How do I traverse through this jungle of various life philosophies, doctrines, religions, and of course God, successfully, to remain satisfied with peace of mind? This is a question of Peaceful Coexistence.
Peaceful coexistence of a diverse of different beings within the same space is only possible when everyone values diversity (as a strength rather than a weakness) instead of wanting to standardize everything. That means differences are welcomed, whereas agreeing with others is considered a lack of personal opinion. This is called harmony in diversity. I want you to be different, and you want me to be different.
In a society where everybody is forced to believe in the same religion, follow the same doctrines, then you will have a monolithic society that is rigid and homogenous, not open to new ideas. In this case, you have multiple beings of the same type with the same groupthink but not a diverse of different beings. The society can remain peaceful so long as the purity of the monolithic society is maintained. This is a peaceful existence rather than coexistence. When a new culture is imported, bigotry and racism and xenophobia will start to arise. Multicultural and multiracial peaceful coexistence will not be possible. I want you to be no different from me, and you want me to be no different from you. I want you to agree with me, and you want me to agree with you. Religious people think they have peace of mind; this is only true when they live inside their own bubble. When they have to deal with another culture, wars often breakout.
In one’s brain, various life philosophies, doctrines, views and religious rules and rituals are like a diverse of different beings living in the same space. If you want peace and you are lazy to think, you can choose and enforce one and only religion and throw out all the others. You will have peace of mind; you will be a peaceful existence. There is no coexistence to consider. It is easy to be a follower rather than a leader. It is easy to follow rules and rituals rather than having to think of an appropriate action to take whenever you are challenged with a new situation. You have decided that your religion is right and anybody who disagrees with you is wrong. You will not be open minded; i.e. you do not have freedom of thought. If the mind is not free, the person can never be really free regardless of which country he lives in. Only the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body are free but not the mind. If the mind is excluded from the person, then maybe he can consider himself to be free.
If you are a person who really wants to absorb and learn various life philosophies, doctrines, views and religions, you must be humble. The sea (the king of all valleys) can become so big because it stays low to receive the water from hundreds of rivers, regardless of the water quality. We can learn from the sea: to be humble, receive knowledge from various sources, apply the useful ideas from all schools of thoughts, keep an open mind and listen to different opinions regardless of whether we agree or disagree with the ideas (江海所以能为百谷王, 以其善下之, 故能为百谷王). This is one of the core philosophies of Dao De Jing. The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Continue to improve your intelligence (睿智), learn to think critically (i.e. not blind acceptance of any teaching), and widen your knowledge on all subjects (聪明). These are essential to gain the ultimate wisdom of life (道). Having no zeal to discriminate right and wrong, you will be able to apply the appropriate not-right or not-wrong idea according to the conditions which are arising.
The sea is the king; the various rivers are the ministers. The mind is the king; the various philosophies, doctrines, views and religions must not be allowed to control the mind. No one school of thought should be allowed to dominate the thinking faculty. The mind as the leader must take control and decide which idea to accept in each and every situation. Right and wrong can change with time and space. What is right at one time and space may become wrong at another time and space. Similarly, what is wrong at one time and space may become right at another time and space.
Right and wrong are in the “box” (方内), but the problem is there are many “boxes” everywhere. If you subscribe to one “box”, you have one set of right and wrong. If you subscribe to a few “boxes”, you find that the different sets of right and wrong are conflicting with one another. You are thinking out-of-the-box (方外) when you start to question whether there are absolute right and absolute wrong. You will have freedom of thoughts (思想解放).
To believe in right and wrong is very stressful. Not believing in right and wrong is bewildering. Right and wrong are like proton and electron; they are opposite but attracted to each other, and both are indispensable (正反相依，对立相存). The universe cannot exist with too much proton (Yang) or too much electron (Yin). It is a matter of maintaining the balance in time and space. There will be imbalances from time to time and from one place to another place, but that’s OK. Wanting to be right and hate to be wrong all the time will be very stressful, whether you are imposing on yourself or other people. Other people imposing a set of right and wrong on you will also make you stressful. More often than not, you may think you are right but other people think you are wrong. That is why we see people committing suicide, quarrelling in a family, engaging in racial/religious disputes, and wars between nations.
A group of blind men have never come across an elephant before. They wish to learn and conceptualize what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant body, but only one part. The person, whose hand lands on the trunk, say: “An elephant is like a big snake”. Another one, whose hand reaches its ear, say: “An elephant is like a kind of fan”. The third person, whose hand is upon its leg, say: “The elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk”. The blind man who places his hand upon the elephant body say: “Elephant is a wall”. Another who holds its tail say: “Elephant is a rope”. The last feels its tusk and say: “The elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear”. They describe the elephant based on their partial experience and their descriptions are in complete disagreement on what an elephant is. They come to suspect that the other person is wrong and they become angry. The moral of the parable is that humans tend to project their partial experiences as the whole truth and ignore other people’s partial experiences. We should consider that we may be partially right and may have partial information. It doesn’t mean we have to feel unhappy to have doubt about our understanding; we just have to accept that it’s OK to be partially right but not totally right. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” – Mark Twain. Just because you have a similar view as the majority doesn’t mean you are right. It is highly possible that it is a groupthink.
Obviously, having no personal opinion is equally undesirable compared to being too assertive about what is right and what is wrong. Should we or should we not distinguish right and wrong? How do we know we are not doing a wrong thing? Not grasping strongly to own opinion (不执于我) is not the same as having no personal opinion. It only means we accept the possibility that our opinion may not be right (but not wrong) or other opinions are also not wrong too. Don’t get stuck in dualistic thinking. There is no problem at all for not wanting our coffee to be too cold or too hot; it is a personal choice. Similarly, there is no problem at all for not wanting to be right or wrong; it is a personal choice. The two extremes of right and wrong are like Yin and Yang; don’t go to the extreme and become an extremist. It is a matter of balancing the Yin and Yang. What we choose to do is a matter of choice. Whatever we choose to do is not wrong if it doesn’t adversely affect our happiness in the short term and also in the long term.
The next question is: how do we have peace of mind with the existence of diversity? Wanting to be right is a great desire. Desire is the cause of all suffering. Greater desire causes greater suffering. To have peace of mind, we must minimize our desire, especially the desire to be right. We must be content with being not wrong. It’s OK to be not right so long as we are not wrong.
举世而誉之而不加劝，举世而非之而不加沮，定乎内外之分，辩乎荣辱之境，斯已矣。
If we don’t have the desire to seek acceptance from anybody about who we really are, what we believe in, what we say and do, we will not be bothered to do more when the whole world praises us; we will not feel disappointed when the whole world disagrees with us. Our self-worth need not depend on how other people think of us. Human distinctions of honors and disgraces are false; none of these external things are important for our happiness.
Peaceful coexistence is the harmony emphasized in Daoism.
RESILIENT KID 