The Eight Sorrows of Life | Friendly Version¶
The ancient Chinese said there are three great sorrows in life: losing your father as a child, losing your spouse in middle age, losing your child in old age.
Xuefeng disagrees — and proposes eight.
What's Wrong with the Traditional Three?¶
Two problems:
First: Those three sorrows are written from a male perspective. What about women? Do they not have life sorrows of their own?
Second: Those three sorrows are not inevitable facts of nature. They were created by human culture and ways of thinking — which means they can be changed.
Xuefeng reframes the question entirely: what are the real tragedies of a human life?
The Eight Sorrows¶
The First Sorrow: No mother's love in infancy.
Life begins without its most essential foundation — love and security.
The Second Sorrow: No playmates in childhood, insufficient play.
Children need play. Without it, their innate nature is stunted from the start.
The Third Sorrow: No one teaches the knowledge of how to be a good person in adolescence.
At the age when it matters most, no one provides a compass for life.
The Fourth Sorrow: Insufficient romantic love in youth; no established belief; time and energy wasted on marriage, family, and material pursuits.
The years that should be devoted to exploring life's meaning and building a genuine faith are instead consumed by conventional life's demands.
The Fifth Sorrow: Suffering a serious setback in middle age.
A stumbling blow at the peak of life.
The Sixth Sorrow: Being disliked and unwanted in old age.
After a lifetime of effort, no warmth at the end.
The Seventh Sorrow: Studying the Bible in youth, Buddhist sutras in adulthood, the Quran in old age.
A lifetime of wandering between religious systems — always searching, never arriving.
The Eighth Sorrow: Devoting oneself to Gong methods, psychic powers, and occult studies.
Precious time and energy poured into a fundamentally wrong direction of spiritual practice.
More Sorrows, Heavier Life¶
One sorrow: life with regret. Two sorrows: life with grievance. Three sorrows: life with pain. Four sorrows: life in defeat. Five sorrows: life in chaos. Six sorrows: life in hatred. Seven sorrows: life in bitterness. Eight sorrows: life as a prison.
How many apply to you?
Is There a Way Out?¶
Xuefeng says:
I have a supreme method — by following this method, all eight sorrows are resolved.
He does not spell out the method in detail here — but the entire body of Lifechanyuan's teachings points in one direction: growing up with genuine love and community, building a real belief, walking the Tour Guide Route Map rather than wandering through religious traditions or chasing psychic powers.
The eight sorrows are not fate. They are the product of human culture — and culture can be changed.