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  • 人选天选论: Chapter 7

    Today’s wine may make tomorrow drunk; better pour it into the cup of the Nine Heavens.
    Only after forming a human world within and gathering sun and moon do I know this body is also faint and small.

    《人选天选论》 Chapter 7 · A Human World Formed Within

    姜蓝 著

    When I was in my twenties, I once wrote a rough little poem.

    Today’s wine may make tomorrow drunk; better pour it into the cup of the Nine Heavens.

    Only after forming a human world within and gathering sun and moon do I know this body is also faint and small.

    At first glance, it may feel a little arrogant. It sounds as if someone is standing between Heaven and Earth, raising a cup toward the sky, trying to gather the sun and moon into his arms.

    But it is not an arrogant poem. It is not even a heroic poem. It is actually a small bit of clarity that suddenly grew out at a certain moment, after many tiny things in my life had slowly piled together, still curled and not yet fully extended.

    And what made a poor Chinese-language student like me write this book was a highly venomous “big fly.”

    The “Big Fly”

    That noon, I was napping in my room. I was half asleep and half awake. The dream had not yet scattered, but the body had already awakened a little. The curtains were probably drawn. The room was dark and quiet.

    At moments like this, people least want to be disturbed, because the dream is still there. That kind of dream is very light, like a thin layer of mist. It was a beautiful dream, though I mostly cannot remember it now. You know it is about to disperse, so you want even more to hold onto it.

    Right then, I heard something flying beside my ear.

    Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

    Circle after circle.

    I did not open my eyes, because in my experience, this sound meant a fly. Summer, a room, half sleeping and half awake. When this sound appears, a person’s first reaction is: there is a fly, and I am annoyed.

    I did not want to wake up. I did not want to come out of that dream. So with my eyes closed, I lifted my hand and swatted. Once, missed. Again, still missed. I swatted a few more times.

    What I was thinking then was extremely simple: kill it, and continue my dream world.

    People are often like this. When something disturbs your comfort, your first reaction is not to observe it, but to eliminate it. Especially when you believe you already know what it is.

    After missing several times, I finally became annoyed and opened my eyes to look.

    With that one look, I woke up completely.

    It was not a fly at all. It was a large hornet. It was flying right in front of me, very close. Close enough that I could even see the unfriendly, tiger-like rings of black and gold around its body.

    At that moment, cold sweat ran over me. I had only one thought: fortunately, I did not hit it.

    If those swats had really landed, I do not know what would have happened. Maybe it would have stung me. Maybe it would have fallen. Maybe I would have paid a ridiculous but very real price for my own confusion.

    But what truly made me stop was not the hornet itself. It was another question.

    Why did I think it was a fly?

    Because the sound was similar. But why, just because the sound was similar, did I assume it must be a fly? Because in my experience, this sound equaled a fly.

    And I had never seriously considered that a hornet could also fly into a room that seemed sealed.

    This was a very small thing, so small that when spoken aloud, it sounds like nothing remarkable. But in a person’s life, the things that truly make you suddenly stop are often these small things.

    Not thunder.
    Not heavy snow.
    Not mountains collapsing and the earth splitting.
    Just one afternoon.
    A hornet you thought was a fly.

    It flew once in front of you, and then you suddenly discovered that you were not looking at the real world. You were looking at the world inside your own experience.

    Someone who has never seen a black swan will think swans are naturally white. Someone who has never seen a hornet inside a room will hear buzzing and think it must be a fly.

    This is the limitation of human beings. People live by experience, but people are also trapped by experience. Knowledge helps us understand the world, and it also locks the world inside our old understanding.

    This is why I later often said: human wisdom begins with knowledge, and is often destroyed by knowledge. Because the more you know, the easier it is to think you already know.

    And once you think you already know, the real world finds it extremely difficult to enter your heart.

    At that time, I lay on the bed, watching that hornet fly back and forth, and began to think.

    If I had really swatted it dead just now.
    If it had died but not stung me.
    If it had fallen under the bed.
    And if some later gust of wind had blown it into some corner and hidden it there.
    Then for the rest of my life, I might have thought that what I killed that day was a fly.
    I would never have known it was a hornet.

    I would also never have known I had once been so close to danger. I would naturally place this story into my memory: one day during a nap, a fly woke me up, and I killed it.

    You see, an “incorrect” world forms just like that.

    No one deceived me. No one harmed me. It was only because I did not see. And because I did not see, I thought I had seen.

    From that moment on, I suddenly gained a deeper feeling for the word “heart.”

    The Human World Inside the Heart

    This does not mean there is no outside world. It does not mean the hornet did not exist. Of course it existed. It could even have stung me.

    But before I opened my eyes, it was not a hornet in my heart. It was a fly. It had to enter my heart first before it could become part of my world.

    So the world people truly live in is not a completely objective world. It is the world formed inside your heart after external things pass through your experience, memory, desire, and fear.

    Every one of us lives inside such a human world formed in the heart.

    Later, I thought of a more distant question.

    If one day I were suddenly taken to a place nobody knew, unable to return and unable to receive any news, then where would my mother be? Where would Wenjie be?

    Perhaps they would still be living in the original world. Perhaps from the moment I left, the original world would already have been destroyed. But as long as I did not receive news of their deaths, they would still be alive in my heart.

    I would wonder: is my mother eating right now? Is Wenjie sleeping? Perhaps they would also think of me at some moment.

    They cannot see me, and I cannot see them. Yet we still live inside one another’s hearts. At that moment, I suddenly felt I understood:

    People are never only alive in this world. They are also alive in other people’s hearts.
    And “others” are not only alive in the world. They are alive in our hearts.

    This is the human world.

    The human world is not merely streets, houses, mountains, rivers, and cities. The human world slowly forms inside the heart. Some people live in your heart. Some things happen in your heart. Some places you may never visit again in your life, yet the lights there are still on inside you. Some people have not been in contact with you for a long time, but once they appear, your heart still reacts.

    This is not emptiness. This is precisely the most real part of the human world.

    It was also then that I suddenly remembered the lines I had written before.

    Today’s Wine May Make Tomorrow Drunk

    The first line is: Today’s wine may make tomorrow drunk.

    Since childhood, I have been very good at saving good things for later. Eating was like this too. If I had a bowl of rice topped with shredded pork, I would often eat the rice first and save the meat for last. I always felt that good things should be kept until the end.

    Wine was the same. I was not someone who dared to drink casually. There were many reasons: fear of harming the body, fear of losing control, fear that if today became too comfortable, tomorrow would demand payment.

    If a person knows how to consider the future, life will indeed become smoother.

    There is wine today, but I do not drink it. I want to drink it tomorrow and enjoy it then. There is something good today, but I am not in a hurry to eat it. I want to keep it for later.

    This looks like wisdom, and also like restraint. I firmly believed that as long as I chose hardship and gave up today’s blessing, I could avoid tomorrow’s disaster.

    But later I slowly discovered that a deep attachment was still hidden inside this. Because it was not that I did not want it. I had only postponed the “want.” I had not let go of the wine. I had only hidden the wine in tomorrow. I was not no longer seeking blessing. I was only using today’s restraint to trade for tomorrow’s blessing.

    This is a very subtle place. A person may think he has already become rational, when in fact he may have only hidden his desire farther away.

    But water can be guided; it cannot be blocked. Once short-term desire is suppressed for too long, long-term desire will become the most poisonous medicine in the world. This poison will be discussed in later chapters.

    Once you see clearly this stage of tangled suppression, you will feel there is no need to deliberately squander, and no need to deliberately restrain yourself either. Because the purpose of restraint, very often, is only longer-lasting indulgence.

    Better Pour It into the Cup of the Nine Heavens

    So came the second line: better pour it into the cup of the Nine Heavens.

    Instead of saving the wine for tomorrow, it would be better to pour it out for the immortals above the Nine Heavens.

    I will not drink it today, and I will not drink it tomorrow. I will no longer use today to exchange for tomorrow. I will no longer use disaster to exchange for blessing. This cup of wine, I simply do not want it. Let it return to Heaven and Earth, return to the Nine Heavens. Give it to the exiled immortal. Send it back to those things I cannot control.

    This line is not heroic, nor carefree. It is more like someone walking to a certain place and suddenly loosening his grip.

    It turns out that choosing disaster for the sake of blessing is itself also an attachment. The relationship between blessing and disaster is not a cause and effect that humans can calculate and judge. Once someone begins deducing the causality between blessing and disaster, it will inevitably move toward the reverse side of causality.

    But these two layers, in fact, were things I had already thought through a long time ago, though of course thinking them through does not mean I can necessarily do them in this lifetime.

    What truly made me write the third line was that hornet. Because before it appeared, in my world, it was only a fly. When I opened my eyes, it became a hornet.

    This suddenly made me understand: the human world is not an external object. The sun and moon are not external objects either. I had always thought I lived inside the world. But in fact, the world also lives inside my heart.

    Forming a Human World Within and Gathering Sun and Moon

    So the third line finally gained its weight: forming a human world within and gathering sun and moon.

    Here, “gathering” does not mean possession. It does not mean I grasp Heaven and Earth in my hands, nor that I stand above Heaven and Earth. It means Heaven and Earth are no longer merely external objects.

    The rising and setting of the sun, the waxing and waning of the moon, all move inside my heart. The human world forms within the heart; the sun and moon revolve within the heart. The world you see, it turns out, must first take shape inside the heart. The people you love also live only inside the heart. The things you fear also grow inside the heart. The blessings you pursue and the disasters you avoid, in the end, also rise and fall impermanently inside the heart.

    At that moment, my heart suddenly seemed to become very large. Not the kind of “large” that wants to swallow Heaven and Earth, but the kind where a person suddenly discovers that there has always been a human world inside him.

    Inside it are my mother, Wenjie, people I have lost, things that have not yet happened, the sun and moon, and myself.

    Heaven and Earth are no longer something far away. They enter observation. A person is no longer merely standing outside Heaven and Earth to look at the world, because Heaven and Earth have always coexisted with me.

    But what is truly strange is this: when the world inside a person’s heart becomes large, he does not feel larger. Quite the opposite. During the hours, or perhaps minutes, when the hornet accompanied my thinking, I suddenly felt very small.

    It was a very subtle feeling.

    Only Then Do I Know This Body Is Also Faint and Small

    So the final line is: only then do I know this body is also faint and small.

    That “I” which had always been attached to itself.

    That “I” which had always sought blessing and avoided disaster.

    That “I” which had always wanted to save good things for tomorrow.

    That “I” which treated a fly as a fly and a hornet as danger.

    It turned out to be only a very, very small point inside this human world in the heart. Like a breathing speck of dust within Heaven and Earth, perhaps even less than dust.

    But this “faint and small” is not sadness, nor emptiness. It is a feeling of becoming plain after regret, and in that plainness, suddenly slowing down and becoming lighter.

    It is like a person standing among vast mountains and waters, suddenly feeling that his gains and losses, victories and defeats, face, good and bad, have all become a little lighter.

    So the real story of this poem is not arrogance, not the power to subdue the sun and moon. It is moving from controlling desire, to letting go of blessing and disaster, to Heaven and Earth entering the heart, and finally seeing oneself.

    Today’s wine may make tomorrow drunk means I was still using today to exchange for tomorrow, choosing disaster for blessing.

    Better pour it into the cup of the Nine Heavens means I discovered that choosing disaster for blessing itself also needed to be loosened.

    Forming a human world within and gathering sun and moon means I finally saw that the world takes shape inside the heart.

    Only then do I know this body is also faint and small means that after Heaven and Earth entered the heart, I finally saw myself, and then could no longer see myself.

    Awakening Is Only an Echo

    But the hardest part of being human is right here.

    Understanding does not mean being able to do it.

    That day, I did understand some things. But in the life that followed, I would still be greedy, still be afraid, still be attached, and at certain moments, still hear a hornet as a fly.

    There is nothing strange about this. People do not change through a single awakening. A single awakening only leaves an echo in the heart.

    Later, when you make the same mistake again, when the same desire carries you away again, when you use the same reason to comfort yourself again, it will softly sound somewhere. It will not stop you immediately, but it will remind you: you have seen wrongly again. You have again mistaken the fly in your heart for the real world. You have forgotten again that Heaven and Earth are not outside, and blessing and disaster are not entirely outside either. They are all within your self-formed human world.

    Believe me, those who attempt to rely on awakening to defy Heaven and change their fate must remember this:

    A person does not become another person by understanding once.

    A person changes slowly by understanding once, failing countless times afterward, and then seeing countless times that he has failed.

    And this book grew out in the same way. Not because I have already done it, but because one afternoon, I once saw it. Later I forgot it countless times, and returned countless times.

    Only then did I slowly understand that this life is not about defeating Heaven and Earth, nor about controlling blessing and disaster. It is only about being able to open one’s eyes again after mistaking the world again and again.

    To look at what is flying in front of you and ask: is it a fly, or a hornet?

    Is it the you I know, the you before I knew you, or the you after I have known you?

    —— 姜蓝《人选天选论》・Chapter 7 · A Human World Formed Within ——

    Image edition: 《人选天选论》·Chapter 7 · A Human World Formed Within

  • 人选天选论: Chapter 6

    Once an explanation exists only to comfort you,
    it eventually becomes the prison of your life.

    《人选天选论》 Chapter 6 · Cracks in Tian Quan

    姜蓝 著

    The first time I met Axiang was on a very, very early morning. It was the summer after my freshman year of college, and I had come to Sihui to learn the jadeite business. I was riding a bicycle with one hand while holding a pile of materials with the other. Most of them were bad purchases. But at that age, I was actually very clear that losing money on materials was the price of learning jadeite. At that stage, I could see my own deficiencies. Greed and fear were in perfect balance. I could move freely between the two sides of Tian Quan.

    Sihui at that time always felt damp. The air carried the smell of engine oil from saws and the powdery smell of freshly cut jade. Many workshops opened very late. That day, I woke up especially early, held my materials alone, and searched for workshops all along the area near the International Jade City.

    The sky had just brightened. There were barely any people on the street, and most rolling shutters were still closed. Only one small stall had not fully shut its door. I remember it clearly. In the middle of a cluster of workshops filled with slab materials and jadeite cylinders, there was a storefront for custom processing. The rolling shutter had left a very narrow opening, roughly thirty centimeters wide.

    I stood at the door and knocked. No response. I knocked again, gently. Still no one. So I carefully pulled the door sideways a little and peeked inside. It was dark. Someone was sleeping on a sofa. The sofa was very old, the kind with cracked leather. Beside it was a crutch. He was covered with a cheap coral-fleece blanket, and the blanket covered even his face. You could clearly see the outline of the person underneath it. More than half of his left leg was gone.

    My heart jolted. It was not fear. It was just that, at that age, I had rarely seen a truly incomplete person from such a close distance. The feeling was strange, as if you had always believed life was only a matter of “success” and “failure.”

    Then, one day, someone placed another thing in front of you: “fate.” Something you had repeatedly thought about before, but had never truly felt the weight of.

    His head was still covered. I stood at the doorway and asked quietly, “Boss, are you there?”

    He did not get up. Wrapped inside the blanket, he only replied, “What is it?”

    His voice was lazy, like someone just dragged out of a dream.

    I said, “I have some materials. I want to process them.”

    He was silent for a while, then asked, “Is it urgent?”

    I said, “Not urgent.”

    Then I saw him slowly, very slowly, prop himself up from the sofa. First he reached around everywhere, looking for his glasses. After searching for a long time, he finally found them and put them on. Then his other hand continued searching for the crutch. He searched for quite a while before gripping it. After that, he supported himself bit by bit and stood up.

    But the moment he stood, a smile appeared on his face. I remember that smile very deeply. It was not a sudden laugh. It was natural, like someone opening a window just a little. Many years later, I still remembered that smile, because it was strange. It was not a “happy” smile, nor was it a “pleasing” smile. It was more like the only remaining warmth left after someone had become used to life.

    Only later did I learn that Axiang had been infected by bacteria as a child, and his leg had been amputated. For many years, he slept on that broken sofa because going upstairs was inconvenient, and also because he did not really have anything that could be called a “home.” But he was always smiling. He smiled when he saw anyone. When people talked to him, he smiled. When people joked, he smiled. Sometimes when people went too far, he still smiled.

    Many people would think: this person’s mentality is really good. But later, I slowly discovered that someone who always smiles is not necessarily relaxed.

    Sometimes it is only because he no longer has a way to express any other face. People are strange. If the cold lasts long enough, the hands go numb. If pain lasts long enough, the legs go numb too. It is like putting your hand into snow in winter. At first, the cold is piercing. Later, you feel as if it is no longer that cold. Many people think this is adaptation. It is not. It is sensation beginning to recede.

    I once asked Axiang a question.

    I said, “What if one day you got cancer?”

    He smiled and said, “If I got cancer, I’d just die. It’s nothing. That would be fine too.”

    He said it very lightly, as if talking about something very far away, as if death were not a wall but only a stone by the roadside. I did not really understand it at the time. I even thought he was genuinely detached.

    Five years later, he really got liver cancer. Only then did I discover that people are not so easily detached. He began to desperately want to live. He called me and told me to help him find medicine. He wanted to live. He wanted to live very, very much. In the end, he left.

    The days after that repeatedly verified one thing: those who say they are not afraid of death are often the most afraid of death. Yet the more one wants to live, the closer death comes. That kind of pain, even now, after having empathized with it, is something I still do not dare recall. During that period, I even did not quite dare go see him.

    It was not that I did not want to see him. It was that I knew: when someone has spent a long time standing on the side of “if I die, I die,” and is suddenly pulled back by the force of “I want to live,” that is not ordinary pain. It is the pain of the entire bridge being ripped open and shattered.

    He had once seemed unafraid of death. But perhaps that was not true fearlessness. Perhaps the fear was simply too vast, so vast that he could only press it down with an extreme kind of optimism. Press it down long enough, and a person begins to think he is truly not afraid.

    This is what it looks like when Tian Quan cracks open.

    He had lived too long on the side of fear, or too long on the side of greed. After enough time, he lost the ability to move back and forth.

    Why the Bridge Breaks

    A normal person should be contradictory. He should be both confident and insecure, both brave and cowardly, both wanting to live and afraid to die. This contradiction is not a bad thing. It is precisely proof that his bridge of Tian Quan is still there. Greed can walk over to the side of fear and look around. Fear can also walk over to the side of greed and look around. He can move back and forth, so he can still adjust.

    But if a person is left with only one side, the problem begins.

    Only confidence, no insecurity.

    This person will become boundlessly arrogant without knowing it, and by the time he ruins himself, waking up will already be too late.

    Only insecurity, no confidence.

    This person will keep lying to himself, keep rationalizing himself, and the accumulation of this self-consistency will eventually collapse.

    Only greed, no fear.

    This person will keep raising the stakes, all the way into madness.

    Only fear, no greed.

    This person will keep retreating, until this vast world no longer has any place for him.

    At that point, it is not that he cannot think. It is that the bridge of Tian Quan has broken. He cannot cross. He cannot move from one side to the other and see his complete self.

    Why does the bridge break? Not because people suddenly lose reason. Very often, it is because they want comfort too much.

    Human beings are born with a powerful instinct to let themselves off. They reduce a complex world into one simple reason. Complexity is painful. Complexity means uncertainty, and uncertainty makes people afraid. So people search for the most comfortable explanation and use it to comfort themselves past the pain.

    This kind of explanation is not for truth. It is not for knowledge. It is for comfort. Once the explanation works, he can tell himself: it is not that I am incapable. It is that the world has a problem.

    With that, the heart regains balance. But the problem also begins there. Because the explanation a person uses to comfort himself will eventually become the logic of his actions.

    This sentence is very important.

    Today, for the sake of comfort, you explain the world incorrectly. Tomorrow, you will act according to that incorrect world. This is the truly terrifying part of the bridge breaking. It is not that you lied to yourself once today. It is that afterward, you will live your life according to the logic produced by that lie.

    My Own Crack

    I have also gone through this kind of period myself, and it was serious at the time.

    I made money very young. By twenty-two, I had already made ten million. At that time, I was very arrogant. Subconsciously, I felt that among people my age, as long as they did not rely on their families, no one had more money than me, no one was more successful than me, and no one was smarter than me.

    You see, that version of me was already in a state where the bridge was close to breaking. This was completely different from when I lost money buying materials and believed that losing money was only natural. At that time, I was standing only on the side of greed. I was not looking at the world. I was using the world to prove myself.

    Later, when I was twenty-three, I saw someone: Yu Jiawen from Super Curriculum Schedule. At the time, his labels were loud: the strongest post-90s entrepreneur, the king of post-90s startups, and he even claimed he would hand out one hundred million in bonuses to everyone. The company’s valuation was high, in the billions. The media at the time were all saying he was impressive.

    But inside, I was uncomfortable. That discomfort was not ordinary jealousy. It was as if a corner of my world had been smashed open. Because the explanation I had given myself before was: among people my age who did not rely on their families, no one was stronger than me. But suddenly, someone appeared who seemed to stand higher and stronger than me. I felt terrible.

    Unable to bear that discomfort, I called people from my company into a meeting.

    I asked them, “What do you think of this person?”

    The people following me were simple inside. They said, “He’s very impressive.”

    At that moment, I could not stand it. What I was really asking in my heart was not “what is he like?” What I was really asking was: is he more impressive, or am I more impressive?

    This is greed. It is the desire to prove oneself. But behind this greed, fear immediately followed. I was afraid I was not the most impressive one. I was afraid that my self-narrative would be shattered. I was afraid that the whole set of things I had believed was not valid.

    So I began searching for explanations.

    I said: his money is capital’s money. It is not his own cash.

    I said: that is valuation. It is not money he has truly earned.

    I said: he has investment, packaging, media. He is different from me.

    Is it possible that all these explanations were entirely wrong? Of course not. But the question was not whether they were true. The question was why I was so desperate to explain. Because I needed comfort. I needed to explain away the thing that had pierced me and shattered my world. I needed to tell myself: it is not that he is truly stronger than me; it is only that his strength and my strength are different.

    This is where the bridge began to go wrong.

    If, at that time, I had been able to walk from greed to the side of fear and look around, what I should have seen was:

    • Why am I so afraid of others being stronger than me?
    • Why must I be the most impressive person among my peers?
    • Why can’t I accept that someone in this world has taken another path?
    • Why can’t I admit that some people are willing to bear costs I am unwilling to bear?

    Many, many years later, when I often livestreamed, people would ask me about the success rate of AI entrepreneurship. What I want to tell everyone is this: the probability of succeeding in the AI industry today may be one in a million, but if ten million people are willing to do it, someone will definitely succeed.

    As for me? I am too unwilling to do things with a one-in-a-million probability. I prefer doing things with a success probability above sixty percent. Because I was deeply shaped by The Art of War, I understand the principle of winning first, then fighting.

    This is not about who is superior or inferior. It is about different choices. I use a lower ceiling and pay a larger price in exchange for higher certainty. Others use greater risk in exchange for greater possibility.

    This is the complete view of the world and entrepreneurship. This is what one should see when the bridge is still there.

    But at the time, I did not think this way. I only wanted to explain away his strength. Once I had explained it away, I felt comfortable.

    Negation can make me extremely comfortable. But that comfort has a price, because it makes me continue to see the world through incorrect logic. I would become more and more likely to attribute other people’s success to:

    • He has capital.
    • He has resources.
    • He has connections.
    • He has packaging.

    These can certainly be factors. But if I only look at these, I will fail to see other things.

    • I will fail to see the risks he dared to take.
    • I will fail to see the probability he was willing to gamble on.
    • I will fail to see the costs of his choice.
    • I will fail to see what he endured while standing in that position.

    The Comfort of Being Inside the Painting

    This is what is terrifying about the inside-the-painting mind. It makes you comfortable, but it also blinds both your eyes while you remain completely unaware.

    So you will see many people like this. You see a girl, a beautiful girl, whose classmate becomes a big star. This girl feels uncomfortable inside. She is simply unwilling to admit that the other girl may truly be prettier, may truly have worked harder, may truly be better at expressing herself, may truly be more willing to gamble, or may simply have encountered an opportunity at the right time.

    All of this is too complex. So she gives herself an explanation: didn’t she just sleep with the director?

    The moment this explanation appears, she becomes comfortable, because she no longer has to face the gap between them.

    When someone becomes student council president, he says: isn’t it just because he knows how to please teachers?

    When someone gets promoted, he says: isn’t it just because he flatters the boss?

    When someone makes money, he says: isn’t it just because his father is rich? Isn’t it just because he has connections?

    Do you see it? He never wants to search for the true laws of this world. He is searching for an explanation that makes him comfortable. But this explanation will not remain merely an explanation. It will become the guidance for his future actions. It will become the compass pointing his direction.

    If he thinks others succeed by giving gifts, he will go give gifts. If he thinks others rise by flattering people, he will go flatter people. If he thinks others make money through connections, he will only look for connections.

    Perhaps in the end, he really bows his head. He really gives gifts. He really flatters. He may even sleep with someone. He truly places himself low enough, but he still does not get the result he wants.

    Why?

    Because the cause and effect he first saw, the cause and effect he used to deceive himself and summarize the world, was wrong from the beginning. He only used it to comfort himself. He did not truly see the world.

    This is the inside-the-painting mind. It is not stupidity. It is a choice to give up becoming someone outside the painting for the sake of temporary comfort. It numbs itself by lowering dimensions, and that numbness also controls it.

    So the rupture of Tian Quan is not an abstract concept. It means you can only see the world through one explanation. You can only stand on the side of greed, or only stand on the side of fear.

    You can no longer move back and forth. You can no longer confirm between “what I want” and “what I fear.” At this point, a person begins to move toward extremes.

    People at the extreme of greed become more and more arrogant. They only see what they want and cannot see the cost.

    People at the extreme of fear shrink more and more. They only see risk and cannot see that they still want many things.

    These two kinds of people look opposite on the surface.
    One rushes forward.
    One retreats.
    But underneath, they are the same.
    Both are cases where the bridge of Tian Quan has collapsed.

    Explanation Is Only a Temporary Bridge

    Many, many years later, I increasingly feel that humans of course need to explain the world. Without explanations, people cannot live. But you must know this: your explanation is only temporary. It is not ultimate truth.

    The only truth in the world is that there is no truth. All explanations are only a small part of movement and change itself.

    Of course, this includes Ren Xuan Tian Xuan Lun. It is also my temporary explanation of the world. I predict that in less than ten years, I will overturn my previous explanations myself. But this does not mean this current explanation has no value.

    A person’s growth is not that he possesses a set of explanations that are forever correct. It is that he knows: my explanation may also exist only to make me comfortable. What I see now may only be one side of the coin. The place where I now stand may only be one side of the bridge.

    If we can still think this way, our bridge is still there.

    If we are completely unable to think this way, then cracks have already begun to appear in the bridge.

    Axiang’s story let me see the bridge breaking on the side of fear. My own story let me see the bridge breaking on the side of greed.

    One is smiling after too much pain.
    One is hurting after too much pleasure.

    On the surface, they are completely different. But in essence, they are the same: a person has stayed too long on one side and can no longer return.

    So why does the bridge crack? Not because people lack wisdom, but because people need comfort too much. They want too badly to feel comfortable, to believe they are not wrong, to make the world simple. So they use one explanation to cover pain, and then are forced to use that explanation to guide the direction of their life.

    In the end, explanation becomes a prison.
    And the bridge slowly cracks.

    It is half past midnight in Tokyo now. The night is deep. I am still on the balcony writing this article. Xiaolong brought me a blanket and poured me a glass of water. He stood beside me, watching what I was writing. When he saw this part, Xiaolong asked me: does that mean we should not be greedy, should not be afraid, and should not explain the world?

    My answer is no.

    People will certainly be greedy. People will certainly be afraid. People will certainly explain the world.

    What truly matters is this: after you finish explaining, are you still willing to look back once? After you become comfortable, are you still willing to ask: is this explanation for truth, or is it for protecting myself?

    As long as you can still ask, the bridge has not broken.

    Once you completely stop asking, that bridge of Tian Quan has already begun moving toward collapse.

    All right. Please remember: we will certainly find reasons and excuses for ourselves. This is the innate self-repairing capacity of the human heart, and it is also an inseparable and important part of Tian Quan. But we must remember this: greed and fear are not the fundamental human nature we need to overcome. But every action necessarily has a cost.

    In the next two chapters, we will discuss the cost of fear and the cost of greed.

    —— 姜蓝《人选天选论》・Chapter 6 · Cracks in Tian Quan ——

    Video edition: 《人选天选论》·Chapter 6 · Cracks in Tian Quan: 24 minutes

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  • 人选天选论: Chapter 5

    Not until many years later, when you look back, do you realize it had always been there.
    This is how Tian Quan was discovered by me.

    《人选天选论》 Chapter 5 · How Tian Quan Was Discovered

    姜蓝 著

    Very early on, my rhythm was different from most people’s. This is why I always say I might “not live too long.”

    In eighth grade, I skipped ninth grade because the whole system felt too slow, and I went straight to high school. Then in my sophomore year, I bypassed the standard junior year process and went straight to college. Later, when I was a college sophomore, I dropped out to start my own business.

    It all looked so smooth. What took others three years to walk, I sprinted through in one. The phases others had to endure, I simply leaped over. At the time, I thought it was competence and wisdom, then I thought it was “luck.” It was only much later that I slowly realized a deeper truth: I had constantly been accelerating. And the reason I could accelerate wasn’t just because I was bolder than others, nor was it just better luck.

    The bigger truth was that I read many books at a young age that didn’t belong to my age. I Ching, Tao Te Ching, Zhuangzi, The Art of War, along with much Eastern and Western philosophy. These texts were never meant to be shortcuts for a young person. They were meant to help people:

    • See the structure
    • See the boundary
    • See the cost
    • See the rhythm

    Yet, at that age, I used them differently. I used them to judge, to make trade-offs, to move early, to skip phases, and to accelerate my life.

    In other words, I didn’t walk fast purely on my own; I borrowed the eyes left behind by ancient sages. I borrowed their understanding of the world, their insights into rhythm and structure, which allowed me to see everything sooner and cross hurdles earlier. Of course, this got me many things. It let me make money much earlier than my peers, and gave me access to levels others had yet to reach.

    But what is borrowed is, ultimately, borrowed. Once you use it, it leaves marks elsewhere. It isn’t free. I first felt this not in the texts, but in business.

    Prematurely Burning the Cycle

    It was around 2008 to 2009. I was selling tourmaline in Wuhan. At first, things were incredibly smooth. I kept selling, pushing goods to vendors in the wholesale market. As they took the stock, I kept overloading their hands with more. The faster I sold, the more thrilled I became. The faster the money returned, the more I believed I was right. On the surface, everything was perfect.

    But the problem surfaced soon enough. It wasn’t that I couldn’t sell anymore; it was that the demand in their hands had been prematurely fulfilled by me.

    The tourmaline they bought hadn’t really been sold to the end-users yet, but I was already anxiously pushing fresh stock to them. That anxiety felt like “capability” at first, but later it started looking like destruction. When the stock piled up and the market’s consumption couldn’t keep pace, they didn’t think they had bought too much. Instead, they began to doubt: has this item lost its value? Is there something wrong with the market? Is this the wrong path?

    At that moment, I saw something very specific for the first time. It wasn’t the business failing; it was that I took a cycle meant to be walked slowly and prematurely burned it out through my over-anxiety. For the first time, I felt something concrete:

    It isn’t that some things cannot be fast. But when they surpass their native rhythm, they break.

    But I hadn’t truly thought it through yet. The real deep dive happened much later.

    The Dam by the Fairy Pool

    In 2011, Wenjie graduated and came to Sihui to work with me. We hadn’t seen each other for over a year. I took him to my favorite hidden spot behind the Sixth Patriarch Temple: the Fairy Pool (Xiannu Tan). It was utterly desolate, much like Shennongjia when I was sixteen. The water was crystal clear to the bottom.

    I remember that place vividly, not just for the silence or the mountains and water, but because of a dam in the stream we sat beside. Upstream, the pool was heavily reserved, calm, thick, and deep. Downstream, the water flowed in thin trickles. We sat there, staring at it for a long time, and then we began discussing a fundamental question.

    Why is it that human desires for eating, sleeping, or sex — once fulfilled, disappear? Eat until you’re full, and even delicacies lose their taste. Sleep enough, and sleeping more gives you a headache. But money is different. Power is different. Resources are different. The sense of security is different.

    Why do these things conceptually have no end?

    That day, we sat by the stream, tearing the concept apart piece by piece. On the way down the mountain, riding behind Wenjie’s motorcycle, I wrote in my diary: Eating, sleeping, sex — these are short-term desires. They stem from the body, from hormones, from biology. When they come, you demand them. When they are met, they retreat. They will return, yes, but each time they do, it is a new occurrence, not a permanent suspension over your mind.

    But long-term desires aren’t like that. A long-term desire isn’t truly an existing desire at all. It is more like a fear — a fear of whether your short-term desires can continue to be satisfied in the future.

    • The fear of having nothing later. The fear of losing.
    • It’s fine today, but what about tomorrow?
    • I have the conditions today, will I still have them in the future?

    It is this exact “what about later” sentiment that pushes people out of short-term satisfaction and traps them inside long-term desire. Therefore, what people ultimately pursue:

    Is often not the money itself. It is not the power itself. It is an insurance measure.

    An assurance that no matter what they want in the future, they will still have the capacity to satisfy it. That dam is the exact same concept. It dams the water not because people have nothing to drink now, but because humans fear the future drought.

    And here lies the problem. The more you hoard, the greater the risk.

    Once the dam bursts, the people downstream have zero buffer. Everything is ruined. Power and money work identically. When you stack countless dams, the more you have, the more miserable and thoroughly dead you become when the flood hits. If you have 1 million and lose it all, you can make it back. But if you have 10 billion and your dam bursts, you are like Xu Jiayin — you don’t merely lose the opportunity to live, you lose the opportunity to die.

    Sitting by the Fairy Pool that day, I genuinely realized something for the first time:

    A human’s true problem Is never whether or not they have desires But how they manage desires. More accurately: It is how they manage the relationship between short-term desires and long-term desires.

    The Bridge Between Greed and Fear

    It was from that point on that the embryo of “Tian Quan” slowly formed in my heart. At first, it wasn’t a word, nor a concept. Just a blurry feeling. I realized more and more that humans don’t lack the ability to choose; they lack balance.

    • When they want, they don’t know how to pull back.
    • When they fear, they don’t know how to let go.
    • When they’re fast, they don’t know how to stop.
    • When they’ve stopped, they don’t know when to move again.

    Later, I pushed my thoughts deeper: what is the fundamental difference between humans and animals? Animals have desires; they seek food, reproduce, and evade danger. More complex animals engage in simple waiting and storing. But an animal rarely suffers for the “future.” It does not push its boundaries to infinity just because “it might be gone later.”

    Humans are different. Once humans become aware of the future, long-term desire inflates. It is exactly this inflation that built human civilization. It taught us to store, to plan, to construct systems, to establish order.

    But it is also exactly this inflation that causes anxiety, unrest, depression, and forces humans to preemptively consume their lives on events that haven’t occurred.

    Meaning: The very thing that makes humanity human, is also the source of humanity’s suffering.

    This structure is inseparable. You cannot claim the civilization and power it brings while utterly discarding its consequences. Realizing this, I forced the question down another layer: Can humans, entirely independent of their physical bodies, rely solely on their thoughts?

    The answer I gave myself later was: No. At least not in the understanding I have at this age. I don’t believe it.

    Thinking itself is not your creation. The capacity to think is bestowed by the body, granted by genetics. It was Heaven’s Selection (Tian Xuan) that first gave you such an organ and structure capable of functioning before you could ever execute those complex layers of logic and analysis. You can cultivate your mind, maintain restraint, and ensure your vision is crystal clear. But the moment an injection of anesthetic enters your bloodstream, Laozi drops, Confucius drops. Avoiding the needle is just physics; you either hide from it or redirect its timing. It is not an issue of ideology; it is a natural law.

    • Hormones secrete
    • Bodies react
    • Desires generate
    • Emotions fluctuate

    These things do not vanish because you’ve figured out life. So the true predicament of a human is:

    You possess thoughts, but you are not just your thoughts. You possess rationality, but you don’t reside in pure reasoning. You possess a body, but you can never completely control it.

    By this point, my vision of Tian Quan got a bit sharper. In the past, I thought the problem was greed and fear themselves. I learned later: it’s not. The issue is never greed, nor is it fear. To be alive guarantees you will be greedy, and guarantees you will be afraid.

    • Wishing to grasp, is Greed.
    • Fearing to lose, is Fear.
    • Stretching out the hand, is Greed.
    • Retracting the hand, is Fear.

    Both sides will permanently be present. The real issue is: Does a bridge still exist between the two?

    Such a bridge is not designed to eradicate greed or to annihilate fear. It exists so that greed can walk across and look at fear. It exists so that fear can also walk across and look at greed. If this bridge remains, the person remains stable.

    Greed will not endlessly escalate into spiraling chaos because it can still walk toward fear and acknowledge the consequences. Fear will not retreat into a shell of numbness because it can still walk toward greed and discover what it truly wants.

    If this bridge shatters, everything goes to extremes.

    People stranded on the shores of greed will blindly lunge forward, perpetually overdrawing, constantly escalating the stakes. People stranded on the shores of fear will relentlessly retreat, offering constant excuses, shrinking back until they don’t even dare budge.

    So then I finally understood. Tian Quan is not authority. It is not control. It is not transcendence.

    Tian Quan is simply the unbroken bridge between greed and fear.

    That bridge doesn’t rid you of desire. It doesn’t clear your mind of terror. It only allows you to transition back and forth when both states exist.

    When you are greedy, you walk across and see what you fear. When you are afraid, you walk back across and see what you still desire.

    This is the bridge, and this is the Right (Quan). Tian refers to Heaven’s Selection. Quan refers to the right to cross over. Without this bridge, it’s not that you can’t think or lack a brain. It’s just that you can no longer select, because you’ve been hijacked completely by one side.

    Debt and Balance

    Looking back at my trajectory over these years, I finally knew where the root of the problem lay.

    I have always known how to build momentum, how to push forward, how to accelerate. But I didn’t know how to retract. I possessed spring, summer, and autumn, yet winter was extremely rare. But once the four seasons lose balance, an organism’s constitution skews. So by 2019, I sold my company. Not because I couldn’t run it anymore, and not because I lacked opportunities. The deeper cause was:

    My life was imbalanced.

    Winter has no presence in Guangdong, so I went to Japan, Xinjiang, Kanas, and Tibet. I wasn’t traveling. I was patching up my winter. Because I knew that if winter remained absent, my seasons would forever remain fractured.

    The fact that I can acknowledge this today isn’t because I’ve suddenly become wiser. Again, it is because of those sages — the I Ching, the Tao Te Ching, Zhuangzi, and The Art of War.

    They saw these things earlier, and I merely borrowed their insights a long time ago. I borrowed their perspective, their judgment, their understanding of structural laws, which allowed me to see everything sooner and walk to where I am today much earlier.

    But precisely because of this, I’ve increasingly felt it—I am in debt.

    I don’t owe to one single person or one single sentence. I owe a debt to an entire road I borrowed ahead of its time.

    This is why I finally grasped the reason behind writing this book. I am not proving anything. I am not seeking validation. It is simply because I’ve used too many tools from predecessors, and now it is my turn to gently and carefully place the path I’ve walked back where it belongs without distorting it too much.

    As for how it will be perceived, I knew the answer from the start.

    There will be people who absolutely cannot read it. Some will be annoyed. Some will deny it. Some will curse it. It’s entirely normal, and well within my anticipation. Of course, anticipation doesn’t equal full immunity:

    I will still get emotional. I will still experience fluctuations. I will still occasionally find these clamorous voices irritating.

    But even so, I still want to write these things out at this particular stage in my life. I know that as years pass, I might no longer want to speak of them, and I might no longer see the utility in expressing them. So while the text is still warm, and while my urge to transmit remains, I will voice them out.

    As I write this down, I understand something profoundly. Once published, this book will establish its own rhythm:

    Initiation - Development - Confrontation - Stability - Decline - Collapse

    It won’t stall just because I will it to. At the start, people will completely fail to grasp it; they’ll reject it, they’ll flame it. Some will grasp a little; they’ll discuss it, attempt to extrapolate it, tear it apart with their own vocabulary. A third category, those who truly understand, won’t ask questions or participate heavily in debates; they’ll take a glance and walk past it.

    The final category will recognize it, feel they share the same debt as me, and step in to help repay it together.

    These things are already happening, exactly as expected. Not because I control it, but because it is bound to walk this path.

    I’m writing this book not for instantaneous comprehension, or universal acceptance. I am writing it so it enters its own rhythm. One day, I will leave this platform, fading slowly from people’s view. It’s not a defeat; it’s a phase. The rest is handed to time. All I can do is strive to put what I borrowed back in its place, and let it walk independently.

    Conclusion

    So the place where Tian Quan was truly discovered by me wasn’t within any single book, or any specific line of scripture.

    It slowly emerged right after I constantly accelerated my life and finally recognized the profound imbalance. I acknowledged the perilous danger posed by the dam between short-term and long-term desires. I saw the absolute necessity for a bridge spanning greed and fear.

    And only after borrowing the vision of ancient sages for so very long, and finally acknowledging that I had to put this little bit of mine back where it belonged — did Tian Quan truly sprout.

    —— 姜蓝《人选天选论》・Chapter 5 · Tian Quan ——

    Video edition: 《人选天选论》·Chapter 5 · How Tian Quan Was Discovered: 16 minutes

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  • 人选天选论: Chapter 4

    This chapter is not here to give you answers.
    It is here to give you a new way of seeing the world — a sharp sword.

    《人选天选论》 Chapter 4 · Breaking Attachment, Reading the Trend, Settling the Mind

    姜蓝 著

    Chapter 4 · Confusion State

    In this chapter, I only do three things:

    • First, I tell you that the Confusion State is not your friend — and it cannot truly become your enemy. It is simply a stage, like winter in the seasons.
    • Second, everything in the world moves through six phases: the Initiation Phase, Development Phase, Confrontation Phase, Stability Phase, Decline Phase, and Collapse Phase. These are the operating laws of the world; all things unfold through them, and I call them the Six Heaven‑Chosen Stages.
    • Third, within these laws, how to use the Three Swords of Renxuan: Break Attachment, Read the Trend, and Settle the Mind. Find your position. Find your road. Find your center.

    “When sprouts are first born, the stems have not yet unfurled.”

    I have always liked winter. I even enjoy warming myself by a fire. Without real cold, we can’t truly understand what warmth is. It’s the same with life: when things are going smoothly, we often don’t notice them. Relationships, emotions, choices — they feel weightless, effortless, almost inevitable.

    But many things only start to take shape when everything slows down, when cold arrives, when you finally stop. That is when the Confusion State is born. So confusion isn’t an enemy. It isn’t a friend either. It is just a stage. Winter itself is not wrong. Cold is not wrong. What’s wrong is that people always try to jump over it.

    People always want only spring, only summer; only growth, only results, only abundance.

    But the cycle of seasons is the natural way — the unfolding of the Dao. You cannot pick and choose it. You can only observe it, experience it. And that is what the line “When sprouts are first born, the stems have not yet unfurled” is most telling you: in the normal turning of the seasons, winter is not an ending, and spring is not a gift. They are simply phases.

    So “When sprouts are first born…” is an attitude toward life, a worldview — not a method. And because of that, I need to be clear about one more thing:

    I cannot solve your problems. I can’t do it — no one can. I can’t choose for you, I can’t bear the cost for you, and I can’t live through the life that belongs to you.

    What I can do is this: tell you why you keep manufacturing these problems — and how to turn the force that creates them into the force that resolves them. That is the meaning of my writing this chapter. This is not “from now on, you will never be confused again.” It is for you to see something: that the sky isn’t falling — you are simply repeating the same manufacturing again. And that matters.

    Because most human pain does not come from the stage itself. It comes from repeating the same kind of problem — without even realizing how you yourself create it.

    So this chapter is not here to give you answers.
    It is here to give you a new sword that breaks your old worldview.

    Many people’s pain is not that winter arrives. It is that once winter arrives, they refuse to accept it as winter. They insist on treating it as a mistake — and then they begin creating even more problems.

    They start panicking, they start churning, they start forcing decisions. After that, they make mistakes. After mistakes come self‑blame. And then — colder still. This is you turning a stage into a problem.

    All things in the world cycle through six phases that you cannot fully control. I call them the Six Heaven‑Chosen Stages. Each phase has its most likely pitfalls, and each phase also has what you must stop doing:

    • Initiation Phase: Stop haste (don’t rush for results).
    • Development Phase: Stop expansion (don’t grow too quickly, don’t get carried away).
    • Confrontation Phase: Stop chaos (don’t scatter your mind; make the purpose of the “battle” crystal clear).
    • Stability Phase: Stop slackness (don’t be lazy; keep being consistent).
    • Decline Phase: Stop loosening (actions may slow down, but don’t loosen your observation).
    • Collapse Phase: Stop going against the trend (don’t resist; know where to stop).

    An entire life, a company, a nation, a tree, a leaf, one fish eating another fish, a building — all of it passes through this process. In Buddhism they call it impermanence; in Daoism they call it the Dao; in the Book of Changes they call it change. These are not conclusions. Remember them first — you’ll use them later. Finding your place in “seeking the trend” is not the focus of this chapter; there will be dedicated writing on the Six Heaven‑Chosen Stages later.

    Why You Keep Creating Problems

    Many people think that problems come from the outside. Not all of them. A great many problems are made by you.

    It’s not that you create from nothing. It happens within a stage that is already normal. You refuse to accept the stage as it is — and then you add extra layers of problems.

    For example: winter is supposed to be cold. But if you force yourself to be warm like summer, you’ll get anxious. Anxiety becomes chaos. Chaos leads you to force decisions. Forced decisions lead to mistakes. Mistakes bring self‑blame. Self‑blame makes you even colder. This is how you turn a stage into a problem — step by step.

    So later, I gradually came to see that the real pain is rarely caused by the stage itself. It is caused by refusing the stage:

    • You refuse to be in the Initiation Phase, yet you demand the outcome of a Mature Phase.
    • You refuse to accept you’re in the Confrontation Phase, yet you still expect everything to flow like the Development Phase.
    • You refuse to let a relationship be in Decline, and you drag it back toward Stability.
    • You refuse the fact that you are in confusion, and you insist on being “clear” immediately.

    This is the root of manufacturing problems. You’re not suffering because of confusion itself. You’re suffering because you refuse to accept confusion as a stage — and so you start adding drama, endlessly, inside it. That is why the first step is never “solve it.” The first step is always: if possible, reduce the extra problems you create.

    The First Confusion: When You Can’t See the Road, Forcing Clarity

    It isn’t that there is no road.

    You’re standing there, and ahead it feels like mist. The road may be perfectly fine. You might even have been walking it well. But then you bring out a “telescope.” At the far end, the road doesn’t look like what you want. So you start rushing to switch roads — because you heard that another place is “better.”

    Yet your telescope cannot pierce the fog on that road. What you see about the future is only a kind of numb sadness: “It’s certain, and it hurts to feel it.” You start thinking life is short, and you didn’t even fully experience what was right in front of you.

    So you keep walking onto a new road — and you ask yourself, “Should I go?” You don’t know. You ask, “Which direction should I choose?” You don’t know.

    In this moment, what problem do you create most easily?

    Greed. Not the simple kind of wanting — but wanting “everything.” When you refuse to let go of any possible outcome, you can’t take a single step.

    So how do the Three Swords work here?

    • Break Attachment: This is not letting go, and it’s not lying to yourself, “It’s fine.” The core is to shrink yourself and enlarge the world. In Zhuangzi’s Xiaoyao You, there is a line everyone knows: “In the North Sea there is a fish called Kun; its size is thousands of li.” The story is exactly that: you shrink yourself, you expand the world. Your first job is not to find a road. Your first job is to pull yourself out of the oversized problem. Ask yourself: what am I really clinging to? Clinging to an answer that must arrive immediately? Clinging to the fear that I can’t be wrong? Clinging to the worry that others will think I’m useless?

    Many people aren’t blocked by a lack of road. They are blocked by fear: fear of admitting, “My new road might be wrong — and my old road was actually better.” That is attachment.

    • Read the Trend: The road has already changed. Now you must look at which of the six “intersections” you are currently in. If you are still in the Initiation Phase, it is normal that you cannot see clearly. The Initiation Phase is not meant to be clear. It is blurry by nature — the stems haven’t unfurled yet. “When sprouts are first born…” is precisely the state that cannot be made understandable in one glance. Many people aren’t without roads. They are trying to demand Initiation‑Phase clarity using Development‑Phase expectations. That’s reading the trend wrong.

    • Settle the Mind: What should you stop? Stop haste. Just this one thing. Don’t rush yourself. Don’t force yourself. Don’t run around in the fog. When you can’t see the road, the best move is not to scramble — it is to stop manufacturing yet another wrong route. Choose a safer way to move. Feel your way forward slowly. Explore bit by bit. When you reach the next intersection, look back — the mist will disperse. So for the First Confusion, you’re not trying to “solve” it. You’re only preventing yourself from adding more chaos while you can’t see clearly. That is enough.

    The Second Confusion: Too Many Roads

    The Second Confusion isn’t “no road.” It’s “too many roads.”

    You have a good family. You have a good education. Everywhere invites you: “Come here, you’ll live well.” You accumulate some respectability, some savings that look steady. Roads appear everywhere — dizzying, crowded. A life that should have had limited choices becomes a life that seems like “all roads lead to Rome.”

    Every option looks reasonable. Every result is hard to let go of. So you stall right there.

    At this point, what problem do you create most easily?

    Greed. Not ordinary wanting — wanting “everything.” You refuse to drop any possibility, and so none of the roads can be chosen.

    So how do the Three Swords work?

    • Break Attachment: First, see what you are clinging to. Are you trying to keep all possibilities? Are you refusing to let any path go? Do you want every outcome “a little”? Do you refuse to take responsibility for any cost or risk? Once you admit this, the picture begins to clear.

    • Read the Trend: Then look at the phase. With so many roads, where am I, for me? What you should experience is the cycle of phases — not a hasty decision. If you are already in the Confrontation Phase but you still insist on charging forward with a Development‑Phase mindset, you’ll only become more tangled. And if the situation is already in Decline, but you treat it like it’s just beginning, you’ll choose even more blindly.

    • Settle the Mind: What should you stop here? Stop floating. Stop taking too much. When there are too many roads, the most important thing is not to choose the “prettiest” one. It is to let go of a portion first. Not because those roads can never work — but because you simply shouldn’t walk all of them right now. So the focus of the Second Confusion is not “solving.” It is to stop creating additional problems — the “I won’t lose anything; I can keep everything” problem.

    The Third Confusion: Want Change, But Don’t Want Change

    The Third Confusion runs deepest.

    You want your life to get better — and at the same time you want certain things to never change.

    You want opportunities. You long for change. Yet you refuse to accept the scenes that change brings — the scenes you didn’t expect. You want growth with time: you want to become stronger, your career better. But you also refuse the other side of time: you don’t want aging, you don’t want wrinkles, you don’t want what time takes.

    That is the fundamental contradiction. In this contradiction, what problem do you create?

    Fantasy.

    In your fantasy, time only delivers the half that benefits you. In your fantasy, time brings only good and never takes anything away. In your fantasy, you can always move forward — and you never have to pay a cost.

    And that is why the Third Confusion is the most troublesome. So how do the Three Swords work?

    • Break Attachment: First, admit what you’re clinging to. You’re not really clinging to “change” itself. You’re clinging to “change that comes only with benefits.” You don’t truly want to accept all four seasons. You only want to stay forever in the season you happen to like.

    • Read the Trend: Then look at the trend itself. Any relationship, any career, any state of life moves through initiation, development, confrontation, stability, decline, collapse. If you want to lock it forever into one phase, you are going against the wheel of change.

    • Settle the Mind: What should you stop now? Stop fantasy. Stop unwillingness to let go. Stop the heart that says, “I want change, but I don’t want to accept what change brings.” This step is not about solving the contradiction. It is about acknowledging that the contradiction is already here. Once you admit it, the problem is reduced by half — because you finally stop forcing the world to run according to your preferences.

    What This Chapter Is Really About

    This chapter is not teaching you how to “solve” confusion. It is telling you: confusion itself is not the problem; the stage itself is not the problem; winter itself is not the problem.

    The real problem is that when you’re already in a normal phase, you start manufacturing unnecessary problems: you create haste when you can’t see the road; you create greed when there are too many roads; and you create fantasy when you want change but don’t want change.

    What I can do is point out the ways you manufacture these problems. After that, when you enter “winter” again, you can manufacture a little less. That is enough. And that is the original line of Renxuan Tianxuan:

    Renxuan does not go against the trend. It also does not pretend it can stop the trend. It only stops exactly where it should stop.
    Tianxuan does not grant you what you desire; it grants you what you should let go.

    Many people, when reading 《人选天选论》, feel something heavy — or feel a sharp sting. That is normal. Let me give an example, so you can understand what I mean.

    “When sprouts are first born, the stems have not yet unfurled.”

    In winter, if you reach your hand into the snow, first you feel the piercing cold — it hurts. Then, after a while, you feel like the cold isn’t as intense anymore. Your hand starts to warm up. Many people think this means you’ve adapted. But that isn’t warmth. It is the blood vessels “expanding under cold‑induced guidance.” If you keep going, you’ll quickly lose sensation.

    The most dangerous state of a person is not pain. It is “no pain.”

    On the other hand, if you sit down somewhere in winter and make a fire — the fire doesn’t have to be big. You move closer slowly. At first, it isn’t warmth yet. It’s a sting. Only after a while does that warmth come out, bit by bit.

    These two sensations look similar on the surface. Both go from “uncomfortable” to “less uncomfortable.” But the essence is completely different:

    The “warmth” in the snow is you losing sensation.
    The “warmth” by the fire is you regaining sensation.
    One is shutting down.
    One is opening up.
    One makes you more dull.
    One makes you more clear.

    So people are very likely to judge wrongly. Many times, you think you’ve “adapted,” but actually you’ve simply started to feel nothing. True recovery is never comfortable from the beginning. True recovery always starts with a sting — slow, real, and full of sensation. It is you clearly knowing that you are coming back, one step at a time.

    So later, I began to care about one question more than anything else: not “Do I feel better or worse right now?” but this — Is my “improvement” making me more able to feel, or making me feel nothing?

    Alright. We’re ready to step into the most important bridge on the path of choosing in 《人选天选论》 — the birth of Tian Quan.

    —— 姜蓝《人选天选论》・Chapter 4 · Confusion —

    Video edition: 《人选天选论》·Chapter 4 · Confusion Total runtime: 18 minutes

    Image edition: 《人选天选论》·Chapter 4 · Confusion (Image edition)

  • 人选天选论: Chapter 3

    《人选天选论》 Chapter 3 · The Coin World

    姜蓝 著

    The reason behind “confusion” and “depression” is not that greed has disappeared; it is that greed, after repeated “failures” and “setbacks,” shatters into fear, clogging the river of thought and temporarily taking away the power to act.

    This chapter, the Coin World, is important and difficult. Once you finish it, you will understand why greed turns into fear after failure, and how fear quietly drains our interest in the world, leaving us lost, depressed, and in pain.

    I have always been fascinated by ancient coins. Beyond their monetary value, coins often symbolized “heaven’s will” at pivotal moments in history. That sense of justice in heaven’s will was a key step in seeing my own fear and greed clearly. The more I looked, the more I felt that what sits in the human heart is much like a coin. Fear and greed, knowing and doing — the two sides of a coin always exist at once, yet you can never see both at the same time. I first understood this not by reading books, but through a foolish yet vividly real childhood story about a coin and a bicycle.

    When I was twelve, my father returned from Sichuan and brought me a gold‑colored panda commemorative coin. I always believed it was real gold. Later, I desperately wanted a better bicycle, but my parents refused and I had no money. So I began staring at the coin.

    As I stared, a thought slowly formed: should I sell it?

    The moment that thought appeared, things became interesting. From that instant, two forces were already standing inside me: one that wanted, and one that feared. Wanting the bike, wanting to turn “I like it” into “I get it” — that was greed. But I also knew the coin was a gift from my father. If I sold it, I feared being asked about it later, and I feared regretting it — that was fear.

    So I began to “flip the coin.”

    I first set a rule: if I got two heads, I would sell it. The first was heads, the second tails. Then I changed the rule to two tails, and again got one head and one tail. Then I changed the rule again. Again. Again. Again.

    I kept changing the rules. Two heads? No. Two tails? No. One of each? Still no. I could never flip the “heavenly sign” that would make me feel at ease. In the end I already knew: the real difficulty was never the coin, it was me. I was not waiting for an answer; I was waiting for a reason — just like many fans who call in to me now. I wanted a reason that let me do the thing while avoiding the full admission: “This is my decision.” Later I changed the rule again. I said, three flips — if I get three non‑matching in a row, I’ll sell it. And sure enough: heads, tails, heads.

    So I took the coin to sell it. But at the shop, they took one look and said it wasn’t real gold — it was silver plated with gold. I was crushed. I had tossed it again and again, changed rules again and again, persuaded myself again and again. And in the end, what I got wasn’t even what I thought it was.

    And yet, in that moment, I suddenly understood something. I had been staring at the coin’s heads and tails, thinking I was waiting for “heaven’s will.” But what truly decided my action was never the coin. It was me — more precisely, the two forces inside me that had been fighting all along.

    One wanted. One feared.

    From then on, whenever I saw the word “coin,” I could no longer treat it as a simple object. It became a way to observe the world — my small world. Many years later, when I watched the TV drama The Young Marshal (《少帅》) and saw the old story of Zhang Xueliang, Yang Yuting, and Chang Yinhuai, I felt it immediately.

    Many people tell that story by fixating on “how many flips,” “whether the coin was rigged,” or “whether it was fate.” I came to feel those details do not matter. What matters is this: why did he need a coin?

    Most people are not clueless about what they want to do. They are unwilling to shoulder a single sentence: this is my decision. So we invent reasons, a reason that makes it seem not “me.”

    Some look for luck. Some look for momentum. Some look for probability. Some look for a coin.

    But these things are usually just the surface. Underneath are still the same two forces: one that wants to move forward, one that wants to pull back; one that wants to gain, one that fears losing.

    That is why I grew used to using coins to understand many things. For a long time, I loved to sit near wish‑making fountains with clear, visible bottoms. Whenever I was wavering or anxious, I would go there and sit quietly, watching people drop their fear and greed into the water, reflecting on their costs and their inner structures.

    When I stood aside and watched coins tossed one after another — cheers, disappointment, a shrug, repeated attempts — I stepped into my Coin World. In that moment, the lights of ten thousand homes felt like a coin.

    One side is greed. One side is fear.

    They do not take turns; at any moment, one side is simply facing up. When you rush forward, you think you are greed, yet fear is there too. You might fear poverty, losing, a lifetime of being ordinary. When you retreat, you think you are fear, yet greed is still there; you still want, still feel unwilling to let go, you just fear paying the price more. So a person’s true state is never “only greed,” nor “only fear.”

    The real state is:

    Greed and fear coexist. At any moment, whichever side has greater resistance, the water flows the other way.

    Now we can clarify what we meant by “stones on the riverbed.” Not all stones are the same. Some are boulders; some are small gravel.

    Greed is the boulder. It is more visible, easier to notice, and more likely to change the flow directly. Wanting money, wanting to rise, wanting success, wanting to prove yourself, wanting a certain future — these are usually obvious. You stand on the bank and see it at a glance: oh, I want that. Oh, that’s what I’m aiming for. Oh, I’m fighting so hard because I want it badly.

    That is why I say greed is a big stone. This is not about high or low — it is simply that its effect on the flow is easy to see. When water hits it, the surface rises at once. People are the same: when someone is strongly greedy, they move fast, feel intense, decide sharply — you can see it.

    Fear is different. Fear is like small stones: tiny, fragmented, easy to hide. It rarely says, “I’m afraid.” More often it says, “Wait a little,” “not ready,” “be more careful.” It is not “I can’t,” but “I want to think it through.” Not retreat, but “this isn’t the right time.” So people can feel fear, yet often fail to notice it.

    You know you feel uncomfortable. You know you backed off. You know you hesitated. But you may not know what is under it: fear. Fear of failure, of losing face, of trouble, of wasted effort, of being laughed at, of admitting you are not that capable, of realizing you might be just ordinary.

    So I came to feel that what people see is usually only the big stones. We think, I really want this, I really want to win, I really want to prove myself. But what traps people most is often the tiny stones. They are not obvious, yet they accumulate.

    One fear of failure, one fear of embarrassment, one fear of wasted effort, one fear of rejection, one fear of being looked down on, one fear that you do not deserve what you want. Most people never look at them, and in their neglect things spiral out of control. Fear piles into a dammed lake — and that is the scariest part of fear.

    Greed raises waves. Fear clogs the channel. Big stones lift the water; small stones block it.

    Many people say they dare not read 《人选天选论》 because they feel unable to act or choose — that is a typical dam caused by fear. These people are not without desire, not without momentum, not without greed. They are simply blocked, little by little, by those small stones. They drift into a strange state: alive on the surface, still thinking, occasionally excited, occasionally envious, occasionally saying they want to change. But when it is time to move forward, they cannot.

    It is not that there is no road. The river is blocked. The most troublesome thing about a dammed lake is not its size. It looks calm. Calm like reason, like maturity, like having seen through everything, like nothing is wrong. But if you look below, you will find the opposite.

    The water is still there. The river is still there. Yet it no longer flows. Water cannot enter, and it cannot leave. The banks expand quickly. The more afraid you are, the more you study; the more you study, the more you know; the more you know, the more you know you do not know; the more afraid you are, the more the river clogs.

    When a person is piled over by fear’s small stones, the most common state is not frenzy but procrastination, self‑justification, numbness. You cannot feel interest in anything, as if life has no hope.

    Procrastination happens because the flow is blocked. Self‑justification happens because you need a reason for not moving. Numbness happens because after being blocked for so long, you forget where you wanted to go.

    So many people feel lost not because they have no goals, but because their river has been clogged by small stones. Why is there so much fear? Where did greed go? This is the most frightening cycle: greed’s big stone shatters, but the small stones never turn themselves back into a big one.

    When people are young, their greed is often large. They want to win, to be fast, to rise, to prove they are different. So the stone is big, and there are many big stones. When the water rushes through, the surface is all waves. But if they crash again and again, fail again and again, and pay the cost again and again, that big stone will shatter into many small stones. “I want to succeed” becomes: I fear losing again, I fear embarrassment again, I fear wasting effort, I fear being laughed at, I fear I simply do not have that fate.

    So many people have not stopped being greedy — their greed has shattered into countless tiny fears after repeated shocks.

    That is why some people are fierce when young, then grow more cautious and more willing to say, “Forget it.” Others may call it maturity, but often it is simply the big stone being broken by reality. And here is a point many overlook: even the act of observing ourselves, studying ourselves, trying to understand this whole system — is not neutral. Many people think they study the inner world because of reason, maturity, a desire to be awake. Often, they do not. Some observe themselves out of greed.

    They want to figure it out, to make money. They want to figure it out, to see through others early. They want to figure it out, to win more in the world. They want to figure it out, to take fewer detours and rise faster.

    That is greed pushing. Others observe themselves out of fear. They do not want to win; they are afraid of getting hurt again, of falling into the same pit, of something happening with no preparation. They fear that if they do not figure it out, bigger problems will come later. That is fear pulling.

    So I came to understand: people rarely observe themselves out of pure curiosity. That is why so many oppose or deliberately misunderstand me. Most of the time, either greed pushes or fear pulls. That means even “observation” has already been influenced by the coin. You are not standing in a fully objective place; you are carrying a coin that is still flipping as you look down into the riverbed.

    That is why I grew to value “how to observe.” If you want to see greed directly, it is not difficult. Look at the moments you are most excited, most driven, most eager to prove yourself, most unwilling to let go, most desperate to “get it.”

    That is how big stones behave — they lift the water outright; you can hardly miss them. But if you want to see fear more neutrally, it is harder. You cannot look in the most intense moments. You must look when the surface is relatively calm — when you are neither too excited nor too panicked.

    For example: after a run, when you are exhausted; after a shower; when you sit down to write. At those moments, the water slows and the surface quiets, and you can see the small stones you usually miss. So I came to feel that greed is best seen when the waves rise, and fear is best seen when the water is still.

    By this point, I no longer see greed and fear as complex. They are too ordinary — so ordinary that everyone has them, so ordinary that they happen every day.

    When you see a great opportunity, they appear together. When you love someone, they appear together. When you want to leave, they appear together. When you decide to start a business, they appear together. When you prepare to admit a mistake, they appear together.

    They never take turns; they are always together. At any moment, whichever side is heavier, the water flows that way. So the real question is never whether you have greed or fear.

    It is whether, when they coexist, you can see which side of the coin is facing up.

    When thought is young, our river’s front is full of big stones. As life grows old, the river holds only small stones, even sand. That is why I love this line:

    Heaven’s will is hard to ask of; how much more human feelings, old and full of sorrows. This is what the lights of the human world truly look like.

    Most people spend their lives discussing the world, destiny, others, and opportunity — yet never bow their heads to see which side of the coin in their own hand is facing up. That is where confusion truly begins. People are lost not because there is no road, but because both sides exist at once and they cannot see them.

    And that is the next chapter: “I have a sword to cut through confusion.”

    — 姜蓝《人选天选论》 · Chapter 3 The Coin World —

    Video edition:《人选天选论》·第三章 硬币世界（视频版）全长19分钟

    Image edition:《人选天选论》·第三章 硬币世界（图片版）

    Quoted Passages

    Everyone who is torn about a decision already has an answer in their heart. They consult others only to obtain the choice they already lean toward. — Keigo Higashino

    Freedom means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. — George Bernard Shaw

    Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility. — Sigmund Freud

    Be fearful when others are greedy; be greedy when others are fearful. — Warren Buffett

    The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

    Many people’s so‑called maturity is merely having their edges ground down by habit, becoming worldly and practical. That is not maturity, but the early decay of the spirit and the death of personality. — Zhou Guoping

    Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. — Henry David Thoreau

    The greatest harm of procrastination is not delay, but that it makes one hesitant and even destroys confidence. — Shi Tiesheng

    There is a goal, but no road; what we call the road is nothing but hesitation. — Franz Kafka

    Desire gives rise to worry; desire gives rise to fear. — Dhammapada

    The mind’s intelligence is cunning; it will find all kinds of crooked logic to justify its own desires. — Yang Jiang

    When the heart is calm, perception is refined; when one restrains oneself, governance takes less effort. — Zeng Guofan

    Is not love a balance between greed and fear? The more you want to possess, the easier it is to lose. Love is the balance between trying to possess and trying to avoid losing. — Zhang Xiaoxian

    The young believe many false things; the old doubt many true things. — German proverb

    Those who look outward dream; those who look inward awaken. — Carl Jung

  • Footprints of Time

    Time keeps moving forward,
    and some moments choose to stay.

    Fragments find their place,
    emotions are not in a hurry to fade,
    and life gains a little more order.

    What remains unfinished
    can rest where it is.
    What has already happened
    is allowed to be as it is.

    TIMEACTOR walks with time,
    and with you,
    toward the self still becoming.

  • 人选天选论: Chapter 1

    《人选天选论》 Chapter 1 · The River World

    姜蓝 著

    In my heart there are many ways of seeing the world, which I call “small worlds.” You can think of them as cognitive frameworks. When I first shared my small worlds with Jason, he excitedly told me that this was the underlying logic of nearly eighty percent of AI. Among all my small worlds, the earliest one — the one that most profoundly shaped my life and later work — is the “River World.”

    When Wenjie and I were fifteen, we were set on joining the army, eager to serve our country with teenage resolve. The next year, imagining we would take the medical exam, we plotted together and ended up tricking our families out of money, claiming we were going to Wudang Mountain to study martial arts, when in fact we secretly went to Shennongjia. Before we left, we each set a goal for the ten days: I would find the original stone of the He Shi Bi; he would quit smoking for good — he had started at twelve, and after Shennongjia he barely smoked again.

    I never found the stone I longed for, but I opened an unexpected door — a door into a small world where I would search for the patterns of reality through independent thought. A quick note: the language I use here is inspired by fantasy novels like Zhe Tian and Jian Lai. It carries no mystical meaning; I oppose all superstition.

    My “River World” began with a small river in Shennongjia.

    That morning, Wenjie and I each bought a box of Wuhan doupi and ran to the riverbank for breakfast. The water was clear; standing on the bank, you felt you could see straight to the bottom. But when you looked closely, you realized: you could see the bottom, yet you could not see it clearly.

    Legend says the He Shi Bi came from Chu, and its original stone was either turquoise or moonstone. The stream flowed; stones stood quietly beneath it. The surface shimmered, light refracted, and shadows twisted, and it flashed with the particular blue glow of moonstone or labradorite. I knew the stone was there, yet I could not see its true face. In that moment, gazing at the stream, I slipped into a strange state of mind. A thought struck me: a person’s mind is like a river. Not merely like — it almost is. Later I mapped the details one by one.

    The water in the river is a person’s ever-flowing thoughts. The source is the constant influx of information from outside. The riverbed is one’s nature, experience, and temperament. The stones on the riverbed are the greed and fear hidden deep within. The width of the river is the breadth of knowledge. The depth of the water is the density of knowledge. The speed of the current is the speed of thinking. The riverbanks are the boundaries of what one knows they do not know. The ripples on the surface are excuses, reasons, self-control, and surface emotion.

    At first this breakdown may feel abstract, but when you connect it to real people and events, it becomes clear.

    Consider the young people who scroll short videos all day and seem worldly: today some finance, tomorrow a slice of history, the day after a bit of emotional wisdom, and then entrepreneurial tips — philosophy, military affairs, technology, everything. At a glance, their cognitive boundary looks wide, like a broad river. The problem is that their water is too shallow. They know a little about everything, but nothing deeply. And when the water is shallow, even a few stones (greed and fear) can stir the surface into chaos: today they swear to charge ahead, tomorrow they collapse midway; today they believe they’ve grasped the meaning of life, tomorrow they’re lost; one moment they want to gallop forward, the next they want to lie flat. It is not that they have no thoughts — rather, they have too many, too scattered, too fast. They have width without depth. The river is wide, shallow, and rushing; the surface can never be calm, full of emotion, self-control, and reasons.

    Take an oncology professor by contrast. They may not know every field or follow every topic, yet they can go very deep in one or two directions. Their river is not necessarily wide, but the water is deep. When the water is deep, even with stones at the bottom, the surface is hard to disturb. Such people are stable, less prone to extremes — not because they have no emotion or no greed and fear, but because their water is deep enough.

    My friend Chen Changwen has fourteen million followers on Weibo. He reads widely, knows much, and his information breadth is impressive. But a sudden betrayal cost him a huge amount of money and left him disillusioned about human nature. After that, he slowly stopped forming deep ties, and he no longer let chaotic information stream into his heart. He focused on writing and living his own life, as if he had chosen to reduce the flow of his river. He is a special kind of person: his river was wide and not shallow, yet he learned to control his source, to guide his current. That is why his inner world can remain calm — not because the world became quiet, but because he learned to subtract from his thoughts and refuse the flood.

    So the “river of thought” differs greatly from person to person:

    Some are wide and shallow. Some narrow and deep. Some wide and deep, yet the current is too swift to control. Some rivers were once clear and calm, yet a huge inflow turned them into chaos.

    To truly see oneself, the first step is not to ask: What am I greedy for? What am I afraid of? The first step is to ask: what kind of river am I? It sounds simple, but many people never think about it. They stare at the surface: “I’m in a bad mood today,” “I’m anxious today,” “I’m suddenly motivated,” “I suddenly feel like doing nothing.” They assume the problem lies in emotion itself, so they try to control emotion — studying psychology, attending motivational classes, meditating, chasing self‑help. Many struggle for a long time and return to the same point. It’s not that these methods are useless; it’s that they keep circling the surface and never look at the river as a whole.

    The surface is always easy to stir: a breeze creates ripples, more water brings flooding, faster flow brings turbulence.

    If you only stare at the surface, life feels full of problems and impossible to untangle. But if you step back and look at the whole river from a higher vantage, you will find that many answers were already written into the river’s shape. Some people are anxious not because they are too sensitive, but because their river is too shallow — a small thing touches the bottom. Some people obsessively spiral not because they can’t think clearly, but because their river is too narrow — all problems collide in a tiny channel. Some people swing between passion and pessimism not because they are contradictory, but because their flow is too great — information pours in like a storm, and the river never slows down. Some people have good conditions, yet feel life is chaotic — not because the world targets them, but because their flow is too fast; the water keeps rushing, and nothing has time to settle before the next wave sweeps it away.

    Too many people make life too complex, searching for a universal answer, a method to solve everything. In truth, many problems are decided much earlier.

    What determines the shape of the surface is never the surface itself, but the form of the whole river. If you do not first see your own river, all effort may be applied in the wrong place.

    Some people pour water in, thinking more information will solve everything, only to make the surface more chaotic. Some try to control the speed of the current, yet the river is too shallow; no matter how slow it is, the stones still disturb the surface. Some try to dam a single turbulent patch without realizing the real problem lies beneath.

    Over time I formed a habit: when I see someone chaotic and distressed, I do not rush to their emotions; I first ask: what does their “river of thought” look like? Is it too narrow, too shallow, too full, too fast? Once you see that clearly, many problems are already half‑solved. But as I followed this thread, a new question surfaced:

    If thought is like water, always in motion, where does it ultimately flow?

    Human communication is an exchange of thoughts — one river flowing into another. But if that were all, thought would quickly disperse. Yet many thoughts do not vanish; some last decades, centuries, even millennia. Why? Because humanity has always done one thing: build containers for the river’s water.

    The earliest containers were oral stories. Then came words carved on oracle bones and bamboo slips. Later, books. Then paintings, music, film. Today, large language models and AI. The forms differ, but the core is the same: to capture a river’s water so thought can endure.

    A book is a river preserved. Decades of observation and reflection vanish if only spoken in casual conversation; but once written, that river is poured into a vessel. Centuries later, someone opens the book, and that river flows again across time into their heart, letting thought continue.

    Art is the same. A painting is a fragment of the artist’s thoughts; a piece of music is the flow of their inner waves; a film is a story woven from their understanding of human nature and life. These are all pieces of a river, solidified into form. When later generations approach, the sleeping river begins to flow again.

    History, too, is the sediment of countless rivers of thought. History is not merely cold years and events, but the compressed riverbed of people’s thoughts, choices, desires, and fears. To read history is to stand on the bank of time and watch those rivers — how they flowed, converged, and shaped the world.

    Humanity advances through history not because each generation starts from zero, but because the rivers of thought of those before us did not disappear. They were stored in vessels, transmitted across time. When we read, we let the water of centuries ago flow into our own river; when we study history, we gaze at dried riverbeds; when we touch art, we touch another river’s former current.

    The width of my own understanding and the calm of my inner current did not appear from nothing. I stand on the shoulders of ancient sages and draw from a vast treasury of thought. Some once mocked me and said I wanted to become a “sage.” I never had such a wish. The sages innovated and opened the way; I merely inherit and carry forward. I know I have received a great gift from humanity’s treasury of thought, and thus owe a great debt. That debt is the duty of inheritance — before I leave this world, I have an obligation to pour my own river into a vessel and return it to the world. Even if the vessel adds only a drop to the sea of human thought, even if it pays only one percent of the interest, I consider my life worthwhile. That is why I often joke that I am broke — a lifetime spent repaying this debt. And those who repay have no right to demand understanding, nor to resist criticism and doubt.

    So when I later began to write, I asked myself: if I pour my river into a book, will my river one day run dry? Later I realized this is not so. When water enters a vessel, it does not vanish; it only changes form. The water in the book will flow into countless hearts, nourishing their rivers; their rivers will then produce new currents that return to my world.

    Thought is never a one‑way current; it is more like a vast watershed — countless rivers exchanging, dividing, merging, polishing each other’s beds, nourishing each other’s flow. Beginning to express oneself is not a depletion of one’s river. On the contrary, it is how a river becomes truly eternal. And as a river begins to flow swiftly, its silt is washed away, its stones are carried forward, and truths once hidden on the riverbed slowly appear. The river grows deeper.

    And when the river deepens, you begin to see things you had never seen before — the things buried in the deepest riverbed, rarely seen, yet truly capable of changing the direction of the flow.

    That day by the stream in Shennongjia, I had not yet fully understood these truths, but I already sensed one thing: to truly see yourself, it is not enough to watch the flowing water, nor even the whole river. The real forces that determine the river’s direction are always below — on the riverbed.

    This is the next story in the River World: “The Stones of Greed and Fear.”

    — 姜蓝《人选天选论》 · Chapter 1 The River World —

    Video edition: 《人选天选论》·第一章 河流世界（视频版） 全长18分钟

    Image edition: 《人选天选论》·第一章 河流世界（图片版）

    Quoted Passages

    No man ever steps in the same river twice. — Heraclitus

    A little learning is a dangerous thing. — Alexander Pope

    To read widely is not as good as reading deeply and thinking hard. — Zhu Xi

    Study broadly, question carefully, reflect prudently, discern clearly, and practice earnestly. — The Book of Rites

    Still waters run deep. — Dao De Jing

    Life is finite, knowledge is infinite. With the finite to pursue the infinite is dangerous. — Zhuangzi

    In learning, each day adds; in the Way, each day subtracts. Subtract and subtract, until one arrives at non‑doing. — Dao De Jing

    A person’s life should be like a river: at first a small stream confined by narrow banks, then surging past boulders and waterfalls. Gradually the river widens, the banks recede, the current grows calm, and at last it merges with the sea, dissolving itself without pain. — Bertrand Russell

    Know thyself. — Socrates

    The farthest thing from each person is himself. — Nietzsche

    We cannot solve problems with the same level of thinking that created them. — Albert Einstein

    He who looks outward dreams; he who looks inward awakes. — Carl Jung

    A person’s view of themselves determines their fate, or at least their final destination. — Henry David Thoreau

    Books are ships of thought that sail across the waves of time, carrying precious cargo from generation to generation. — Francis Bacon

    Art is eternal, and life is short. — Leonardo da Vinci

    Illuminate the past to discern the future, and make the subtle manifest. — Book of Changes

    If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. — Isaac Newton

    To set the heart for Heaven and Earth, to set the life for the people, to continue the lost teachings of the sages, to open peace for all ages. — Zhang Zai

    Thought is born in intercourse with others, but is refined and expressed in solitude. — Leo Tolstoy

  • 人选天选论: Chapter 2

    《人选天选论》 Chapter 2 · The Human Path Toward Awakening

    姜蓝 著

    The next morning, Wenjie and I went back to the stream. I knew the stone was right there, yet I could not see its true shape. The day before I had wanted to scoop it up, because it shimmered with a strange light — not the dull reflection of ordinary stones, but a faint, bluish glow, like moonstone. Against the black‑and‑white background, a cold blue seemed to seep through. I even thought it might be special, perhaps the same kind of stone as the He Shi Bi. I crouched down and reached into the water, but the moment my hand touched it I pulled back. The water was too cold.

    I wanted it, but I was unwilling to pay the cost, so I did not take it. The next day, seeing me still fixated on it, Wenjie gave me a look of disdain, laughed, jumped in, crouched down, and felt around. He pulled the stone up and handed it to me. The moment it was placed in my palm, I froze — it was nothing like I had imagined.

    No blue glow, no mystery, nothing that felt like it hid something inside. It was simply an ordinary stone: a gray‑white base with tiny mica flakes, glinting with scattered light.

    I stood by a rotten pine log on the bank and stared at it for a long time. My first response was not disappointment, but to search for reasons: was it the refraction of water? Was the current moving? Did sunlight hit at a certain angle, stretching the mica into blue on the surface? The more I thought, the more reasonable those explanations felt. So I carefully stepped through the grass to the water’s edge, put the stone back, and waited for the blue light to return — but it did not.

    Once it was back in the water, it never became what I had first seen. Standing there, I suddenly understood: that blue light was never on the stone, nor in the water. It was in my mind.

    Those explanations I had rushed to assemble were not to seek the truth. They were an effort to prove that the cause‑and‑effect I had just seen was correct. Over time I realized people are like this: we see a result first, then scramble for a cause, then gather evidence for that cause, and finally convince ourselves — I wasn’t wrong, I thought correctly, this is how the world is. But often, if you simply place the stone back in the water and look again, those seemingly reasonable reasons fall apart on their own.

    It was precisely because I discovered the value of repeated observation and comparison that 《人选天选论》 was born.

    Recording matters, because only through records can you preserve what you truly thought in the moment. When you look back later, you can tell whether you were seeing stones on the riverbed, or ripples on the surface. I took that stone home, and because of it I lost the second‑hand Sony Ericsson W800c Wenjie had given me. To this day, the stone sits on my desk. It still looks like nothing special, but to me it is more important than many things. Many of my later reflections about people began with that stream. If you ever saw it, you likely would not find it special.

    But to me, it is the beginning of everything.

    From that moment on, I began to seriously ask: if the mind is a river, how do we observe our own riverbed?

    For a while after that, I wrote in my diary every day, with unusual seriousness — so serious that I would even show it to Wenjie. I hoped he would give me honest feedback, perhaps understand me more.

    But one day he said, “Don’t show me your diary anymore.”

    We were walking past the crossroads by the First People’s Hospital of Danjiangkou, on our way to the Shentong Internet Cafe to play World of Warcraft. I froze and asked him why. He said something I remembered for years.

    He said, “When people express themselves to others, it’s always false.”

    I didn’t understand. He told me his story: his parents divorced when he was young; he grew up with his grandparents. His father often told him his mother was bad; his mother often told him his father was good.

    “No one lies completely, and no one tells the full truth,” he said. “Because when people speak, they always have an aim, something they want to keep, and a version they want you to believe.”

    Then he looked at me and said, “So once you write for other people to read, it’s already not real.”

    I was furious. I had sincerely wanted to share my reflections on life, and he seemed to deny everything I was doing. I wrote from the heart; I thought it was my truest part. And he dismissed it as “all false.”

    I could not accept it. We argued, and for the next two months we barely spoke. I stopped showing my diary to anyone. Later, when I reread my old entries, I realized he was right: because I expected him to read them, I unconsciously polished my language, emphasized certain emotions, and hid certain things.

    If I were to write my feelings from that time again, I would not write them the same way. In that moment I understood: anything written for others begins to deform. From then on I never showed my diary to anyone. And yet, writing for you now also changes things — I try to control the change, but even that effort only makes the change continue in another form.

    Are you ready? Ready to enter my River World, to walk a path of awakening that belongs to you?

    We begin now:

    If thought is a river, then seeing the riverbed is hard — because the water never stops moving.

    Information flows, emotion flows, desire flows.

    Most people spend their lives seeing only the excuses, reasons, and disguises on the surface, and never truly see the stones beneath. Over time, I realized there are three ways to see the stones on the riverbed.

    The first is lifting stones — recording “Dao traces” (道痕) by writing a daily journal. The second is diving — deep thinking, meditation. The third is rerouting the river — completely dissolving your former self.

    For most people, I only recommend the first. Do not underestimate the human path. Its end converges with the heavenly path, and this human path is “lifting stones” — the slowest, but the safest, with the smallest cost.

    What does lifting stones mean? It means you do not try to see the whole river at once. You lift one stone: today one, tomorrow another. Lift it to look, put it back to look, then write it down.

    You don’t need to see every stone today, nor to change yourself immediately. You only need to build one ability:

    See the surface, and know what lies beneath.

    This is the seed of insight. It is not mysticism, and it is not fortune‑telling. It is your unconscious ability to observe your own riverbed with increasing accuracy. So how do you lift stones?

    I eventually found a simple method: write your journal when you are most tired. I loved exercise then, working out and running every day. I discovered that the time after a run was perfect for lifting stones — when your body is exhausted, blood and oxygen flow into your limbs, and your mind stops racing as it does normally.

    At that time, the river of thought slows — not to a stop, but noticeably. When it slows, the surface grows calmer; when it grows calmer, the riverbed becomes visible. So I set my method as:

    Run, shower, then write.

    How to write is crucial. When I guided my students, they would write: “I was tired today,” “I was unhappy today,” “Someone let me down,” “I realized something today.” Such records have little meaning; they are just ripples on the surface. What we record is “Dao traces.”

    Not the events of life. Not feelings. Not stories.

    We lift one stone from the river each day. So how do you write without staying on the surface? I recommend that every “Dao trace” follow this fixed order:

    First layer: Facts

    Write only what happened. No explanation, no evaluation, no emotion. For example: “He said I changed.” “I saw someone make money quickly.” “I wanted to reply, then didn’t.” “I saw someone showing off, and I felt uncomfortable.” This layer marks where the stone is. Many people start with reasoning, which only covers the stone.

    Second layer: First reaction

    Write the most direct feeling in the moment — not the correct answer, just the first reaction. For example: “I wanted to argue.” “I felt sour.” “I was a bit afraid.” “I wanted to prove myself.” “I wanted to run.” This layer matters because the first reaction is often closest to the stone itself.

    Third layer: What I want to gain (this is greed)

    Force yourself to answer: if I follow this impulse, what do I want to gain? Avoid big words like “dignity,” “happiness,” or “meaning.” Be concrete. For example: “I want him to admit I’m right.” “I want to be stronger than that person.” “I want others to respect me.” “I want to keep this relationship.” “I want that opportunity.” “I want to prove I’m not a failure.” This step often reveals greed.

    Fourth layer: What I fear

    This is fear. Again, no empty talk; write the ugliest, smallest, most direct fear. For example: “I’m afraid of being looked down on.” “I’m afraid I’m not that good.” “I’m afraid of losing him.” “I’m afraid I chose wrong.” “I’m afraid to admit I was foolish.” “I’m afraid I’ve been lying to myself.” This step is crucial because many people can say what they want, but refuse to face what they fear — and what truly holds them back is often fear.

    Fifth layer: What reasons I gave myself

    This is the key step — the ripples on the surface. Ask yourself: to make myself feel better, what explanations did I invent? For example: “I’m not jealous; I’m just being objective.” “I’m not afraid; I’m just waiting.” “I don’t not want it; I’m just seeing further.” “I’m not angry; I just think it’s not worth it.” “I’m not trying to prove myself; I’m just being fair.” This layer captures how you persuade and reconcile yourself. Many people stop at the third layer, so they never touch the stone — because the real stone is often hidden behind the reasons you are most skilled at telling.

    Sixth layer: What stone did I lift today

    You are allowed only one sentence: Today’s stone is ______. Only one main stone; do not list a pile of greed and fear. For example: “Today’s stone is fear of being looked down on.” “Today’s stone is the desire to prove I’m stronger.” “Today’s stone is fear of losing the relationship.” “Today’s stone is craving certainty.” “Today’s stone is fear of admitting I was wrong.” This step is critical because it forces you to focus from a whole surface into one concrete stone.

    Why do many people find journaling useless? Because they write only the first three layers: what happened, what they felt.

    “I felt wronged today.” That has value — but it is only seeing the surface. Anyone who learns to observe themselves will always add two more layers: what do I want, and what do I fear; then one more: what explanation did I invent to protect myself.

    Only then do you truly touch the stone. And why must you look back? You already realized this earlier — it is the most powerful part: you lift the stone not to keep it, but to compare it.

    Lift it today, put it back tomorrow, and look again. After a week, after a month, you will discover three things:

    First, what you once thought was huge was not the core stone at all.
    Second, what you thought was accurate was mostly self‑persuasion and self‑reconciliation.
    Third, some stones keep appearing again and again.

    The third is the most important. If a stone repeats, it is not a temporary emotional fluctuation but a large stone on your riverbed. So I suggest: write every day, review once a week, and each month, find only the three stones that repeat. After a month you will be shocked. You will find that what you thought was a complicated life is often pushed around by just those few stones.

    How do you learn “human choosing” through journaling? This is the point. Many people think that “seeing the stone” is enough. It is not. Seeing the stone is only the first step. True “human choosing” means that the next time the same ripples appear, you immediately know which stone is underneath.

    For example, in the past you saw others succeed and felt disturbed; after ten days of Dao traces, you will know clearly: “This isn’t just discomfort. Underneath is a desire to prove I am stronger.” Or: “This isn’t rational hesitation. Underneath is fear of paying the cost of a choice.”

    Only then do you begin to earn the right to choose. But how to choose will likely wait until after chapter thirty. Recently I published the original first chapter, and many people rushed to “choose.” It worried me — they were unwilling to lay foundations or listen to principles; they just wanted to choose. That made me even more determined to put the “how to choose” much later.

    The “Dao trace” template — use this every day:
    1. What was the most turbulent event today?
    2. What was my first reaction?
    3. What did I actually want to gain?
    4. What was I actually afraid of?
    5. What reasons did I give myself?
    6. What was the main stone I lifted today?
    7. If I face the same event tomorrow, how will I choose?

    The first six lines are for “seeing stones.” The seventh begins to simulate “human choosing.” Some criticize 《人选天选论》 as mysticism; after reading the preface they see it isn’t. Now they say it is empty talk, neither provable nor falsifiable. After this chapter, we shall see — 《人选天选论》 is never empty theory, but a practical guide for action.

    Keep lifting stones. If you keep at it, you will slowly learn to distinguish water, ripples, stones, and your true self. Only then will you truly earn your ticket to learn 《人选天选论》.

    The second method is diving.

    That is, deep thinking. It is fast, and it is dangerous. I must make the danger clear — because when people hear “deep thinking,” they imagine something elevated, but it can pull you into a hollow abyss. I have had two experiences close to depression, both related to “diving.”

    The first was when a friend I had accompanied for years developed liver cancer. I couldn’t stop thinking about death, too deep and too long, and nearly couldn’t climb out.

    The second was later, when I studied human genetic structures. I reached some deep logic and kept digging. The deeper I dug, the more I sank into a hollow, bewildered state.

    So I became convinced: deep thinking is not something everyone should do immediately. If you cannot yet observe your river, lift stones, or judge your own state, diving too early will only confuse you. So in this chapter I do not teach diving; I only tell you it exists, it works fast, and it is high risk. When your foundation is solid and your river’s structure is clearer, diving will be much safer.

    The third method is rerouting the river.

    This method is the most powerful and the most difficult. Rerouting the river is not about seeing the stones; it is about changing the flow itself. When a river truly changes course, its old riverbed is exposed for a time, and you can see it very clearly. So before you reroute, you should know what your original riverbed looks like. After rerouting, look again — the contrast will be striking.

    But the cost of this method is enormous, and I will not expand here — because if I do, many will mistake it for mysticism. Just remember this: the power to reroute is immense, and not something ordinary people should touch lightly.

    If someone truly wants to know themselves, the first step is not deep thinking or changing one’s structure. The first step is to see what your river looks like, then lift one stone each day — look a little, compare a little, and correct those judgments that seem reasonable but are only self‑consistent.

    You will slowly discover why you reach, why you withdraw, why you are always drawn to the same “blue light,” and why every time you lift it, it is only an ordinary stone. When you begin to do this, you have truly begun to know your own heart.

    Twenty years have passed. The stone still sits by my purple clay teapot, beside a blue Sri Lankan moonstone. Sometimes I lift them and compare them. The stone from the stream is, in truth, not special at all — gray‑white, with a faint mica shimmer. If you saw it by the river, you would not look twice. But each time I see it, I remember that stream, and the boy who once stood by its edge.

    Everything begins with only two things: greed and fear.

    In the next chapter, I will lead you into my “Coin World,” a world of two sides — are you ready? Ready to walk through greed and fear, through all the blossoms, without a single leaf on your body.

    — 姜蓝《人选天选论》 · Chapter 2 The Human Path Toward Awakening —

    Video edition: 《人选天选论》·第二章 走向觉醒的“人之路”（视频版）全长24分钟

    Image edition: 《人选天选论》·第二章 走向觉醒的“人之路”（图片版）

    Quoted Passages

    What we hear is only a point of view, not a fact. What we see is only a perspective, not the truth. — Marcus Aurelius

    People only see what they want to see. — Emerson

    Once the mind has adopted an opinion, it draws all things to support it. — Francis Bacon

    No one, whoever he may be, can see all of reality; most people see only the reality they want to see. — Julius Caesar

    Nothing exists outside the mind; no principle exists outside the mind. — Wang Yangming

    The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. — Richard Feynman

    When a man is least himself is when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. — Oscar Wilde

    What I write is not what I say, what I say is not what I think, what I think is not what I should think — and so on, into endless darkness. — Franz Kafka

    The man who can see the essence of things in half a second and the man who can never see it in a lifetime are destined for different fates. — The Godfather

    The unexamined life is not worth living. — Socrates

    Your unconscious is steering your life, and you call it fate. When the unconscious is brought to awareness, fate is rewritten. — Carl Jung

    The easiest thing in the world is to blame others; the hardest is to see oneself. — Rabindranath Tagore

    No one reads for the sake of reading; we read to read ourselves, to discover ourselves, to examine ourselves. — Romain Rolland

    If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. — Nietzsche

    One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. — Carl Jung

    To know others is wisdom; to know oneself is enlightenment. To conquer others requires strength; to conquer oneself requires true power. — Dao De Jing

    Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful. — Warren Buffett

  • 人选天选论 Preface

    《人选天选论》 Preface

    姜蓝 著

    Many years ago, I wanted to package this book as an “ancient fragment” I had happened to find. I did not believe people would take seriously the reflections of a green kid on “choice” and “cost.” Even the phrase “人选祸天选福” was coined so the idea would spread more easily, and the cost followed. Our story begins with me choosing misfortune as fortune for the sake of spreading it.

    My father was a man of letters, and under his influence I read widely from a young age. When I was fifteen, I was already thinking about writing a book. I wondered why so many people were willing to study the Heart Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, and the Dao De Jing, yet so few were willing to read Zhuangzi or the Nirvana Sutra. In the end I concluded that “ease of transmission” is the core factor in whether an idea is accepted by the public. The Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra are short, easy to memorize, and easy to copy; the Dao De Jing opens with “The Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao,” which is rhythmic and memorable. Zhuangzi, though — even now, there are passages where I cannot read many characters. In order to make the idea spread, I coined the catchy slogan “人选祸天选福.” It led to widespread misunderstanding, and it also led me to write 《人选天选论》 early. I owe an apology to those I misled.

    For this reason, I will not present the book in the form of classical Chinese quotations, nor will I rush to show you the “value.” We begin by understanding my subjective world, and I invite you to step into it.

    Subjectively, I believe the world runs on laws, and the universe is deterministic. The leap of electrons, the structure of crystals, the movement of planets, chemical reactions, human evolution — none of these are the result of choice, but the necessary outcome of laws. From the origin of the universe, everything is already a book; time is only the order in which we turn its pages, a ruler for measuring change. Human thought is the same: neural responses and genes are merely manifestations of laws.

    Strictly speaking, in a materialist world, humans have no free will. The fact that I am writing the preface to 《人选天选论》 right now, and that you are reading these difficult lines, is also predetermined.

    And yet, after deep reflection, humans must “pretend” we have the right to choose. If everything is fixed, why strive, why give up, why choose? So we must live in a simpler state: even if everything may already be decided, we still act as “choosers.” We are born to die, yet we do not abandon living.

    Many people misunderstand “人选祸天选福” as fortune-telling. I do not believe the future can be predicted or interfered with. Here I mention my “broken-painting principle”: no matter how strong the figures inside the painting are, they cannot tear the canvas. In scientific terms, observation itself is part of the variable.

    This is the front side of my coin: the material world.

    Now let us look at the reverse: the world of mind.

    In my view, nothing truly exists in this world as an object in itself; it is a projection in the mind. For example, you are reading 《人选天选论》. You roughly know I am still alive, what I look like, and that I will livestream tonight. All of this exists in your mind, not in the world itself. If I were to die in a car accident before the livestream, no one would update anymore, and you would slowly forget me; but if, at some moment, you remember me, you might guess I have gone into seclusion or become disillusioned with the world — then I live in your mind. The day you see the news “Famous shipbuilding blogger Luffy dies in car crash,” I die in your mind. Of course, it could all be my own story: I might be in Antarctica watching penguins. When you see my skiing video from Antarctica, I live again in your mind; when you notice the label “video suspected AI,” I die again in your mind — perhaps the AI label was even Photoshopped by me.

    The idealist world is vast. The material world and the mind-world are two sides of the same coin: they coexist, but cannot be observed at the same time. This is mind-bending, but necessary. Later chapters will go into the details; for a preface, I only need to make clear what this book is about.

    From these two subjective worlds arises a subjective idea, and this is the purpose of “人选祸天选福”: life cannot decide the outcome, but it can choose what cost to bear. We cannot avoid pain, and we cannot guarantee what we want. Life is not about gaining or losing; what we truly need is a structure that can survive over the long term — something like my own pursuit of a good ending.

    A makes a lot of money, but is anxious, fearful, and sleepless; his “gains” are many, yet his structure is unstable. B earns an ordinary income, but lives with clear order and stable relationships; his “gains” are few, yet his structure is stable. It is a clumsy example, but the point is this: a stable structure comes before all else.

    Over the years I have met many people who are lost or in pain. Some are poor, some are financially free; some have read many books, some have done many things; some are beautiful, some are not. But all of them suffer. Observation has convinced me: suffering is not the property of any single type — it is a universal condition.

    The core causes of suffering fall into two categories: “not getting what you want,” and “losing what you failed to cherish.”

    When I was sixteen, Wenjie and I stole money from our parents and ran off to Shennongjia. Muyu Village was beautiful, and we walked by a small stream. The water was clear; the stones looked special. But when I crouched down, I could see the water, yet not the stone. The current was fast; water rolled over the stone, the surface rising, refracting, twisting. The water looked shallow. I reached down to grab a stone on the riverbed, but halfway I pulled back — the water was freezing; in that moment even my thoughts felt frozen.

    The next day we returned. Wenjie saw I was afraid of the cold, so he went in and fetched the stone for me. The instant he lifted it, it was nothing like the beauty I had imagined.

    Greed — wanting the beautiful stone. Fear — recoiling from the cold. Loss — the mysterious beauty of the stone. Not getting — the stone I wanted in my heart.

    Thoughts began to whirl. I asked Wenjie not to disturb me, and I started writing it down in my diary. That entry was long: it spoke of the river and knowledge, of the speed of thought and the efficiency of thinking, of how to observe the greed and fear within, of excuses and self-justification.

    I compared greed and fear in the human heart to two stones on the riverbed, one white and one black. I compared excuses and self-control to the surface water churned into chaos by those stones. Greed makes you reach out; fear makes you withdraw. Wanting is greed; fear of loss is fear. Many decisions in life are made between these two stones.

    But the problem is never greed or fear. The problem is this: between them, is there a structure that still allows choice? That is tianquan. If greed and fear restrain each other, you can still remain steady; if one completely overwhelms the other, you will go to extremes and fall into pathological depression or anxiety. Very few people are left with only greed or only fear. Most of us swing between the two.

    So I subjectively divide human states into five realms:

    • Lost — tianquan collapses; you keep doubling down and shrinking back.
    • Seeking fortune — tianquan wavers; you chase gain and avoid harm.
    • Seeing the mechanism — tianquan is visible; you clearly see your choice, your cost, your outcome.
    • Holding balance — tianquan is controllable; you know life cannot avoid cost, and you choose to bear misfortune.
    • Two-forgettings — tianquan dissolves; there is no greed, no fear; thus both are forgotten, and tianquan is no longer needed.

    But no one remains in a single realm forever. The heart is like water, moving with circumstance. Someone can be clear today and confused tomorrow; see through things this moment and be dragged by desire in the next. These realms are only momentary states.

    I know you are already trying to place yourself in one of these realms, and also wondering where I, Jiang Lan, stand. The main text will discuss this. For now I can only say that I neither dare nor deserve to enter Two-forgettings. I even doubt whether anyone can truly reach it. It relates to what I have long said: use the largest hook, the largest bait, to catch the largest fish.

    Most people seek fortune. Where there is benefit, they go; where there is risk, they retreat. They look clever. But in my subjective world, the world never rewards anyone. The world only charges a cost. Every choice demands a price — some paid immediately, some settled years later.

    Many believe there is a ledger between misfortune and fortune. Endure now, and you will be rewarded later; take a loss, and fate will compensate you. But the world is not a bank. Between misfortune and fortune, there is no ledger you can return to and reconcile.

    So later I distilled many things into three words:

    人选。
    祸。
    天选。

    Human choosing (人选) is your choice in the present. In the world of human choosing there are only “human” and “heaven”: human is yourself; heaven is every variable beyond you. Misfortune (祸) is not disaster; misfortune is cost. Heaven’s choosing (天选) is the outcome. You can decide your choice, but the outcome never belongs to you alone.

    Where, then, is fortune? Fortune is a stable structure — the main text will explain.

    Many people like to explain all this with one word: “luck.” But “luck” makes it too easy to stop thinking, to stop restraining oneself. In my view, most “luck” is simply the stacking of choices you cannot see. You can decide your choice; everything beyond you is heaven’s choosing, and heaven’s choosing cannot be measured. Countless choices interweave and form the result. You cannot see every path, so you call it luck.

    That is why, in this book, I will repeatedly say a very subjective sentence: there is no luck in this world, only choices.

    Of course, if we go deeper, we meet an even larger question. If everything in the universe is governed by laws, if consciousness is itself part of those rules, then what is choice? I do not avoid this; I am even willing to admit that perhaps we really are only people inside a painting.

    This is also where “breaking the painting” comes in. You cannot step outside destiny, yet you must still be responsible for your life. Many spend their whole lives trying to avoid pain, but they do not realize pain is unavoidable; joy and pain are, absolutely, half and half. The only thing you can decide is how you will bear them.

    So this book is not here to teach success, nor to teach how to obtain “fortune.” It is not for gaining or for avoiding loss. It is for building a structure — a structure that will not wither even as the world keeps changing.

    Human beings cannot pursue eternity, because eternity itself is an illusion. What is truly stable is never the unchanging, but the capacity to bear change.

    If this book has any value at all, I hope it is not to help you win over anyone, but that when you stand by that river again, you will see more clearly: why you reach, why you retreat, why you choose, why you bear.

    If one day you can finally see those two stones on your own riverbed, then perhaps this book will not have been written in vain.

    All right, dear reader. The collision of our inner worlds begins here.

    姜蓝

    Aside

    《人选天选论》

    The full original text of this book will be released online. It mainly explains the author’s own cosmology, worldview, and values.

    人选天选人

    This part describes how, by learning the symbols of greed, desire, and cost in people’s choices, one can establish tianji (an insight into the hidden mechanism) and probabilistically judge and predict the inner world of a person or a matter — at an immense cost. By using tianji to observe tianquan, you will find that tianquan cycles between opposition and division, and between unity and return. The true opportunities to change our environment and structure lie at the critical nodes where tianquan unifies or splits; at those points, the feedback efficiency of human choosing and heaven’s choosing becomes especially high. When the tianquan structure is stable, no one can change the structure through personal effort, and the feedback efficiency is low. But remember: the improvement of feedback efficiency, and the opportunities we expect, can only be used to build a more stable structure and to regulate tianquan; otherwise, the cost in the final outcome will be enormous.

    人选天选天

    This part explores the search for a causal ledger, the illusion of the observer, the imagined path toward Two-forgettings, and the idealist hypothesis behind it.

    @姜蓝 · 人选天选论

    Video edition: 《人选天选论》-序 （视频版） 全长16分钟，很干也很用心

    Image edition: 《人选天选论》-序 （图片版）