursue influence: circumstances make it so. Yet farmers face floods and droughts, merchants have gains and losses, craftspeople have successes and failures, and officials find opportunities or meet with rejection: fate makes it so.”
Going with the present
Fixation on wisdom, purity, withdrawal from the world, and the farther shore prevents one from reaching that shore. Innate wholeness: no cultivation, no attainment. The present itself is the farther shore.
Go with all the pain and karmic obstructions of the present, and also with all its tranquility and joy. Go with the flow of the times and fate.
Zhuangzi’s eight absences: no ego, no attachment; no assertion of ability, no contrived action; no desire, no seeking; no sorrow, no worry.
The Liezi: Shun said, “If my body is not mine to possess, whose is it?” The reply was: “It is a form entrusted to you by heaven and earth. Life is not yours to possess; it is a harmony entrusted to you by heaven and earth. Your nature and allotted lifespan are not yours to possess; they are a course entrusted to you by heaven and earth. Your children and grandchildren are not yours to possess; they are transformations entrusted to you by heaven and earth. Thus you walk without knowing where you are going, remain without knowing what sustains you, and eat without knowing why. Heaven and earth are the vigorous activity of vital energy. How could you possess them?”
“Zhuangzi on the Noble Person Remaining Steadfast in Poverty”: “The assaults of hunger, thirst, cold, and heat, and the blockages of hardship and poverty that prevent things from going smoothly, are the workings of heaven and earth, expressions of the endless movement of all things. This means simply being in harmony with the movements and transformations of heaven, earth, and all things. As a subject, one does not dare disobey the ruler’s commands. If one can be so steadfast in observing the way of a subject, how much more so in responding to the Way of Heaven!”
Living in the present is the best way to connect with the future.
Fantasizing about and becoming entangled in the future is different from connection with the future.