Dependent Arising: Watching the movie and learning Buddhism

3. The theory of dependent arising: Watching the movie and learning Buddhism

1. Start with saving Private Ryan

Watching the movie "Saving Private Ryan" many years ago, I really felt that it was filmed well, and Douban had a high score of 9.1.

Still, I never quite understood why so many people had sacrificed to save a man named Ryan. Although he lost three brothers in the war, was it really worth it for him to put more people in it?

So after watching the movie from beginning to end, I had no interest in this big soldier Ryan either.

The so-called insider looks at the doorway, and the layman looks at the bustle.

Ryan, the blinding private, is, in Hitchcock's cinematic parlance, the film's MacGuffin.

(McGuffin) That's something the characters on the screen worry about, but the audience doesn't care.

—Hitchcock

In real life, McGuffin actually exists, for example, people always ask, what is the meaning of human life?

This is a very typical thing that the person (the character) is worried about, but the other person (the audience) does not care. Or rather, it's something that sometimes I'm worried about, and most of the time I don't care about.

However, questions such as "what is the meaning of human beings living" are basically wrong at the first question.

Why?

Say it in two parts.

First, the focus of this question is often mistaken.

Many people think that in this problem, we should pay attention to "meaning", but in fact, it is not right, and the first thing that should be paid attention to is "living". After all, for a dead person, talking about "meaning" really doesn't make any sense at all.

So how to live? Health, wealth, career, these three directions to do their best to do better. With these, the happiness you should enjoy and the obligations you should fulfill, you can do better.

Second, the misdirection of this question.

Asking meaning is a judgment of right and wrong. The person who asks the question hopes to find a ruler that can measure the people and things in life - what meets the standard is meaningful, and what does not meet the standard is meaningless.

Asking such a question will make you spin around in a closed circle, and the direction of action will become blurred. So I repeatedly entangled in "myself – my judgment yardstick – the things I want to judge", and finally lived my life into a dead knot.

The final result is that everyone often says "can't think", or "can't get out".

2, how to ask the right question

So what should I ask?

Quite simply, ask the value – to paraphrase the above sentence, "What is the value of human life"?

Because talking about value involves transactions, a complete transaction relationship will include the three elements of "myself – valuable items (value I provide / value provided by the other party) – counterparty".

At this time, your focus will shift from a closed Vipassana system to an open social system.

In turn, you become an actor, either creating value or exchanging value.

Conversely, if you ask about meaning, then you are the evaluator or the evaluator, which means that you surrender the right to action in life and sit down: either sit in the judging seat and judge others, or sit on the judging seat and be judged by others.

In fact, as long as you do something that is valuable to society/to others, you can establish a stable connection with society, and in the process of interacting with various people and various things, you will experience various meanings and pleasures.

In addition to fun, there is also real.

Now it is a commodity society, paying attention to value exchange. As long as you output value, then you will definitely get the reward. Most of the time, this reward is money, or social status.

And once you have this, you will most likely not ask too much about the question of "meaning".

This process is the best commentary on the Buddhist "sexual emptiness": there is no eternal essence or meaning in the world, but people can still create value and live out fun.

People live, grow old, sick and die, and all the beauty cannot be retained, or even begged for, but you can still go to work every day to move bricks, chop wood to feed horses, face the sea, and blossom in spring.

3. Buddhism is actually against superstition

In the Buddhist system, when it comes to "sexual emptiness," it is naturally inseparable from "dependent arising." (I've talked about the topic of "sexual emptiness" earlier, portal)

Dependent arising, in the literal sense, is "dependent arising" and occurs through conditions. This is also the "possibility of conditions" repeatedly said by Ye Zinong in "Heavenly Red Dust".

Standing up with very mysterious words, in practice, it is actually the two sentences that our ears hear the cocoon:

Everything starts from reality.

Specific problem-specific analysis.

The Za'ahan Sutra says:

(Dependent arising, i.e., there is a reason for this, and there is another life for this life. There is no reason for this, and there is no reason for this, and there is no reason for this to be destroyed.

Disassembling from the composition of elements, the core of dependent arising theory is three points:

(1) Things arise from causes and conditions—so there is no God or thing that does not depend on preconditions, and therefore there is no absolute truth and correctness.

(2) There are many kinds of constituents of things – so there is no single decisive condition for everything, and sometimes you feel cornered just because you haven't found the hidden conditions and ingredients.

(3) Concrete things arise from the interaction of different causes (conditions) - so that things (effects) exist when various components and conditions exist ( causes ) ; when causes change , the effects also change.

When you understand the theory of dependent arising, you will immediately understand that Buddhism is actually against superstition: it wants you to understand that there is no supreme God and there is no only unchanging absolute right.

In the final analysis, it is to seek truth from facts and look at problems from the perspective of movement and change.

If you want to accomplish something, then create the possibility of the condition, make the cause sufficient, and accept the result that the condition can bring, which is the logic of the application of dependent arising thought in life.

4. Use the theory of dependent arising in the workplace

In this part, I share the application and experience of the theory of dependent arising in daily life.

Based on (1) and (2), we need to figure out the conditions of dependence of things, and based on (3) we need to figure out which changes in conditions bring about changes in results.

This system, one positive and one negative, has a great role in the workplace.

The application of "positive" is mainly at the level of daily work.

In Ali's product manager ability system, there are clear requirements from P6 to P9. P6 focuses on "points", P7 should be able to do a good job of "lines", P8 will look at "surfaces", and P9 should focus on "body". This system can be talked about when the conditions are ripe in the future.

Among them, starting from P7, it will require that a business line can be "inserted to the end": it is necessary to be able to understand the basic conditions of the business, but also to understand the user's needs and problems, and to be able to design business processes and user links.

When I am interviewing, I see whether a product manager is competent and whether the basic skills are in place, mainly to see what he does to himself, whether he can clearly explain the key conditions on the "line" of the business he is responsible for, and whether he can straighten out the logic.

The application of "anti" is mainly reaction and response, which lies in the sorting out of the logic of reporting and the response to challenges.

To put it simply, it is that you can prepare one or even two layers of support condition information for the plan, key data, and OKR settings that you are ready to report.

When you're ready, you'll be the one who is very convincing and hard to challenge.

For example, you are in charge of xx business, today to do an oral report, one of which is that the DAU of this business position has dropped significantly, and you have proposed several optimization strategies, which require the support of the boss to give you budget and technical resources.

You already feel like you're well prepared: data analysis, optimization of the plan, estimated investment of resources, and all aspects are taken stock.

As a result, the boss did not play the cards according to the routine, but directly asked you -

What are the channels that contribute more to the traffic of the business position?

During this period, the position DAU declined, mainly because of which channels declined in traffic?

Has the position been iterated recently, or has the business side it relies on recently changed?

Have there been similar fluctuations in the same period last year/month?

At this time, are you confused?

But the boss's logic is really fine, the position DAU drop is just a phenomenon, how can you ensure that the proposed solution will solve the problem? ——

Think one more layer: look at the user side. You have to look at the main composition of the traffic source channels of the position, and the changes in the traffic contribution of each channel

Think about two more layers: look at the business side. The users who have been introduced, is the service good? Will it be the business party that relies on the chain?

In addition to these, in fact, there are many conditions that can be sorted out, and they all need to be paid attention to and accumulated in daily work, rather than being prepared in a report.

OK, this section is over, let's review the core points of dependent arising:

(1) Things arise from causes and conditions.

(2) There are many kinds of components that make up things.

(3) Concrete things arise from the interaction of different causes (conditions).

In fact, from working in the workplace to understanding the world and life, this system is very effective.

5, if there is a life remote control should be how good

If you run into a difficult situation, most people can't help but ask one or more of the following questions:

Why is this happening?

Why me?

What am I going to do?

Asking this kind of question, in fact, you know, can not get any valuable answer.

And those situations that you don't like will probably be based on a long time: a family is crowded in a small house, the boss's aura is repeatedly suppressed, the peers have already sounded the bell and gone public, but they are worried about whether they can keep their jobs...

Sometimes you can really help but think, this is all bad, if you can fast forward 32 times the speed of the past how good it would be.

I have seen an American movie before, "Life Remote Control" (CLICK), the male protagonist has got such a remote control, the heart is thinking about work and promotion, in all the family life scenes that he does not like can fast-forward the past.

In the end, he achieved career success. But because he missed too many so-called trivial family routines, his wife left him, his son did not kiss him, and he missed his father's last moment...

Thinking back to myself, when I was in high school, I hoped to end my intense preparation for the exam and enter the university, when I got to college, I hoped to work early and earn money more freely, and I just got married and hoped that my income would increase quickly and I would not have no way to borrow money.

But now I occasionally think that no matter how tired I was in high school, I was still with my parents and family, so it would not be difficult to meet now.

Although I didn't have much money in college, the time I spent with my friends was a youth I could never go back to.

When we first got married, although we were poor, we also lived purely, riding a battery car home halfway out of electricity, we walked a section of gliding, singing, dancing, the sky can sprinkle the way home.

Sometimes I think that those states that can't wait to end may be the norm in life; those difficult moments that I hope to be able to make a quick progress may be the beautiful life that can never go back.

6. Obstructing Dependent Arising: It is enough to remember this

Seeing this, you may ask, what does it have to do with the "dependent origins" I said above?

In fact, there is a relationship.

Earlier, when I looked at Xi Yong's "Fourfold Dependent Arising Deep Pranayama", he mentioned the fourfold dependent arising: karmic dependent arising, dependent dependent dependent arising, relative dependent arising, and obstructive dependent arising.

The Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism is the most admired for obstructing dependent arising. The so-called "obstacles" are conditions and limitations.

All life forms must adapt to this limitation in order to exist or appear

So we have to adapt to these "obstacles". This adaptation has a proper noun in The Buddhist family, called "Ren Yun".

"Ren" means indefinite, and "luck" means operation.

So renunciation is to operate indefinitely.

Indefinite is to adapt, so it cannot be defined. For example, if an earthworm does not have eyes, we cannot settle down and say that we see the world by our eyes, and if we are so determined, earthworms cannot exist and appear. Man has the ren luck of the human, the earthworm has the renyun of the earthworm has no eyes, but it also has its operation.

All life must adapt to its obstacles, and if it can adapt to this set, it becomes A, and if it adapts to another set, it becomes B. A may be completely different from B, and people are completely different from earthworms.

——Talk about Xiyong.

Talking about what the teacher said was all vernacular, so I didn't need to translate.

Regarding the origin of each other, combined with the previous "memory of bitterness and sweetness", my biggest experience is 3 sentences -

(1) Everyone is alive, and they must adapt to their own conditions and obstacles, and what conditions they have to do.

Just like a group of people standing by the river to scoop water, everyone has different conditions: some people have only a pair of empty hands, some people have a bowl, and even a big bowl, a big bucket, a water pump.

(2) Create conditions as much as possible to get things done, and then the days may get better and better.

If you only have a bowl at the beginning, you can use a bucket of water that has been scooped up and exchange a large bucket with someone else for an hour of use time; you can also sell your labor, help people with water pumps, liberate each other's labor, and then share with him...

(3) The part of your body that you want to escape the most is the strongest background color in your life, and the unique mark that you have lived in this world.

Maybe when everyone is born, the potential of a lifetime is like water, it can become any shape, and there are infinite possibilities.

If you only have bowls, then your shape is a bowl; if you have an ultraman-shaped container, then your shape is ultraman.

Maybe you think, I'm not going to be a normal bowl, I'm going to be Ultraman.

But don't forget, without this bowl, we would be nothing, just a bunch of illusory possibilities. Chaos and chaos can only flow aimlessly and worthlessly into the distance.

This bowl is our obstacle, but it is precisely because of this bowl that we have the water in our bowl.

It's good to go with the flow and do what you want.

7. Epilogue

It is said that in the "Sutra of the Buddha's Metaphor", there is such a story, I think it is very good, I will use it to end this three pieces of the inner exploration journey -

There is a pine tree on the cliff, and a cane hangs down from the pine tree.

There was a man, clutching a rattan in his hand, hanging in mid-air.

Next to the pine trees, there is a tiger lying on its stomach; under the cliff, there is a rough sea. On the sea, there were three more evil dragons, opening their mouths wide with blood basins, and swallowing him when he fell.

At this time, two rats appeared, alternately nibbling on the roots of the cane. In order to drive away the rats, this man shook the rats vigorously. It turned out that there were honey dripping down on his face and mouth.

He fixed his eyes on it, and there was a honeycomb at the root of the rattan, and with the movement of the shaking, the honey kept dripping down.

So the man licked the honey and reveled in it, completely forgetting the dangerous situation.

One by one, one by one, and again, he kept shaking the life-saving rattan and enjoying the delicious honey to the fullest.

The original intention of this passage is to use this metaphorical example to warn us that when the world is about to die, it is still clinging to greed and cannot extricate ourselves, which is our fate as human beings, and it also makes it impossible for us to escape the suffering of the six reincarnations.

To me, this person's approach seems to be fine.

Life is a one-way journey, what conditions do I have, see the world according to the circumstances, and do my own "conditional possibility".

If one day you really fall into this inescapable predicament, it is not impossible to drink a few more mouthfuls of honey.

After all, "sexual emptiness is used to have", the honey eaten in the mouth is sweet, that is "there"; the body that falls into the sea is " empty" after all, how we think, in fact, has no impact on the result.

What do you think?