https://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/liaofan.pdf
Liao-Fan's Four Lessons (Chinese: 了凡四訓) is a book written by Yuan Liaofan (Chinese: 袁了凡; 1533–1606), was a Chinese official during the Ming Dynasty, born in present-day Wujiang County, Jiangsu Province. Yuan wrote the book to teach his son, Yuan Tian-Chi. The principal idea behind these lessons is that destiny can be changed through proper cultivation of kindness and humility. Thus, one should not be bound by fate, but by one's own actions.
▶️ 3Speak
You have a wonderful family that clearly fostered and cultivated your curiosity and gaining wisdom. My own family was widely dispersed, and growing up I had no idea what cousins were. As a result I have never conceived of my destiny as anything but what I made of it, not attached to or depending on anyone else, neither their achievements nor their failings.
Now, at the end of my life, I observe I was correct in that assumption, and, while I have failed to achieve any public acclaim of greatness, I have a community of good and wholesome (more or less, LOL) people that, despite their constant fractious bickering amongst themselves, all treat me well and kindly. I believe this is an effect of keeping a goodwill account with each and all of them, perhaps the most valuable aspect of eschewing money and physical wealth insofar as I am able.
I have a broader appreciation for living things, and do not find that killing a mouse or deer is somehow less good than killing a potato or a tree. When I was just attaining majority, 17 or 18, I was exploring a forest on an island a day's travel from my usual stomping grounds. It was drizzling, as it always did there. Everything was soaking wet, saturated, dripping with water, the moss on the ground was like peat, a meter or more thick sponge on every surface it could cling to and absorb to constant rain. It was a primeval site that had never been logged. The canopy was total, the gloom beneath the evergreen trailing sopping wet moss and lichens admitted little but sparse and thin brush that could live in eternal dusk. I had an epiphany, that I was not a foreign thing in this new place, but integral. My breath out fed the trees, who in turn fed me the sweet air I breathed in. My footsteps sinking deeply into the mossy Earth squeezed out not only it's oversaturation of water, but extinguished bugs and worms, to be consumed by the moss and lichens. What I killed to eat I would deposit in the forest similarly, and the deer and squirrels that had fed on the forest would feed me, and then in turn would feed the forest.
I think that is our role in nature, and all of life feasts on and feeds all life. That is how nature maintains it's balance, it's peace: through unabated warfare between every green twig above, every roving beetle searching for fat, slimy slugs, every worm; each and all fighting ceaselessly for their supper, for air, for water, light, and all the resources they each need to live until they, in turn, die and are eaten. None of us are only eaten by the predator that takes us down and first feeds on us, but we are all joined into the entire web of life, which is one thing. All living things are composed of cells that have been dividing and reproducing asexually continually in unbroken chains of living cells descended from the first living cell that divided and reproduced. All of life is one organism, with many chains that have diverged bit by bit to take on new forms, new roles in the ecosystem.
There is only one living thing on Earth, and we are all part of it. I do not have any masters, nor am I anyone's master. As we are all one living thing, we are all equally sovereign and none rules another. I have learned this from no one, or from everyone, as you prefer, and include all my other limbs and digits, my other body parts like the deer and the trees, like the salmon and the kelp, all that I ate and will eat, and all that has eaten what I have left, and what I will leave, as my teachers and companions in life, and death that surely comes. We aren't men, and deer, moss, and lichens. We are trillions of cells, all brothers and sisters to one another, some greedy for light to make sugars with from the CO2 in the air, some greedy for sugars and the twigs that made them to grind between their molars and digest with bacteria in their guts, and some greedy for the flesh fed on the sugars and twigs. When we are in balance, there are no burdens of cruelty or accolades of gentility from conducting our natural role.
There is only life and death.
We humans are amazing juggernauts of many billions of cells, blessed with extraordinary complexity of intellect and society. Today I waged war on grass and bramble, jamming a snarling weedeater into the edge of the forest that continually pushes into the lawns of the people whose homes I maintain. The deer are baffled. They stare at me bug-eyed, as I destroy their dinners without taking a single bite. They are also creatures of the edge of the forest, and they are rightfully wary of me. They can smell the meat on my breath, and know only my forbearance prevents my breath from smelling of them. They don't understand licenses and tags, only that suddenly in the fall men here don't forebear anymore, but seek them out and slaughter them for food. Now, in the spring, they know what to expect from me and my weedwhacker, as long as I stay a leap away I am just going to destroy the sweet buds of the bramble they prefer, and they'll turn to my potatoes and beans in my garden as retribution.
They, like me, don't want to be eaten today, but we know that someday we will be eaten, and neither of us call that evil.
Thanks!
Hey VC,
been meaning to respond to this. Give me a day or so, things have been hectic here.
Hoping all is well, and btw, would you be interested in joining my private chat group on the element.io?
I am on element already. Just send link so I can add the rooms.
you will have to make an account on my private homeserver though. Will send email instructions.
Won't that fuck with my other element logins?
probably, thats why you make another account
@valued-customer I'm online for a bit, so if you're thinking of jumpin on, let me know