Why practice?

Because you don't recognize yourself.

In a small way—

Either you don't know what kind of responsibility you should take in your life and work, so you always grow up and become a huge "baby" with an adult appearance; Or maybe you don't know how to care about your relatives and friends and can't express your feelings properly, so there are various problems in interpersonal relationships; In other words, in the face of problems, you always escape and retreat, feel inferior and bind yourself; Or, after being hit, it is easy to collapse, pessimistic about everything, and negative and world-weary?

To a large extent-

Have you seriously thought about what your persistent goal in life is? Have you seriously thought about the meaning of life and tried to live a meaningful life? What is your destination in life? What is the root of your life's pain? Where does life come from and where does death go? Even if you are immortal, is it necessary to live a meaningful life? Does it have long-lasting or even eternal significance? ?

Combine these two aspects, observe and reflect on what you think and do in your life as a whole, and then ask yourself, why are you alive? What's the point of doing whatever you want? Do you think truth, goodness and beauty can stand all kinds of doubts and tests?

With these ideas, you should be able to understand why-you can't recognize yourself. On this basis, you may understand why the ancients emphasized Tao and virtue, righteousness and action.

This ignorance of oneself and life is ignorance and ignorance. Ignorance (ignorance) is neither an original sin nor a sin, but it is a great mistake to ignore and let this ignorance not be solved.

Practice is essentially to help you realize the growth, maturity, awakening and perfection of your inner life. Therefore, don't take practice too narrowly. It's not just burning incense, worshipping Buddha, meditating on rosary beads, or lonely scrolls. These are just means to achieve your goal, not absolute, not unique. The focus of all means is actually to help you mature mentally, sublimate your mind, and finally realize the true consciousness of life.

Therefore, don't regard practice as something completely divorced from life. Practice and life are the same thing. Practice is the first important thing in life. If you don't know the meaning and essence of your life, what reason do you have to think and do it?

For countless years, people have always realized the big problems in their lives and started to question them. From the perceptual point of view, the traditional "four classic novels" as a whole express different life contents and represent different aspects of life, which explains why people tend to practice after all.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms describes the little people in troubled times, who are determined to pursue their own goals, build fame one by one, and make great achievements throughout their lives, with great pride in conquering the world. However, at the beginning of this novel, a poem "Fairy on the River" is quoted as the opening words, which is the most familiar sentence: "The Yangtze River rolls eastward and disappears, and the waves wash away heroes. Success or failure has turned empty, the green hills are still there, and the sunset is a few degrees red. White-haired fishermen are used to watching autumn moon and spring breeze on the river. A pot of warm wine likes to meet, and many things in ancient and modern times are to pay a joke. " If you carefully taste the meaning, it is full of historical vicissitudes. In the long river of time, all heroes, achievements, beauties, the world, right and wrong, disputes, loyalty, treachery and so on. It's all wasted. What's left? Often it will only become people's leisure after dinner. Achievements and undertakings are great, but there is a certain limit to this greatness.

"Water Margin" describes the course of a group of people at the bottom of society who have ideals and rewards trying to achieve good social effects in the peaceful and prosperous times, and the way they achieve their goals is to rob the rich and help the poor, and to uphold justice for chivalry, in short, to help the sky. The irony is that if you want to do justice for heaven, you have to be a robber first. There are only two outcomes, either overthrowing the court to manage the society itself or accepting the court to be managed. In fact, no matter what kind of outcome, the ideal of eliminating social injustice and upholding justice for heaven can not be truly realized. Its prologue is that the world is disturbed, with nowhere to run, nowhere to get and nothing to do. The poem at the end of the poem is also so artistic, the heroes are all dead, and the yes-men are still there.

A Dream of Red Mansions is about a Dream of Red Mansions, which wakes up without a trace. The world in the red chamber is exactly what the world dreams of: splendor, children and grandchildren, extravagant enjoyment, beautiful women like clouds, intoxicating. The opening of the novel and the judgment in it reveal the final ending, which is actually the normal state in the world-people desperately pursue wealth, indulge themselves, and even hide evil and do evil, but the final ending often has no good end. Even so, knowing that it was a fire pit, too many people jumped in one after another and staged one after another, "Eat all the birds and throw them into the forest, and finally end up in a white land, which is really clean." In such an environment, even if you want to be alone, it is impossible. So in Jia Baoyu's eyes, so many pure women are depraved and dying. In this impermanence of the world of mortals, the real Yin Shi who really sees through and puts down first appeared in the first book and was moved by a monk; Later, after all kinds of ups and downs, Jia Baoyu finally became a monk.

Why emphasize practice? Because if you don't practice, you can't do anything about the joys and sorrows of the world and where you will go. The development of the overall story of Journey to the West revolves around this issue. When the Monkey King led a group of monkeys to enjoy themselves in the Guo Hua, he suddenly burst into tears, because he deeply realized that he would get old and die sooner or later, and all the good things he had now would eventually come to nothing. As a result, he made up his mind to stay away from the comfortable life, put down everything he had, and traveled across the ocean to learn from his teacher and seek an immortal party, which triggered the development of the follow-up story. Journey to the west called his serious worries "the development of Tao's mind" because he understood why and the importance of monasticism, and then went to practice sincerely and eagerly. Of course, there are various twists and turns behind it, and the source of the twists and turns is actually the deviation of people's understanding concepts.

In short, if everything in the world is measured by the standard of "impermanence of life and death", our social model and living conditions can't solve the big problem of life and death at all, which shows the necessity and importance of spiritual consciousness.

Does spiritual practice mean that we must abandon our relatives and friends, stay away from society, and not eat fireworks?

Buddhism says that life is bitter. Although many ancient sages criticized and denied human life and human society, basically it can be said that Buddhism is the most negative criticism, which gives many people an impression. It seems that what Buddhism conveys and makes people establish is a negative and decadent outlook on life, escaping from the suffering of reality and seeking happiness in the afterlife.

Actually, this is a misunderstanding. The root of misunderstanding lies in that people's pursuit of secular life and happiness and Buddhism's negative criticism of the world are completely two levels. The criticism of Buddhism focuses on people's inner life state-ignorance and indifference to their own life and life. In this ignorant state, people blindly and selfishly pursue the maximization of self and group (or self-centered) interests, which is doomed to have no beautiful process, and it is even more difficult to have a happy ending.

People's pursuit of happiness in world life is often at the phenomenon level. For example, you really want to "have a good full moon" and you are naturally surprised when you finally arrive. However, the phenomenal situation is always changeable, fleeting and impossible to maintain for a long time. In fact, life has always been "people are not as good as heaven, and flowers are not as good as heaven." But if you only want and like "a full moon", you artificially create pain and opposition. It's not that there is something wrong with the world, but your understanding.

Moreover, people often attach a lot of conditions, thinking that what conditions are met and where they are. This pursuit is not only fleeting, but also often self-restraint. If you rely on conditions to achieve happiness, then in essence, you become a slave to conditions, and you are enslaved by conditions ideologically. Even if your goal is achieved and your expected conditions are met, you can't have real happiness, because the spiritual world you form is like duckweed floating without roots, which produces endless desires and you will never be really satisfied with it.

On the Journey to the West, the Monkey King went down to practice, but the first place he went to was the People's Club in Nanshan, where he studied etiquette and writing. After staying for 89 years, he found that he could not achieve his goal: "Seeing the world is all about fame and fortune, and none of it is for life, that is-when will you stop fighting for fame and fortune?" It is not free to get up early and go to bed late. Riding a donkey and mule thinking about a good horse, the prime minister of the official residence looked at the princes. I'm only worried about food and clothing, and I'm afraid Yan Jun will take the bait. The shadow of the stepson and the grandson are very rich, and no one wants to look back. "What is denied and criticized here is people's concept of life and mental state. Everyone obeys his animal side, indulges himself, follows his own desires, rushes about in fame and fortune, and churns in the ocean of desires. Even if there are moral etiquette to check and balance, they simply don't pay attention to the question of "serving life"-what life is this? Where did it come from? Where are you going? What is the fundamental significance of settling down?

Buddha, the meaning of consciousness. What is awakened is not the moral principle, not the principle of something, but the true meaning and essence of life. Practice is to reflect on oneself, pursue the true meaning of life and return to the true existence of life on the basis of ensuring the continuity of life and ensuring the basic needs of life. Only when the career pursuit and achievements of life are brought into the track of spiritual growth and spiritual consciousness can everything in life have real meaning. After awakening, life goes on. But after awakening, life is no longer an impulse of blindness and ignorance, but pure wisdom.