Making a wish vs. sending a vow:
a single word that makes a world of difference. Have you ever made a wish during the New Year?
Light an incense
stick, put your hands together, close
your eyes, and silently chant, "I want to get rich," "I want to find a partner," "I want a promotion,"
and then open your eyes,
continue scrolling through your phone,
continue feeling anxious,
continue agonizing? The
wish you made is like a WeChat message you sent—
read but not replied to.
You start to doubt: does this thing even work? There's
a Western concept called the "Law of Attraction," which
says that if you believe enough and desire enough, the
universe will deliver what you want to you.
This theory has been written into best-selling books,
made into documentaries, and
has supported an entire self-help industry.
In recent years, it has rebranded itself as
"manifestation."
Search for this term on any social media platform, and you'll find
millions of results—teaching you how to write scripts, do visualizations, and
"live in the ending"—far more sophisticated and popular than the Law of Attraction.
But the problem is,
whether it's the old version of the Law of Attraction or the new version of manifestation,
many people have believed in it,
tried it,
and then found it didn't work.
So another group jumps out and says
it's pseudoscience.
It's just harvesting韭菜 (a metaphor for exploiting people).
But what if I told you that there's
a concept in Buddhism called "the power of will"? It
seems to overlap with the Law of Attraction and the Law of Manifestation, but its
underlying logic is completely different. Moreover,
its operating mechanism
can actually be explained by modern brain science and quantum mechanics.
Today, we'll dissect the underlying logic of "the power of will." Hello
everyone,
I'm Wang Lijie.
In the last episode, we talked about a core definition: the
essence of enlightenment, or becoming a Buddha, is the
active rewriting of the underlying parameters of "consciousness."
Simply put,
it's rewriting your own code. The
method of rewriting is through meditation, contemplation, and introspection.
I left a question at the end: Where does the motivation for rewriting come from? What makes
you able to persist in rewriting? What makes
you choose your direction?
The answer is today's topic - the power of will.
Let's make a key distinction first - "making a wish" and "making a vow."
These two words differ by one word, but they
differ by an entire universe.
What is making a wish? It's when
you make a request to an external force.
You set a premise in your mind: there is an existence more powerful than me. Whether it's
Buddha,
God, the Way of
Heaven, or the
universe,
it can give me what I want,
but whether it gives it or not depends on its mood.
So you have to be devout and
respectful enough. It
's best to donate more money to
increase the approval rate.
This is essentially a transactional mindset – I offer sincerity,
you provide results. Making a
vow is completely different. In
Buddhism, the "vow" in
Sanskrit is called pranidhana. The root
of this word can be broken down into three parts: pra (forward), ni (
towards), and dha (
to place).
Combined, it means "to place forward" – placing your heart and your will
in the direction you want to go.
Therefore, pranidhana is usually translated as "vow"
or "determination."
Making a vow is not making demands on the outside world; it's
issuing an instruction to your own consciousness system.
It's not "Please give me something,"
but rather "I decide to become something," "I decide to go towards something."
You are not negotiating with the universe;
you are reprogramming your own operating system.
Why is this distinction important?
Because it directly determines the effect. The
person making a vow waits; the
person making a vow acts. The
person making a vow places themselves in a passive receiving position; the
person making a vow places themselves in an active creating position.
One is a consumer mentality;
the other is a builder mentality. Have
you noticed? The
currently popular global phenomenon of manifestation
actually sits precisely in the middle of making a vow and a vow.
It is more advanced than the traditional Law of Attraction.
It no longer says, "The universe will give you whatever you want,"
but rather, "You need to change your inner state and
live in the feeling of having already achieved it."
This is a step from "external requests" to "internal change,"
but it stopped halfway.
What is its fatal problem?
I'll keep that a secret for now; the
next episode will specifically dissect the underlying logic of manifest chemistry and its hidden
structural paradoxes.
Today, we'll thoroughly explain the Buddhist system of vows,
because only when you understand vows
can you see what manifest chemistry is lacking.
Okay,
let's go back to making vows.
Who is the most famous "vower" in Buddhist history?
Amitabha Buddha. Before
he became a Buddha, he
was a king
named Kausika.
After hearing the teachings of the Buddha Lokeshvara, he was
deeply moved and
renounced his throne to become a monk, taking the
Dharma name Dharmakara. The Buddha Lokeshvara
showed him the good and evil, the coarse and subtle aspects of 21 billion Buddha-lands.
After five kalpas of contemplation, Dharmakara
finally made forty-eight great vows.
Each one follows the format: "If
my world cannot meet certain conditions after I become a Buddha,
I will not become a Buddha.
" Note this format.
He wasn't asking anyone to build him a Pure Land;
he was betting his own chance to become a Buddha,
binding his vows and actions together.
These forty-eight vows,
after countless eons of practice, were all
ultimately fulfilled.
This is the foundation of the Pure Land School. Ksitigarbha
Bodhisattva is even more ruthless: "I will not become a Buddha until hell is empty.
" Think about the power of this statement.
He wasn't just wishing for hell to be empty;
he was saying, "As long as there is even one sentient being suffering in hell,
I will not leave."
This isn't a request; it's a
declaration. This isn't a
transaction;
it's a promise. Okay, that's the explanation.
Now let's get to the core part—what exactly is making a vow about, and
why does it produce practical effects?
I'll break it down for you on three levels. The
first level is
neuroscience.
Let me give you some data to give you a feel for it. In
2025,
Zheng He Meister of Caltech
published a study in the journal *Neuron*.
They precisely measured the information throughput of the human sensory system. The
conclusion was that
your sensory system collects about one billion bits of information per second. One billion!
But what about your conscious mind? It
can only process about ten bits per second. One
billion versus ten—the
difference is one hundred million times.
In other words...
Your brain discards 99.99999% of information every second.
So the question is: who decides which information enters your consciousness?
The answer is a filtering system in your brain.
In the past, people simply attributed this to the reticular activating system in the brainstem.
However, the latest neuroscience research shows that
a more complex network called the "salience network" is actually responsible for this filtering work.
Its core is located in the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex.
This system does a simple thing: it decides what you see based on what you consider important.
You just decided to buy a red car, and
suddenly you find red cars everywhere. The number of
red cars hasn't increased;
it's your salience network that has marked "red cars" as "important
information."
So all the red cars that were previously filtered out have reappeared.
This isn't the universe sending you a signal;
it's your brain executing the search command you issued.
What does making a
vow do? Making a vow is writing a new filtering rule into your salience network.
When you truly make a vow—not just saying it,
but deciding something from the bottom of your heart—
your brain will begin automatically filtering information, marking opportunities, and establishing connections.
Things you couldn't see before will suddenly appear.
People you previously ignored will suddenly become important.
This isn't the universe working in your favor;
it's your own perception system being recalibrated. As
I mentioned in the episode about lucky personalities,
the brain, this super-powerful filter, determines what you see and remember.
If you believe, "I'm just unlucky," your
brain automatically activates confirmation bias mode, amplifying
all bad things and
ignoring good ones. Making a
vow is rewriting this filtering rule in reverse.
Here's a crucial detail:
vague wishes have almost no filtering effect.
"I hope life will be better" is
meaningless to the brain
because it's too vague; the
salience network doesn't know what to label.
But "I want to build a community that helps 10,000 entrepreneurs within three years" is
specific enough. The
brain immediately knows what to focus on: entrepreneurs,
community, methodology, partners, event venues. The
information density of your entire perceived world instantly changes.
This is why vows in Buddhism are extremely specific. Amitabha
Buddha's forty-eight vows
each have clear standards:
"If the heavenly beings and humans in the land do not know true gold, I will
not attain perfect enlightenment." – See
how specific it is? Even
body color is included.
This isn't fantasy;
it's writing precise parameters into the consciousness system. The
second layer:
Yogacara philosophy. The Seed Theory
directly connects to the enlightenment framework discussed in the previous episode.
I've made several videos about the Alaya-consciousness before, so let me
briefly recap: The Alaya-consciousness is the underlying operating system of your consciousness,
storing countless "seeds"—the
imprints left by all your past experiences, actions, and thoughts.
These seeds are activated under specific conditions,
manifesting as your current cognition, emotions, and behavioral patterns.
Seeds give rise to actions, and
actions influence seeds,
forming a never-ending cycle. In the previous
episode, I mentioned that
enlightenment is the active rewriting of these parameters. So, what role does
vow play in this framework? Making a
vow is planting a very special seed in the Alaya-consciousness;
we can call it the "master seed" or "root seed." The
special thing about this seed is that
it's not just a single imprint;
it's an organizing principle.
It rearranges the priorities of other seeds already existing in your Alaya-consciousness. For example,
your Alaya-consciousness is a huge warehouse
filled with all kinds of seeds—seeds of diligence,
seeds of laziness, seeds of courage, seeds of fear, seeds of kindness, seeds of selfishness.
Normally, these seeds are activated randomly, depending on the
conditions.
You're basically being pushed along by karmic inertia. As
I mentioned in the last episode,
this is the NPC (NPC in the game) model – parameters are running automatically, and
you're completely unaware.
But when you actually make a vow, it's like
installing a sorting system in a warehouse.
This system automatically pushes seeds related to your vow to the front and
irrelevant ones to the back.
Your behavior patterns, attention allocation, and decision-making tendencies
will all undergo a systematic shift due to the existence of this primary seed.
I previously mentioned in my discussion of the Four Lessons of Fan that
destiny is equal to the projection of seed patterns; when
seeds change, destiny
changes. Making a vow is one of the most efficient ways to change seed patterns.
It doesn't modify seeds one by one – that's too slow.
It directly changes the priority order in which seeds are activated.
In AI terms, making a
vow doesn't change the model's parameters,
but rather the weight distribution of the attention mechanism.
A precise vow is like
an extremely high-quality system prompt.
It doesn't change your underlying parameters,
but it can produce completely different quality outputs from the same set of parameters.
If enlightenment is like gaining the authority to rewrite parameters,
then the power of a vow is the first rewriting instruction you receive after gaining that authority.
It tells your consciousness system: from now on,
reorganize everything along this direction.
This explains a phenomenon: why some people seem to have suddenly better luck after making a vow. It's
not that their luck has changed,
but that their seed activation mode has changed.
Good seeds,
wisdom seeds, and action seeds that were previously suppressed at the bottom of the storage space are pushed to the forefront
due to the reordering of their vows, and
begin to manifest frequently. The
outward manifestation
is that "this person seems to have become enlightened," or "this person seems to have suddenly found their
direction." The
third layer is
quantum mechanics – probability clouds and observation effects.
I discussed this layer in detail in the previous episode about lucky constitutions.
Here's a precise connection:
quantum mechanics tells us that
at the microscopic level,
particles are in a superposition state before being observed;
all possibilities exist simultaneously. The
act of observation causes this superposition state to collapse into a definite result.
Wheeler's "participatory universe" model goes further.
We are not bystanders,
but participants. The
act of observation itself participates in the construction of reality. What role does
making a vow play in this framework?
It's a continuous "directed observation." The
consciousness of ordinary people is scattered – thinking about this one
moment and that the next.
Attention is like a particle without direction, undergoing Brownian motion.
In this state,
your influence on the probability cloud is random and inefficient.
But when you make a clear and firm wish,
your consciousness has a stable direction.
You are no longer observing randomly,
but observing with a consistent intention.
If consciousness truly participates in the construction of reality—and I say "if,"
this is still a conjecture without scientific consensus—
then a consciousness with a consistent direction
should have a greater power to shape reality than a scattered consciousness.
But here I must add an important footnote:
this doesn't mean that if you sit on the sofa and meditate "I want a million,"
a million will fall from the sky. The
observation effect described by quantum mechanics
is that observation participates in the collapse process,
not that observation creates the result out of thin air. The
probability cloud must first contain this possibility before
observation can collapse it into reality.
You must first put yourself in that probability space—through learning,
action, and connection—and then your willpower has the material to act.
This is precisely the biggest flaw shared by the Law of Attraction and the manifestation of reality.
They both imply, to varying degrees, that "
thinking" or "feeling" is the most crucial step.
The Law of Attraction directly tells you that thinking is enough. The manifestation of
reality is slightly more advanced,
telling you to "live in the state that has already been achieved."
But they both omit something that Buddhism never omits: doing.
Buddhism speaks of the "three requisites": faith, aspiration, and practice.
Note the order: faith is the foundation,
aspiration is the direction, and practice
is the implementation. None of these
can be lacking.
Having faith and aspiration without practice makes
you a spiritual giant but a dwarf in action; the
seed will forever remain dormant,
lacking the necessary conditions to activate it. To
summarize, the
underlying mechanism of making aspirations can be described in one sentence:
it's a directional anchoring behavior of consciousness,
simultaneously acting on your brain's filtering system,
your deep seed structure, and your coupling with the probability field. These
three mechanisms combined
produce a systemic effect far exceeding "positive thinking." Okay,
now that the mechanism is explained, let's move on to practical application—how to make aspirations effective.
I've summarized five principles,
each based on both Buddhist and neuroscience principles.
First, aspirations
should be directed towards "becoming,"
not "obtaining."
"I want to earn 100 million" is making a wish; "
I want to become someone who can create 1 billion in value" is making an aspiration. The
difference is that
"earning 100 million" is a result, something
external, beyond
your control;
"becoming someone who can create 1 billion in value" is a state, something internal, something
you can gradually approach through action. Making a wish
puts you in a waiting position.
The vow places you in a position of growth. The
vows of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are never "What I want to obtain,"
but rather "What I want to become," "What I want to achieve." The
Bhikkhu Dharmakara didn't say, "Please give me a Pure Land,"
he said, "I will build a Pure Land; if I cannot build it,
I will not become a Buddha." Do
you see the difference? The
subject is different, the
verb is different, the
energy direction is completely different.
This distinction is precisely one of the most fundamental differences between Buddhist vows and Western manifest teachings. The
subject of manifest teachings is "What I want."
You visualize wealth, relationships, an ideal physique.
But the subject of vows is "The person I want to become."
One grasps outward,
the other grows inward.
This difference seems small, but it
actually leads to completely different consciousness dynamics.
I will break down the differences in detail in the next episode.
Second, the
vow must be large enough
to transcend the self.
This is the biggest difference between the Buddhist vow system and all Western self-help theories.
The Law of Attraction teaches you "You attract what you want"
—luxury cars, mansions, perfect partners.
Manifest teachings teach you "Assume you already have them."
What is the common characteristic of these vows? They are
all "I want,"
the subject is "I."
The object is "the object of my desire."
What is this kind of desire called in the Yogacara framework? It's called "
imagined attachment." You've superimposed a narrative of "this is what I deserve" on top of your desire, and then expect the universe to cooperate with your narrative. Truly powerful vows in Buddhism all share a common characteristic—they transcend "self." The first of the Four Great Vows is: "I vow to liberate all sentient beings."
This vow doesn't ask "what I want to gain," but
only "whom I want to help."
You might think this is too idealistic,
but from a neuroscience perspective,
altruistic goals do indeed mobilize more neural resources than selfish goals. This is
because altruistic goals activate not only reward circuits
but also empathy networks, social cognitive networks, and executive control networks.
In other words,
when your vow is large enough to include the well-being of others,
your brain will mobilize more systems to support it.
This isn't moralizing;
it's a matter of efficiency in neuroscience.
Of course,
I'm not saying you can't have personal desires.
You certainly can,
but if you can embed your personal desires into a larger vision—
"I want to create a company that can create 10,000 jobs in the AI ​​era"—your
vow power will be multiplied
because you've provided your brain with richer filtering keywords and more...
Strong emotional motivation.
Third, the
vow needs repeated confirmation
to form neural circuits.
Making a vow once is not enough; the
seed needs watering.
Amitabha Buddha spent five kalpas contemplating his vow.
How long is five kalpas?
In modern time units,
that's an astronomical number.
Of course, we don't need five kalpas,
but the core logic is the same: the power of the vow needs to be strengthened through repeated confirmation.
In neuroscience, this is called neuroplasticity.
Every time you repeat your vow, the
related neural pathways are reinforced. With enough
repetition,
it transforms from a muddy path into a highway, where
information travels quickly and smoothly. This is
why Pure Land Buddhism requires you to recite the Buddha's name every day and at all times.
I analyzed this in a previous episode. Every time you recite
"Namo Amitabha Buddha," it's a miniature backpropagation, a
gradient update in the Alaya consciousness. Making a
vow is the same - every morning you spend thirty seconds silently reciting your vow.
These thirty seconds are a miniature parameter update,
continuously calibrating your consciousness system to the direction you want. In the
last episode, we said that enlightenment is not achieved in one go.
One meditation shifts the parameters by 0.001.
Ten thousand meditations may reach an inflection point.
Making a vow follows the same logic.
Each confirmation is a tiny weight adjustment,
but the cumulative effect is astonishing.
Fourth, the vow
must be combined with "cessation" training.
This is something many people overlook.
Making a vow in a scattered state of mind is very
weak.
Why?
Because your consciousness is filled with noise.
Your salience network is overwhelmed by countless competing signals:
work pressure, social anxiety,
dopamine pulses from short videos.
Your vow is just a weak signal in the noise,
quickly overwhelmed. But
if you first practice "cessation" training—quieting your mind,
even just a few minutes of deep breathing or meditation—
and then make the vow in this quiet state, the
effect is completely different.
Because at this time, your consciousness has a very high signal-to-noise ratio.
Your vow is a clear, high-power signal
that can be deeply written into your deep consciousness structure.
This is why in Buddhism, making vows is usually done after meditation,
not just moving your mouth at any time.
I talked about this in the meditation episode. The
essence of cessation is to reduce the precision weight of higher-level a priori beliefs,
quieting the automatically running narrative machine.
When those old weights of "I'm not good enough" and "I can't do it" are
temporarily reduced, the
new instructions you write—your vow—
can truly penetrate the defenses and
reach the parameter level of the Alaya consciousness.
Otherwise, before
your vow is even written in, it will be
bounced back by the high-precision weight of old beliefs.
Fifth,
act immediately after making your vow.
This is the anchor point of the entire system. Quantum
mechanics tells us that a
wave function needs to be observed to collapse.
Your vow is an uncollapsed wave function,
containing countless possibilities.
Action is observation.
Every specific action causes the wave function to collapse a little,
turning possibilities into reality.
What did Bhikshu Dharmakara do after making his forty-eight vows?
He practiced for countless eons. He did
n't just sit and wait after making his vows; he
immediately began to act,
and it was an extremely long and extremely diligent act.
Action is not an appendage of vow power; action
is a component of vow power. A
vow without action is like a circuit
without a ground wire. No matter how
strong the current is, it won't reach the device; it
will only dissipate in the air.
In the last episode, we said that enlightenment requires three things: awareness, persistence, and direction.
Vow power is the system that provides direction for enlightenment,
and action
is the only channel for enlightenment to transform from internal experience into external reality.
Finally,
let me return to the question at the beginning: Does the Law of Attraction and manifestation have
any merit? Yes,
but they are only partially correct. The
part that the Law of Attraction is correct about is... It's true that
your state of consciousness affects your perceived reality;
this is
supported by neuroscience. The
part it gets wrong is that it packages this mechanism as a passive,
magical process—you just "think," and the
universe "gives" to you.
This simplifies a complex engineering of consciousness into a marketing slogan.
Manifestation is a step further than the Law of Attraction;
it upgrades from "wanting to get" to "becoming the person who possesses that
thing,"
shifting from external goals to an internal identity shift.
This is a meaningful upgrade,
but it has a fatal structural paradox.
This paradox isn't methodological;
it's a problem with the underlying logic of the entire framework.
Buddhism not only discovered this paradox 2,500 years ago but
also provided a solution.
What exactly is this paradox?
I'll dissect it in detail next time. What the
Law of Attraction and Manifestation completely overlook is that the
influence of consciousness on reality is not a one-way attraction
or a one-way projection of state,
but a two-way participation.
You change your filtering system;
your filtering system changes your behavior;
your behavior changes your environment; and
your environment, in turn, changes your consciousness.
This is a closed loop,
not a one-way street. The
Buddhist system of aspiration is far more sophisticated than the Law of Attraction and Manifestation
because it never omits that crucial closed loop:
faith, aspiration, and practice.
Faith is believing that change is possible – as we discussed last time,
enlightenment requires believing that parameters can be rewritten.
Will is choosing a clear direction.
Today, we'll cover everything.
Action is using concrete actions each day to calibrate that direction.
These three elements form a positive feedback loop: the more you act, the
clearer your will becomes; the
clearer your will, the
stronger your faith; the stronger your
faith, the more
powerful your action.
Once this flywheel starts spinning, the
outward manifestation
is what others see as "good luck" or "wish fulfillment."
But there's no such thing as wish fulfillment; it's about aligning your
thoughts, words, and actions.
Persisting long enough allows the
seed to mature.
So, if you could only take one thing away today,
I hope it's this: stop wishing, make a vow. Stop
negotiating with the universe,
reprogram your own consciousness system.
You don't need any external permission.
Your brain already has a wish fulfillment system;
it's operating in your brain right now. The
problem isn't whether it works, but whether you've written a clear,
firm, and powerful enough instruction into it.
Try it tonight.
Turn off your phone,
close your eyes, and
spend thirty seconds thinking clearly about one thing.
If you could only accomplish one thing in your life,
what would you hope it would be? Once you've
thought it through,
silently tell yourself: This is my wish.
Then open your eyes and take the
first step,
even if it's just a tiny action—checking a message,
sending a message,
writing a plan—it'll do.
Because that action is observation, the
first touch that causes the wave function to begin collapsing.
Willpower isn't mysticism;
it's the most powerful function in your consciousness system,
though many people never use it in their lives.
And if after listening today you're already wondering, what
exactly is wrong with manifesting things?
What is its fatal paradox?
Why do some people become more anxious the more they manifest?
What is the Buddhist solution? In the
next episode,
we'll analyze this head-on. I
'm Wang Lijie.
See you next time.