On Some Things That Change Destiny

On life’s journey, one inevitably encounters things one is helpless against. 　　For such situations you will often hear some mystifying people say: let nature take its course, act in accord with the current, for the Dao follows what is natural, so just leave it alone and get by as best you can. 　　Some people really believe this, and so acquire a kind of intoxication of “picking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence,” merrily tipsy and unable to extricate themselves; in time they actually feel they are happily carefree—until suddenly they meet some irresistible disaster, or unexpectedly fall gravely ill, and only then realize that reality is so cruel, and that their previous self-satisfied leisure was nothing but a dream of self-deception. 　　There are also those who feel defiant, who insist on getting to the bottom of everything, and so develop intense obsessive-compulsive tendencies, constantly trying to use the wrong mode of thinking to arrive at the answer they want—of course this is impossible, so in the end they still cannot avoid failure. 　　Hence some people sigh that destiny cannot be defied—because no matter what you do, it is wrong. 　　Is it really that no matter what you do it is wrong? Actually you have simply done it wrong. No one can guarantee that their worldview fits the real world, because if it truly fit, that would require unity of heaven and humanity, and ordinary people cannot achieve that—which means the force of such fit is very small. 　　Since this force is very small, it will necessarily find it difficult to influence the real world—much like those powers of the mind that employ the law of attraction. They are a good method for improving one’s inner feng shui and can indeed produce some effects, but in most cases they cannot play an infinitely great role. For example, if you set a goal of surpassing Buffett financially, in most cases it can only be an unrealistic fantasy. 　　But this force is actually elastic; if you insist on viewing it with material metaphors, it really is bound. If you consider whether it is actually a material existence, you can understand that it is “great without and small without within”—meaning that the magnitude of its force can in fact change according to certain rules. 　　I once encountered an interesting case: a cancer patient whom the hospital said had only months to live. He came hoping to explore whether there was any way to go on longer. His bazi had no water, and then he met a dry-earth luck cycle, with the annual fortune also extremely inauspicious—by all appearances he would not live long. At the time I asked how his illness was; he said the pain was unbearable and he truly wanted to die then, but when it didn’t hurt, he still ultimately wanted to live. I was still a shallow student at the time and truly had no good method, so I asked him: would you rather live amid agony or pass away amid happiness? He said of course it would be better to pass away happily. Since he had little money left from prior treatment, I offered an idea: go to the Arctic Circle to see the aurora borealis, commit the aurora deeply to memory, take lots of photos and keep them at home; whenever the pain came, strain to imagine the aurora, so that on the day he could endure no more, he could at least depart elegantly in spirit. When he did pass, have his family contact me and I would perform a deliverance rite for him. Otherwise, don’t contact me. 　　A long time passed without anyone contacting me; occasionally remembering this, I found it strange, thinking perhaps his family simply didn’t wish to—there’s nothing more to say about such matters. Years later, one day I suddenly received a call from his family saying he was in a coma, which surprised me. Only after careful inquiry did I learn that after that trip to see the aurora, though his body hadn’t grown stronger, it hadn’t grown worse either; most of the time he was no different from an ordinary person. His family had asked him, and he said each time the pain came he labored to fantasize about the aurora; over a long time the pain gradually became less. This coma was not from his original illness but from a car accident. His family, considering his physical condition, estimated he would hardly survive this, so they called. 　　Upon hearing this I immediately felt this car accident would not cause much trouble, and sure enough he woke not long after. Of course that wasn’t the main point—the main point was that during the hospital stay after the accident, medical exams found the tumor had gone who knows where. The man went on living well; apart from some occasional odd pains, there were no other problems. 　　Years later I read a foreign article and discovered such cases are not unique—abroad many have also had terminal illnesses, gone to see the aurora, and recovered without medicine. Though such cases are few and lack statistical significance, they nonetheless exist and are not mere coincidences. Some scholars have explored this, suggesting it results from hormones secreted by the heart after witnessing a hugely shocking scene. 　　Here something ingenious arises: pure imagination cannot change cancer. In truth, many optimistic people who want to live do not always get their wish. Yet this factor that can affect cancer still has material causes—and those causes must be triggered by psychological feeling, which turns it back around: the subjective psychological effect is indeed useful against cancer; whether the method is correct determines how great the influence. 　　So whether a person’s destiny can be changed is hard to assert with certainty—but in this world there is always no absolute law. When you think it can be changed, you find that for the vast majority destiny does not budge at all; when you think it cannot be changed, some counterexample always appears to teach you. 　　The key factor is whether the person trying to change can transform a mere wish into an objective, real influence. 　　The truth of this world is that most people shout about how they will change destiny through accumulating virtue and doing good works, shouting about how hard they will strive and struggle—but they only shout, and do not put it into practice. Such people account for at least 80 percent of the population; these are the truly unchangeable realities. So although miracles exist in the world, they are unlikely to happen to these people. 　　Many get lost in a mistaken, contradictory logic: if destiny is variable, then why can it be calculated? If destiny is unvariable, then how can it possibly be changed? 　　Placing “calculable” and “changeable” in opposition is itself a logical error. All things in the world exist in dynamic balance, changing at every moment; yet amid these changes there are also things relatively stable and unchanging—just as molecules are always moving, but if you set a pair of chopsticks down, no matter how the molecules move, after ten or eight years, as long as they haven’t gone mouldy, you can still use them to pick up food; they are still chopsticks. 　　Generally speaking, calculating a person’s destiny is like recognizing a pair of wooden chopsticks—and for the chopsticks to cast off their fate of being chopsticks is very difficult, because however much one works internally, overall they are still a pair of chopsticks; at most the motion is faster, the energy higher, and the chopsticks get a little hotter. 　　So if the chopsticks don’t want to be chopsticks, what can be done? One way is to move so fast that the chopsticks finally catch fire and become charcoal—thus the chopsticks change themselves, but this premise requires enormous energy. 　　In India’s original religions, cultivation is basically this concept: don’t expect the practice itself to change much, for that requires extremely powerful energy. Rather, through arduous practice or elaborate sacrifice one can attract the attention of Brahma or Shiva, who then grant energy, enabling one to be reborn into a better caste or into one of the six destinies, or to cultivate better and ultimately achieve unity of brahman and self. 　　In Buddhism, which arose later, the guidance is to awaken to dhyana: the chopsticks are actually just a product of the conjunction of causes and conditions. The chopsticks themselves do not exist; the name “chopsticks” is also imposed by humans. So it is chopsticks yet not chopsticks, and not non-chopsticks; therefore abandon your understanding of chopsticks, don’t take chopsticks as chopsticks, and so there are no chopsticks; realize the truth of suffering, accumulation, cessation, and path, and naturally chopsticks are not chopsticks—this is called nirvana. 　　In Daoist thinking it is not like that: a chopstick is a chopstick; since it is a wooden chopstick, just transform it into something else. Cultivate from inside outward, causing real material change within, until it becomes a golden chopstick; then the golden chopstick can become a primordial qi, and with this qi one can freely transform into other things. So Daoist cultivation pays more attention to subtle inner things—and things that can truly produce real effects—rather than resting on the mind alone out of nothing. 　　Naturally, different modes of thinking lead to different results; thus the Indian style cannot solve many problems, so it emphasizes karmic influence, whereas traditional Daoism, because it can solve problems, need not concern itself with karma. 　　A good mode of thinking can solve more problems. For example, suppose you see two mountains in the distance, separated by lakes, ridges, and scattered rocks, and you want to calculate the distance between them. 　　With Indian-style thinking, upon seeing this, you would be told: there are simply too many obstacles between these two mountains; it is impossible to measure, and even if you try, obstacles will crowd you and precision will be hard—all because of karma; that is why there are so many obstacles here, so you had better give up early. 　　With Daoist mathematical thinking, you directly measure the distance from the first mountain to yourself, then the distance from the second mountain to yourself that forms a right angle, and with the Pythagorean theorem you can calculate the result. 　　As for Daoist mathematical arts, many people are not quite clear. As a casual example: back when Li Chunfeng produced the “Linde Calendar,” he told Emperor Taizong of Tang that a solar eclipse was coming and it was inauspicious. Taizong flew into a rage and retorted: what if there is no eclipse? Li Chunfeng said directly: if there is no eclipse, you can kill me. Taizong said: fine, fine, then go home and say goodbye to your wife. 　　Then the eclipse happened, not off by a hair. What’s more interesting than this is that Li Chunfeng’s method of using interpolation for the calculation came a thousand years before Newton. 　　The Daoist Five Arts were later summarized as mountain, medicine, divination, destiny, and physiognomy—but in my view this summary is incomplete, because Daoism also includes many other fields. The Book of Changes is not entirely something for divination; it has also been used as a theoretical tool for exposition. Daoist mathematical achievements are also extremely high, especially evident in the art of calculation. If these are confined only to the arts of destiny and divination, that clearly greatly shrinks the academic scope of Daoism. 　　After all, all the various arts are used to witness the Dao. 　　Take divination as an example: because things can be predicted and divined, there must necessarily be corresponding methods of change. Divination only builds a model, then checks whether that model matches reality; if it matches and the interpretation is correct, one can reverse-engineer from that interpretation, deliberately changing the relevant influential factors so that the whole shifts toward the result one needs. 　　The basis of all this is that things are knowable and models can be built to simulate them, and on the basis of such simulation one can find the crux of the problem and resolve it. 　　Understanding this principle, one will know that divination itself is not mysterious: accurate judgment and decision-making on the basis of divination can influence the direction of events—and that is likewise not mysterious. Divination merely utilizes an objective regularity of this world; it has nothing to do with talk of ghosts and spirits. 　　So the future is originally chaotic. If we imagine a polar coordinate on which many auspicious and inauspicious nodes are randomly distributed, and understand destiny as a structure of piecewise vector changes, then fortune is the distance in that direction—together they form the pattern of destiny, jointly expressing the changes of development. Often one cannot reverse the direction, but as long as one controls well the landing point of the vector, one can still achieve the aim of seeking the auspicious and avoiding the inauspicious.