Writing on the line

- Layman, stupid, impulsive - the heart is difficult to cultivate

1. The style of a gentleman, the right path of self-cultivation, and the influence of the times

"The way of the university is in Mingmingde, in being close to the people, and in stopping at perfection."

That's the first sentence in "University."

"The word "gentleman" is widely seen in the pre-Qin classics, which originally meant 'the son of a king', and generally referred to a person with high morals. For example, "Zhou Yi Qian": Ninety-three, the gentleman works all day long, and he is not to blame. "The Book of Poetry, Zhou Nan, Guan Ju": My Fair Lady, Good Gentleman. "Shangshu, Yushu, Da Yu Mo": The gentleman is in the opposition, and the villain is in power. ”

This is the secular understanding of a gentleman on the Internet.

Whether it is in the classics of Chinese civilization or in the current cognition of people, there is an overview and standard of how people should or what kind of behavior is advocated and pursued in this civilization; However, this general concept and standard exists in people's consciousness and is contained in the essence of civilization, but it is not specific to the level of behavior, or it is vague in terms of discrimination; And what is more difficult to discern than what kind of person is a gentleman is - what kind of person is not a gentleman; This is a problem that we urgently need to solve in the inheritance and development of our own civilization, and it can even be said that there is no other problem before this problem.

Second, a gentleman's self-cultivation dilemma

1. The heart is difficult to be quiet, and worldly interference cannot be avoided

Born as a human being, it is inevitable to have a vulgar word, because people are "vulgar".

There are two aspects to this custom, one is material and the other is spiritual;

On the material level, man cannot be separated from his material nature, and no matter how much he emphasizes and differentiates, he cannot change this essence, at least for a long time to see.

On the other hand, it is spiritual, because the limitations of the material level of human beings will greatly affect their spiritual level, but fortunately, this influence does not carry some kind of inevitability, that is to say, people can control their own spiritual level of ascension, if he wants this kind of ascension is endless, and everything is mutual, such as: a person, as a human being, needs food, which is determined by the material level of his person, and cannot be changed; Similar needs materialize it; Regardless of the outcome, it is undeniable that the spiritual level can detach oneself from materialization, although more often the spiritual level of a person is dependent on the material level, and this is also necessary.

This material "vulgarity" of man can make him stupid, an impulse to become stupid, and the root of this stupidity is unavoidable; And this kind of "vulgarity" on the spiritual level of human beings, and the resulting impulse to be stupid and stupid to evolve, can be avoided, although it is not easy, and this is the meaning of mind cultivation.

2. Self-cultivators have a grasp of themselves, and it is difficult to have an impact on the outside world

A person can make mistakes because of his state of mind, but he can't change the environment because of this, and the world will not change how he treats you because of how you treat yourself; People can influence each other, this is right, and it is also one of the importance of the meaning of self-cultivation of a gentleman, but people can't change the world, the world changes with human nature, this is not something that a few people can do in a short period of time, so I said, no matter what a person you do, you can't change the world, and you can't change how the world gets along.

3. The short-term truth is easy to understand, but the long-term truth is difficult to maintain its belief

In the process of self-cultivation, it is difficult to adhere to beliefs, and often give up because they cannot get beneficial feedback in practice; Gentlemen and self-cultivators are still like this, and it is even more difficult for ordinary people who have no such intention to have any faith in them, and people are more willing to believe in what they can see in front of them than to bother with long-term changes.

4. The self-orientation of self-practitioners is prone to deviations

When a person has a certain understanding of life and the world, it is often easy to detach from people's own nature and explain things with self-centeredness; Even self-made prisons trap themselves and others in them.

3. About the several types of people encountered in self-cultivation: truth, falsehood, and evil

1. A gentleman who sincerely pursues self-improvement

No matter where a person is born, what he has done, or where he is placed, as long as he is seeking self-improvement in his heart, has an inner gentleman's goal, and this gentleman's goal is in line with the "Tao", we can call him a person who is truly self-cultivation—that is, what we call "truth".

2. The "layman" who has nothing to pursue

Everyone is a layman, but once he pursues something in his heart, he will change, and he will gradually change and reduce his vulgarity; If a person does not care what other people say about him, what aura he has achieved, if he has nothing to pursue in his heart, he is a layman after all, unable to free his own heart, let alone help others, no matter what achievements he makes, this achievement will only bring short-term benefits, and will not be beneficial to mankind for a long time.

3. The wicked who destroy the good

A person can live an ordinary life as a human being, or he can try everything that he can try as a human being, and he can even compete for survival, all of which are ordinary, nothing evil, and ordinary people; But there is a kind of person whose behavior has caused irreparable damage to the good side of man, and most of this kind of person and behavior will be punished accordingly in the world of man himself, and there are a few evils that are not recognized because of their humility, and the root cause of all this is the blurring of standards, and some people even classify this "evil" as normal; Some cultivators also regard it as understandable and list it as a test of their own cultivation, which is ridiculous and ridiculous; The self-cultivator can show tolerance for "evil" when appropriate, but the purpose of all this is to make the "evil" disappear, not to allow it to spread because it is small, otherwise everything will be deviated, and it will be unenlightened, confused, and inappropriate to constrain itself to any such deviant framework.

Fourth, about the "tiny evil" - the villain

Some "evils" seem to be ordinary and small, but we must know that evil has no size, and the essence of evil is evil, regardless of its quality. There is no qualitative difference between the very small "evil" and the very big "evil", and the people who are dominated by their "small evil" have their commonalities, and the "little man" is the accurate name of the group even if it is a representation of the group's behavior;

There is a village in Europe, quaint and integrated, where people have lived happily for hundreds of years, peaceful, plain and happy; But strangely, in recent decades, the population has been decreasing, and the formerly thriving village has become deserted, and no one knows why, and all kinds of rumors about it have increased, until the arrival of a priest has made it clear what happened. It turns out that a few decades ago, there was a woman living in the village, she was a standard "villain", whispering and telling right and wrong, all you can imagine the villain's behavior, she despicably regarded it as a daily life, she was constantly doing such things in a busy day, the village was constantly right and wrong, and became estranged from each other, some people's deliberate behavior in order to show intimacy did not change anything, the atmosphere became worse and worse, and many people left the village one after another, even if the truth of some things was clarified, But the atmosphere in the village hasn't improved for decades......

You may feel that this is a story, but in fact, this is a real thing, and the same thing even happened around us; There is no difference between the great and the small of the "evil" nature, and the "destructive power" they exhibit may make you disdain for a while, but if you regard them as "normal", you are underestimating them. Their manifestations cannot be classified as a number of "evils" predetermined by human beings, but their behavior is extremely bad, and the overall amount of destructiveness is no less than what people think of as "evil", and if people think that they are excluded from "evil" and regard it as "ordinary", it is stupid because they are too self-conscious, and there is no progress at all according to this concept;

Seeing something beautiful or something that is beneficial to oneself, and loving it and wanting to get closer, this is not a "villain", this is human nature; Seeing good things and getting them at any cost, if they contain great "evil", it is easy for people to distinguish; Seeing good things, no matter what they have to do with themselves, and destroying them bent on destroying them, people often have wrong judgments or are difficult to distinguish this kind of "evil" because they do not understand their motives, and even sometimes understand this kind of destruction without asking the reason as a kind of "good", which is the real harm of "villains", that is, what we say "evil has no size, and the essence is evil";

Generally speaking, people are a kind of balance of good and evil, but what can be called "villain" is the person who has been dominated by "tiny evil", they no longer belong to this state of equilibrium, and the reason why people can't distinguish them for a while is because the understanding of good and evil is not deep enough, and it is also because of the lack of definition standards for this "villain" state;

The main and obvious characteristic of the villain is his hatred of good things, which is also the inevitable result of his control by the essence of "evil", and this control of the villain's "small evil" is mainly manifested in the following points in life:

1. Extreme inferiority: villains will always be sensitive to the "strong", but what they care most about is not to ban the "strong", but to get their own interests in the "strong", they are even extremely inferior in their hearts to the point that they can't believe that they can replace the "strong", but they can clearly know the benefits they can get from the "strong";

2. Selfishness: There will be a selfish side in human nature, which is why "villains" can often be confused in the crowd, people are easy to ignore the difference between the two, the selfishness of villains often has "destructiveness", both for their own interests to damage others at any cost, and even if the benefits they can bring to themselves are unknown, they will do it, sometimes it is even difficult for you to tell whether their instinct is to hurt others or to pursue their own interests, can only be understood as they are already in a pathological "selfishness" , which can easily be distinguished from the so-called selfishness of the human survival instinct;

3. Unprincipled: Villains are often easy to get things done, which also makes many people have wrong evaluations of them, or use them to excuse the villains themselves; The reason why the villain can get things done quickly is often because at the cost of his "not speaking of principles", the villain rarely has his fixed principles, and he is very "sincere" in everything he does, and there is no burden in his heart;

4. Lack of personality: The villain will not stop his behavior, and the lack of personality is the driving force for his inner evil; Its understanding of the world is evil, so it does not believe in good, nor does it stop being evil;

5. Good at camouflage: Because the villain is a "tiny evil", he does not have the control of the things around him, and he does not pursue control, which will only bring endless damage, so the villain often shows his weak side, but this weakness does not change its essence of harming others;

6. Proficient in human nature: The villain does not have the ability to directly harm others or dare not use that way, so the villain will figure out people's hearts most of the time, use the weakness of people's own human nature to attack others, and let things enter a worse situation, the villain will never push things in a good direction, which is also its main feature;

7. Unable to protect themselves: People often can't judge the villain because he has been hurt himself, but he doesn't know that it is difficult for the villain to protect himself because of his own ability and position; When things get bad, the villain often has no ability to get out, and the outside world will not waste more resources to rescue him, so he is often trapped in it and reaps the consequences, and his remorse at this time is only his own reason, and the harm to others is still ignored;

4. Saving and Reducing the "Little Evils"

1. Far from the villain

Far from the villain is not the usual understanding of staying away from the villain, but to identify the villain, can not let its humble behavior hide in the daily life, when we understand what the villain's behavior is, in the restraint of their own at the same time do not become its accomplices; Human nature often makes people stupid, this is a reality, but to know in your heart that becoming a villain will only make you degenerate and will not bring the benefits that people usually think, this is also a realistic situation, so people don't need to be very high, just need to have normal reason will not become a "villain", although this is not difficult to do, but in reality it is not ideal, this is a very regrettable thing, can only be understood as the power of "evil", and the existence of "evil" in people themselves, What people really seek is to reduce the existence of this part of the "evil", and all those who reduce it are in line with the Tao, but on the contrary, whatever form they appear in magnified is an existence that violates the Tao, and everything becomes much clearer when we understand this.

2. Self-denial and convincing others

As a human being, at any time, the first task or the pursuit is to improve one's own level, which has an external part, but more importantly, its inner part, only in this way can human beings have hope to talk about, this is an indisputable judgment. Therefore, in a person's daily life, we need to improve the "good" side of human nature as much as possible, this promotion is not in the external form, and others comment, but more importantly, a person's heart, when a person's heart is really pursuing this, will consciously or unconsciously make a model for others, to prevent the depravity of normal people, of course, an ordinary person can not play this role all the time, but as long as he has that trace of concept in his heart, this effect will appear, no matter how much of its timing, There are even contradictory behaviors, but they do not change the kind of selfless, no gain or loss, this is the hope and possibility of human progress, with which human beings will always have hope; On the contrary, without this, there would be no hope for mankind, and such a thing should not really happen, because the coexistence of good and evil in human beings will not change in the visible time.

3. Punishment is measured

Discerning between good and evil, that is, we said a long time ago, "For the good that exists in human nature, man can sometimes not do it, but he must know it"; Self-denial and convincing others is to improve oneself as the goal of one's life; On these two points, there will be no big difference in a person's behavior in daily life, after turning into one's own interior, the opposite must be mostly "evil" behavior, and the one that is in line with it must be "good" behavior, at this time a person's behavior is often close to a kind of detachment from the world, and does not need to be understood by ordinary people, what needs to be completed is more difficult, sometimes only oneself knows, sometimes even oneself does not know, everything is left to each person to experience by himself, and a person's life needs to be completed by himself.

5. Overview

Some words must be repeated after a person has thought about it; The pursuit of self-improvement does not mean that a person ignores everything external and is only self-centered; In the same way, a person's addiction to the world does not mean that he can completely objectify himself and no longer need his own inner understanding;

A self-seeking individual and human beings pursue the whole, that is, the individual and the whole are:

"The individual and the whole, the perfection of the individual is the perfection of the whole, the protection of the individual is the protection of the whole, there will be a time for conflict between the individual and the whole, but in the end the pursuit should be the same, and the individual will not be submerged in the whole but the dialectical organic sameness."