The Trajectory and Free Will of Life
December 1, 2017
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( Translated by Transn and Edited by Kaer)
There are many times more stars in the sky than people on earth. Each star floats along its own orbit around the galaxy and each orbit is determined and is not its free choice.
Life also has its track: birth, growth, ageing, and death is our inescapable course. Eighteen (18) properties cannot be self-managed within Life’s track. If we make a detailed search and analysis, we can see that each detail on Life’s track is predetermined, including our name, temperament or character, words and actions, who we will encounter, what we will suffer, what diseases we will succumb to at each stage of Life, when the end will come, and so on.
Here is question:
Since our Life trajectory and its details are already predestined, do people have free will or not, and if they do have free will, how then is it manifested?
There is no doubt that people have free will. It is precisely this free will that causes the hesitation, trouble, agony, fear, and sadness in Life. The universe is one; the universe is holographic; the universe is a big play. Everything that happens in human society is a single episode of the big play of the universe. Everyone is an actor on this big stage of Life and performs in strict accordance with a predetermined plot and is playing their role in this prescribed scenario.
The hesitations, troubles, agonies, fears, sadness, and other psychological feelings in Life result from the conflicts and contradictions between each person’s free will and their role in the play. You are asked to play a mouse, but your free will wants you to play an elephant. You are asked to live in a thatched cottage, but your free will wants you to live in a five-star hotel. You are asked to cooperate and serve a certain person, but you attempt to make them cooperate and serve you. You are asked to grow vegetables, but you hope to make a spaceship. You are asked to do good or evil, but you choose to do the opposite, and so on. This is the conflict between the your role in the play and your free will. Whenever the arrangement of the play is contradicted by free will, hesitation, trouble, agony, anxiety, fear, worry, and sadness will take over. If your free will agrees with the arrangement of the plot, you will feel peace, joy, happiness, and blessings in your heart and feel free.
The highest realm of self-refinery and self-improvement requires you to eliminate your self-persistence and to become "free from ego”. It is only in this way that you can unite with Tao. Then, when you do that, you will attain the spiritual state of an immortal.
Here is another question:
Since everything is predestined, what is the value and meaning of struggling and making efforts?
First, the so-called struggling and making efforts are barely more than nonsense. When a program is determined, the role to be played is determined and one’s so-called struggles and efforts are determined. That is, you will “have to” struggle and make efforts because a series of things will force you to. It is decided by the nonmaterial structure of your LIFE. Your character and temperament will force or encourage you to struggle and make efforts. This is determined by the self-state. It is not that I want to struggle and make efforts, but my character and the things happening around me and their ramifications prompt me to do so. This is described as, "Many things are not in charge of our hands in this world”.
Every person yearns for a better future and to go to heaven, so who can eventually achieve their most beautiful dreams? Also, now that everything is predestined, what is the point of personal yearning?
This involves some of the programs of the play of the universe. The play of the universe has destiny and variables. The plot of the play is destiny. Who shall play which characters in the play are variables. If you play well, you can constantly play the role more according to your free will, such as to play in heaven. If you play badly, you will play a role more deviated from your free will, such as to play a demon in hell.
Who then will go to heaven?
Anyone who can play the role in accordance with the established plot of the play, free from self-persistence and free from ego will go to heaven, but anyone who has conflicts with the arranged plot, that is whose self-conscious is too strong and is unwilling to play the role, will end up in hell.
We can find such a secret from this. Going to heaven or hell has nothing to do with the role you play, but everything with how well you play it. For instance, from most people’s perspective, Adolf Hitler should definitely be in hell, but from the plot of the play of the universe, if he played his part very well, he would be in heaven. No matter what your role is, an emperor or a thief, as long as you play it well, your reward will be to go to heaven. If you do not play it well, you will be doomed to reside in hell.
So, how does one know whether they are playing well or not?
Here is a very simple validation method. Namely, no matter what role you play, be it one with much pain and suffering or one that enjoys happiness and pleasure, be it a role to ride the whirlwind or one to suffer the commonplace, if you can stay calm, be happy and joyful, free from hesitation, trouble, agony, anxiety, worry, and fear, but with gratitude, then you have played well. Otherwise, you will have failed the role.
Those who have mastered the essence of the teachings and instructions of Buddha understand that self-persistence is the biggest obstacle to the Elysium World. Self-persistence is the result of a strong free consciousness. If you do everything according to your own ideas and wishes, if you always believe that yours is a just cause, if you always insist on your own views, if you always know that you are right, then you cannot play the arranged plot of the play very well and you will be miserable and unable to be rewarded with the Tao of heaven.
Take things as they are. Associate with others by following your predestined relationships. Acting in accordance with your nature and taking advantage of opportunities is the best way play the role.
lifechanyuan.org
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