What's in your cup?
One day,
an old Buddhist monk asked his disciples a question.
He said, "
If you're holding a cup of coffee and
someone accidentally bumps into you,
why does the coffee spill?"
All the disciples thought the question was too simple and
answered in unison, "Because someone bumped into me!" The
old monk shook his head and
said, "No, the
coffee spills
not because someone bumped into you,
but because your cup contains coffee.
If your cup contained water, what
spills is water;
if it contained tea, what
spills is tea." The
disciples were stunned. The
old monk continued, "When life hits you,
it's inevitable
and happens often. What
you carry in your heart will be poured out.
If your heart is filled with fear, jealousy, anger, and greed,
then what spills out is these.
But if your heart is filled with love, compassion, gentleness, and kindness,
then what spills out will also be these." When
I first saw this story, I
stood there for a long time,
not because it was complicated,
but because it was so accurate.
It used a very simple metaphor to
answer a question that had troubled me for many years. Hello
everyone,
I'm Wang Lijie.
Today's episode
is the first in a series I've wanted to do for a long time. The
series is called "Stories About Spiritual Practice."
Before we begin...
I'd like to start by saying a few words from the heart.
Those of you following this channel
might have clicked on a macroeconomic analysis episode, been
drawn in by a title like "Quantum Mechanics and Buddhism,"
or perhaps stumbled upon a video about the nature of consciousness late at night and couldn't
sleep after watching it.
Regardless of your entry point,
you'll eventually ask the same question: What exactly does this channel want to do? Why does
an angel investor
sometimes talk about the Federal Reserve,
sometimes about Yogacara, and sometimes
combine AI with the Diamond Sutra?
The answer is simple:
I have a persistent curiosity about three things:
macroeconomics and investment, AI and cutting-edge technology, and the nature of consciousness.
These three lines seem vastly different,
but in my cognitive map,
they all point to the same question:
What rules govern the underlying workings of this world? The
main series of has always been doing one thing: building a map. What are the classics? What are the
mechanisms?
Where do Buddhism and neuroscience meet? At
what level of the same thing are Yogacara and predictive coding talking about?
That's mapmaking work.
But there's always a distance between the map and the real terrain. The
series aims to
take you into that terrain. The
material consists of real stories of people's experiences on their spiritual journey. It
might be an ancient Zen koan, an
autobiography of a practitioner, a
fragment of a historical figure's life,
or the inner growth experience of an ordinary person. In
each installment,
I will use the cognitive framework established by the main series to
dissect these stories.
Why did that person react that way at that moment?
What is the underlying mechanism?
How does that have to do with your and my daily lives?
I must first clarify my position:
I am not a preacher of any religion, I have
not converted to any sect, I have
no master, and I
have no Dharma name.
I am an explorer full of curiosity about the underlying mechanisms of consciousness,
still struggling in the mundane world,
far from "attaining enlightenment."
My interest in Buddhism is
very simple—among all the knowledge I have access to,
I believe Buddhism,
especially Yogacara,
is one of the most sophisticated theoretical frameworks for explaining the nature of consciousness and the workings of the universe. It's
not the only one,
but in my cognitive map,
it is the most fitting piece of the puzzle.
Therefore, this series is not about the miraculous experiences of spiritual practice,
but about the things that every person who lives earnestly will encounter.
Okay, let's begin. Let's
return to this story. On the
surface, it is a short story about "self-cultivation."
But I believe it touches on the core of three completely independent fields:
neuroscience, Buddhist philosophy,
and investment psychology.
These three fields start from completely different directions, but
ultimately arrive at the same answer,
pointing to the same place.
Let's start with the most counterintuitive question: When someone bumps into you,
what is your first reaction? Not the
reaction you think you "should" have,
not the version you tell others afterward,
but your true, initial first reaction. For
most people, their bodies have already reacted before they even
realize what they are thinking.
Angry people are
already glaring;
anxious people are
already apologizing;
wronged people have already
reddened their eyes.
This "reaction that happens before you even realize what you are thinking"
is what the old monk meant by "the thing in the cup."
Neuroscience has a concept called "amygdala hijacking." The
amygdala is a walnut-sized structure in your brain.
Its job is to process emotions,
especially fear and threat.
It operates extremely fast,
about 200 milliseconds faster than your rational thinking cortex.
In other words,
when someone bumps into you,
before your brain has time to "rationally think," the
amygdala has already assessed the threat level
and sent chemical signals throughout the body.
This is a gift from evolution, an
instinctive mechanism that allowed humans to survive in the jungle.
But the problem is: what signals does the amygdala actually send out?
What does it
depend on? It depends on what it has "learned" before.
Your amygdala is an experiential learning system.
It constantly searches for patterns in your past experiences
and then judges whether the current stimulus is a threat or an opportunity, a danger or a safety, based on these patterns. A
person who grows up in a safe and secure family
and a person who grows up in an environment full of violence and uncertainty will
interpret the event of "being bumped" in their amygdala
completely differently. It's
not because their willpower is different,
not because their character is different,
but because what's in their amygdala is
different. Do
you understand what the old monk was saying now?
He wasn't saying "you should have a better mindset."
He was talking about a deeper mechanism - what you spill
is what you usually put in the cup,
not what you "decide" to spill at that moment. At that
moment, it's too
late to decide.
Okay,
that's the scientific level.
Now let's go deeper. The Yogacara
school of Buddhism has a concept
called "Alaya-vijnana," which
literally means "storehouse consciousness"
or "storehouse consciousness."
This is the core concept of Yogacara school describing the structure of human consciousness. The concept was
proposed by Vasubandhu, a Mahayana Buddhist philosopher from the 4th or 5th century AD,
nearly 1,600 years ago.
What is Alaya-vijnana?
It's described as the deepest "seed storehouse" of human consciousness.
Every action, every thought, every
emotion
leaves a "seed" in Alaya-vijnana.
These seeds,
under suitable conditions, will sprout again,
growing into corresponding behaviors, thoughts, and emotions.
Simply put: what you planted before, what grows
when stimulated.
When I first learned this concept,
my first reaction was, is
n't this just "synaptic plasticity" in neuroscience?
Synaptic plasticity refers to how
your neural connections strengthen through repeated use. The more
you use a certain response pattern, the
stronger the neural pathway of that pattern becomes, and the
higher the probability of it being triggered again. The phenomenon described by the
Yogacara philosopher 1,600 years ago
using the metaphor of "seeds"
and the phenomenon described by modern neuroscience using the term "synaptic plasticity"
are the same underlying phenomenon.
This convergence across millennia
always amazes me.
I've been an angel investor for over a decade,
investing in more than 300 early-stage projects, and I've
seen countless instances where "things everyone thought were
unreliable later changed the world."
This makes me naturally wary of mainstream consensus
and particularly sensitive to things ignored by the majority.
Buddhist explorations of consciousness are considered
"unreliable" by many,
but I sensed the same fervor I felt when investing in early-stage AI companies. There
's something real in it. The
Yogacara school's description adds a crucial dimension, one that
modern neuroscience hasn't fully covered yet.
It not only describes the mechanisms
but also the directions
and paths that can be changed.
Yogacara says the
essence of practice is "transforming consciousness into wisdom," transforming the
seeds of suffering in the Alaya consciousness into
seeds of liberation.
The method is to continuously and consciously plant new seeds
until their power surpasses the old ones.
This isn't about "thinking more positively"; it's about
continuously and practically planting new behavioral patterns
until they dominate your mind.
This takes time,
deliberate practice, and
repeatedly choosing new behaviors where old patterns might resurface.
Here's a common misunderstanding:
we often assume that
a person's reaction under pressure
reflects their "nature,"
their "true self."
So, when someone seems fine normally...
When someone breaks down, loses their temper, or becomes cowardly under pressure,
we might say, "Oh,
so that's the kind of person he is."
But that's inaccurate. A
more accurate way to put it is: at that moment of pressure, what
he had in his cup was these things—things
he had accumulated over the years,
not things he was born with. These things
can be changed,
but change isn't achieved through willpower during a moment of pressure; it's achieved
through deliberate practice day after day before that moment of pressure.
That's why it's said that
true skill lies beyond the surface. A
general who remains calm on the battlefield is
n't necessarily braver than others at that moment,
but because his training has filled his cup with
muscle memory for remaining composed under pressure.
An investor who can maintain calm judgment during huge market fluctuations is
n't necessarily unafraid of losses,
but because he has experienced enough fluctuations and
handled each one rationally.
Slowly,
those seeds of rationality take root in his warehouse.
Speaking of investing,
I can't help but say a few more words here
because this story is so valuable to investors.
What is the market? The
market is that person who bumps into you from time to time. It
doesn't care if you're prepared or not,
it doesn't care if you're in a good mood this week;
it just gives you a big shock at the most inopportune time. The
2008 financial crisis and the
March 2020 COVID-19 crash—
every sharp market drop,
every 30-50% loss in account value—was a
"blow."
At that moment,
what spilled from most investors' cups was
panic, the
anxiety of "this time is different," the
impulse to liquidate assets, and the cry of
"it'll be too late if I don't run now." But what spilled from the cups of a
very small minority was
research,
logical analysis,
calculations of "how much cheaper is this price than six months ago," and the
exploration of "where are the opportunities?"
Note that neither of
these reactions was
"decided" at that moment. At
that moment, the
amygdala of the brain had taken over.
You didn't have time to make complex decisions;
you simply poured out what you had previously stored up. The
first type of person,
in normal times,
when the market is calm,
what was in their cup? Most
likely, it was a constant focus on paper profits and losses, a
pursuit of the "next hot trend," and a
cognitive habit of equating price fluctuations with changes in value.
So when the crisis came,
these things spilled out in the form of "running away." The
second type of person,
in normal times,
what was in their cup? An
understanding of the essence of business.
It's a study of the recovery after every crisis in history.
It's about the deeply ingrained belief that "cheap, good things are more worth buying than expensive, good things."
So when a crisis comes,
these things spill out in the form of "the more they fall, the more excited they become."
Many people have heard Buffett's famous quote: "Be fearful when others are greedy, and
greedy when others are fearful."
Everyone treats this as a trading suggestion,
but few ask: How can he be greedy when others are fearful? Is it
just willpower?
No, it
's because his cup is
filled with a profound understanding of the intrinsic value of companies,
decades of firsthand experience with countless crisis recovery cycles, and a fundamental understanding that
"whether this company will still exist next year" is more important than "whether this
stock will rise tomorrow."
That cup was
filled over decades.
So when the market "bumped him," what
spilled out
were those things.
This isn't genius;
it's accumulation.
Okay,
now I want to upgrade this question
because there's another dimension here, one that
many haven't considered. The
old monk said, what
spills out
is what you put in.
This establishes a very clear cause-and-effect relationship: what you put in, you spill out.
But there's a deeper question: why did you put those things in in the first place? The
answer to this question... This
points to how your upbringing shaped you—the
history of your parents, teachers, culture, traumas, rewards, and punishments. It
's those early experiences you may not even remember,
quietly planting seeds in your cup.
In other words,
not only was what you spilled not decided at that moment, but a large part of what
you put in was
n't intentionally chosen either. Does
this mean
everything is fate and
change is impossible? Quite the opposite.
Acknowledging this
is the starting point for real change.
Why?
Because when you don't understand this mechanism,
you do something incredibly energy-draining.
After spilling your coffee, you
hate yourself,
saying, "Why did I do this again?" "
I just can't control myself!" "
Why am I so terrible?"
This self-attack
not only doesn't change what's in your cup, but it also fills it with
more seeds of self-negation,
making the next outburst even more intense.
But when you understand this mechanism,
you can face it more efficiently. Instead of
blaming yourself the moment you spill your coffee,
calmly see afterward—"Oh,
so this was in my cup.
I didn't realize it before"—and then
consciously replace the old seeds with new ones. There
's a saying in Buddhism: "It's not the arising of thoughts that's worrisome,
but the slowness of awareness." This
means that it's okay for thoughts to
arise;
the key is whether you're aware of them.
Awareness itself is a power.
Neuroscience has a corresponding finding:
when you can name an emotion,
such as "I feel anger right now," the
act of naming itself
reduces the activation level of the amygdala. The Yogacara school of
Buddhism from 1600 years ago
and modern neuroscience
point in the same direction once again: awareness is the first step,
but awareness alone
is not enough.
After awareness,
you need to plant new seeds with new behaviors.
This isn't something that can be done overnight;
it's a time-consuming process.
So,
what do you want to fill your cup with?
Note that
this isn't an abstract question,
not a wish list like "What kind of person do I want to be?"
This is a very specific question: Today,
in those moments you have the choice,
what did you choose to fill your cup with? Did
you choose to spend your time and attention on truly understanding a problem
or on being bombarded with superficial information? Did
you choose to practice truly listening in a conversation that makes you uncomfortable
or to react quickly? Did
you choose to check your investment logic during market fluctuations
or stare at account numbers and let your emotions run wild?
Every choice
is filling your cup,
whether you realize it or not. Finally,
I want to say something that might seem counterintuitive.
This story might evoke anxiety in some people – "Oh my god,
I have to constantly be aware of what I'm putting into my cup,
that's so tiring!"
If you feel this way,
please note: this anxiety itself
is what's in your cup.
Maturity in spiritual practice
isn't about becoming more alert,
but about becoming increasingly relaxed.
When your cup is filled with truly internalized values,
refined judgment,
genuine compassion and openness,
then you don't need to constantly remind yourself;
your reactions will naturally be there.
This is called "acting spontaneously" – acting naturally according to your nature.
No coercion,
no force is needed
because your nature is already like that.
Therefore, the goal of spiritual practice is
never to build a stronger willpower system to control your reactions,
but to fundamentally change what's in your cup.
This is a long-term, lifelong endeavor,
but you can begin every day.
Finally, what impresses me most about
this channel so far
isn't the number of views or subscribers,
but the comments section.
Several friends with STEM backgrounds said they
used to think Buddhism was too abstract, but
this channel gave them an entry point.
A long-time practitioner
shared his profound experience in the comments section, which
left me speechless for a long time.
Another viewer said something I've always remembered:
"The words of Buddhist scriptures have been crushed in this flood of information.
To defend the Dharma in the world,
first learn from the Buddha and
explain your Dharma in language that ordinary people can understand.
" This channel has reached where it is today
not because of how well I speak,
but because of your resonance.
Many comments
have exceeded the depth of my videos.
You are not just viewers;
you are co-creators.
This new series
is my response.
Starting with today's episode,
will be continuously updated.
For this episode, what's
in your cup? What are
your feelings?
What do you most want to replace in your cup? In the
next episode,
we will delve into a more complex, more real,
and more impactful story –
the collapse, failures, and ultimate blossoming experienced by a real person on their more than twenty years of spiritual practice.
Feel free to tell me your thoughts in the comments section.
I'm Wang Lijie. See you
next time.