A leisurely life that begins with the possession of a game character

This chapter does not advance the plot, so you can skip it.

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It is possible to introduce a few masters of cultivation to Tian Qingyong. When Zhang Lan was studying his own magic, he deliberately looked for relevant people and things when he went out.

It is hard to say whether every city has a few truly capable people, but within the neighboring cities, there will definitely be one or more people with some real abilities.

No matter how true it is in the Dharma-Ending Age, there will always be some people who are gifted, brilliant in spiritual practice, and able to stand out.

In addition to those who explore their body's potential and push the limits of life, there are also people who have achieved success in mysticism.

Although they don't have a game panel like Zhang Lan, which can materialize merits and cast spells, there are still people who can subconsciously choose the path of accumulating merits, thus having a short-term foresight and prediction ability in certain aspects.

The biggest difference between Zhang Lan and them is that Zhang Lan can transform merits into extraordinary abilities through the game panel, while they can only rely on some things or methods in real society to resolve them.

There is a prerequisite for cultivation, which is to practice the correct Dharma. Many people practice side-door Dharma as if it were the correct Dharma. It is useless to practice for tens of millions of years, and it can only prolong one's lifespan at best.

Of course, prolonging life is only possible if you don't go astray. If you go astray, it's fine, but if you go astray, modern medical technology can't cure it. You might even kill yourself.

Because it is easy to see the effects of minor methods, people praise each other, and people who practice them are conceited. If you tell them that this is not the right way, they will get angry.

For example, the word "Reiki". Anyone who talks about Reiki is either a liar or a fool. Reiki has never been written about in Buddhist and Taoist books, but it is often mentioned in novels.

In fact, the so-called spiritual practice is often the process of killing the "false self". The human heart dies and the Tao heart lives. Those who practice Tao lose more and more every day, and lose more and more until they reach inaction.

Throughout the ages, various masters have explained the practice of cultivation. If the color of ordinary people is black, then cultivation is to whiten yourself little by little, and then wash white until it is transparent. Ordinary people have a hand of messy cards, and cultivation is to change the cards again and again, so that the hand can be cleared at once.

Everyone is a Theseus ship, whether spiritual or material. Cultivation is to "correct the human heart and practice the Tao heart", and you will naturally gain the Tao over time.

The difficulty of spiritual practice lies in correcting one’s mind. Who would be willing to admit that their three views and cognitions are wrong? Who would be willing to admit that the beliefs they have always held are meaningless? Who would be willing to admit that their personality is not so noble? Who would be willing to uncover their own wounds and look directly at their own pain? Who would be willing to admit all the dark sides of themselves?

There is no way to solve the problem if you don’t acknowledge it. This is the root cause of the inability to correct the problem.

How many people can honestly admit all their mistakes and correct them in the circumstances of life? Confucius said: "Knowing shame is close to courage."

If you can't do this, you won't be able to reach the state of peace of mind. If your mind is not at peace, cultivating your nature becomes an empty talk.

If you can't do this, you can't accumulate morality and generate noble spirit, the simplest and most effective way to nourish qi is not used, and cultivating life becomes an empty talk. Precisely because you can't do this, driven by desire and fear, people will try to take shortcuts and try to use formal things to convince themselves that they are cultivating.

However, formal things are not the path to liberation after all, and nothing can be achieved by practicing them this way.

So many people want to die, but they deceive themselves and say they want to live.

Therefore, many people do not want to form the elixir, but they deceive themselves by saying that they want to form the elixir.

How can one cultivate to achieve something? This is an open secret. If one does not laugh, then he is not qualified to be a Taoist. This is self-cultivation.

"Wu Zhen Pian": "If you want to complete the nine transformations of cultivation, you must first refine yourself and control your mind."

"Xuan Yao Pian": "Before refining the elixir, refine your nature first; before refining the great medicine, cultivate your mind first."

People who practice inner alchemy must first calm their minds and regulate their breathing, so that their hearts and minds are extremely empty. But is this self-cultivation? This is not self-cultivation.

The sign of successful self-cultivation is to maintain a calm and peaceful mind at all times throughout the day, and only with this as a starting point can one achieve the elixir. If one fails to achieve self-cultivation, one will repeatedly accumulate and leak, wasting time.

Lu Zu himself had tried and failed three times, and failed many times. Bai Yuchan of the Southern School also went through a lot of trouble, and there is still a poem "Failed to Make the Elixir" left today, which has the line "Reorganize the fishing rod, and chop the autumn bamboo again."

From ancient times to the present, the black and white of the Tai Chi diagram has never increased or decreased, and the objective laws cannot be changed by human will.

If you only treat spiritual practice like reading and reciting texts, you will never reach the core in your lifetime, and you will still stay in the comfort zone of your mind. At most, you will hang out in various spiritual practice groups and talk about general things to kill time.

This phenomenon not only occurs in those who study traditional Buddhist and Taoist practices, but is also common among new-age spiritual learners, both of whom often quote classic words and talk about love.

But they are only talking about the form of the classics and have not touched upon the spirit at all.

Cultivation often becomes like reading a book. The more you read, the more you seem to know. However, cultivation is just the opposite. In true cultivation, the more you read, the more you will discover that all this knowledge is just a transitional ship, and you will have to put it down sooner or later. Even worse, you will learn very little and have only a vague understanding of the direction of your own cultivation.

In spiritual practice, one must go through negative feedback before obtaining positive feedback. This negative feedback refers to the inner struggle, just as Jesus had to practice alone in the wilderness to overcome his inner demons, and Buddha had to face tests under a tree.

Nowadays, many people have been practicing for a very long time, but have never touched upon their inner struggles. They always like to learn more and say more, wasting their time in the positive feedback of their minds.

No matter how much knowledge is loaded into your mind, it is just tools. No matter how many tools there are, they will not really play a role. As long as you stay on the boat, you will not be lonely on the boat. There are many similar people who are always communicating with each other. This can also be called practice.

A true practitioner must walk a lonely journey. Even with invisible blessings, he must truly go deep into his inner self, explore his feelings, and touch this door without a door.

In fact, you don't need too much knowledge to practice. A good tool is enough. There is no need to develop a hobby of collecting tools. On the contrary, the more tools and methods you have, the less likely you are to know which one to use.

Listen to your inner intuition, find a handy tool, and then you should immediately go deep within. Your inner self is where the real infinite wisdom lies. The only thing you need to do is to dispel the dark clouds that obscure your wisdom, and wisdom will emerge.

In the process of inner exploration, it is inevitable that there will be conflicts between old and new ideas and habits. One will often encounter spiritual storms, inner advancement and retreat. However, it is only when there is a real inner tug that a person truly begins to practice, until one realizes that the tug is just a non-existent rope, everything is let go, and the light of true nature begins to emerge. Only then, looking back on the past, can one truly be called a "practitioner."