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Life's Wisdom
Life's Wisdom
  • Forword to the "Chapter of Wisdom"
  • Crossing the River as Stones
  • Where Did My Six Hours Go?
  • Emptiness, Spirit, Grace
  • Balancing the Abstract and the Concrete
  • Avoid the Long-Term Impact of Small Load Energy
  • Enemies Are Benefactors: The Path of Repaying Debts
  • Space and Hatred
  • Faith is Truth, Love is LIFE
  • What Are You Busy With?
  • The Longer the Gestation, the Sweeter the Fruit
  • Adding Value to LIFE
  • The Secret to Health
  • Do Not Disturb—Joy Lies Within It
  • Eliminate One Source of Profit, Amplify Efforts Tenfold
  • The Sun in the Black Hole
  • Observing the Profound and the Manifest
  • Enlightenment
  • Follow Your Nature
  • Those Who Have Long-Term Concerns Will Have Immediate Troubles
  • Move the Earth
  • The Way of the Tao Seems Obscure; Advancing in the Tao Seems Like Retreating
  • The Highest Form of Communication
  • Always Do Simple Things
  • Seeking the Optimal Combination
  • Unused Medicines are the Best Medicines
  • The Sustenance of Life
  • The Path of Understanding, Seeking, Realizing, Attaining, and Upholding the Way
  • How About Turning 180 Degrees to See the Scenery?
  • Transform Consciousness and Abandon Wisdom—Entering the Hall of LIFE
  • One Who Is in Harmony With the Tao, the Tao Likewise Delights in Him
  • The Highest Goodness Is Like Water
  • The Highest Wisdom is Formless
  • The Harm of Thought Inertia
  • The Scholar Stays Home
  • Expanding the Space of LIFE
  • Seeking the Best Fulcrum for Life
  • Follow Your Heart’s Desires Without Overstepping Boundaries
  • The First Step to Returning to Youth
  • Resolving Contradictions in the Invisible
  • The Most Easily Obtained is the Most Precious
  • The Magical First Time
  • Whimsical Fantasies: Exploring Extraordinary Abilities
  • Unshakable and Following One's Nature
  • Follow Your Intuition When Necessary
  • The Great Way (Tao) and the Small Path
  • Enrich Your Inner Self
  • Surrendering Life to the Tao's Arrangement
  • The Finite and the Infinite
  • Small Matters and Big Matters
  • The Three Essential Elements of a Fulfilling Life
  • A Revelation from Walnuts and Peaches
  • Chaos and Holographic Order
  • Establishing Oneself in Society through Rich Inner Content
  • The Heart of Comparison is the Heart of Malice
  • Examining Whether You Belong to the Masses
  • The Differences Between Minor, Moderate, and Great Filial Piety
  • The Subtle Techniques for Achieving a State of Emptiness
  • Do Not Suffer Yourself for Goals
  • So-called Coincidences are Links in the Chain of Inevitability
  • Is Coincidence Accidental?
  • From the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom
  • Everything Is Inevitable; Only I Roam Free
  • The Self in All Things
  • The Constant Nature of All Actions
  • The Benefit of Existence and the Utility of Emptiness
  • The Utility Cannot Be Seen and the Visible Cannot Be Used
  • Act Without Striving, Handling Things Without Interfering, Savor the Flavorless
  • The Objective World is a Reflection of Subjective Consciousness
  • Break Through the Consciousness of Walls
  • Unite with Heaven, Resonate at the Same Frequency
  • The Reference Frame and Coordinate System of Life
  • Mutual Generation and Restraint Maintain Balance
  • Destruction and Creation
  • Two Parallel Lines Intersect at One Point
  • The Secret to Acquiring Infinite Energy
  • The Three Major Pursuits in Life
  • Appearance and Essence
  • Positioning Your Life
  • Secrets of Diet
  • The Many Benefits of Knowing About the Afterlife
  • The Three Great Treasures of Life
  • Strategic Life
  • The Spiritual Life
  • A Life Without Regrets
  • Escape from Despair
  • Chasing the Sun and Escaping the Night
  • Infants Who Never Grow Up
  • Do Not Offer Help Unless Asked For
  • Further Discussion on “Do Not Offer Help Unless Asked for”
  • Looking for Your Own Garden of Eden
  • Abandonment Is an Achievement
  • Consciousness, Structure, and Energy are the Three Elements of the Universe
  • Who is Wrong?
  • How to Use Free Will
  • Should We Maintain Kindness?
  • Conquering Demonic Nature
  • Your Enemies Will Be the Members of Your Own Household
  • The Eight Great Awakenings from Human to Celestial Being
  • The Cerebellum and the Brain
  • That which is Easily Hurt is Weak and Flawed
  • Fate and Transcending Fate
  • Escaping the Traps of Life
  • Patterns and Endings
  • It was We who Sold our Own Liberty
  • Four Outlooks will give you Harmony
  • Some Perceptions about Life
  • My Reply to the Four Questions Raised by the Chairman of the International Federation of Philosophic
  • The Thinking Style and Approach to Action in Spiritual Thinking
  • Those Who Have Constant Faith Will Have Constant Actions
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Mutual Generation and Restraint Maintain Balance

Xuefeng

Balance brings blessings; excess brings misfortune. The coexistence of mutual generation and restraint is the essence of peace. This is true for the universe, and it should also be true for human life. I have studied the “Five Elements Theory” and was once fascinated by fortune-telling for others. I discovered that the ancient Chinese wisdom is profound and mysterious. What is often dismissed as nonsense and superstition by the secular world actually contains the crystallized wisdom of our ancestors, who deeply studied the laws of the universe and the trajectory of life’s blessings and misfortunes. Due to our ignorance, we have foolishly thrown away these gems of wisdom into the trash, while modern people are intoxicated by the dazzling surface phenomena of a commercial society or merely use the wisdom of the ancients as a means to make money through fortune-telling, completely ignoring the vast and profound knowledge about the universe and life left by our predecessors.

The Five Elements—Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth—mutually generate and restrain each other: Wood generates Fire, Fire generates Earth, Earth generates Metal, Metal generates Water, and Water generates Wood. The Five Elements also restrain each other: Metal restrains Wood, Wood restrains Earth, Earth restrains Water, Water restrains Fire, and Fire restrains Metal.

Only through mutual generation and restraint can all things develop harmoniously and be peaceful forever. Any extreme development not only harms the rest but inevitably leads to its own demise.

This principle applies to nature, and human society should be the same. The reason why the United States, a country with only a few hundred years of history and a mixture of races and cultures, can become a world superpower is mainly because it conforms to the principle of mutual generation and restraint. Their administration, legislation, judiciary, religion, and civil organizations are like Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth, mutually generating and restraining each other, enabling harmonious and vigorous development and making them invincible. On the other hand, China, with its 5,000-year cultural history, has experienced continuous wars, movements, and widespread discontent and anxiety throughout its history. The root cause lies in the violation of the principle of mutual generation and restraint.

National affairs are not the concern of us Lifechanyuan; what we care about is how each individual can live a happy and fulfilling life. From the "Eight Characters Fortune-Telling," I have glimpsed some mysteries. The so-called "Eight Characters Fortune-Telling" involves converting a person's birth year, month, day, and hour into the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, then converting these into the Five Elements, and finally using the principles of mutual generation and restraint of the Five Elements to calculate a person's future lifespan, fortunes, merits and demerits, success and failures. This method of fortune-telling is highly scientific and reasonable and is a profound subject. I studied it for two years and found that its mysteries are beyond the understanding of anyone who is not highly learned and wise.

Mechanically fortune-telling is undesirable, but what is desirable is to provide timely guidance based on each person's Five Elements. This guidance is essentially about changing a person's life trajectory, but changing a person's life trajectory is no easy task. It involves a series of personal factors. Not only must one consider the person's Five Elements attributes and the positions of the Eight Trigrams, but also the changes in the times, the changes of the moment, and the Five Elements attributes of others connected to the person. One must also consider the person's beliefs and psychological activities. If any of these factors are ignored, fortune-telling guidance may have negative consequences, or even disastrous results. Therefore, I no longer dare to tell fortunes.

One universal insight I’ve gained is worth sharing: Fate lies in balance, and a life that has lost its balance will inevitably lead to sorrow and disaster. In "Revelation Chapter”, article 29: The Priorities and Urgency of Life," I gave a brief explanation of what are the priorities and urgency of life from a macro perspective of life as a whole. From a micro perspective, each stage of life has its priorities and urgencies, and even each day has its priorities and urgencies. Ignoring priorities and urgencies and spending much time on what is secondary and trivial can lead to distress at any time, so maintaining balance is crucial.

The reason why the Five Elements of Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth can exist forever is mainly that they can mutually generate and restrain each other, maintaining balance. Balance is perfection, smoothness, harmony, and the law for the permanence of life. If a person’s Five Elements attribute is Mountain Fire, and if their relatives have a predominantly fire attribute, and they live in the southern part of the country, this indicates that the fire element is too strong. If they encounter a fire year, fire month, fire day, or fire hour, the fire will inevitably burn fiercely. The external manifestation could be illness, disaster, or even sudden death—unexpected misfortunes such as illness or car accidents. At this time, traveling to the north to visit relatives, or being with a few people whose Five Elements attribute is Water, especially those whose attribute is Heavenly Water, can alleviate the severity of the situation.

Giving flowers, crops, and trees the right amount of water will make them grow well, but soaking them in water will inevitably drown them. Therefore, more is not necessarily better; moderation is best.

People generally resent those who restrain them, wishing to destroy them. A powerful and corrupt person hates party discipline, hates media interviews, and hates the freedom of speech of the common people. They see the factors that restrain them as enemies, and the inevitable result is that they will fall when they are at their peak.

Aside from emotional factors, parents, spouses, children, etc., are the restraining factors on a person’s path of cultivation. But it is precisely these restraining factors that prevent a person from going to extremes and from going mad. Attending school, working, and participating in social activities are also restraining factors on the path of cultivation. These restraining factors provide us with opportunities for cultivation and excellent opportunities for insight.

"Good fortune hides within bad, and bad fortune lurks within good." Appropriate help or harm to others is beneficial, while excessive help or harm will lead to disaster. Conclusion: When the direction is right, every step is an elevation; Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth, mutually generate and restrain each other; As for the myriad affairs of life, one should go with the flow but never go to extremes. Do not seek possession, but seek balance; do not seek fame, but seek inner peace; do not seek intensity, but seek emptiness and elegance.

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Last updated 9 months ago