Chapter three
If
you were standing on a vast piece of land without any boundary at all, there is
no way for you to know whether you are leaning more to the left, right or
center, is there? Not until you come up with a definite ruling point, only then
could you locate your precise spot whether you were more to the left, right or
centre by measuring from the boundary you had set up. This is a very scientific
way of thinking. You can relate to that, can’t
you?
It
still works exactly the same in the spiritual sense too. Whatever subject you
want to bring up and talk about, if you don’t
know the boundary of life, it can go absolutely anywhere and everywhere. A
brought up subject whether they are about humans, animals, social affairs,
economy, politics, justice, science, nature, and so on can be talked,
discussed, commented and debated in all directions depending on the interests
and the purposes of the people involved in the talking. Without knowing the ultimate purpose of
life, the nature of talks will be scattered, having no real direction apart
from promoting the obvious - health and wealth. This still very much as if you
were standing on a vast piece of land without any final boundary.
Can
you see that the ultimate purpose of life is the wisdom that has gone missing
from humanity? This severe lack of ultimate wisdom results in the nature of a
scattered mind in individuals and the subsequent collective misdirection of
life for the whole of humanity. Hence, we are going to identify the nature of
the scattered mind both within individuals like ourselves and the whole society.
It is important that you are able to recognise this destructive nature so that
you can appreciate what you are about to learn from now on.
No more philosophical
talks
You can see that
the crucial factor here is the knowledge of the ultimate experience that I am
about to confirm for you through this book. Without using this ultimate nature
as the ruling point, there is no way I can guide you because I wouldn’t
have any idea where to guide you to. I would be in the same position as you are,
not knowing I am leaning more to the left, right or centre.
Even
spiritual subjects such as telling people to live a simple and humble life,
that money cannot buy happiness and we should treasure our relationship with
our loved ones or telling people to appreciate the beauty of nature and so on,
we tend to philosophise these subjects. We emphasise the profoundness of such
issues. In the end, we all know that those wise thoughts are good but why they
are good and by what means exactly we can live up to that wisdom, we don’t
seem to know, do we? In the end, those philosophical talks leave no real impact
on people. They become some passing wisdom that sounds good to the ears at the
time and merely turns into wind. We soon forget and go back to our usual
troubled world until we hear them again and we think about them again. Then,
the cycle begins again.
I
am going to put a stop to this Catch 22 situation. It means that from now on no
matter what subject we want to talk about, we must be able to make a connection
with the ultimate boundary of life. There will be no more scattered and
philosophical talks. All subjects brought up in this book will lead to one sole
purpose only - the ultimate boundary of life.
Getting used to the
ultimate term
I might have used so many terms
referring to the ultimate goal. I hope you are not confused and think I meant
something different. Hence, before I move on, I must make absolutely sure you
follow what I mean by that. So I am going to gather all the usual words and
terms I have been using regarding the ultimate nature so that you have a clear
idea what I mean every time I use them.
You
may as well get used to the word “ultimate”
and “absolute”
because they mean just that and I will have to use them a lot more from now on.
The words and terms that I refer to as being the ultimate nature are the
following: Nirvana, God, The Tree of Life, Tao, the ultimate truth, the
absolute ruling point in nature, the final boundary of life, the ultimate
purpose of life, the final frontier, the ultimate entity, the ultimate
experience, the ultimate simplicity, the ultimate normality, the ultimate
ordinariness or the end of suffering.
I
have also invented two more terms to accommodate our misconceptions that there
is no such thing as the ultimate truth. They are “the
innocent perception” and “the
innocent world”. These terms can tone down the
extreme implication of the ultimate entity and help people to feel that the ultimate nature is not too far
fetched and beyond our reach. They are in fact the simple nature that we have
already known and are familiar with, but have no awareness of it. All these
will be explained clearly later on in this book.
So,
please understand that whenever I use either one of the above words or phrases,
I refer to that one sole nature - the ultimate boundary of life - all the same.
The Buddha found the nature of the
ultimate truth
Some
of you may not have yet read A Handful of Leaves and the first part of this
book and found this second part first. You may be a bit confused and wonder how
this whole issue about the ultimate truth came about. Who said there is one in
the first place? How could I be so sure that there is an ultimate truth at all?
The
answer is the Buddha was the one who brought this subject up. On the night of
his ultimate enlightenment some 2591 year ago, he found the ultimate entity in
nature that no one at the time had found before. Indeed, in modern terms, he
found the final frontier of life and of the universe. Scientifically speaking,
the Buddha found the absolute ruling point in nature that Albert Einstein
failed to locate. Upon his finding, the Buddha knew for a fact that this
ultimate entity in nature is also the ultimate truth and the ultimate goal of
life for all sentient beings - humans, animals, aliens and any being at all
with senses wherever they are. We are born into this world for this sole
purpose so that we can fulfil our duty in life by doing the necessary practice
and move a step closer to the ultimate goal.
The nature of the
ultimate truth
As
far as the ultimate entity in nature is concerned, there is no human’s
word that can penetrate such nature. Hence, the Buddha expressed his utterance
regarding the ultimate nature with such amazement and with total submission. He
said:
“Listen
to this Bhikkus, that nature does exist. That nature is not earth, nor water,
nor wind, nor fire, nor space, etc. it isn’t
this world, nor the next world. It isn’t
the moon, nor the sun. It isn’t coming, nor going, nor
existing, nor leaving, nor arriving, nor proceeding, nor becoming. It isn’t
a sense object. That nature is indeed the end of all suffering.”
For
the sake of passing on this piece of good news to people, the Buddha had no
choice but to give a name to that ultimate nature “Nirvana”.
Lao
Tzu also had experience of this ultimate nature. As the first two verses in Tao
Te Ching said:
Tao
has no name.
What
has name is not Tao.
There is only one ultimate
truth
Logically
speaking, there can only be one ultimate nature or one ultimate truth. There
cannot be two or three. So, even though you are a non-Buddhist, it doesn’t
make any difference in the slightest, the ultimate truth is still your ultimate
goal in life and has everything to do with you. This is not about trying to be
a Buddhist. I have no intention to turn you into anything, only helping you to
find your true self by coming face to face with the ultimate nature. You can
experience the ultimate nature as you are, no matter who you are or what you
are, provided that you follow my advice.
You
could also be a God believer or a non God believer or whatever you want to
label yourself, it doesn’t matter. As long as you
are a human with senses, this ultimate nature has everything to do with you,
whether you want it or not. If you want it and pay attention to my advice, the
benefits you will gain are that you will reach your destination in life quicker
and the rest of your life will be a bonus.
If
you however don’t want to know and think this whole
thing is a joke. You just have to take longer time to reach your final
destination in life. As for how long will it take you? The answer is as long as
it takes. Please go back to read about the time scale in Buddhism in chapter 13
of The User Guide to Life part one. The cycle of rebirth is a gigantic ring
road of life, there is no beginning and no end. You can be trapped in this ring
road of life for as long as you want until you come across someone like myself
to help you out of this trap. The choice is entirely yours. My sole intention
is to help you to reach the final boundary of life no matter what beliefs you
have.
That’s
why I have no alternative but to bring the word God, the Kingdom of God, The
Tree of Life to a place on the same level as Nirvana and all the rest of the
ultimate terms so that you can see a common goal humanity shares. This will put
the whole structure of life in better perspective. No matter what word or term
I use, they are all the made-up words referring to one sole ultimate nature in
the universe or in life.
How do I know?
If this is the first time you know
about me, you can’t help thinking this has
to be a joke. No one in this day and age would talk about the ultimate truth. There
is no such thing! Obviously, you would question how I can be so sure about this
ultimate knowledge I claim I know. How do I know I am not self-deluded? Please
don’t worry, you are not the only one to
doubt me.
Should
you have doubt whether I might be self deluded or not, please go back to read
the first chapter of this book and make up your mind again because you don’t
want to read a book written by a self-deluded person, do you? I certainly
wouldn’t read it if I thought the author
might be crazy! Please don’t waste your precious
time should you be in doubt. Put this book down and go to do something else
more worthwhile.
Nonetheless, if you really must know the
answer, yes, I do know the ultimate nature of life. Had I not known, I wouldn’t
be sitting here writing this book. There wouldn’t
be anything to write about since I am not a writer of fiction.
I
hope you have made up your mind to join me on this journey after the first
chapter. Because if you don’t want to join me on
this journey but still carry on reading anyway just for the sake of gaining a
bit more mental furniture, you can’t
help but make fun of my terminology every time I mention I know the ultimate
truth.
I
cannot stop you from reading and making a mockery of my words but please see
what category you fit into among these three types of people.
When people heard of Tao (the same
nature as the ultimate truth), there were three different reactions:
1)
Ignorant people would laugh and say that there is no such thing as Tao, totally
dismiss it and walk away.
2) Uncertain
people would take a step back, keep quiet and think maybe there was such a
thing called Tao and would listen to the wise attentively.
3) Enlightened
people would laugh and say that indeed there was Tao and walk away.
There
are only two types of people who laugh when they heard the term “ultimate
truth”. Now work it out which type you
belong to. The Buddha says that ignorant people are as many as the number of
hairs on a cow, whilst the wise people are as many as the number of a cow’s
horns.
The ultimate truth is the beginning and
the end
Please
bear in mind that the ultimate truth is the ultimate goal of life and that
everything has to begin there and end there. A Handful of Leaves, The User
Guide to Life, part one as well as this book I am writing are based on the
grounds of my knowing the ultimate truth. Hence, all my talks start from there
and will end there too.
When
a subject is brought up and the talkers have no knowledge of the ultimate
truth, the talks will become scattered and fail to lead the listeners to the
final boundary of life. Life is an enormous subject, as I have compared it to
huge piles of jigsaw puzzles in the previous chapter. Knowing the ultimate truth
is the moment when the whole picture of life is completed.
When
you do your 100 pieces of jigsaw puzzles, the quickest way to do it is to find
the few straight edge pieces, which go along the boundary of the picture. This
is exactly what we are going to do with the picture of life too. We are going
to narrow the massive diverse subjects of life down to just a few manageable
ones. It means that you will have to follow the certain trail of thinking that
the Buddha has paved for us and of which I will refresh and simplify for you.
We are going to begin the wise trail of
thinking by recognising the nature of the individual scattered mind, which
accumulates into the collective misdirection of life in humanity and results in
the huge scale of world problems from domestic violence to wars and the
destruction of the global environment.
Morality is dead without
the boundary of life
Let’s
have a close look at the issue of morality, which is a very important subject
of life and see what the collective scattered minds think of this subject. Without
knowing the boundary of life, people don’t
know why they have to be morally good.
Our
modern concept of life encourages us to follow our hearts or our feelings. We
don’t make it very clear what exactly we
mean by following our hearts. What happens when our hearts tell us to be
selfish, greedy, envious, angry, hateful, abusive and so on? It isn’t
wrong as long as you know what the boundary of life is. You would know when to
stop once you reach the boundary. But when you don’t
know and don’t have that wisdom, it can go
terribly wrong because people feel that there is nothing wrong in acting
angrily or abusively because their hearts say so. The wars that are happening
in the world right now are the acts of following our hearts, are they not? The
Christians kill the Muslims, the Muslims kill the Christians and the Jews, the
Jews kill the Muslims and so on because their hearts are blazing with anger and
hatred towards one another. They could kill one another like that because they
feel right in their hearts. Otherwise, they could not do it. They even believe
it is God’s will and they are not afraid to
sacrifice their precious lives in the name of God, which means suicide attacks
have become more common nowadays. These destructive actions are the result of
following their hearts, are they not?
The
five basic moral codes - don’t kill, don’t
lie, don’t commit adultery, don’t
steal and don’t intoxicate oneself - have been
savagely destroyed from our modern world because we believe that we should
follow our hearts. Worst still, our society glorifies such immoral conduct. Our
blind governments also consent with such immoral behavior both directly and
indirectly such as legalising the use of certain drugs, not to mention the involvement
in wars, which subsequently entail a lot more suffering for mankind.
Apart
from the straight forward immoral acts like killing, stealing, there are also
some not quite straight forward acts that I would like to class as amoral as
well. For example, simply being disgustingly rich is amoral. It isn’t
right to keep a lot of money for oneself while there are so many poor people in
the world. Bankers, loan sharks, pawn sharks and all the businesses that make
quick money out of poor people’s misery by setting high
interest rates and ridiculous high charges. These are wrong. I don’t
mean the good ones. Legal professionals who represent the wrong doers, help
clients to carry on with their dishonest acts by legal means, stringing cases
along as way to earn their legal fees, excessive charging and so on are also
amoral. The Legal profession is the top earner in Britain. These are the few
examples of the not so straight forward amoral deeds. People regard such
actions as a means to earn a living and cannot see anything wrong with it. Greed
is what makes it wrong. Greed is one of the three main barriers that stop
people from reaching the ultimate boundary of life.
Taking part in the process of making
weapons of all sorts from researching, inventing, supplying the material to
actually making them are wrong doing even though those people do not use the
weapons and do the direct killing themselves.
God is replaced by a
celebrity
We
are entering an age when our children no longer know what is right from wrong,
because often their parents and teachers don’t
know much better themselves. We think that we are clever in able to deny the
existence of God and let our free will lead us. This free thinking has led
people especially the young generation to believe in everything and anything at
all, the exact nature of self-destructive scattered minds. As a result, we
worship the celebrity, the rich and the famous. It doesn’t
matter if they are dishonest, immoral or involved in wrong doing. As long as
they are rich and famous, that is all that matters to people nowadays.
As a result, young people grab hold of
pop idols, sports idols, film stars and even cartoon characters as their role
models because they are rich and famous. Homer Simpson is more popular than
Abraham Lincoln is nowadays. What do all these modern role models know about
life but money and fame? The media adds fuel to this mental disaster by
glorifying the rich and the famous and only make the matter worse. Consequently,
selling dreams and fantasy to people has become a huge industry, which trap people living in a
dream world - telling them they would be rich and famous one day. People will
become more and more competitive and selfish and destroy everything in their
way, just to achieve their dreams.
Moral vacuum
Before
one can pass on any moral comments to others, one has to have the moral
authority within oneself first. The majority of people are living in glass
houses themselves and are too scared to throw stones at one another.
Moral
conduct can be kept alive because people warn one another. When less and less
people are qualified to pass moral judgement, it creates the moral vacuum and
speeds up the process of moral annihilation.
The
sense of shame and guilt are the natural stop button, an instinct that causes
self-restraint and helps man to stay in tune with their natural morality. Our
modern philosophy and concepts on life, especially the idea of following our
hearts, have killed off our ancient wisdom, which tells us to follow the moral
codes. This has resulted in some cultures that have lost all sense of shame and
guilt.
Not
to mention killing another human being, morally decent people would be hit with
tons of guilt in just killing animals unless they could justify their acts. Killing
a human being is not an easy task. If one can kill a human without being
flooded by a guilty conscience and even feel good about it, it means that
person is very sick in the mind. A society that has a high rate of crime
indicates a high level of sickness of that society. War is the collective
sickness of people’s minds.
I
like the theme in the film “Saving Private Ryan”.
Soldiers who were trapped in the complete madness of a war zone must try to
justify their own actions, otherwise they could easily go mad themselves which
a lot of them have. Therefore, in setting a clear purpose to save Private Ryan,
making sure he could return safely to his mother was the very least of reason
left to justify those few soldiers’
actions among the madness of the battlefield where reasons and common sense had
been completely wiped out. Government leaders who are prepared to send their
troops to war zone must be absolutely sure that the cause of war is justified. If
not, soldiers cannot fight a war and treason is inevitable.
It
is very confusing nowadays to know what is the right thing to do especially
regarding taking an action on war. Government leaders and politicians are now
viewed with distrust, lack of integrity and seen to be self-serving. Of course,
there are some good politicians but most of them are a bunch of people who have
no moral authority - do as I say but don’t
do as I do - and fail to convince people. No wonder why people’s
minds are in great chaos. People don’t
know what the real truth is anymore. Before the war with Iraq, the American and
the British were led to believe that Sadam Hussein had the weapons of mass
destruction in his possession and he was about to attack the Western world very
shortly unless the troops were sent in. This reason was the main cause to justify
the war with Iraq. After the war, the tune changed. So far they still haven’t
yet found the weapons of mass destruction. People still don’t
know what the truth is. Not to mention the grief and the frustration of the
families who have lost their loved ones in this war.
It
is quite frightening to think if anyone knows the truth or has the truth or
know exactly what they are doing at all. This is the exact point why I have to
be very direct with you and decide to draw the ultimate boundary of life for you.
Otherwise, we’ll be trapped in this huge Catch 22
situation where there is no beginning and no end and no one knows what is what
anymore. Just follow this trail of thinking and I will find a way out for you.
Drugs and alcohol abuse and greed are
the main reasons that cause mass numbers of people to loose their sense of
shame and guilt too. When the conscience disappears from people’s
hearts, it means society has become very sick indeed.
Nevertheless, the death of our moral
conduct is a direct result of not knowing the boundary of life or the nature of
the ultimate truth.
Morals become simple
when knowing the boundary of life
On
the contrary, if we bring up the moral issue on the ground of knowing the
ultimate boundary of life, we would know exactly which direction we can lead
the talk to.
You
must know that there is no moral absolute because morality is not the ultimate
truth. Therefore, there is no end to moral debate. Moral codes will always be
debatable and opened to all kinds of interpretations because they relate
closely to time and place. What used to be wrong in the past can become right
nowadays and vice versa. Having sexual relationships and having children out of
wedlock were morally wrong in the past. It is completely the opposite nowadays
in the Western society.
What
is right in one society can be wrong in another society. Tony Martin, a British
farmer, was jailed for five years after he shot dead a 16 year old burglar
raiding his property. Without knowing the ultimate boundary of life, it is
extremely difficult to reach a common agreement as far as moral debate is
concerned. Should Tony Martin be an American citizen and do exactly the same in
some states in the USA where they regard such killing as not only acceptable
but also a heroic act. Tony Martin would be awarded a large sum of money
instead of being thrown in prison. How can we justify a case like this?
As
far as moral judgement is concerned, We can only do our very best by listening
to our common sense as well as watching out for the warning button of the sense
of shame and guilt. Whatever action that our conscience tells us not to do
because it is wrong, we must listen carefully to that echo in our heads. Above
all, we must not complicate the moral issue by using relativism because we’ll
be trapped in the nature of a scattered mind in no time at all.
Moral
relativism is about comparing our behavior to someone who behaves worse than
ourselves. Then, we condone our bad deeds because there are always someone else
who behaves much worse than we do. It also works in the opposite way by
comparing with the people who are better than ourselves, which in turn should
motivate us to do better. Nevertheless, people are keen to compare themselves
towards the downside direction because it is instinctively easier to do so. Morality has been brought to its knees
because of moral relativism.
It
is important to know that moral relativism is not a clever way of thinking. It
is, in fact, very dangerous and stupid. It shows the obvious sign of the lack
of true wisdom. If you must do it, use it toward the positive direction. That
is pushing yourself to be better than others. Then again, this sounds very much
like creating the high sense of competitiveness, which is happening throughout
the sport world and the entertainment business. It has become a culture where
ambitious people aim to win and to be famous. Some sport men and women pushed
themselves over their physical and mental limit because they want to be the best.
This strong drive for high achievement has caused some of them to rely on some
form of drugs, if not, facing mental breakdown.
So,
even if we use moral relativism in the positive direction, it still doesn’t
look like a healthy way of thinking either. Without the true wisdom of the
ultimate truth, there is no real solution to our way of thinking and the
subsequent actions. Can you see that?
Morals are the means to
an end
You must understand as well that the
general moral conduct is only the means leading to the ultimate boundary of
life. One cannot be whiter than white. The ultimate truth is not the whitest
nature. There is no whitest nature in the first place. The ultimate experience
is simply the best because it is the final frontier of absolutely everything.
The
only reason humans need to observe moral behavior is because this would help
them to speed up their mind journey to the ultimate goal of life. The better
they do it, the quicker they can reach their destination in life. That’s
it. This is a very quick summary. You can see how simple it is.
Should
I, however, have to go into any detail about moral conduct, I would say like I
did in the first part of this book. Just follow the guidelines in this book
carefully and you won’t go out of bounds.
You
can see that once we set the boundary of life, every issue we bring up will
have perspective. There is no more scattered talks. I know exactly what
direction I would steer your attention towards so that you would reach the
boundary of life yourself.
Different races, a
problem or a gift?
One more example I want to bring up is
race since it is one of the most troublesome subject in some societies. When
you don’t know the ultimate boundary of
life, different races of people living together is a problem especially when it
involves the different religious beliefs too, it means wars and all the
suffering as we all know. This issue is, in fact, very simple once we know the
boundary of life. I often asked my students to pass on this message for me.
The
making of human life is individual. Mother nature bestows on us, humans with
different looks, different skin colours, black, brown, yellow, and white. The
differences of skin colours are in fact the best gift from God or mother nature.
Could you imagine what life would be like if you got up one morning and
everyone looked identical, with just one skin colour, and one look all the
same? Would you really want to live in a society whose inhabitants had eternal
youth, blond hair, blue eyes, golden skin, fit, healthy and with one single
level of intelligence all the same? Indeed, we would be saying it was a
nightmare like what they portray in horror films, wouldn’t
we? That is what we call robots, isn’t
it? Nonetheless, it is ironic that our modern technology is geared up to build
such a society.
In
one of the early episodes of Star Trek with Captain James T. Kirk. He and his
crew came across a group of people who wore masks. Intrigued, they went on to
find out why these people had to wear masks. In the end, it was revealed that
behind the different masks, every face was identical, they were bored out of
their minds and they could not live their lives like that. Therefore, they
found a way to create diversity by creating the different faces on masks.
Can you see how sad and ignorant we
are? We have all the diversity we
need. Different races, looks, color skin, ages and intelligence are in fact the
true beauty of nature. It isn’t a problem, not in the
slightest. No two trees, two shade
of green or two animals look the same; even identical twins have some
differences. This is a beautiful gift and the wonder that mother nature has
handed down to us. But we are too stupid to realise it. We cannot appreciate
this wonderful gift and turn it into a problem instead.
Racism
is the result of collective scattered minds of a certain society, passing it on
through political, religious and family establishments. Ignorant people can’t
help thinking that only their race, religious beliefs and their political views
are right and others are wrong. The minds that know nothing about the ultimate
boundary of life cannot make sound judgement. Neither can they be trusted. Thus
the scattered minds are self-destructive. Whether it is true or not, you only
need to look at today’s world yourself. Go and
see what they do to one another in war torn countries like Bosnia, Cosovo,
Rawanda, Israel and Palestine where the people are made up of different races
and different religious beliefs.
One road to materialism
When government leaders and politicians
don’t have the fundamental wisdom and
the moral authority themselves, it is dangerous because these people are
responsible for the happiness of a mass number of people. The lack of true
wisdom has reduced government leaders to focusing on the obvious, health and
wealth. Since the collapse of communism in the eighties, the main direction of
life in humanity is heading towards one common goal all the same, materialism,
capitalism or consumerism whatever you want to call it. Materialism with the
help of democracy will thrive well because it is the system that allows people’s
defilements - greed, anger and delusion - to flourish without any resistance. Tyranny
basically is the exercise of materialism or of greed of one person instead of
letting people exercise their greed equally like a democracy.
As far as materialism is concerned, the
concept behind it is nothing more than creating wealth or making money. Some
people like to express their philosophical view by saying that money is not
everything, it isn’t important because it
cannot buy happiness. It depends what kind of happiness you are talking about. People
are saying it without actually knowing the true happiness. If money is not that
important, why is the world full with people wanting to make more money. The
poor want to get rich, the rich want to get richer and the richer want to get
richest. People killing one another because of money. Indeed, money is
everything in the real world because we make it so.
Money is the medium of
exchange
Originally,
money was supposed to be a medium of exchange. Before using money, we had a
barter system. When society was small, we exchanged what we had with what we
needed. People could be happy because life was much simpler. As long as they
had the basic needs as food, clothing, shelter and medicine. They could live
quite happily till they died with or without medicine. As the society grew
bigger, no two persons always had the mutual need to exchange the objects they
wanted and therefore money was brought in as a medium of exchange, a way to
make life easier. Value was then added to the money as the indication of the
power of spending. Money in itself wasn’t
worth as much as the added value. A five pound note and a fifty pound note are
both made up of pieces of paper which worth as much as a small piece of paper
worth. It was the value that was added to that small piece of paper, which
makes the five pounds note different from the fifty pounds note.
When
society grew bigger and people had surplus money. Instead of hiding their money
in the ground, the banking system was introduced. It was a way to allocate a
group of people to look after the money for the rest in the community. Then the
interest was brought in. The banking system happened gradually and innocently
at the beginning to fulfil people’s
need and now has turned into giant
monsters who are capable of sucking blood out of a stone. Poor people are
sucked dry because of this most complex banking system that is based on greed.
Now,
people have lost track that money is merely the medium of exchange for
something we really need and that money is not god. Instead, we accumulate
money even though we don’t need it to exchange
for anything because we have already had all the basic needs. People like to
see the figures grow on their bank balances even though some of those people
have enough money to last ten lifetimes.
In the later chapter, I will bring
back this subject again and you will see how stupid people are to treat money
like they do nowadays until they are ready to kill one another for it.
Real life story
Having said about how the giant monster
can manage to suck blood out of a stone, I have a story to tell you, which
represents millions who are in the same shoes as mine.
Last
week, while I was totally absorbed in writing this chapter, I forgot to check
my bank balance and didn’t realise we were
overdrawn until one morning I received five letters from the bank telling us that we had to pay 30 pound
charge for each item of unpaid direct debit and another 28 pound charge in
writing a letter with a few words to inform us. Knowing that they contained the
same message, I didn’t bother to open the
other four letters. I tried to think how I could get out of this financial mess
without letting my husband know about it. I decided to go to the bank and hoped
I could explain to bank staff that it was a genuine mistake. My husband’s
wages went into the account only some 24 hours after the overdraw. I thought
maybe they could back date my transfer and forget about the ridiculous charges.
The lady staff I dealt with appeared to be rather cold-faced, a contrast from
the time when they wanted to sell us their merchandise. After listening to what
she thought was my excuse, she emotionlessly explained:
“Well,
Mrs. Green, the direct debit comes out from your account between 3 and 4 am. It
doesn’t matter if you transfer your money
at 6 am, you still have to face the charges anyway let alone 24 hours after. I
am sorry, all the charges have already gone out of your account. We can’t
do anything about it because the computer has done them all…..
Well, you just have to make sure you have enough money in your current account
before the direct debit is due, Mrs. Green.”
Did she tell me anything I didn’t
know? The bank charges were nearly
two hundred pounds in total and this amount was nearly the whole of my husband’s
weekly wage. I could not bring myself to tell him.
I
was too naive to think the bank could help me because not only are we dealing
with a very greedy system but also a technology which is incapable of
understanding human misery. Now, I am not talking about people who deliberately
over spend beyond their reach and get themselves in heavy debt. I am going to
talk about a great number of people who are very careful with their hard-earned
money like my husband and myself. Normally, people have to go overdrawn because
they don’t have the money, and the bank
punish them further because they don’t
have money. I can understand a few pounds charge should I have overdrawn. But
such ridiculous and excessive charges are sheer criminal, robbing, cold blooded
and contemptuous of the poor customers. I regard this as an amoral act. The
greedy system cannot understand how hard people have to work to earn money and
the bank takes it away with a snap of the fingers.
The
millions of British pensioners and householders with the endowment mortgage are
facing a grim future because of this greedy system. People were promised to
have a lump sum of savings left when their mortgages were paid off at the end
of the term or when they are retired. This has motivated people to work hard
and save and look forward to their savings at old age. Now, it looks like that
the people could be robbed of their life long savings again because these money
grabber businesses won’t be able to deliver
their promises. The government hasn’t
done much to help these people either. We are dealing with a monstrous system
that gambles with people’s lives.
Materialism will always
be with mankind
If
you want to ask who made this greedy system in the first place? If you want to
shift the blame, the answer is our blind government. The more direct answer is
actually all of us. As long as we still have traces of greed in our hearts, we
all have a share of the blame because we contribute both directly and
indirectly to such a greedy system, which, in return, is responsible for the
misery and suffering of humanity. I am afraid this is the harsh truth that we
all have to face.
In
79 AD, the volcano erupted and buried Pompeii, among the archaeological site,
they found people cradling their pots of gold in their arms while running away
from the flowing lava.
What
does that tell you? It tells us that we will never get rid of materialism and
capitalism and that the pure
idealism of communism doesn’t work and that
socialism struggles to work. Materialism will always be with mankind because
this system is based on greed and ignorance towards the ultimate boundary of
life. Greed and ignorance are the two main bandits manipulating our scattered
minds into wanting more and more. Consequently, our whole way of life revolves
around making money. A handful of rich people passed on their wealth through
many generations plus a few more who made themselves billionaires by their own
merits and now these people literally govern and dictate to the world. Because
of their immense power of spending, they exercise their power through
politicians, government leaders who are also rule, regulation and law makers.
A clear sign of massive misdirection of
life
This
greedy system has entailed so many subsequent problems, which entangled
themselves like a huge ball of cotton where there is no beginning and no end - the
nature of a real life ring road.
As
a matter of fact, the worlds natural resources belong to every single human and
animal on earth. We all have the basic right to those resources all the same. When
the world community was small, people could eat and use the produces that
nature bestowed to us. Just like animals in the wild, they just eat leaves,
fruits, grass as they wish. But now the world is much more complex, through the
free economy, the worlds natural resources have fallen into the hands of few
rich merchants. Even so, if the governments have compassion towards their
people, they will at least make sure that the basic necessities like food,
clothing, medicine, health care, housing, gas, electricity, transport, etc are
cheap and affordable especially to the poor people of the society. Government
must find a system to distribute these necessities fairly to people. This is
not always the case. Great Britain was supposed to be a socialist country but
not much longer. The governments both the Tory and the Labour were keen to hand
over the basic enterprises into
the hands of greedy merchants. Through privatisation, the basic needs become
expensive with poor services.
The free economy and free enterprise
although the idea is good, in practice it creates the nature of a big fish
eating a small fish in every level of society. We can never get rid of
corruption especially in poor countries. Consequently the rich gets richer and
the poor gets poorer. People starve nowadays not because there is no food about
but because they don’t have money to buy food.
With our modern technology, food is abundant but they are not distributed
fairly because we are trapped in this complex system where money talks. People
die of illnesses because they don’t
have money to buy medicine and afford the health care.
Poverty on a big scale happens because
of this complex system of free economy where World Bank and IMF are playing the
big role. A lot of poor countries in Africa, South America and Asia should not
be poor because they have abundant natural resources but they are still poor
because their foods and produces are used to pay off the heavy debt and
interest owed to the rich countries. Consequently, slavery is being kept alive
in this day and age. Children as young as five are forced to work hard in poor
countries. They are given inadequate food, paid very little or none and beaten
if they try to escape. Some die of exhaustion, illness and starvation. Because
of money again, girls, boys and women are sold as sex objects into the global
multi-billion pounds sex industry. Greedy and wicked people also make money out
of selling poisons from tobacco, alcohol to drugs which generate more crimes
and health risks and entail much bigger problem from local community to the
global level. The rich Western countries already admitted that Africa would
become the forgotten continent because it is too much of a liability to them. Africa
is now infested with the Aids virus and people are dying in mass numbers
without much acknowledgement from the outside world.
Rich countries too are facing huge
problems with human exodus. Britain is flooded by asylum seekers and illegal
immigrants wanting to find jobs and earn more money. Legal aid for asylum
applicants costs the British taxpayer 174 million a year. On the other hand, in
trying to minimise cost and maximise profit, the motto of capitalism, the rich
greedy merchants in the West are shifting their employment to the poor
countries so that they could spend less on wages and earn more on profits. This
is the trend that is happening in banking, airlines, communication, textile and
car industries which will be responsible for the high rate of unemployment in
the rich countries like Britain. The unemployment, the illegal immigrants, the
different religious believes and racism, once these ingredients are mixed
together, you don’t have to be a fortune-teller
to predict the outcome of such mixture. I cannot see anything else but social
unrest. This is what happening in Great Britain now.
We
have to admit that the event of 9/11, part of the cause is due to the gap
between the rich and the poor nations. We can never get rid of terrorism and
wars that are threatening the peace on earth because they are the result of our
scattered minds entangled into a gigantic Catch 22 situation. Not to mention
about the polluted environment, also caused by the free economy, that is
threatening the whole of the green planet.
All these troubles in the world we are
facing right now are the clear sign of a collective misdirection of life, the
results of the individual scattered mind put together. Humanity will be plunged
into more chaos, mayhem and suffering.
Should you want to have a clear picture
of how misguided we are just by living in today world, I advise you to read
just the headlines of your daily papers and the coverage of the world news. Misdirection
of life leads to false kind of happiness, if not, full blown suffering in
mankind.
The world is void of a
spiritual leader
When was the last time the world had a
political leader who was well equipped with morality, honesty, integrity,
kindness, compassion, selflessness, having spiritual vision along with
charisma?
I
regard Mahatama Ghandhi as such a leader. The world has been void of such good
leaders for a long time and is infested with more and more mad and greedy
leaders.
A
good leader is very hard to come by because one has to be selfless with no fear
of death. The good ones are normally bullied by the bad ones. Look at the Dalai
Lama and the Burmese opposition leader, Ongsan Suyi who had also won the Nobel
peace prize. What have they achieved so far in being good leaders? Not much,
because they will never have a chance to actually lead people. They will always
be bullied by bad leaders. Nevertheless, simply hearing of the existence of
such good leaders is quite enough to inspire people.
Without
leaders with clear spiritual vision, humanity will always be trapped in this
huge sea of troubles for as long as it takes. Believe it or not, this is the
smallest scale of the cycle of rebirth.
People’s
minds are the first domino
I want to emphasise that there is no
real solution to this massive scale of problems the world is facing. The world
will not get any better than this because this is the normality of the human
predicament - one stop among the huge ring road of samsara or the cycle of rebirth.
This is why you need to escape from it and find the long lasting solution to
life instead. This is the exact part I want to help you through this book. I
have no interest in trying to change the world.
Nevertheless, if you must know the
overall solution, it means that you must find the beginning or the end of this
huge ball of entangled cotton, only then can you truly solve the problem.
Having
known the nature of the ultimate truth, I can only say that the long lasting
solution to humanity has to begin with people’s
minds. A Persons mind is the first domino. Make individual people find the long
lasting peace of mind and the domino effect will happen. When individual people
are happy, every problem will collapse accordingly.
The
massive volume of water in the river, sea and ocean are the result of every
single drop of rain put together. Provided
that country leaders can make every individual member of society happy, the
individual happiness will make up the overall happiness of the family unit, the
local community, the whole nation and of the world accordingly. This simple
perspective of life can become clear only when we know the ultimate truth. This
fundamental wisdom will result in the government to build and create the way of
life that pave the way for individual to gain their happiness or peace of mind.
The enlightening culture
The
enlightening culture written in A Handful of Leaves is indeed such a way of
life. The enlightening culture is the exact way of life that will look after
every individual’s happiness and
subsequently lead to a peaceful country and finally to a peaceful world.
World
peace has not got an instant solution that can be put together by means of
endless clever talks without any common sense and true wisdom or by means of
making more weapons and wars. It seems to me that our country leaders have lost
all their common sense. We like to look at the big picture and forget the small
scale that make up the overall outcome. Margaret Thatcher, during her
premiership, liked to say that nuclear arms were necessary because they were
used as war deterrent? With all due respect to Lady Thatcher, although I truly
admire her strength, I must say her
solution for world peace didn’t
make any sense at all. She was not alone. Many world leaders do believe so.
My
common sense however says if we don’t
want wars, we must stop making weapons in any form and shape. Just stop
completely and stop right away. Without sophisticated weapons, should people
still insist on fighting, let them punch, kick, scratch, pull hairs, use sticks
and stones whatever. Let them get on. It will reach a point when they
physically run out of steam, feel totally exhausted and the fighting will
naturally end. The damage and the suffering will not be as extensive as we do
with our modern warfare with all kinds of sophisticated weapons. As the nuclear
technology become more available nowadays, even poor countries with real crazy
leaders can also make nuclear arms. Do you really think you can find a safe
place on earth? I don’t think so.
Call
me stupid and naïve if you like. Think carefully, common
sense sometime makes much more sense than clever talk. That’s
why our parliaments and house of representatives are full of clever and
intelligent people but the world is still in a big mess because we lose our
common sense and true wisdom. If leaders lose their common sense, it means they
lose touch with ordinary people whom they represent and work for.
World
peace is a very long term investment starting from creating the right kind of
culture that can secure the happiness of every individual person in society. Only
the enlightening culture can plant the seedling of true happiness in people’s
hearts. Despite the impossibility
in bringing back the enlightening culture, as far as reason goes, it is still
necessary to mention it.
Nevertheless,
I don’t spend much time thinking down that
path any more. I have moved on since. My concern has been shifted to focus on
helping one person like yourself instead.
Summary
To create the individual peace of mind
is what this book and all my work are all about. Without paying attention to
this wisdom I am guiding, you will be trapped in the nature of the scattered
mind and you will be caught up in this troubled world for as long as it takes. Think
carefully and seriously make up your mind again whether or not you want to join
me on this life journey.