Probability and Luck

Everything in the world manifests probabilistically, which leads to the diversity of this world and others, with luck playing a huge role in it.

Take the lottery, which everyone is familiar with, as an example. For China Sports Lottery, with seven digits ranging from 0 to 9, for all lottery buyers, it is a concept of one in ten million. Statistically speaking, less than one in a thousand is basically an impossible event, so winning the lottery is basically impossible.

But here comes the problem: someone always wins.

The reason for winning is simply that many people buy tickets, so someone always wins. But the question arises again: why is it always him and not you who wins?

What is special about the winners?

If you observe lottery stations across the country, you will find an interesting phenomenon. If you calculate the ratio of the number of winning tickets to the number of buyers, there will always be some lottery stations with a higher winning probability than others.

Although this is due to the fact that probability cannot be completely uniformly distributed, you will always find that some lottery stations indeed bring a higher winning rate.

If you further study, you will find that these lottery stations have similar Feng Shui characteristics. This is a digression, so let's not discuss it for now.

In short, luck is such a thing that it can describe the degree of favorability in the probability distribution of an event.

The higher the luck, the higher the probability one gets from it; the lower the luck, the lower the probability one gets from it.

This is actually very common in life, such as villages producing top scholars or villages producing generals. In ancient times, many villages had people who passed the imperial examination as top scholars, and some villages or places easily produced generals.

If these are summarized, the impact of probability enhancement caused by different regional environments becomes the Feng Shui effect.

So Feng Shui can change luck; it actually changes luck, making luck higher or lower, so that people will gain more or suffer more in corresponding events in life.

But it must be clear that luck affects the probability changes of the person influenced by luck, so it is not omnipotent.

Do not think that after the probability of something is increased, it will definitely be 100%. This is impossible. However, with increased probability and your own effort to repeat doing something, you will benefit.

For example, if you toss a coin, under normal circumstances with two equally likely sides, the probability of heads or tails is 50%.

If you process this coin, without considering the scope of Feng Shui, Daoist methods, or other divination techniques, just thicken the heads side. After thickening, because the heads side is heavier, the chance of it landing face down will increase significantly. However, you can still toss it to land face up.

Since both heads and tails sides must exist, there is no absolute 100% guarantee that a certain side will appear.

This is because it is the principle of nature.

There are different ways to enhance luck in different events. If summarized for life as a whole, it is:

First Fate, Second Luck, Third Feng Shui, Fourth Accumulating Hidden Merits, Fifth Studying

Other sayings were added by later generations. This is actually a good summary by the ancients. Why summarize it this way?

First, regarding Fate: some are born into wealthy and official families. This is not something one can decide, so Fate comes first.

Second, the issue of Luck influences changes in life. Those with good luck can become rich even if they were poor. Zhu Yuanzhang almost starved to death originally, but later became emperor. Emperor Wu of Liang was born into a royal and noble family but ended up starving to death. These are all caused by Luck.

Third, Feng Shui of ancestral graves affects descendants. Moving ancestral graves is not an easy matter, and most ancestral graves either benefit or harm descendants, which is also not something one can decide.

Fourth, Accumulating Hidden Merits belongs to what can be accomplished postnatally, but it requires personal practice and is related to one's own mindset. If one does not have this awareness from childhood or is naturally shallow and mean, naturally one cannot have the behavior of accumulating hidden merits. Half of this is not autonomous.

Finally, Studying: everyone knows studying is important, but knowing is one thing, and whether one can study well and how well one can study is related to intelligence, family, and mindset. Many ancients did not have the opportunity to study from childhood, so there is a small part that is not autonomous.

These five points determine the base of luck, which is the most basic luck, while the part assisted by postnatal effort is mostly autonomous.

So-called making up for先天 deficiencies with后天 efforts ultimately still supplements luck.

The methods to make up for insufficient luck are divided into Yin and Yang. The Yang part is what to do and how to create conditions when encountering specific things; the Yin part is Feng Shui, divination, and techniques.