Can Fate Be Changed? Seeing the Hidden Script of Life Through Liao Fan's Four Lessons
Have you ever felt that you tried hard, yet still fell short at the most crucial moment? Or noticed a strange loop in your life, where changing jobs or relationships still leads to the same kinds of problems?
In moments like that, we often sigh and say, "Maybe it's just my fate."
The word fate feels both mystical and heavy. But more than four hundred years ago, a scholar named Yuan Liao Fan carried out a powerful experiment with his own life to show us this: fate exists, but it is not immovable.
This article avoids superstition. We focus on the first and most stirring chapter of Liao Fan's Four Lessons, The Study of Establishing Destiny. It is both a guide for changing one's life and a profound manual for personal growth and self awareness.
1. The Terrifyingly Accurate Life Forecast
The story begins like a familiar scene of someone seeking answers when lost.
In his youth, Yuan Liao Fan planned to study medicine. At Ciyun Temple, he met Mr. Kong, a refined man who mastered the Huangji numerology system. Kong told him, "You should not study medicine. You are meant to be a scholar. You will pass the exam next year, so why not study?"
Liao Fan doubted it, but the next year's exam ranking matched the prediction exactly. He was convinced. He asked Mr. Kong to calculate his entire life: exam rankings, official postings, promotions, even that he would have no sons and die at age fifty three on the fourteenth day of the eighth month before dawn. Everything was mapped out.
The next twenty years were the quietest and most hopeless period of his life.
The predictions were too precise. Each year unfolded like a script, not a line out of place. His surprise faded into numbness, and he eventually gave up completely.
He thought: If everything is fixed, why strive? Why struggle? He stopped wanting things, stopped feeling much at all, and sat in stillness like a person with a dead heart.
Many of us live inside such a hidden script. We may never meet a Mr. Kong, but labels, family shadows, and self limiting beliefs become our Mr. Kong. "I will never be lucky." "I will never meet the right partner." "With my personality, I cannot succeed." The moment you accept those scripts, your life is already written.
2. The Wake Up Call from Master Yun Gu
Liao Fan's empty calm was broken when he met Master Yun Gu.
They sat in meditation on Qixia Mountain for three days and nights. Liao Fan sat still without a single distracting thought. Yun Gu was astonished and asked, "Ordinary people cannot become sages because they are full of wandering thoughts. You sat for three days without one. Why?"
Liao Fan smiled bitterly. "Mr. Kong already calculated my life. I know when I will die and when I will fall ill. Thinking changes nothing."
Yun Gu did not praise him. He laughed and said, "I thought you were a hero, but you are just an ordinary man."
That sentence is priceless.
Yun Gu explained: if a person is bound by fate and experiences no change for twenty years, it means he has floated with the current and never used his inner strength to change his environment. Only the most average lives are fully predictable. The extremely good and the extremely bad are not.
Why? Because fate is the accumulation of causes. Each thought and action creates new causes.
3. The Logic of Changing Fate: From Victim to Creator
Yun Gu did not teach magic. He taught a rigorous logic of change, a framework that still defines personal growth today.
1. Reflection: Why Am I Not Worthy?
Yun Gu asked, "Do you deserve to pass the exam? Do you deserve to have a son?" Liao Fan reflected deeply and admitted his flaws: narrow mindedness, irritability, talking too much, drinking, staying up late, and wasting mental energy.
This step is crucial. In psychology, it is called seeing. Many complain about fate yet never examine their own patterns. You want wealth, but do you procrastinate? You want to build a business, but do you fear responsibility? You want a healthy relationship, but do you keep criticizing the other person? The fruit of fate grows from the causes in character.
2. Seek Within, Not Without
Yun Gu told him, "Destiny is made by oneself, and blessings are earned by oneself." Praying for wealth is external and unreliable. But training yourself to be diligent, generous, and skillful is internal and always effective. When the inner structure changes, the outer world is naturally drawn to it. This is what modern people call the law of attraction, but Liao Fan explained it centuries ago.
3. Merit and Demerit Ledger
To make change concrete, Yun Gu gave him a merit and demerit ledger. Record a merit for each good act and a demerit for each wrong act. Liao Fan vowed to complete three thousand merits. This is deliberate practice. Habits do not change through vows; they change through measurable tracking. As he recorded, he saw how chaotic his mind had been.
4. The Result: The Script Collapsed
Once he began to reform himself, miracles followed.
The next year's exam was predicted as third place, yet he ranked first. Positions he was told he would never receive arrived early. Most striking of all, he was predicted to die at fifty three, yet he lived to seventy four and had a capable son.
The prediction failed.
It shows that fate is not a rusted plate. It is a piece of jade that can be carved. When one's intention and action exceed inertia, the life path shifts.
5. For Modern Readers: Who Is Your Mr. Kong?
You might ask, "I am not pursuing official rank. What does this story have to do with me?"
Each of us has a Mr. Kong inside.
Your Mr. Kong may be your boss who says, "This is all you are." It may be your parents who say, "Our family has always been poor." It may be your past failures whispering, "You are not talented enough."
If you accept those voices as truth, your fate becomes accurate. You will be precisely ordinary, precisely limited.
But if you meet your Yun Gu, perhaps through this article, a good book, or a deep reflection, and you begin to recognize that destiny is made by you, you can correct your patterns and accumulate your three thousand merits.
Then your life script begins to rewrite itself.
Closing: A Preview of the Next Chapter
The first chapter of Liao Fan's Four Lessons gives us confidence: destiny is in our hands.
But how do we change it in practice? Is doing good deeds enough? What if change feels impossible? In the next article, we will explore the core techniques in Liao Fan's Four Lessons: how to correct faults and build merit, why good deeds do not always bring immediate rewards, and how to tell genuine goodness from performative kindness.
Do not let your potential die inside someone else's prediction. See you in the next chapter.
Reflection question: If you were to write your own merit and demerit ledger today, what three character flaws would you list as the biggest obstacles to your growth?
