Liao-Fan Yuan was born during Ming Dynasty, in about 1550, in Jiangsu Province, Wujiang County. Liao-Fan wrote a book, Liao-Fan's Four Lessons (了凡四訓), which were written originally to teach his son, Tian-Chi Yuan. The principal behind those lessons is that destiny can be changed through proper cultivation of kindness and humility. Thus one should not be bound by fate but by one's own action.
Liao-Fan was predicted by a wise monk, Mr. Kong that he would only live to the age of fifty-three and have no son. At first, he disregarded this wise monk's words as farcical nonsense, but then other things that Kong had predicted were rapidly coming true, which greatly disturbed him, but made him realize the force of destiny. He then proactively made an effort to rewrite his fate. In relating his own life experience in changing destiny, Liao-Fan, at the age of sixty-nine, wrote and taught these four lessons to his son.
The first lesson shows how to create destiny. The second lesson explains the ways to reform. The third reveals the ways to cultivate kindness and the fourth discloses the benefits of the virtue of humility.
This book, still in circulation after more than 500 years, is said to be the very basic foundation in learning Buddhism.
Famous quotes containing the word fan:
“Hard times accounted in large part for the fact that the exposition was a financial disappointment in its first year, but Sally Rand and her fan dancers accomplished what applied science had failed to do, and the exposition closed in 1934 with a net profit, which was donated to participating cultural institutions, excluding Sally Rand.”
—For the State of Illinois, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)