Explanation of Nouns in the Theory of Happiness and Misfortune

Throughout a person's life, it can be said that it is always connected with blessings and disasters. It is either a blessing or a curse, or a curse or a blessing. Of course, the size is different.

Some people may say that I didn't encounter any misfortune, but I didn't have any good news. I was flat and light, without waves and waves. However, we should know that "peace is a blessing", and it is also a blessing without waves. It is called "Qingfu", just like boiled water. It doesn't feel anything special when you drink it at ordinary times, but once you don't drink water for a long time, you can appreciate its preciousness. Reese, Zeng Gui is the prime minister of Qin, one person below and above ten thousand people. But when he was taken to the guillotine with his son, he said to his son, it's great to lead the yellow dog out of the East Gate with you now. When disaster struck, he would rather live an ordinary life with his family, but it was too late to regret it. So, in the face of sudden disasters, isn't it a blessing to be indifferent?

Since we are talking about blessings, what is the blessing? What is a curse? According to people's traditional understanding, defining happiness and disaster is actually very simple. I think it can be explained in one sentence. Happiness means "gain": getting money, power, wife and children ... disaster is "loss": losing money, power, health and relatives ... The biggest disaster is losing yourself, and then nothing. .

It should be pointed out here that happiness and happiness are two different things. Happiness refers more to material gain, while happiness refers more to personal subjective feelings. Get the same thing, get the same blessing, but feel completely different. For example, it is also 1000 yuan. For a farmer who earns only a few hundred yuan a year, this "windfall" is enough to make him happy for half a year. For a millionaire, this 1000 yuan is not money at all. In his heart, he may not even be excited. Therefore, the rich may not feel happier than the poor.

Let's give another example. On a hot noon, people chasing fame and fortune hurried down the street in the scorching sun, their faces full of lawsuits and sweating. At this time, two rag collectors were lying on their own broken cartons in the shade, crossing their legs and humming a ditty with relish. Those people may be richer and more "decent", but at this time, subjectively speaking, who is happier?

But in any case, people always want more things, that is, to get more "blessings." But fortune and misfortune are brothers, and they often go hand in hand, so people struggle between gains and losses of fortune and misfortune all their lives, and they will never stop until they die.

Natural and man-made disasters-the basic type of wealth.

There are several kinds of blessings and disasters.

From the actual effect, it can be roughly divided into the following categories:

First, physically, health is a blessing, and illness is a curse.

Second, in terms of personnel, being promoted and reused is a blessing, and demotion is a curse.

Third, doing business, making money is a blessing, and losing money is a curse.

Fourth, in life, it is a blessing for children and grandchildren to wrap around their knees, and loneliness is a curse.

In terms of property, it is a blessing to have enough food and clothing, and it is a curse to make ends meet.

6. If you are not careful, "a pie falling from the sky" is a blessing, and "bird droppings on your head" is a curse.

One to five is easy to understand. Let me focus on the sixth point.

Chance means that things happen as if they are not transferred by human will, and they happen by accident. There are countless examples of this. For example, someone went out and accidentally found a wallet with thousands of dollars in it; Someone took out a few dollars to buy several lottery tickets, and as a result, they won tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of prizes. This kind of good thing can be met but not sought. We generally say that anyone who meets this kind of thing is lucky. In contrast, some people accidentally lost money when they went out; Someone passed by the construction site, and a brick fell from it and hit him right on the head. This kind of disaster, without warning in advance, we can only say that he deserved it (but then there is a question, why should he rather than others deserve it? )。

From the perspective of good or bad reasons, it can be simply divided into two kinds, one is personnel and the other is fate. Some disasters are man-made and can be avoided through human efforts. Some disasters, as mentioned above, are purely accidental. The so-called "people sitting at home, disaster from the sky." On the other hand, Fu is the same. Next, let's talk about the causes of happiness and misfortune.

Every fruit has its cause-the cause of misfortune.

According to Buddhism, every fruit has its reasons. Tracing back to one thing, we can find its cause, and blessing and misfortune should be no exception.

Personnel reasons are easy for us to find and understand. For example, someone has diarrhea today because they drank unclean raw water and ate unwashed fruit in the morning. The causal relationship is very clear and direct. The reasons for someone being promoted are complicated, but through analysis, we can still find that, for example, he works hard and gets good grades; Study hard and be proficient in business skills; Modest and low-key, good relationship with colleagues; Honesty and reliability, won the trust of leaders, etc., although these reasons are not necessarily all, they are not bad.

This kind of personnel reason, first, has diversity. There are many reasons for one thing, which we may not be able to exhaust. At the same time, it has a certain long-term nature. The cause of what happened today may have been buried many years ago.

There are some things that seem to be accidental. As mentioned above, "when people sit at home, disaster falls from the sky." The most common thing we do in real life is car accidents. Walking well on the road, suddenly a car came behind, and the tragedy happened. Can we find any reason for this unexpected trouble from the dead and wounded?

I once read a novel by Shi Tiesheng, saying that a young man who is excellent in all aspects and is about to go abroad for further study has a bright future. When he went out by bike, his bicycle wheel ran over a stone and he fell to the ground, neither too early nor too late. Just then, a truck just came and crushed his leg. Since then, his life trajectory has completely changed. With his leg broken, he lay in bed thinking hard about the reason why all this happened.

He went out to see a movie this time. Why did he go to the movies? A colleague of Lu Yu gave him a ticket. Why did you meet your colleagues on the road? I was visiting a classmate's house. Why do you want a home visit? Did this classmate suddenly laugh for no reason in class? What are you laughing at? Finally, the student gave him the answer because he heard a dog pooping outside the classroom.

If this is the reason for his car accident, then we can only say that it is a "nonsense" reason. This reason seems unconvincing.

Because there are still some links in the middle, such as why did his colleagues meet him just after they went out? Who lost the stone? Who let the dog out? As long as any one of these links changes, then this thing may not happen. For such a similar result, there have always been two completely different views: "accidental" and "inevitable". Unfortunately, life is not an AB drama and will never give us a chance to verify it. Although there are countless possibilities for the development of things, we can only see the only one.

Every reason has its result-as you sow, you reap.

Is there a consequence for every cause? For example, before going to work in the morning, don't eat, don't comb your hair and don't wash your face. Will different reasons lead to different results? In fact, just as we can't find out the reason accurately with the results, it is not clear at a glance what kind of result a reason will lead to, and the development of things is often unexpected.

There is an English nursery rhyme called "The wind is blowing, the kitten is starving", which vividly and exaggeratedly describes the "domino" phenomenon in human society, that is, things that were originally irrelevant, but eventually became causal because of their relationship. This nursery rhyme goes like this: the wind is blowing, and the wind has lifted the curtains. The curtain knocked down the vase and the water in the vase spilled on the floor. The floor was wet. The old woman slipped and he broke the chair. The carpenter came to repair the chair. The carpenter cut down a tree. The big tree smashed the baker's house. The baker left, and the mouse had nothing to eat. The mouse is not coming-the kitten is starving!

Just as the wind causes kittens to starve to death, whether you eat or not, comb your hair or wash your face in the morning, the results may really be very different.

People often attribute such unexpected troubles or unexpected happiness in life to fate. This should also be true. In fact, the appearance of this result has sprouted in a person's life tree a long time ago. What kind of career and what kind of fruit are as clear and direct as "as you sow, so you reap", but most of us can't see through the relationship.

There is a folk proverb: "evil is rewarded with evil, and good is rewarded with good." It' s not not not reporting, nor is it the time. " I'm rather skeptical about it. Who cares about "reporting" and "not reporting"? Even if there is a god, I don't think his old man's house will observe everyone's every move, let alone every thought, anytime and anywhere. If everyone in the world is recorded in the account book and cashed in at an appropriate time, in a fashionable word, this is a complex systematic project, which is too complicated to be completed at all. But then I read a sentence in a book: "God doesn't punish people, one should find out why he was punished." Then I understood that if a person always makes trouble, it can only be because he likes to make trouble.

There is a saying in Buddhism: "Bodhisattva is afraid of cause, but ordinary people are afraid of fruit". Most people only see terrible bad results, but they don't understand that it is because of the former and the latter. Every result has a cause, and every result has a cause. If you want to seek happiness and avoid disaster, you must work hard at the initial cause.

There is also a folk saying that "it is not surprising to knock at the door in the middle of the night if you don't do anything wrong." . The first time I heard this sentence, I was watching the drama "Fifteen Levels", in which the floor rat pretended to be calm and confessed himself when facing the fortune teller. So I formed an understanding of this sentence, that is, I didn't do anything illegal, so I was not afraid of the government coming to me.

Is this the correct understanding? Yes, but it's not comprehensive. We may have the experience of sleeping until midnight and suddenly being awakened by the ringing of the phone. At this time, our first reaction must be: What's going on? This may not be a good thing. Therefore, most people are very afraid of the phone ringing in the middle of the night. There was no telephone in ancient times, and a sudden and rapid knock on the door would of course make people break out in a cold sweat. So I think "knocking at the door in the middle of the night without doing anything wrong" should have another meaning: if a person has not done anything immoral, then those disasters will not come to you. In a word that people often say now, a good man is safe all his life. Because as you sow, you reap. If you don't plant any "evil causes", you won't reap any "bad consequences" naturally.

Although it is said that "good is rewarded with good and evil with evil", in real life, we often see the opposite example, so people are suspicious of it. However, what are our criteria for judging a person's good and evil? Are our standards accurate? Can you see a person's good and evil from the surface?

For example, some people look kind, but in fact they are hypocritical. We may be confused by his appearance. Some people may be decent in front of others, but when they are alone, they may do very shameful things. Others may have good intentions, but they may also have done bad things with good intentions. If most of us can't see clearly, we may "recognize good as evil and refer to evil as good".

In the "Four Disciplines of Leaving Fan", a master named Wang asked his students to talk about what is evil and what is good. Some students said: "It is evil to beat people and call names, but it is good to respect others." . Some students also said: "greed is evil, honesty is good." But Master Zhong Feng said that the standard you said is not necessarily reliable. Others asked what the standard of Master Zhong Feng was, and Master Zhong Feng replied: Be kind to people, just beat him and scold him; It is also evil to be beneficial to yourself, to respect others, and to be polite to others (so-called curry favor, flattery, flattery); Being insatiable for money, taking it for nothing, if it is to do good and benefit all beings, is also good, not evil; Honesty, on the surface, is good. Ignorance of current events is not good for people and cannot be regarded as good.

These are the standards of good and evil. Let's talk about the result first.

If you do a good thing, it is a good thing to spread it around for fear that others will not know. Everyone praises you. Praise is a blessing. Now that you have reported it, there will be no reward in the future. Doing good deeds without being known is a virtuous act, and accumulating good deeds can be rewarded. Because of this, one good deed deserves another, and most people can't see through it. What really accumulates goodness is what others can't see, and what you see can't be accumulated. You can pay it back after repairing it, and then there is no good result at all. This is the so-called "Yinde Tianbao, Yangshan enjoys the world name". And "those who are famous all over the world and whose names are not true, are many strange disasters." On the surface, what we mean is "good people get what they deserve."

On the contrary, some people do good deeds and keep silent, but they don't shy away from the problem, dare to take responsibility, and sometimes they are even misunderstood and accused by thousands of people. In this way, their merits have accumulated, but their crimes have been reported by people who are jealous and slander others, with great results. What we see on the surface is a "Millennium disaster".