Escape the Array of Affection

Xuefeng

September 8, 2020

Of the Thirty-Six Eight-diagram Arrays, the most difficult one to escape from is that of affection. Everything has affection, all beings have affection and affection is the rainbow and the best condiment of life. If the sky is affectionate, then the weather will be favorable; if the earth is affectionate, then the grain will be abundant; if people are affectionate, then life will be auspicious and warm; if things are affectionate, then spring forests will abound.

Affection is like salt in food; with too little, it will taste dull, in excess, it will be too salty, but if in moderation, then and only then, it’s flavor will shine. Happy lives are not unfeeling but must not be trapped in affection. To be unfeeling is worse than to be a beast, but to be trapped in affection is worse than death. Affection can nourish people but it can also torture them. Once people are poisoned by affection, they will become perverted; they will act like neither humans nor ghosts, but will be unreasonable, hysterical, and maybe even lose their minds eventually.

Sort out your mood as you lie in bed. What is the most worrying thing in your life? What has tormented you the most, recently? What is the hardest thing for you to give up? What depresses you the most? What concerns you most deeply? What do you want to maintain the most? What do you want to end the most but are unable to? The answers are always affection.

The affection between immediate family members, lovers, friends, classmates, masters and apprentices, teachers and students, comrades-in-arms, and so forth, any special relationship that you establish with anyone else will entangle you and might make you worry for your whole lifetime; it will wrap you tightly within it and make you restless for your entire lifetime. This is the array of affection.

Can you escape from this array? The array of affection is also the net of affection. Look at fishing nets: people cast their nets into the water and any fish that enter it and cannot escape will be yanked out of the water and become meals on people’s plates. Standing in heaven and watching the world, everyone looks like fish in nets; those who cannot escape from their nets will become delicacies on the devil’s dining table.

Do you want to escape from this net of affection? It is hard to do so on your own; to do this, you must rely on the power of authority and the guidance of gods, Buddhas, Celestials, and saints, especially the divine powers of Jesus Christ and Buddha Shakyamuni, and the “road map of the guide”. There is very little chance of escaping from it if you try your own way blindly.

The most difficult nets to escape are the parents’ and children’s nets. Who can abandon parents’ and children’s affection and are they not monsters if they do? Would they still be human? So, if you do not rely on the power of authority, then you cannot and you will not escape. The second most difficult net is the one of couples’ affection. Now, more and more people are not marrying, which means that they can escape from the nets of couple’s affection. Many people escape from nets of couple’s affection by divorcing. More couples who are sticking to it want to escape but are reluctant to leave or find it hard to escape. In this case, they need the “roadmap of the guide” even more. The next most difficult one are the lovers’ nets between boyfriends and girlfriends, which are also nets of affection that make people enjoy each other so much as to not want to leave each other and be willing to go through fire and water and hurl themselves into flames willingly. Life’s joys, sorrows, bitters, and sweets are induced fully in this net of affection like raging fires moving the earth and frightening heaven. In these nets of affection, most people are unwilling to escape. They will even risk their LIVES, go to hell, and “fight for victory in a flash moment”; even with their heads broken and bleeding, their livers and gall bladders smashed, they will fly desperately like moths into flames. As long as there are people with whom we care about, with whom we miss, and with whom we want to maintain our relationships, we are in a array of affection.

Until the day when we have nothing to care or worry about, with our minds abiding nowhere, our affection filling mountains and rivers, when we always long for the celestial islands, take things as they are, associate with others by following predestined relationships, act in accordance with our natures, and take advantage of opportunities as they arise, then we will not have escaped from our net of affection. How will you feel after escaping from your array of affection? It will feel like a frog crawling out from the bottom of a well into a pond, a wild horse stuck in silt returning to a prairie, a bird flying out of a cage into an idyllic forest, or a pig jumping out a pigpen and becoming human.

The easiest, most direct, effective, and thorough way to escape from a array of affection is to become a Chanyuan celestial and live in the New Oasis for Life. From then on, you will no longer establish any special relationship with anyone else - especially by establishing a special love relationship with a member of the opposite sex. From then on, you will follow what is predestined, be open, leave things to fate, be free and unfettered, and enjoy life whatever it brings. “When the wind blows through a clump of scattered bamboo, it makes a swishing sound, but as soon as it passes, no sound is left behind and silence reigns itself once more among the bamboo plants; when geese fly over ponds in winter, their reflections are seen on the water, but as soon as they move on, their reflections vanish”. ”Do not be nostalgic for that illusion and do not miss the passing clouds, but fix your eyes on the Celestial Islands of the Elysium World; trek and climb, enjoy the scenery all the way, never stay and be obsessed with any beautiful scenery, never let anyone impede your pace forward; everything will work itself out and you will ascend to the fairy world as it happens.