The Ultimate Blessing: Non-Attachment to Appearances

The greatest blessing a person can possess is: non-attachment to appearances.

What does “attachment to appearances” mean?

In “Distant Savior,” there’s a scene where Rui Xiaodan takes Ding Yuanying out to eat but doesn’t drive the BMW that Han Chufeng gave them.

Ding Yuanying asks in confusion: “Why aren’t we driving?” Xiaodan replies: “Is that the kind of car I should be driving?” Ding Yuanying says: “You’re attached to appearances.” Rui Xiaodan doesn’t understand and asks: “What do you mean by attached to appearances?” Ding Yuanying explains: “It’s a Buddhist term, meaning being obsessed with surface appearances while deviating from the essence.”

What is the “appearance”? It’s a BMW, a luxury car that displays wealth and status.

What is the “essence”? It’s a car, a means of transportation. Rui Xiaodan’s purpose in driving this car is for transportation, not to show off.

People who don’t attach to appearances can better penetrate surface phenomena and touch the essence. In the movie “The Godfather,” there’s also a famous line: those who can see the essence of things in one second and those who spend half a lifetime unable to see the essence of one thing are destined to have different fates.

Wang Yangming’s “there is nothing outside the mind” isn’t mysticism. Modern neuroscience confirms that 60% of the visual information we receive is automatically filled in by our brain based on experience.

Just like when you see a Hermès scarf on a colleague’s desk, your brain immediately creates the narrative “her husband must be rich,” while ignoring that it might be a reward she gave herself for working overtime.

Modern society needs precisely this ability—product managers must penetrate user complaints to see the essence of needs, parents must penetrate through children’s complaints to understand their true inner needs, doctors must penetrate examination data to see vital signs, and teachers must penetrate test scores to see thinking patterns.

In today’s society, all industries are quite competitive, and people often unconsciously fall into anxiety—work anxiety, career anxiety, parenting anxiety, health anxiety…

Psychology has a “cognitive defusion” training: when anxiety strikes, try changing “this is trouble” to “I notice myself saying this is trouble.” Then, imagine yourself as an observer watching that anxious self.

Don’t equate yourself with anxiety, reducing anxiety’s impact on you.

I heard about a psychology experiment: two groups of people wore different colored hats while shopping. Group A was told “the hat is ugly,” while Group B wasn’t reminded. As a result, Group A always felt passersby were looking at them, but tracking footage showed no one actually paid attention.

This experiment reveals a truth—our anxieties about “others are watching me” or “what others think of me” are horror movies our brains direct and produce themselves.

Steve Jobs’ “Stay hungry, stay foolish” in his Stanford speech is essentially the wisdom of non-attachment to appearances.

When he demanded that the iPod must hold 1,000 songs, engineers stared at the 3.5-inch hard drive in distress, but only he penetrated the technical parameters to see the essential need of “putting an entire music library in your pocket.” This thinking ultimately multiplied Apple’s market value many times over, and to this day, Warren Buffett still holds Apple stock.

My friend Ye Zi is a psychological counselor. Every time she faces emotionally agitated clients, she gently asks: “What are you truly trying to protect?” This question cuts through emotional abscesses like a scalpel, and through layer-by-layer peeling, most visitors can find the root cause and what they truly care about after several consultations.

So, in daily life, ask yourself several times: what do you truly care about?

Do you want a happy child, or a child who, due to poor grades, is denied and blamed by parents, has low self-worth, and lacks confidence?

The search for life’s truth is reflected in many literary works.

In “The Moon and Sixpence,” Strickland, to pursue the “moon” in his heart, leaves his comfortable middle-class life at 40, abandons his wife and children, and begins painting. However, when he creates masterpieces, to maintain his absolute idealism and draw clear boundaries with the mundane world, he ultimately has his wife destroy his works.

Strickland believed that the process of painting had already given him satisfaction, and these paintings no longer held value for him.

Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge” tells of Larry Darrell, an American pilot who participated in WWI. During the war, his comrade died saving him. After leaving the military, he abandoned conventional lifestyle, left his fiancée, and chose a path less traveled, trying to explore the meaning of life, the meaning of human existence, and the meaning of self-existence through reading, traveling, and experiencing life.

Of course, these literary works portray extreme idealists who spend their lives exploring life’s truth.

In reality, people who don’t attach to appearances can both enjoy fine dining at Michelin restaurants and taste the warmth of street food at roadside stalls. It’s a state of awakening that keeps us from being burdened by “appearances” and continuously exploring our inner selves—what do you truly want to pursue?

Next time when you’re anxious about your child’s grades, try to see beyond the numbers to the brilliance of their thinking when solving problems; when you argue with someone in a meeting, try to penetrate opinions to see the core values they’re protecting.

Eckhart Tolle writes in “The Power of Now”: When you no longer compulsively label everything, the world will reveal itself to you as it truly is.

Let’s encourage each other.