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The schools tell the students how great the parents are in sacrificing and providing everything to their children. The parents are happy not only for the flattering but mainly for the potential benefits from educating the students to reciprocate. Unfortunately, the students start to think that the parents have the responsibility to sacrifice and provide everything to them, and start to demand for the rights to get more from the parents as if it is a debt. And the parents start to think that they are obligated to repay the “debt” and they feel guilty if they can’t meet the “responsibility”. They would feel fear that the children would hate them and leave them when they are old. The vicious cycle continues. When the children grow up and become parents, they experience the same fear, obligation, and guilt (F.O.G.). This is another danger of promoting compassion and righteousness. If the schools and the parents were not greedy for reciprocation, they wouldn’t tell the students how precious (a.k.a. rare) is the sacrifices and generosity of the parents. If those things are not promoted, parents would love their children as naturally as the Nature intended. Children would appreciate the love and not demand for more. The natural filial piety and unconditional-love will be restored (绝仁弃义，民复孝慈).

 

Everybody must learn to be plain and ingenuous. Don’t try to be clever in manipulating others. Everybody must learn to have little selfishness and desire. Selfishness is not wrong but too much of it can kill you and other people. Desire for honors (success, wealth, fame), and desire to meddle with the lives of others (children, spouse, neighbors, society) must be kept to minimum. Stop learning to become clever. The best thing to learn is not unlimited knowledge but learning the Dao to have no worry. We will have no worry when there is nothing else that we cannot let go, including our bodies. (见素抱朴；少私寡欲；绝学无忧。)

 

Religion is a way of life for the improvement of oneself. It should not be used as a tool for extortion and victimizing the believers (i.e. no one should be bullied for not obeying the religious “authority”). Compassion is a kind of spirituality for individual to practice and improve himself, for his own happiness. The same goes for gratitude. You don’t have any obligation to be grateful to anyone. But you can choose to be grateful to someone if it makes you happy. Gratitude requires emotional intelligence and it takes mental toughness and discipline. Compared with those who dwell on daily hassles, people who exercise giving thanks more regularly are found to have less complaints of annoyance and feel better about their lives overall. They also feel more loving, forgiving, joyful, enthusiastic, and optimistic about their futures, while their family and friends find them happier and are more pleasant to be around.

 

The schools also teach the students to have responsibility. You are told that you have certain responsibilities to your family, community, and country. Children must be responsible to their parents in doing their chores diligently, and employees must be responsible to their employers in doing their jobs diligently. The fact is, you are only responsible to yourself. You are answerable to someone only if you want something from someone. Children want loves from the parents, and parents want loves from the children. Employees want money and promotion from employers, and employers want employees to make money for them. In other words, the so-called “responsibility” is actually a contract you enter into. You do not naturally have any responsibility to anyone but yourself. If you don’t desire to get anything in return, you have no responsibility whatsoever. Although some people like to impose all kinds of responsibilities on your shoulder, you don’t have to listen to them and impose the unnecessary responsibilities on yourself. Of course, we all want something; the more we want, i.e. we are hungry, the more we have to give in term of “responsibility”, in order to fill our stomach. If you have a responsible employee, he will expect to be commensurately compensated. When you have strong desire and sense of responsibility, you will be tortured by fear, obligation, and guilt (F.O.G.). You fear not getting what you want, or getting what you don’t want, or losing what is in your grip, or not losing what you wish to lose. Because of the implied responsibility, you feel obligated to do certain things although you are unable to do it or your heart tells you not to do it. You feel guilty for doing something or fail to do something. The toxic of having desire and therefore the implied responsibility is detrimental.

 

Don’t go into a job with responsibility but love. You will then enjoy expressing love and do your job like molding artistic clay or painting a drawing. You will not be plagued by F.O.G.

 

Don’t go into parenthood with responsibility but love. You will then enjoy expressing love and raise your children like playing with pets. You will not be tortured by F.O.G. It is sad that some people love each other but their deeds are hurting each other because of responsibility. If you love someone and you want to be loved, don’t make him/her sad or angry.

 

When you have a sick parent to care for, don’t go into it with responsibility but love. You will then enjoy expressing love and give the best care that you are happy to give. You will not be agonized by F.O.G.

 

Superheroes save people for the fun of it, not because “great power comes with great responsibility”. They don’t feel F.O.G. for not being able to save everybody and the world.

 

The five fingers have different lengths; i.e. inequality is natural. Similarly, you don’t have to give equal love to everybody. To get more love, one will have to be lovelier, so that he becomes luckier.

 

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Compassion (仁) and righteousness (义) are some of the important advocacies of Confucianism. They look like good things; therefore, most people love the concepts. They become precious things. Unfortunately, like all precious things, they are rare. People want them, like the way they want diamonds. Some people want to be known as noble persons who stand on moral high-ground. They hate to have any “dirt” on their reputations; thenceforth, they will put on an angry look like the fighting cocks, to tell everybody that they hate the lack of compassion and righteousness. They exhibit hatred towards people who lack compassion and righteousness in order to condition the mind of everybody to think that the holy men will do no wrong. They can then pretend that they are the good leaders whom everybody need. They compete with other ambitious politicians like themselves to win the prize of being made the supreme leader of all leaders. Very often, they win by being generous in giving or promise to give everybody benefits, so as to show their great compassion to the people. They don’t see there is anything wrong to rob the rich and give the heist to the poor. They don’t see there is anything wrong to trade promises with votes/supports, they think they have the rights to ask for reciprocations, they see compassion as a win-win business, they see the lack of reciprocations as morally wrong or lack of righteousness. Ironically, they believe in selfless giving but at the same time they expect repayments. Ironically, the people love the benefits and promises; therefore, they love individuals who exhibit compassion and righteousness. They love the win-win business, so they do the same to their children, parents, families and friends. They make it an unspoken social-contract. Lack of reciprocation is equated to lack of gratitude, and it is politically-incorrect to talk about self-interest but not wrong to actually be selfish so long as you deny the notion about you being selfish. There is always a way to use compassion and righteousness as the tools to defend yourself or to attack others (for being lack of compassion and righteousness).

 

In a one-man-one-vote democracy, the people get the kind of leader that they deserve. If they deserve a compassion and righteous but clever-devil leader, the government will give them the material benefits funded by the properties of the people. The clever-devil self-serving leader will collect his honors (success, wealth, fame) but plunge the country into decay (corruption, depreciation of currency, inequality, social ills, trust deficit, etc.). The “check-and-balance” system, if any, will have limited effect on the self-serving leader because he is a clever-devil. To really benefit the people, the craving for morality must stop. Stop praising clever tricks (from the government or individuals, in the name of compassion and righteousness, or for individual success, wealth, and fame), and there will be no robber or thief in the government or on the street. (绝圣弃智，民利百倍；绝巧弃利，盗贼无有。)

 

Confucius knew the negative side of promoting compassion. He said: “I have never seen a person who really likes compassion but hates people who are lack of compassion. A person who really likes compassion sees it as an extremely precious/rare thing and high standard which is very hard to achieve; therefore, not expecting many people to be able to achieve it. For a person who hates lack of compassion, his show of compassion is merely to prevent himself from being grouped among the people who are lack of compassion. Will he ever use all his energy to practice being compassion?” (我未見好仁者，惡不仁者。好仁者，無以尚之；惡不仁者，其為仁矣，不使不仁者加乎其身。有能一日用其力於仁矣乎？) If compassion is easy for everyone to achieve, it will cease to be a precious thing.

 

Most of the time, when people talk about compassion and righteousness, they are actually talking about the benefits of their race and religion. They are racists and authoritarians, because what they meant is compassion for their tribe members first, and the right or wrong according to the definitions of their religion. They are selfish. When they sacrifice for their race and religion in a seemingly selfless manner, the deed is really the greatest selfishness. They don’t sacrifice for other races or religions, they even attack other races or religions, but they would deny their selfishness and continue to demonize selfishness. Selfishness for the race and religion is highly regarded as selflessness, but selfishness for personal gain is politically-incorrect. This is perplexing. Selfishness is wrong, but sometime it is right? Selfishness is not wrong but natural for everybody to love himself, his family, his community, and his country more than anybody else. You must not demonize “selfishness” on one hand but you are being selfish on the other hand. It’s OK to be selfish.

 

There was a big thug leader named Dao Zhi (盗跖). He had nine thousand followers. A Confucian wanted to give him some advices. At first, Dao Zhi was very angry and didn’t want to see him. He told a soldier to tell the Confucian: “Stop manipulating right and wrong in the name of the past noble emperors, and confuse the present kings. Stop deceiving the ministers, in the name of compassion and righteousness, in the pursuit to become an honorable adviser to the king. He has terrible sin to cause so much suffering to the people. The government used his ideas and caused so much inequality that the people have no food to eat and the kings keep going to war with neighboring countries, all in the name of compassion and righteousness. He better leaves now or I will eat his heart and liver for lunch!” The Confucian refused to leave. He told Dao Zhi: “The three highest qualities of a person are, first: strong body; second: intelligent, able to differentiate right and wrong; third: courage to make decision, able to rally for huge public support, and lead an army. I want to congratulate you for having all three qualities. Unfortunately, it is a pity that you choose to be a thug leader. If you agree, I will persuade the king to build a castle for you and make you a general of the king’s army. You don’t have to be a thug leader anymore.” Dao Zhi laughed and said: “If a person can be lured by personal benefits, he is as common as a common person. As for the castle you mentioned, can it be larger than the world I live in right now? The emperors in the past possessed the world. Where are their successors now and do they still possess the world? Everything in this world that has great benefit will have great danger at the same time. As a thug leader, the people I kill are limited. If I become a general of the king’s army, the people I kill, in the name of compassion and righteousness, will be countless and it will be a disaster to the world. What you told me today is the rubbish that I throw away long ago. It is so far away from the real truth!” The Confucian didn’t have ill intention to deceive anybody. He was just a dreamer who thought that he was awake and had clear conscience of what was morally right or wrong. He didn’t know there were great dangers hiding behind the definitions of right and wrong.  “Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.” They operate with the false belief that they can fix thing.

 

Zhuang Zi had a dream. He became a butterfly, flapping his wings and fly happily. He totally forgot that he was Zhuang Zi. He felt so real that he was a butterfly. After a while, he suddenly recalled there was a human named Zhuang Zi. He thought: “Whatever happened to Zhuang Zi? Am I not really a butterfly but a dreamy object of Zhuang Zi? Or Zhuang Zi was a dreamy object in my dream?” We feel we are real; we are so confident that we are alive in a physical world. But maybe we are just virtual characters in the dream of “ourselves” in another dimension. Everything we have (success, wealth, fame, relationship) are virtual; no matter how tight we grip it, all will be gone when we wake up. We felt so strongly that we know what is right and what is wrong, we are so serious with our lives; we make plans for our children thinking that those are perfect plans, and we expect to achieve certain goals. But in the end, we are wrong. Everything was just a dream. Life is a dream, but most people only know it is dream when they wake up. Don’t take life so seriously. Don’t be a perfectionist. Have fun, enjoy your time in the dream, and go on an adventure. Don’t worry; when you get out of the dream; you become the real you again. The real you could be nothing or something. But, what difference does it make? You can’t change the real you from the dream. Even if you can do something, how do you or anybody knows what kind of change is perfect? You may as well relax and enjoy the ride.

 

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To be a great leader, one must be selfless, in order to receive the greatest selfishness. For all common people, we should be selfish, to love ourselves, our families, our friends, more than anybody else. Being selfish doesn’t mean making our neighbors unhappy; otherwise our neighbors will also make us unhappy, and it will be counterproductive to our self-interest of being happy. Anybody who tells us to be selfless is actually selfish (because he has some selfish purposes); he is the same like us who want the leader to be selfless. Hypocritical politicians are selfish but have no courage to admit it but pretend to be selfless. A truly selfless leader would want the people to be selfish, because he wants nothing from us but for us to live our lives to the fullest. A great leader would prioritize the interests of the people. He will be happiest when the people are happy. (先天下之忧而忧，后天下之乐而乐。) To be a leader, he must be humble. To be in the leading role, he must leave his self-interest behind the interests of the people (because he has very little desires). Hence, the people are not worry to let him lead the way, and don’t feel burden with him on top. Everybody wants him to be the leader. Because he doesn’t compete with the people, nobody wants to compete with him for the leadership role. (是以圣人之欲上民也，必以其言下之。其欲先民也，必以其身後之。故居前而民弗害也，居上而民弗重也，天下乐推而弗猒也。非以其无争与，故天下莫能与争。)

 

In Chinese tradition, the Emperor has no private life (天子无私事), because his private matters are the public matters. His conducts can affect the life and death of the people because his government monopolizes the use of forces. The public have the rights to know his every move, at least conceptually, including which woman he sleeps with each night, which prince he wishes to appoint as the heir, and how much money he has. The government declare publicly the principle that the Emperor must be morally upright and totally transparent (正大光明). It implies that the Emperor should be worried about losing his legitimacy if he breaks the moral codes. Although the principle was simply ignored by the Emperor and his government during the decaying period of each dynasty, it was better than the silence on moral codes of some Western governments. The silence was deafening when the autocratic Kings did some of the most ridiculous things in the world history without any restraint. Even in today’s democratic countries, politicians follow the principle of “survival of the fittest”; defeating the rivals and cheating the people are legitimate so long as the evidence of violating the laws cannot be proven. It is a game of “don’t get caught” in the name of rule-of-law. The people don’t see there is anything wrong for the fittest to defeat the weak; the weak people only have themselves to blame for being weak. Everybody will try to avoid punishments but not feel ashamed to break the laws.

 

Shakyamuni Buddha said: “Health is the greatest gift. Contentment is the greatest wealth. Faithfulness is the best relationship.” Lao Zi said: “When the world is peaceful, horses are used in farming operations. When the world is in chaos, horses give birth in the remote war zones. The greatest sin is no greater than greedy for benefits. The greatest crisis is no greater than not contented with life. The greatest trouble is no worse than desire to obtain ambitious success, wealth and fame. Therefore, the satisfaction of contentment is the real satisfaction.” (天下有道，却走马以粪；天下无道，戎马生于郊。罪莫大于可欲，祸莫大于不知足，咎莫大于欲得。故知足之足，恒足矣。) The greedy desires of the leader and followers can cause chaos. Everybody including animals will suffer. If the people see that health is the greatest gift, they will not want too much development which will be detrimental to their health, physically and mentally. If the people see that contentment is the greatest wealth, they will not want anything to be promised by the leader. If the people see that faithfulness is the best relationship, they will greatly value their family time.

 

Why do people want to become rich and successful? It is because they have a big “bowl-of-desire” in their minds which disable them from feeling satisfied until and unless the “bowl” is fully filled up. The sufferings that they go through in life are all self-inflicted (咎由自取). If you cut down the size of the “bowl”, then it can be filled up quickly. The solution is so simple but very few have the intelligent to do it. You are rich and successful when you really feel satisfied with yourself regardless of how little money you have. Unfortunately, you will not be able to apply the solution if you fear too much about what other people think. When you have the uncommon mental toughness to resist the influence and common thinking of the mass of common people, you will feel contented and happy instead of envying the “hungry ghosts” who must consume much more to relieve their hunger and quench their thirst. You can be poor but happy (贫而乐) and not miserable (贫而不穷). Some people are rich but miserable (穷) because the only thing they have is money but nothing else.

 

It is almost a parody when someone makes a big bottle himself and then feels sad and keeps complaining about not being able to fill up the bottle with water for days when a small cup is enough to quench his thirst. When asked why he keeps enlarging the bottle every day, he replied: “Everybody says a bigger bottle is better.” A few days later, the bottle breaks and he hasn’t drank a single sip. It is another parody when a clever guy named “right” and another named “wrong” keep chasing each other in a circle when an intelligent master sit quietly at the center enjoying the clownish performance of the two clever guys who keep arguing about who is cleverer.

 

A man keeps slapping his face. He dislikes the pain but somehow likes the feeling after the pain subsided. When asked why he keeps hurting himself, he replied: “It is easier said than done. I want to stop but I just can’t do it.” Some people like to do the wrong thing to hurt themselves physically and mentally, causing them to feel fear, sad or angry. They refuse to stop but give excuses such as it is hard to stop.

 

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Win or lose in an argument or competition, what difference does it makes? The truth is your mental health will be negatively affected regardless of whether you win or lose. The winner doesn’t necessarily hold the truth; he is only skillful in debating. Winning makes him more arrogant and drifts further away from the truth. The loser may hold the truth but not skillful in debating. The defeat in the argument may cause self-doubt and make him drifts away from the truth. You should be contented with being not-wrong; being not-right is OK. You are intelligent to not compete merely for the sake of determining who is cleverer. If you don’t compete with anyone, no one can compete with you.

 

In all cases, debating is never about finding the truth. It is about which side you take and you argue for your side even if you don’t agree with your side of the story or your own arguments. It is about doing everything it takes to defeat the opponent. The end finds its way to justify the means. The victor assumes he has the truth and demands everybody to agree with him. It is really unwise to engage in a debate; you always lose regardless of winning or losing in the debate. The truth is above the winner of the debate (事实胜于雄辩).

 

Hui Shi (惠施) was very good at debating. He debated with many people in his life. He liked the sense of achievement in winning. Every time he felt exhausted after a debate, he would rest under a giant tree. One day, while resting under the tree, he suddenly got the enlightenment on the truth of not debating. From then on, he stopped wasting his energy to debate with anyone again. The giant tree never engaged in competition but concentrate on growing up to a gigantic size. Winning is losing if it is detrimental to you, physically and mentally. Right is wrong if it creates chaos.

 

A student asked his teacher: “Do you know the ideal method to learn the truth of all things in this world?” The teacher said: “I don’t know”. The student asked: “Do you know how many things that you don’t know?” The teacher said: “I don’t know”. The student asked: “Is there no method to learn the truth of all things in this world?” The teacher said: “I don’t know”. The student was disappointed. The teacher said: “Why should you be disappointed? How do you know that I actually “don’t know” when I said I “know”? How do you know that I actually “know” when I said I “don’t know”?” The student seemed to understand something. The teacher continued to say: “Let me ask you. A person who sleeps in a wet place will get Arthritis. Will it happen to mudfish? A person who lives on a tree will feel afraid of falling. Will it happen to monkey? Human, mudfish and monkey live in different environments. Who knows which environment is the ideal? Human like to eat meats, deer like to eat grass, centipedes like to eat snakes, and crows like to eat mice. The tastes of the four animals are different. Who knows which taste is the ideal?” When someone says he knows something, he may not actually know it. There are different things which are ideal for different people or animals. It is not necessary to define one standard for everybody, or argue which is right and which is wrong. A diverse of things can be not right and not wrong at the same time. Different people can have different tastes, and that’s OK. Don’t pretend that you are cleverer and want to force everybody to agree with you.

 

The tastes of politicians, businessmen, teachers, and different people are different. Who knows which taste is the ideal? The ideal environments for government and business are different. Businesses are selfish entities or profit centered and the bosses always live in fear of making losses. Government should only provide services to facilitate the people and it should have no consideration about its profit or loss. Government should work like a horse or a cow; and the people should continue to whip it regardless of whether it is a good or bad horse/cow.

 

There is a difference between intelligent and clever. An intelligent person will not play with fire because he knows the danger of fire. A clever person enhances his skill to play with fire and therefore ignorant of the danger of fire. Don’t force yourself to be clever, so that you don’t have to compete with anyone. Don’t give high regard to honor or any precious thing, so that you are not lured to become a thief or a fraudster. Don’t see anything as desirable, so that your emotion is not restless. (不上贤，使民不争；不贵难得之货，使民不为盗；不见可欲，使民不乱。)

 

If Shakyamuni Buddha is the head of state, he would not want clever devil in his court, so that the people don’t compete to become clever devils. He would not give high regard to excessively refined things. He would lead by example so that the court and the people would not give high regard to excessively refined things, therefore are not lured to steal. He will not show there is anything desirable to be in his court, so that the people’s minds are not restless. He will keep his mind empty to learn new knowledge, eat to live, weaken his ambition, and strengthen his determination. He will continue to educate the people not to be clever devils and not to have excessive desires. He will teach the people to be wary of the uselessness of cleverness, precious things and excessive desires therefore don’t want those things. The state will therefore be peaceful. (不上贤，使民不争；不贵难得之货，使民不为盗；不见可欲，使民不乱。 是以圣人之治也，虚其心、实其腹、弱其志、强其骨，恒使民无知、无欲也；使夫知不敢弗为而已，则无不治矣。) Leadership by example is very important.

 

Highly intelligent individuals (like Buddha, Confucius, and Lao Zi) have no desire. There is nothing they can’t live without other than the basic needs. If you want to elect a great leader, you must choose a highly intelligent person, who has no desire so that he is truly selfless. A person who has a lot of desire cannot be truly selfless. It is a symptom of low intelligent (although he may be very clever); therefore, he doesn’t have the leadership quality and doesn’t deserve to be your leader.

 

There was a boy seeking refuge in a foreign land. He was begging on the street, suffering from hunger and cold every day. One day, a rich man took him home and loved him like his son. When the boy grew up, he murdered the rich man in order to possess the wealth. Being rich is a curse. Rich men often need to hire bodyguards to protect them and their family members. However, they still don’t feel safe because they have not only external enemies but also enemies within. Many emperors and kings were murdered by their heirs or other children. The heirs then killed their brothers and other family members because of fear of being murdered. Sometime the new kings were murdered by their relatives or ministers. Teaching the people to be clever is very dangerous; they will heed the advice and out-clever the teacher. Teaching the people to desire for success, wealth and fame is very dangerous; they will heed the advice and do everything they can to get the honors. Teaching the people to desire to become government leaders is very dangerous; they will heed the advice and seek the power to meddle with the lives of the people, regardless of whether we like it or not, all in the name of compassion and righteousness (aka race and religion), and development, but they are actually making the people miserable for the self-serving purpose of collecting the honors. If politicians become rich and powerful, they are not as selfless as they want us to believe. They only want us to be selfless in helping them to collect the honors; they claim everything good is due to their contributions to the state, and everything bad is due to the people or someone else. I wish we can have a truly selfless Artificial Intelligence (which is intelligent 睿智, no desire 无欲, don’t compete with the people 不争, love the people 慈and love the Mother Earth by being thrifty 俭) as our head of state in the future. Good leaders who are selfless are so rare, and after they die, the darkness will return. Computerize Artificial Intelligence (人工智能) may be better than human Artificial Cleverness (假聪明), in this case.

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The school and the society always teach us to study/work hard so that we can become successful, rich and famous. It gives us the impression that anything less means we don’t have a life worth living. We are told that we will have no job if we are unable to provide more values than Artificial Intelligence (AI); hence, the academic pressure and economic pressure. Our parents and teachers/bosses would love us more if we perform better and lesser otherwise. We learn that honor is everything, anything else is a disgrace.

 

I always tell my children not to think about competing with anyone but themselves. Learn to become a better self than yesterday. Learn as they should, to become intelligent. The purpose of learning must be for the well-being of us, and not for the benefit of anyone else. Spiritual and mental improvement is like making the inner-self more beautiful/healthy, the same way we eat well and exercise to make the external-self more beautiful/healthy. Unfortunately, the school and the society still manage to brainwash them, make them want to compete with classmates although they don’t like the stress which comes with it, because they see honor as a precious thing. They like the praise and the special attention. The classmates also see honor as a precious thing, but they feel envy because they couldn’t get it although they also experience the stress of the competition. They hate the negative notions about them. The desire for honor and the disappointment created a negative impact to their mental health.

 

Many people want precious things (success, wealth, and fame) but dislike the amount of efforts they need to put in. The society measure the worth of a person based on the precious things he has. The end justifies the mean. Hence, the never-ending scams, cronyism, nepotism, and corruption. How is competing for honor a good thing? Although the school also teach morals and ethics, but actions speak louder than words. The worst get on top, instead of people with high morals and ethics. People love morals and ethics in words rather than deeds. Hence, morals and ethics become nothing but tools to rally for support.

 

Killing and stealing are the greatest crimes. If you kill a person, the government will use force to take away your life. If you steal a cow, the government will use force to put you in jail. When a leader kills a million civilians and steal a country, in the name of morals and ethics (or race and religion), he becomes a king and he can proudly tell his children and grandchildren about the killing and stealing. The future generations will visit his shrine and remember him as a hero.

 

A thug leader, Dao Zhi (盗跖), has many followers because he has morals and ethics. His prior homework and intelligence enables him to predict the wealth and its location within a house. His courage to enter the house first is an inspiration. After the heist, he is the last one to leave so that his followers can flee safely; he shows great brotherhood righteousness. He has the intelligence to make the right decision on the time and place to make the heist. After each job, he has the compassion to divide the heist equally with his followers. If he didn’t have the morals of knowledge, courage, righteous, intelligent and compassion, he wouldn’t have so many followers and he wouldn’t become a big thug leader. He would be just a small thief. The morals and ethics he learned from school make him a great leader.

 

Morals and ethics are not necessarily good. The man-made division of “good” and “bad” is inaccurate and unreliable. In reality, they are just tools which can be useful as much as harmful to the society.

 

An expert was hired by a king to train a selected fighting cock. Ten days later, the king asked: “Is the cock ready to fight?” The trainer said: “Not yet. It is enthusiastic to fight on seeing other cocks.” After the next ten days, the king asked the same question again. The trainer said: “Not yet. It gets excited on seeing the shadows or hearing the sound of other cocks.” After another ten days, the question came again. The trainer said: “Not yet. It often puts on an angry look because of overconfidence with its fighting power.” After another ten days, the king came to visit. The trainer said: “It is ready. It has no more response to the sound of other cocks. It looks like a wooden cock. His emotion is no longer influenced by the surrounding.” The king could not wait to send the cock for a fighting match. Other cocks were frightened off on seeing its static posture. No other cock dared to challenge it for a fight.” A good leader must have a convincing and stable manner. The fine quality must come from a kind of philosophical-intelligent which makes him not influenced by desire for honors. He is confident but not eager to do something for the sake of honors. He doesn’t feel excited with the shadow of honors; not enthusiastic even when the prospect of honors is presented in front of his eyes. If a person loves honors so much, how do you know he doesn’t love money and fame? Could he be a self-serving person who would do anything and everything (including bad things) simply because he wants his medals (success, wealth, and fame) and not really for the benefit of the society?

 

If you don’t think of your self-interest when you do something, it doesn’t mean you won’t get it. Most of the time, you will still be rewarded although sometime it comes in a roundabout way. You don’t have to think about how good you did compare to others, so long as you have done your best. You will get what you deserve. It doesn’t matter whether you are the best or mediocre. Desire for honor will make you stressful, and depression is bad for health. It can cause the body’s hormone system to go haywire, and the whole body-functions become sluggish; it can even cause cancer. Competing for honor is a very unwise endeavor.

 

Whatever matter to you is you live your life happily. Honor is not essential. Most people can’t be successful, rich and famous. If honor is something you must have in order to make life meaningful, does that means most people should be ashamed to live? The advocacy by the school and the society to make people compete for honor is clearly a misguided dogma. Unfortunately, you can’t change how people think, but you can change yourself. You can choose not to be insane in an insane world. You are intelligent if you know not only the usefulness of being useful, but also the usefulness of being useless. You are intelligent if you can see that honor and humiliation are one; honor and humiliation are manmade binary division; honor cannot exist without humiliation; if you adopt the binary division, your emotion will be negatively affected by humiliation as well as honor; if you want honor, you must be prepared to receive humiliation.

 

When Hui Shi (惠施) became the chief minister of Wei state, Zhuang Zi went to visit him. Someone told Hui Shi: “Zhuang Zi may be pretending to visit you but his real intention is to impress the king with his knowledge and replace you as the chief minister.” When Hui Shi met Zhuang Zi, he asked: “What is your hidden agenda to visit me?” Zhuang Zi said: “In the Southern area, there is an extraordinary type of bird which looks like the phoenix. When it flies from the Southern sea to the Northern Sea, it will not rest if there isn’t a phoenix tree although the journey is very long. It will not eat anything but bamboo shoots. It will not drink unless there is a mountain spring. One day, it flies over a crow which is eating a dead mouse. The crow is afraid that the phoenix will steal the dead mouse, so it “yells” to chase away the phoenix. Are you trying to “yell” at me like the crow?” Honor is precious to some people, but to a person with high spiritual intelligence, it is undesirable like the dead mouse.

 

Honor is not a good thing to have, although it is also not a bad thing. Why stress yourself to compete with others for this junk? You win, so what? You have so many medals at home that you struggle to find enough space to display them, you don’t have enough space for yourself, and you feel so painful that you have to throw away the medals or hide them in a non-obstructing place. Rare things are not necessarily precious things. Diamond is considered precious simply because people condition their mind to see it as precious. Bitcoin is considered precious simply because some people condition their mind to see it as precious; therefore they push the price up, to satisfy themselves and to validate their view. They make it happens to see what they wanted to see, i.e. the price keeps going up, until it doesn’t. Most people only like to hear what they wanted to hear, and see what they wanted to see. In the end, the greater fools will be left to hold the bags.

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You can feel pain through your sensory and interpretation system. That means external factors can make you unhappy. You need to defend yourself from those external factors. If you know how to build a good fortress, it cannot be destroyed by enemy. If you know how to hug, the people you love will not leave (善建者不拔 善抱者不脱). The fortress cannot be destroyed because no one comes to destroy it, because you don’t make enemy with anyone or you don’t make yourself the obvious/easy target. The people you love will not leave because you don’t hug them too tight and you love them, so they don’t want to leave. Hence, the best defense is no need for defensive effort. But you need a backup plan. You need to build fortress; you need to choose carefully who to befriend with. You need to love the people who deserve your love, so that you become deserving of their love. Sometime, you are not loved because they don’t want your love or they don’t think you are lovely; they may have different tastes. You will not feel hurt if you don’t have the desire for their love.

 

The principles to govern a country are not much different from the ways to govern your family and yourself. Your body is like a solar system (小周天) with orbiting planets; your family is like the Milky-Way galaxy with billions of stars; the country is like the Universe with countless of galaxies. The atom is a nucleus with orbiting electrons.

 

A disciple of Confucius asked the master about the principles of governing a country. Confucius said: “You only need three things: enough food, enough military defenses, and the people’s trust.” The disciple asked: “If we have no choice but to forego one element, what should we forego first?” Confucius replied: “Forego the military defenses.” The disciple asked again: “If we have no choice but to forego another element, what should we forego next?” Confucius replied: “Forego the food. From ancient time until today, nobody lives forever. If a country loses the people’s trust, it will cease to exist.” (子贡问政。子曰：足食，足兵，民信之矣。子贡曰：必不得已而去，于斯三者何先？曰去兵。子贡曰：必不得已而去。于斯二者何先？曰：去食。自古皆有死，民无信不立。) Surrender and accept unfair peace treaty if you have no choice; don’t ask the people to sacrifice for the country. The people will voluntarily sacrifice themselves for their families and countries if they trust that the government is acting for their best interest. Pay the reparations to the invaders if you have no choice. The only thing you cannot lose is the people’s trust that you are sincere in protecting them although you fail to do it. On a personal level, you need to defend yourself, physically and mentally. You can be financially poor, but you must never lose your integrity and self-respect.

 

In the modern life, you will face tough time again and again, which are related to sciences, mathematics, healthcare, economics and finance. You can enjoy the challenges better if you have the relevant knowledge and intelligence. You must not only focus on the philosophical-intelligence, unless you are living in a cave. You must never forget that all the things you learned are meant to be useful to yourself, spiritually and physically, first and foremost (古之学者为己，今之学者为人). You can then use your knowledge and intelligence to help others or to work for someone. It is perfectly OK to become a superhero if you have the power; or to become successful, rich and famous, so long as you don’t become a victim of your desire to be useful to others. Not only you might be troubled by fear, obligation, and guilt (F.O.G.) along the way (because you don’t want to get humiliations but honors), the reward itself can also be a burden, like putting on a lot of weight on your shoulder. You may also feel fear of losing the honor that you received. Receiving honor or humiliation can be as alarming as losing them. Honors and humiliations are one super-entity. (宠为上，辱为下；得之若惊，失之若惊，是谓宠辱若惊。) If you want honors, you will also receive humiliations (有成功必有失败).

 

If you have a higher purpose to do what you do because there is a big problem which threaten everyone including yourself, you can have no fear when you don’t see yourself as a divided or separate entity. The people and you become one. When you forget yourself (小我) because you focus on the greater self (大我), you will become selfless. A selfless you have no body, therefore no fear of getting anything, neither honor nor humiliation. (何谓贵大患若身﹖ 吾所以有大患者，为吾有身；及吾无身，吾有何患﹖) Selflessness is the greatest selfishness (大私无私). A mother may go back into a burning house to save her daughter, because she and her child become one combined self; she considers her daughter as part of herself. The mother becomes selfless, to save her child, because she forgets herself. But she is actually selfish; she won’t do the same for other children. The emotional attachment is like an invisible rope which ties her to her child; the two entities become one super-entity. Nevertheless, it is a great selfishness.

 

It feels so good to have the philosophical-intelligence which makes your heart so strong like it is shielded by “golden bell” (金钟罩) and “iron cloth” (铁布纱). It feels so good to have the knowledge and intelligence which enable you to solve problems easily. You feel like you have a lot of energy, like the potential energy which builds up as you climb up a mountain. Having a lot of power doesn’t mean you have to use all of them. You don’t have to jump down from the mountain to convert all the potential energy into kinetic energy. Having a lot of power means you can use it for your wellbeing and also to help others, like a superhero. It feels so good to have the capacity to help others. Conversely, it will not be a good feeling to always need helps from a superhero or anyone else. A superhero can save a few people but he cannot save everybody. Nevertheless, he will not feel sad for his shortcoming, otherwise he would have died of broken-heart or depression a long time ago. Storm cannot continue for a very long time. Even the Mother Nature has a limit, so the limit of man and superman will naturally be much lower. (飘风不终朝，暴雨不终日。孰为此？天地而弗能久，又况于人乎！) In tempestuous seasons, when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again. Tyranny cannot last for a very long time either. Even if you are useless, light will return after the darkness goes away. It happens every single day. Spring will return after winter. It happens every single year. Who said humans are not born to experience sufferings in this world? No, you don’t have to become someone like Batman or Wonder Woman, but you don’t have to become a victim either.

 

Some people ask: “What is the point of learning if you never want to use it or have the chance to use it?” You learn martial art for physical health and to be able to defend yourself, but not looking to fight or compete. To use martial art in MMA (Mixed Martial Art) fighting competitions, you must train extremely hard and be ready to get hurt badly, and humiliated many times. If you eventually become a champion, you will still be hurt in every fight, physically and mentally. You will continuously be challenged by stronger fighters who desire to take the title away from you. What is the point of competing? Shaolin monks learn Wushu but hope they never need to use it. Wushu is more about avoiding conflict than about fighting. Reading books is for you to talk to bullies courteously. Learning Wushu is for bullies to talk to you courteously. If you are provoked or challenged, you should run if you can. Use your brain to win, not your fists. Winning is about maximizing your benefits and minimizing your losses, not about defeating anybody. Fighting a hundred times and defeating the enemies a hundred times is not the best strategy. Winning without fighting is the best, as suggested by Sun Zi. Having powerful weapons is about avoiding conflict than to use them in a war. Lao Zi (The Ancient One) said: “The courage to dare defying Dao will get you killed. The courage to dare-not defying Dao will keep you alive. These two types of courage, one will bring benefit while the other will bring disaster. The things that the Nature hates, nobody knows what the reasons are. The Laws of the Nature are: never fight but always good at winning, never say a word but always good at responding, never called upon but always come as it wishes, simple but always good at planning. The net of the Nature is extraordinarily wide; there are many loopholes but It never fails to capture anything.” (勇于敢则杀，勇于不敢则活。此两者，或利或害。天之所恶，孰知其故？天之道，不争而善胜，不言而善应，不召而自来，繟然而善谋。天网恢恢，疏而不失。) The greatest courage is cowardice (大勇若怯); it takes great mental toughness and discipline to have the courage to be cowardice. Most people only know the courage to dare for a fight. Very few know the courage to step aside; stay alive for a greater purpose rather than lose your life over a small quarrel. When you engage in a fight, nobody knows who will lose. If you learn the Laws of the Nature, you will focus on winning rather than fighting, responding with actions rather than arguing, make your preferred moves rather than agreeing to fight in the ring, make a good plan which can be simple. Those who defy Dao will fail more often than winning. You can be a winner in your own right without becoming a MMA champion. Winning in a MMA competition may be a lost to one’s life; you have no life if you are not happy. There can be only one champion, so all other MMA fighters will be the losers. That means you will lose regardless of whether you win or lose in the competition; it is very unwise. You are just the entertainment of the crowd. The sense of achievement is no greater than winning a computer game but the price to pay is extremely expensive.

 

Sun Zi said: “One who doesn’t completely understand the risks of a war will not be able to completely understand the benefits of a war.” (不尽知用兵之害者，则不能尽知用兵之利。) When you make a decision for any undertaking, you must first understand completely the risks involved; and you must not proceed if the consequences of the failure will be overwhelming. Sun Zi also said: “The winners usually engage in a battle after gaining all the advantageous conditions to win. The losers usually engage in a battle and then hope to win.” (胜兵先胜而后求战，败兵先战而后求胜。) Most people are impatient and yet they think they can win; the attribute of impatient itself is already one of the disadvantageous conditions. They want to do something for the sake of doing something, or they think they ought to do something. They think cowardice is a shame and one ought to feel ashamed for being careful and dare not do anything. Their wrong solutions usually create more problems or side-effects than the original problem that they wanted to solve.

 

Learn to have spiritual intelligence and also cognitive intelligent (智). Cognitive intelligence will enhance spiritual intelligence, and vice versa. Be like the sea, accept all knowledge and don’t divide them into good and bad. Simple division of good and bad (色/有名) is flaw; it is better to keep a flexible nameless (空/无名) classification which encompasses (包容) both good and bad, and everything in between. With the intelligence to understand the significance of nameless classification of things, you will not reject any knowledge but accept all knowledge; and you will become more intelligent. You can use the knowledge without becoming confused or limited by the knowledge. The purpose of intelligence is to be useful to yourself. Knowledge will increase every day, but intelligence means relying less on anything every day; intelligence can create new knowledge, therefore no need to rely on knowledge anymore when you have achieved enlightenment. You will not need to rely on anything when you have no desire (无欲). With no desire, you will not engage in competition (不争) and your emotion will not be restless. You will automatically be a nonviolent person and have a lot of capacity to love others (慈). When you abandon all desires, you will be able to abandon all emotional attachments, and you will have no more suffering. You will have no fear, obligation, and guilt (F.O.G.) (无患). You will be happy because your heart is full of loves.

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Choosing to be happy is a choice; choosing to be unhappy is also a choice. Choosing to be judgmental is a choice; choosing to be not judgmental is also a choice. If we were to choose one of the choices, we have to judge or decide the better choice to take. That means we will be judgmental even if we choose to be not judgmental (不辨即是辨). The question is: do we have to choose between the two choices? The answer is: if we never get into the position to choose, we don’t really have to choose. (If we don’t have to take an examination, we don’t have to answer any question in the examination paper. If we don’t get into the position to choose whether to live or to die, we don’t really have to choose whether living is better than dying.) If the desire to choose a stand is not stirred up in our heart, we will not start to debate about the choices (不生辨别之心). Thinking too much can be detrimental to our mental health. Stop thinking and start living. We will be happier if we don’t have to make too many choices.

 

If we keep looking for differences, we will never find the parallels or common grounds. As a rule of practice, try not to judge what is right and what is wrong when there is no necessity for a decision to be made. When we have to make a decision, to do this or to do that, then of course we have to judge or decide the better action to take. Don’t be limited by rules. Rules are meant to be broken; yet the rules need to be made (勿被法轉心，執空即頑空). Having no rules at all can make us bewilder, but strongly upholding the rules can make us brainless (不生知見法不明，若生知見障心靈). If we hold strongly the stand that no rules should ever be made, that means the rule of “having no rules at all” should also be abolished.

 

The Buddha has had a struggle to teach the devotees not to have adoration or veneration toward anybody including the Buddha. Needless to say, we must not have adoration or veneration toward any rules. We must not assume any law, theory or method is right (or wrong) in all time and space; we must not simply divide them into right and wrong. All the deductions with our brains are false delusions (诸法空相). To gain insight on the subtleness of Dao (ultimate truth), we must not have the desire to divide the reality. On the other hand, we may need to adopt certain perception for different scenarios in order to see the form or boundary of certain manifestations of Dao (故恒无欲也，以观其眇；恒有欲也，以观其所徼). Do make the necessary distinction when the need arises, as a temporary measure, so long as we don’t become the victims of our desire to divide the reality and burden us with fear, obligation and guilt (F.O.G.), which then lead to sadness and anger. We can classify something as dirty or clean. If we like clean too much, we will hate dirty, which is detrimental to our mental health, although our original intention is to attain physical health. Poor mental health can be detrimental to physical health. Dirty is temporary since we can clean up later, or we can leave the dirty place later. We can classify someone as good or bad. But there is good in a bad person, and there is bad in a good person. If we insist on absolute good, we will have to live in a cave. Alternatively, we can apply more cautions when there is a “bad” person around, and less cautions when there is a “good” person around. “Bad” person who doesn’t kill us will make us stronger. “Good” person can let us enjoy some peaceful time but he can also make us become complacent or ignorant of the hidden danger (i.e. not mindful). If we are so naïve to say “good is bad, bad is good, good and bad are one, so we shouldn’t differentiate good and bad”, therefore we don’t run away from a tiger, we will be dead. A tiger may not become aggressive immediately upon seeing a human, but it can kill for no obvious reason, more so when it is hungry. To fear or not to fear, that is the question. There is good and bad in the fear itself. Fear is a natural and essential mechanism to keep us out of trouble. But too much of it can kill us. We fear to go to Hell, or to be reborn as animal or human to experience the cycle of life and suffering again, therefore we do what we are told and refrain from committing any sin. We are already in Hell when we are suffering emotionally or physically. We are already in Heaven when we are happy. If we believe in contentment, we wouldn’t be greedy to stay alive in this world forever.

 

A professor asked a monk to show him what Heaven and Hell were. The monk scolded him with all possible demeaning words. The professor got so angry. He picked up a stick and wanted to beat up the monk whom he respected so much before the incident. The monk said: “Didn’t you want me to show you what Hell is? You were in Hell just now when you were angry. The world suddenly looked so ugly.” The professor realized his mistake and return to calm. The monk said: “You are back to Heaven. The world suddenly looks beautiful again.” We are already in Heaven. We don’t have to look around to find the path to Heaven. There is no path to Heaven. Heaven is the path; we just have to keep staying on the Heaven instead of detouring to Hell from time to time.

 

We have a new life every day. When we sleep, our senses are shut down and we feel nothing, like a dead person. Nobody loves to sleep, but the satisfying feeling upon waking up after a long hour of sleep. We are reborn every day. We are already in the cycle of birth and death, or eternal recurrence, or reincarnation. If we don’t learn to be happy, we put ourselves in a vicious cycle; reborn in Hell every day. If we are happy every day, we are reborn in Heaven every day; we want to stay awake as long as we can. It is our choice, not someone else’s discretion. The world may change, but we can choose not to be emotionally affected by external changes.

 

No desire (无欲) is the fundamental principle. Having desire (有欲) is useful, but not necessarily good or bad (无为本 有为用). If I desire to have no desire (我欲无欲), that means I still have desire. The use is I can slowly forget myself (忘我); then I will have no body (无身), therefore no emotion, and finally achieve the abandonment of desire (绝对无欲). When we reach our destination, we don’t need any more muscle energy; when we reach the state of no desire, we don’t need any more desire. But in order to live, I need to eat and exercise (虚其心 实其腹 弱其志 强其骨); therefore I can only minimize my desire (寡欲). Totally no desire means I will forget to live (涅磐). I am not sure whether that is good or bad; there is no good or bad. Having no desire is to leave this world (出世), or rise above the worldly world (超越世俗). Having desire is to stay in this world (入世). We must learn to live in this world before we try to learn about the afterlife world (未能事人 焉能事鬼 未知生 焉知死). We can learn about afterlife when the time comes, i.e. after we die. If a person doesn’t know how to make people happy, how can he possibly know how to make gods/ghosts happy? Be brave and strong to face it if indeed there is eternal recurrence (or reincarnation) and afterlife (Heaven and Hell).

 

Someone said: “I don’t think there is any opinion that I can accept as the truth (执于空).” Shakyamuni Buddha said: “If that is the case, does that mean the opinion you just said is also not the truth? You seem to contradict yourself. If a person does not grip strongly on a thought, he will not end up arguing with others about the thought. When the thought is criticized, he will not feel agitated and want to start a debate.” When we say nothing is absolutely right and nothing is absolutely wrong, it doesn’t mean we should listen to no one. What is not-right doesn’t mean it is useless; what is not-wrong doesn’t mean it is useful. We should accept everything which is not-right and not-wrong, like the sea which accept everything. Seek common grounds while reserving differences, or unity in diversity (存异求同). Confucius said: “A gentleman would seek harmony and not insist on unity; despicable person would seek unity and not satisfied with harmony (君子和而不同，小人同而不和).” When we hear something which we want to hear, the words are pleasing to our ears (顺耳). When we are able to listen to different opinions, our ears are pleasing to the words or people who want to offer ideas to us (耳顺). Dividing the opinions into right and wrong should be avoided. We should have a calm demeanor, peace of mind, and not easily swayed into emotional states when faced with points of view that run counter to us. We should recognize that there are different ways of looking at different things depending on the context and perspectives. Ultimately, we want to have the intelligent to do what our hearts tell us to do, without violating the Dao (能从心所欲，不逾矩).

 

Don’t insist you are right (不执于我). Don’t insist a particular law is right (不执于法). Don’t insist that nothing is acceptable (不执于空). Not everything is wrong; they are just not-right and that’s OK.

 

You should not be afraid to die. You should not be afraid to live either. You will be happy to live if you live happily. Shakyamuni Buddha (The All-Knowing One) said: “There is no path to happiness. Happiness is the path.” You don’t have to look everywhere to find the path to happiness. You can be happy now because your heart is in your body; you can’t take out your heart and ask someone else to make your heart happy. If you choose to be happy now, you are already on the path of happiness, and continue to be on the happiness-path.

 

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Hui Shi (惠施) told Zhuang Zi: “The king gave me a special seed of bottle gourd. I planted it and got many extremely huge bottle gourds. However, the wall is weak and it breaks easily when I fill it with water. Therefore, it is useless although it is extremely big.” Zhuang Zi said: “It is a pity that you don’t know how to use a big thing. Why don’t you put a few bottle gourds in a big net and tie them around your waist as a float? You can then enjoy floating on the water surface. Why do you have to use it to store water?” Sometime you thought something is useless, but it is simply because you don’t know how to use it.

 

There was a famous fortune teller who can tell the fortune and disaster, life and death, by just a look at the person’s face. Many people avoided him because they fear to know their impending disaster or death from the fortuneteller. Lie Zi (列子) was amazed by the wizardry and he thought his master was not as skillful as the fortuneteller. His master said: “What I’ve taught you are the superficial elementary things. I haven’t taught you how to control your true feeling inside your heart. When you use superficial intelligent to interact with people, your emotion is easily read by people. Bring the fortuneteller and I will test his wizardry.” After meeting the master, the fortune teller told Lie Zi: “Bad news. Your master is going to die in less than 10 days. I saw black cloud over his face.” Lie Zi was alarmed and quickly tell his master the bad news. The master said: “Just now, I showed him more Yin than Yang, hence my face looked covered with black cloud. What he saw was my physical appearance after I hide the lively energy. Of course, he thought I am going to die soon. You may ask him to look at me again.” After the second look, the fortune teller said: “I saw his lively energy starting to emerge. He has great chance to survive.” The master told Lie Zi: “I showed him more Yang than Yin this time, hence my face looked livelier. Ask him to take a look again.” After the third look, the fortune teller was scared and said: “Your master’s face changes all the time. I can’t tell his future.” The master showed his face for the fourth time. In one look, the fortuneteller was totally terrified and ran away. He ran so fast that Lie Zi was unable to bring him back to see the master. At that point, Lie Zi finally realized he hadn’t learned much from the master. He went back home. He cooked and home-farming for three years, paying no attention to what happened in the outside world. He managed to unlearn all the doctrines ingrained in his mind, and return to purity of the heart. He was then able to remain equanimity and not disturbed by the surrounding. Everything is useful. It is a matter of how you use it. Emotions shown on the face can be useful too, for certain purposes, although your heart remain calm at all time. Facial emotions need not be associated to your true feeling in the heart. In other words, a fortune teller can be misled by facial emotion (色); sensing someone’s emotions by looking at his face can be inaccurate and misleading.

 

A family in the state of Song had a special cream to protect the skin from cracking during winter. The family used the cream for generations in cloth bleaching business. One day, a guy offered a hundred pieces of gold coins to buy the formula. He then gave it to the king of the state of Wu, and told him the military usage of the cream. The king waged a war against the state of Yue during winter. The soldiers of Wu were protected by the cream, but not the soldiers of Yue. Hence, the state of Yue was conquered. The guy who gave the formula to the king of Wu was heavily rewarded with a piece of land, a big amount of gold, and a very high social status. The family of Song only knew the limited usage of the formula, so they could only use it for family business. The clever guy expanded the usage and became hugely successful. But the use of usefulness is not necessarily a good thing; of course it is also not necessarily a bad thing.

 

Hui Shi told Zhuang Zi: “I have a very big tree, but it is useless. It grows by the roadside, but no carpenter cares to even look at it. Your philosophy is like the tree; it is very big but useless. Who would ever use it?” Zhuang Zi said: “Have you ever seen the fox and wild cat? They use their agility to sprint and hop, and manage to hunt for food. But they both die in a trap. A yak is extremely big, but it cannot catch mice. You have this very big tree but you are concern that it is useless. Why not you plant it at a garden? You can then rest under the tree. The tree is useless, naturally no one will chop it down and you don’t have to worry about it.” Being useless to others can be useful; the big tree and big yak are useless in one way but useful in another way. The fox and wild cat have great skill, but using the skill too often will bring disaster. You may not get hurt now using your cleverness to play with fire until one day in the future when you regret that you go too far. Learning something useful in order to use it may not always be good.

 

Nothing is absolutely right and nothing is absolutely wrong, but a diverse of things can be not-wrong at the same time, and a diverse of things can be not-right at the same time. All the laws, theories and methods have some inherent limitations. There are things that we can see, hear, smell, taste, touch and deduce with our brain (六识). We may then classify the thing as beautiful or ugly, musical or noisy, fragrant or foul, delicious or yucky, smooth or rough, logical or illogical, big or small, long or short, good or bad, precious or cheap (色和有名). The recognitions of the different divisions happen in our brains, and thereafter create various emotional disturbances. The naming is given by us, i.e. our doing to the Nature, for our purposes. The naming is flaw and has a lot of limitations. Originally, the various things exist together harmoniously as one big entity with no name (空和无名), and there was no conflict. We apply our cleverness to divide them as if they are supposed to be divided. For example, a group of people were living together harmoniously. Someone starts to divide them into beautiful versus ugly, and causes conflicts (within the group of people and also the mind of the perpetrator). The manmade division was the problem. There is nothing abnormal with diversity in the natural world. Conversely, manmade unity or uniformity is unnatural. A cup made up of shaped ceramic and empty space at the center is one complete entity; the cup will cease to exist if we take away the ceramic or the empty space. Different colors or sizes of rocks will only be referred to as a pile of rocks. Rock type A and rock type B will be just rock, and make no difference if we never desire (欲) to know how many are type A and how many are type B. We can leave them alone with no name (空) although there are differences (色); nameless encompasses all the names, and each name is a member of the “nameless” family. The nameless things (meaning no differentiation made although there are differences) and the various things having different names are the same things; having differences don’t necessarily need to have different names. (空不异色 色不异空 空即是色 色即是空。) With no differentiation (i.e. no naming, no name-calling), we can love ugly as well as beautiful, love noise as well as music, love foul as well as fragrant, love yucky as well as delicious, love rough as well as smooth, love illogical as well as logical, love small as well as big, love short as well as long, love bad as well as good, love cheap as well as precious. They are divided and named differently because of our desire (欲) to divide them; but the simple division or over-simplification is flaw because of our limitations. We are making mistakes. At the beginning of the Heaven and Earth, everything has no name (无名 天地之始也). Life and death, young and old, clever and foolish, clean and dirty, more or less, right and wrong, and a myriad of definitions are born or come into existence (in our brains) as different classes because of our subjective bias (有名 万物之母也). We then start to prefer life and hate death, prefer young and hate old, prefer clever and hate foolish, prefer clean and hate dirty, prefer more and hate less, prefer right and hate wrong, prefer good and hate bad, prefer beautiful and hate ugly. We are so not intelligent to let our emotion be negatively affected by our own desire (欲) to see the reality as divided and make our own interpretations. If we never make division and the subsequent preference, we will see no difference between life and death; the border between life and death is like a door which we walk right through from one side to the other. We should just keep on walking like we do every day. Instead of naming one side as “life” and the other as “death”, why not we consider them as one extended road with no name (不生不灭)? Then, there will be no good reason to prefer “life” and hate “death” anymore; we can embrace life as well as death. We are probably still alive in another dimension (which we cannot see or comprehend) although we appear dead in this world; our dead body is just an appearance, like a footprint. We don’t know whether there is really another dimension; it doesn’t matter. But it matters to us if we feel fearful unnecessarily. Death is not scary. We must not fear to live, and we must not fear to die (不怕生 不怕灭). If we give up on our lives, it only means we fear to live. Live as well as we can (eat well, sleep well, do what we like, love our family) although we are not afraid to die. Buddha lived until 80-year old during the 6th to 4th century B.C. when there wasn’t scientific medicine.

 

Sometime we think some substances (foods, drugs or germs) are bad for health, and we start to feel fearful. The fact is, everything is bad for health if we consume too much. Nothing will kill us if the amount is well within the safe level; even poisons and nuclear radiations will not kill us. Sometime we think some actions or behaviors (in the past or present time) are bad for our future, and we start to feel fearful. Similarly, nothing will kill us if the amount is not too much. Our over-analyses are not real; the facts are real but the certainties of bad consequences are not real. To let fear robs us of our happiness is extremely unwise. According to the Heart Sutra (般若波羅蜜多心經), we must learn to have no worry (心无罣碍), therefore no fear (故无有恐怖), if we want to be happy. There is nothing we must do or mustn’t do. Of course, if you are sure of the consequence, then it is a matter of whether you are able, willing and ready to face it.

 

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Sometime you think you are happy being useful to others; but you are not really happy, because you have a lot of fears, obligations and guilt. You have no time for your family, because you pressure yourself to show better results every year like paying compounding interest to yourself (for example, you want to generate at least 6% rate of return better than last year, year after year, so that your investment will double in 12 years = 72/6), and you fear being considered useless. You are unhappy to be useless, but the opposite of useless will not bring you the opposite of unhappy. You are also unhappy to be useful. How can you be happy? Can you live with being neither happy nor unhappy? All manmade definitions are false. Similarly, the definitions of happy and unhappy (色) are also problematic. Unhappy is not necessarily the opposite of happy. Unhappy doesn’t necessarily mean the feeling is disturbed and not peaceful; it may only mean there is nothing to make you laugh, and that’s OK. It’s OK to be unhappy; it’s OK to be useless. Again, an open definition (空) is better. Unfortunately, an open definition means it cannot be described with words (道可道也 非恒道也). You can only feel it from experience.

 

Lie Zi (列子) learned self-levitation method from his master. A disciple wanted to learn the method. The disciple did all kinds of chores at the house of Lie Zi, but was never taught the self-levitation method. He was angry and went back home. A few months later, he came back to Lie Zi. He said: “I know I was too impatient and acted rashly.” Lie Zi said: “In the first three years of training under my master, I learned to stop thinking about right and wrong, and stop talking about benefit and risk, success and failure. Only then, my master started to look at me. Five years later, I achieved another mental level of not dividing right and wrong, benefit and risk. Only then, my master started to smile at me. Seven years later, I naturally didn’t think of right and wrong. My words naturally didn’t touch on benefit and risk, success and failure. Only then, my master let me sit with him. Nine years later, whatever I thought and said wouldn’t touch on right and wrong, benefit and risk. I felt no difference between my external self and inner self. I could hear with my eyes, smell with my ears, eat with my nose, and there was no difference. Thereafter, I could concentrate my mind and body so much so that I forgot myself, and my bones became weightless. Without my knowledge, my body started to levitate. I floated in the air, suddenly to the East and suddenly to the West. In the end, I didn’t know whether I rode the wind, or the wind rode on me. And you, my disciple, only know how to complain. The Chi of the Nature cannot accept any part of your body; therefore, your limbs cannot be lifted. How can you be levitated?” You must not let your five senses decide how you feel about the surrounding; you must filter the signals (色) which you received from the five senses and then decide what to do with the signals. Don’t be quick to judge right and wrong using fixed rules or threshold levels (above which are considered unacceptable). With the same signals, make different interpretations and decisions at different time and space according to the contexts.

 

The purpose of learning must be for your well-being, not for the benefit of the bosses or the country. You must learn as much as you can, but you don’t have to set a difficult target or to compete with anyone. You need the intelligence and knowledge to really feel and experience the wisdoms of life, not merely knowing and understanding them. A person who hears the wisdoms from a teacher can only follow others to believe in the teachings. A person who personally feels and experiences the wisdoms will not need to trust the words of anyone. You must not believe and grip strongly on any teaching (执于法) simply because it comes from a great teacher or “thought leader”. Having critical thinking means not blindly accepting what is commonly considered correct (or incorrect). You don’t have freedom of thought if you are critical about one ideology/religion but not critical about another ideology/religion. Dao (ultimate truth) which can be expressed with words is not the true Dao (道可道也 非恒道也). (There is an ultimate truth but we say there is no absolute-right because it cannot be expressed with words. The ultimate truth is not a constant; it changes with time and space.) We need to learn it and feel it ourselves, thenceforth deeply believe it and have no doubt about it (不惑). Confucius said: “Obtaining knowledge is not as good as loving the knowledge; loving the knowledge is not as good as feeling comfortable and happy to practice the knowledge and wisdoms (知之者不如好之者，好之者不如乐之者).”

 

When high intelligent Individuals hear of Dao, they see the subtleness of it and therefore practice it diligently. When middle intelligent individuals hear of Dao, they don’t fully understand it and therefore have some doubts about it. When low intelligent individuals hear of Dao, they laugh because their self-righteous and subjective biases toward an ideology/religion make their minds corrupted with misconceptions and therefore not able to objectively see the truth. Common truth is ordinary; the ultimate truth is uncommon, therefore not easily understood. If common people do not laugh at Dao, that means it is not extraordinary and has nothing subtle (上士闻道，勤而行之；中士闻道，若存若亡；下士闻道，大笑之。不笑不足以为道).

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There was a very big tree next to a temple. A carpenter told his pupils: “That tree is useless. If you use it to make a boat, it will sink. It is not hard enough to make good furniture. Using it to make the structure of a house, the wood will be eaten by termites very soon. It is totally useless. I wouldn’t spend a minute looking at it.” If the tree was useful, it would have been fell a long time ago. It wouldn’t live to the great height. As far as the tree was concerned, being useful (有用) meant it had a deathly “disease”. A useless (无用) tree is the most useful tree to itself. People like to use you if you are useful to them or you can contribute to their happiness. You may feel proud to be useful to other people; you will be rewarded and successful. All is good if you like to be used. If you choose to be useful to yourself, you can try being useless so that you are not used by others; but you must remember not to stand in their way and become a liability. The useless tree was intelligent to grow next to a temple and not in the middle of a street; otherwise, it would have been chopped off a long time ago.

 

Wood is used to make the handle of an axe, and in return the axe is used to cut the tree itself. Oil is used to light up a room, but it burns itself until nothing is left. Cinnamon tree is edible, so it is fell for people to consume. A tree with usable latex will be cut a hundred times and not allowed to die. Most people know the use of usefulness (有用), but very few know the use of uselessness (无用). We need to know how to be useless to others but useful to ourselves (无用之用). We need to know how to be useful to some people without becoming useless to ourselves. Give what you are happy to give; don’t give more than what you can give. Don’t lose yourself.

 

There was a donkey which was made to pull a grinder and trot around a circle in a factory. One day, it became too old and not able to work anymore. The master set it free, but it continued to trot in circle around a tree every day. Many of us are like the donkey. We work like slaves every day, the virtual chain around our neck is the salary. After retirement, we still work like slaves every day, and never know there are better things to do, and we tell our children it is a virtue to work hard for the money.

 

There were two frogs living in a pond. Drought forced them to look for a new water source. They found a well. One of the frogs said: “let’s jump right in! We will have everything we need.” The second frog said: “It is definitely good to have the water. The problem is, how do we get out later on? I would rather keep looking for a better choice that doesn’t require giving up my freedom.” Getting trapped in extreme joy (like having party or playing smartphone games every day) is as bad as getting trapped in the pursuit of fame and wealth. It is easy to jump in but difficult to come out. It may not be the best thing to do for your best interest. Being foolish, ignorant and lazy will make you not only useless to others but also useless to yourself.

 

The definitions of useful and useless are flaw and have a lot of limitations. Being useful to others may be useless to yourself, although you can also be useful to yourself. Being useless to others may be useful to yourself, but you can also be useless to yourself. The definitions with words (色) can be useful and useless at the same time. In other words, you can be fooled by the definitions and misled into making a wrong decision. You must not take the definitions too seriously but use them with discretions; it is best to refrain from using the definitions (无分辩之心). Instead, keep an open definition (空), which is flexible, not judgmental, and encompasses (包容) both the definitions of useful and useless.