"The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari": The escalation battle of life practice, holding up life through giving up

For me, life is not a short candle, but a blazing torch that I hold in my hand at this moment. I want to keep it burning as brightly as possible until I hand it over to future generations.

——Robin Sharma

"The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari" has a Douban score of 7.2. After Julian, a well-known lawyer, suddenly suffered from a heart attack, he sold his luxury home, private jet, holiday island, and beloved Ferrari, went to India to learn Taoism, and brought back fables from Himalayan monks. The core story of the novel is that Julian transformed from a well-known millionaire lawyer to an enlightened monk wearing a red robe. On the surface, Julian saw through the world of mortals due to a serious illness, gave up his wealth and became a monk. Behind it is an all-round battle to upgrade life, effectively practicing and passing on the 7 life qualities contained in the fable.

The author Robin Sharma is a world-famous author, well-known speaker, and top spiritual consultant. He has published more than ten global best-selling books, which have been translated into 70 languages ??in more than 50 countries, including "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari" and "Who Will Cry for You When You Die" etc. The book "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari" has sold more than 6 million copies worldwide and is the fifth best-selling book in Israeli history.

Behind the best-selling products is modern people’s desire to explore the essence of life. Robin Sharma turned this desire into words and stories, and presented them to the world. What it really shows is a practice about life.

This is a unique practice. Life is not a short candle, but the person in it. The blazing torch in your hand at this moment is the essence of the flame of life. It awakens life, opens the door to life wisdom, and supports life with the practice of heart.

1. Awakening Life: Ignite the Light of Life

Julian is an outstanding defense lawyer who has everything most people dream of having, a prominent professional reputation, and more than 7 years of experience. A multi-digit income, a spectacular and luxurious mansion, a private jet, a villa on a tropical island, and the most beloved, shiny red Ferrari sports car.

In real life, these are what most people pursue. Julian has the material wealth that everyone dreams of, but he still cannot satisfy his desires. For greater fame, more honors, Even greater wealth, working intensively for 18 hours a day. He is dissatisfied with everything in his life. At the age of 53, he looks very old, with wrinkles on his face. Eventually his father severed ties with him and his wife divorced him.

One day, Julian collapsed from a sudden heart attack in court. At the hospital, his doctor delivered an ultimatum: Give up the law or give up his life. He said that at this time, he saw an opportunity for new life to rekindle the fire of life that was about to be extinguished.

Therefore, he sold his luxury home, private jet and holiday island, as well as his beloved Ferrari, and decided to go to India.

There are at least three points in Julian’s story that are worthy of our reflection:

1. In a modern society where material things dominate our lives, we must learn to give up our desires.

When a certain thing only brings endless troubles and sorrows, and all kinds of burdens are like a mountain on the heart and cannot breathe freely, the wisest way is to abandon it and come and go without worries. , life is naturally relaxed and happy.

2. Suffering and disease are reminders to wake you up.

If love cannot awaken you, then life will awaken you with pain. If pain cannot wake you up, then life will wake you up with greater pain. If greater pain cannot wake you up, then life will wake you up with loss. If loss cannot awaken you, then life will awaken you with greater loss, including life itself.

3. When the students are ready, the teacher will naturally appear.

There is a saying in the sutra: "When the disciple is ready, the guru will appear." If you are not ready, even if he is there, you will not notice or have any reaction. Just like if you don't know how to identify diamonds, if you find them somewhere, you will throw them away as a piece of glass.

Julian is determined to give up his career and all the glory and wealth in the world. This is when he is ready. He came to India, found the legendary eminent monk, and learned the ancient wisdom of life.

2. Life requires practice: Uncover the 7 wisdom of life

A few months after Julian arrived in the Himalayas, the yogi Raman told him a magical fable. This fable contains 7 pieces of wisdom about life. Julian learned and practiced these methods, brought them back and taught them to more people in need.

This is the story of a magical garden:

A beautiful, lush garden filled with enchanting flowers. In the center of this magical garden stands a towering, six-story red lighthouse. Suddenly, a Japanese sumo wrestler who was 2.7 meters tall and weighed 400 kilograms came out and broke into the garden center.

The Japanese sumo wrestler was naked except for his private parts covered with a pink ribbon made of multiple strands of silk. He found a shiny gold stopwatch in the garden, accidentally stepped on it and fell to the ground. He became unconscious and lay there.

Suddenly smelling the fragrance of yellow roses around him, as if absorbing new energy, the player jumped up and looked to the left. He was instantly stunned by the scene before him:

He saw a winding forest path covered with countless sparkling diamonds. As if there was a magical force, he was gradually attracted and walked slowly along that road. This road led him to a road filled with endless joy and happiness.

What do the gardens, lighthouses, gold stopwatches, sumo wrestlers, pink ribbons, yellow roses, and diamond-paved paths in this fable represent?

1. Rich mind

In the fable, the garden is a symbol of the mind. Julian said: "If you take good care of your mind, fertilize and cultivate it like a fertile and lush garden, then when it blooms, the scene will be far beyond your expectations. If you let the weeds go unchecked, If you don't live in peace, the lasting peace and deep inner harmony in your inner world will also leave you."

This is like walking into a garden with tall trees and green grass. , flowers of various colors, including red, yellow, blue, purple, etc., are extremely beautiful. However, there will always be some people who dump some garbage in the garden. As the owner of the garden, you must protect the garden. These garbage are metaphors for various negative thoughts, thoughts, and emotions, which will consume your energy.

The famous psychology professor David Hawkins has spent more than 30 years researching and analyzing the energy levels of various emotions. Below 200 is negative, and above 200 is positive. People with an energy level below 200 are completely affected by life.

A person's energy level is related to a person's state of mind, mood, and emotions. Emotions below 200 are the internal consumption of your life energy. As the owner of the garden, you should cultivate your "mind garden" to grow happiness, prosperity, kindness, forgiveness, love, abundance, understanding, gratitude, and abundance. Therefore, you must learn to control your mind and become the master of your mind.

So how do you control your mind and make your heart full of love, abundance, and gratitude? In fact, it is very simple, just find what you like the most in your heart, then focus all your energy in that direction, and then put in your best efforts. This is also the secret of happiness.

Once you find something you like to do, you also need a steady stream of motivation to keep doing it, which naturally requires a clear goal.

2. Life goal

A bright lighthouse stands in the center of the garden. This lighthouse symbolizes an ancient principle: the purpose of life is to live with purpose.

That is to say, what do you want to get from life, whether it is material or spiritual. If your goal is to gain inner peace, learn to control yourself and learn to understand life. You will spend a lot of time and energy on this and finally achieve the experience you want. This is called "life goal".

A clear life goal will allow you to turn it into a reality through continuous efforts. Julian sold his luxury home, private jet, holiday island, and beloved Ferrari, listened to his inner voice and wanted to go to India, and finally became a monk. This was his life goal.

Master Guoxian once wrote an article. He said that he wanted to learn Buddhism when he was in college. He didn't know why he had such an idea. One day, he saw a book "Zen Life" in a bookstore. After flipping through a few pages, he was sure that it was the master he was looking for. It feels like you are stuck in a sea of ??confusion and suddenly find a clear goal, and you feel very confident in your heart.

Therefore, establishing good goals is the basic starting point. Whether it is your personal, career, or spiritual goals, setting your direction and goals can unleash your creative potential and ultimately enable you to embark on the path to goal realization.

After establishing a good life goal, how to achieve it?

The first step is to have a clear and specific understanding of your expected results.

The second step is to create a positive pressure to encourage yourself.

The third step is not to be too ambitious and set some goals that are not suitable for you.

The fourth step, the 21-day rule, is to create new and valuable habits to control your life. As new habits are formed, old bad habits will naturally be broken.

The fifth step is to keep cheering and encouraging yourself every morning to make yourself full of energy and enthusiasm.

Follow your goals and follow these five steps, and your path to confidence and success will get brighter and brighter. At the same time, you should spend more time on your mind, pay more attention to your inner self, enrich your soul, maintain inner peace, and your life will be more energetic.

3. Inner peace

Yogi Raman told Julian that this sumo wrestler represents a very important factor "Zen enlightenment", which is lofty and complete in every goal. Men and women who are awakened will carry this magical characteristic.

A person's success first comes from inner success. If you want to change your outer world, you have to improve your inner world, whether that outer world means your health, your relationships, or your financial situation. A person's inner cultivation is the most powerful. Only by improving one's inner self-cultivation can one have happiness and success.

There is a sentence in the "Diamond Sutra": "All conditioned dharmas are like bubbles in dreams, like dew or lightning." Our real life is like a movie about joys and sorrows, love, hatred, wealth, sex, fame and food, but they are just like a dream. When life ends, we can take nothing with us. However, there are too many people in this world who regard the pursuit of external wealth, sex, fame and food as their entire life.

Everyone pursues happiness. The so-called happiness is the feeling of a "heart". If a heart is full of all kinds of desires, greed, anger and ignorance, it is a sick heart and will not have it. happiness. Happiness is a feeling that comes from satisfaction with life and inner peace.

Julian said that enlightened people can experience deep happiness at any time, are always ready to give up short-term happiness for long-term satisfaction, and face weaknesses and fears head-on. This means that you have to dare to do what you like. That muscular sumo is a reminder of "zen enlightenment," which means continuous self-development and progress.

So how to practice the technique of "Zen Enlightenment"? Spend an hour every day paying attention to your inner self, keeping yourself quiet, and feeling the power of silence. The key point is to find a really quiet place to be alone. This "habit of solitude" is a short break in the soul's long journey. By meditating in silence every day, your mind will become as calm as a mirror, you will smell good when you sleep, and you will have endless energy when you work.

To practice these skills, the key is to practice them every day and gradually develop life habits. And developing a good habit is inseparable from a person's willpower.

4. Strong willpower

The sumo wrestler in the story, the multi-strand woven pink ribbon covering the private parts represents that self-control and willpower are needed to achieve a happy life.

If you want to have a strong body, you need to get up early and exercise. In the cold winter, you may want to lie in the warm bed and forget about it, but strong willpower will make you get up on time. Having strong willpower allows you to remain calm and silent when facing criticism from others; it allows you to overcome difficulties and realize your dreams.

Jim Randall, a well-known American lawyer and entrepreneur, said: "Willpower is directly related to thought control. Once you realize that you can let positive thoughts crowd out negative thoughts, you will move towards A big step forward in self-disciplined life."

Inventor Edison said: "The most obvious sign of a great person is his strong will." Willpower is what a person or an organization wants to achieve. The psychological state of consciously striving for a certain goal. It is a kind of endurance and a kind of spiritual temperament. The stronger this kind of spiritual temperament, the stronger the willpower. On the contrary, the willpower will be weak.

Boorman lost the ability to walk independently due to the war, and doctors declared that he would not be able to run for the rest of his life. He began to give up on himself. Later, with the encouragement and companionship of his yoga instructor, he continued to practice yoga, and gradually improved from stumbling to walking without relying on crutches. Boorman's friends shot a video of him and shared it on the Internet. Many people were deeply inspired by seeing Boorman running outdoors in the video, picking up the things they had given up and persisting tenaciously.

Willpower inspires you to overcome difficulties under any circumstances and gives you courage. Developing willpower can also eliminate the bad habit of worrying and give you more energy. Willpower is the commander of psychological power. When you control your mind, you control your life. Only those who can completely control their lives can become the masters of their destiny.

How to unlock the power of your will and cultivate inner consciousness?

The first is to try to do those things you don't like. By developing the habit of doing your best, you will quickly change the habit of obeying weakness and impulse. Second, practice the vow of silence, which is to spend a day in silence so that your willpower can do what you command it to do.

The development of these good habits is not the result of one day, but the result of long-term practice, which requires reasonable arrangement of one's time.

5. Outlook on life: time

The gold stopwatch in the story represents time. Everyone has 24 hours, regardless of status, poverty or wealth. The quality of your life determines the quality of your life. Whether you live a happy life depends on how you use your time. Therefore, mastering time is mastering life.

Julian was so busy at work that he forgot his wedding anniversary. That night, he came home tired and late, the children were asleep, and his wife was lying on the sofa crying alone. Because of this matter, the couple had a cold war for more than a week. During that time, he was not focused on work and often suspected that his wife was having an extramarital affair.

I have seen many people who are very busy at work all day long. They have arranged plans to take their parents to travel, but they can only put them off again and again. I promised to spend the weekend with my family and children, but I could only make mistakes again and again. Work is getting busier and busier, and life is getting less and less happy. In fact, 20% of the time you invest in a day produces 80% of the benefits. In other words, the 20% of action effort affects the quality of your life.

Therefore, you need to spend more time on meaningful behaviors. Arrange your time reasonably to achieve a balance between work and life. For example, spend time improving professional skills, spending time with clients to increase their emotions, and spending time with family and children. You also need to have your own time to be alone in silence, practice "Zen Enlightenment", and express gratitude for everything you have. This is also the secret to controlling time.

"Parchment Scrolls" Volume 5: If today is the last day of my life. How do I use this last, most precious time? If this is the end of me, then it is an eternal anniversary and I treat it as the best day. I want to turn every minute into nectar, one bite at a time, savor it carefully, and be grateful. I want every minute to count. I'm going to work harder until I'm exhausted. Every minute of today is better than every hour of yesterday, and the last is also the best.

Yogi Divi once gave Julian advice: The best time to plant trees was 40 years ago, followed by today. Don't waste a single minute of your life. Have a dying mentality.

This is a view of life in ancient Eastern philosophy, also known as "living toward death." Maybe today is the last day of your life, so enjoy it. With this kind of dying mentality, you will treat every day of your life as the last day, and every day will be full of vitality and meaning.

So how to spend time on meaningful things? That means don't let others steal your time. For example, when you are concentrating on work, someone calls in; when you want to relax after a busy day, someone comes to you to handle work, etc. In the face of these, you must learn to say "no" and have the courage to say "no" to the trivial things in life. Only then will you have the strength to say "ok" to the big things in life.

Learning to say "no" does not mean rejecting all people, things, and things, but spending time on meaningful things to help others.

6. Help others selflessly

Yogi Raman said that when he was a child, before going to bed every night, his father would always ask him what good things he had done during the day. If you haven't done anything today, get up immediately and do a good deed, help others selflessly, and then go to bed.

The yellow rose in the story represents the Chinese proverb "Giving roses to others leaves a lingering fragrance in your hands." If you intentionally do some kind deeds every day, your own life will become richer and more meaningful.

Bai Juyi, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, heard that Zen Master Daolin of Bird's Nest had a very high level of practice, so he made a special trip to consult the Zen Master.

Bai Juyi asked Zen Master Daolin Niaochao: "What is the general meaning of Buddhism?"

The Zen Master replied: "Do not do any evil, and practice all good deeds."

Bai Juyi snorted and said, "A three-year-old child knows how to say this."

The Zen Master said: "Although a three-year-old child can say it, an eighty-year-old man may not be able to do it."

Bai Juyi was loyal and convinced, so he bowed and left.

Good and evil are matters between one thought. If you can always have kind thoughts in your heart, you will naturally accumulate blessings. There are two things in the world that cannot wait, one is filial piety and the other is doing good deeds. The value of a person does not lie in the length of his life, but in the size of his contribution. If you have good thoughts in your heart, you will have good deeds. If you have good thoughts and good deeds, God will bless you. When we contribute to others, we grow and gain a sense of accomplishment and happiness.

7. The secret of happiness: live in the moment

The sumo wrestler stepped on the shiny gold stopwatch and smelled the strange fragrance as if he was a different person. , walked happily to the long and winding path, dotted with countless diamonds. From then on, he embarked on this diamond path and headed towards a happy life.

The fables Julian brought back from the Himalayas may seem simple, but they actually require hard work and persistent practice. By practicing these principles down-to-earth, the quality of your life will be elevated to an otherworldly realm.

In daily life, many people spend most of their time worrying about things that have passed, worrying about things that will never come, and their minds are filled with thousands of thoughts. . These people are caught up in the energy of thoughts pulling back and forth, and their lives are occupied by these meaningless internal frictions, and they cannot feel the happiness of life.

The wise men of the Himalayas believe that true happiness and a meaningful life can only be achieved by "living in the present". The past has passed, and the future has not yet arrived. We must learn to live in the present and fully enjoy the fun of life.

Sakyamuni Buddha asked his disciples: "How long is life?" Some people said: fifty years. wrong!

For forty and thirty years, the Buddha shook his head and said, "No." The disciples were very puzzled and asked, "So how long is life?" Buddha smiled and pointed. My own nose said: "Life is only between breaths."

People are changing every moment, and between breaths, you are no longer the same person you were just now. All the past has only brought us to the present, and all the future is determined by our current thoughts and actions. Therefore, when it comes to life, we should grasp the present and live in the present.

How to develop the habit of living in the present? Pray and be grateful every day for the wealth you have, whether material or spiritual. When you live your "now" well, it is equivalent to igniting the flame of life and awakening your mission. On the road of boldly following your dreams, you will achieve everything you want.

Each fable contains infinite power and eternal rules for a happy life. These seven wisdoms are also called seven qualities, because behind acquiring each wisdom requires continuous practice of corresponding skills and methods.

When you live mindfully according to these 7 wisdoms and benefit from them, you will naturally share them with others.

3. Holding up life: conveying the seven qualities of life

Julian met the wise man in the Himalayas and was particularly eager to obtain the ancient truth that can enlighten life. Therefore, he accepted the wise man's condition: after learning those eternal truths, he must return to his homeland in the West and share them with all who need to know them.

Three years later, Julian's friend John, who has become a tired and somewhat cynical veteran lawyer, appears. He shared the ancient truths he had learned with John and taught John some corresponding methods and techniques.

The most wonderful thing about the novel "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari" is the description of the character's life state before and after Julian's heart attack.

Before selling the Ferrari: A successful lawyer, with the material wealth that everyone dreams of, but at the age of 53, he looks very old, with wrinkles on his face.

After selling the Ferrari: A highly educated monk, who looks to be in his thirties, tall, thin but strong, and full of vitality and vitality. He looks at the peak of his health, his smooth face is radiant, his eyes are sparkling, and he contains endless vitality. Beneath his handsome appearance lies a tranquility that gives him an almost otherworldly excellence.

These two states of life form a sharp contrast. The so-called happiness is not an inscrutable philosophy, but just a simple change of mind. In the novel, Robin Schama presents happiness to readers simply and clearly by describing Julian's spiritual changes.

This high-quality life state is also the happiness that people pursue. To achieve this quality of life, we need to persist in practicing these 7 qualities so that life can be improved in all aspects. Live the highest quality of life, like a candle, burn yourself to illuminate others, illuminate life with life, support life with life, nourish life with life.