Amituofo
Respectful brothers and sisters of New South Wales and everywhere else: I thank you for coming to the chapter 3, next session of Mr. Liaofan. So last week, we discussed chapter 3, cultivating goodness. This week we will continue on this chapter. Last week, we talked about how people (cultivate goodness), Mr. Liaofan has given us a lot of examples from the past, in his era, with his contemporaries in the Ming Dynasty where there are about 10 cases of people from all walks of life from a normal civilian to government and military officials. They all have committed good deeds and how they committed good deeds and what are the consequences, what are the rewards or effects of them committing good deeds. We have picked a few notable examples where they really stand out from the others, like Mr. Yang whose great grandfather, that's the first example, by the way, has saved a lot of lives during the flood in China. And these two men, great men, have helped these people who almost drowned and saved a lot of lives, while the rest of the people, most of the people, are looting around the river current where all the goods were flowing because the river overflowed and flooded the houses. Those good deeds did not go unrewarded. It was rewarded by Cause and Effect. When Mr. Yang's father was born, he passed the Imperial Examination and he improved even better when he was born. It got better and better as time went on. It's just like planting trees and they get more fruitful as they grow when the roots are good. So another case was about a very old lady, Miss Lin. She was very kind and always gave food to people, to the poor. And one there is … which is like someone who practices and cultivates good deeds a lot and becomes one of those gods in Chinese culture. So we call it a … and this … appeared as a normal Taoist monk in front of Madame Lin asking for alms. He didn't ask only for one, he asked for six or seven packages of food. So it's like more than (normal people) would ask for. Normally people would only ask for one, no more than two. He asked for six or seven. For how long? For three years. And Madame Lin did not have any resemblance of grudge, or doubt, or any sort of anger or something like: why do you take so much from us, something like that. She gave it generously, for three years and without stopping, every day, this … turned Taoist monk was testing Madam Lin and she did not change her commitment to these good deeds for three years. So he knew that she was real, not only for show, for real. Because at the end of three years, the testing period, after the exam, he talked to Madam Lin: You have given me three years of food without any sort of anger or anything. You gave it willingly. How do I repay you? Behind your property, there is a piece of land. Once you pass away, because she was already at a high age, your own next generation will enjoy high positions and rankings, become a duke, marquis, lord or something like that back in ancient China. And the amount of your descendants who will be bestowed these titles, positions, wealth and ranking, will be as many as the number of seeds in a one kg bag. You can imagine how small sesame seeds are, put them in a big bag. That means a lot of her descendants will get really really rich and wealthy and high positions. That's the effect of her good deeds. And so their children followed these instructions, and buried the lady when she passed away naturally. And when she just passed away, her next generation, the immediate generation, nine people attained, these are all recorded, nine people attained(passed) Imperial Examinations, attaining some of the highest ranks. That means they immediately got upgraded to lords and marquis and all that. Following her next generation everyone who was under her lineage all got the benefit as well. So this happens in Fujian in southern China. There was a saying that there is not one Lin who would not pass the Imperial Examination, all of them got the position, wealth and good karmas. So these are the examples. I just brought out two very common examples, that most good books that ask you to do good deeds, encourage you to do good deeds, usually bring out. They will say what happened, what this person did, what kind of condition that this person did these good deeds and what were the effects after this person committed to do these good deeds. This is all Cause and Effect. Here Mr. Liaofan has talked about 10 examples and when he finished that, he moved on to the actual theory behind it, like he classified them. Last week we talked about the first of the eight pairs of cultivating goodness. First pair is very straightforward, real or fake. Is this real or fake? I'll revisit them here, just to give everyone a review. There are 10 examples that he listed before and I only picked two out of ten. All of them are doing different things, but all are good deeds. I'm just quoting him: If I summarize them, then they are real or fake, they are crooked or straight, they are hidden or obvious, they are right or wrong, they are off track or on track, they are half or full, they are big or small, they are hard or easy, so all of these need to be clarified. and explained in depth so that we know we are actually doing the good deeds that we claim to be. First of all, if we do good deeds, we are not talking about why we do good deeds. Are we actually doing good deeds? What are the standards of doing good deeds? Even though we claim that we are practicing, we are cultivating, we are learning Buddhism, we are learning to be a good person, decent person but we do not know, in reality, that we are actually committing unwholesome karma which leads to the undesirable results that we are trying to get rid of. Whatever we ask for will never appear in our life. This is a waste of time if we don't do a good examination of what we're doing. What is real or fake? Last week, we talked about that actually. I'm not gonna go into it very long. Venerable Zhong Feng who is the Venerable, because we are in Amitabha Pure Land Association, we've been doing the Thrice Yearning Ceremony. Venerable Master Zhong Feng is the one who compiled this ceremony for us. So it's quite close to our relationship with him. In Buddhism, there is a saying that all good and bad deeds will have consequences, will have karmas, good and bad karmas. They are like the shadows that follow your body, your shape. Based on this claim, a statement in Buddhism, when there are people who do good deeds, however, when I look at this society, this is what the people who ask the Venerable, there are people who do good deeds, however their children, descendants are not getting anywhere, they're not elevating to (higher) positions. Their life is not getting better. Some people do bad deeds, but their family still remains in position, in power, in influence, in wealth. So I say what Buddha says does not make sense. Venerable Zhongfeng says: My friend, your affliction has not been severed, has not been washed, that means the lens where you view things are not clear, it's clouded. Clouded by what? He said, he only said four words in Chinese, but to explain this in English, it's something else 凡情未滌. So to say it in the most literal way, he says that ordinary beings have a lot of afflictions and these afflictions can be summarized in the Chinese word 情. We call it, in English, the five desires and the six senses 五欲六塵. or we call it selfishness. They have not been washed. So the lens that you view things in is not correct. It's clouded. 正眼未開. You have not seen things as they clearly are. We see things clouded with biased perspectives and judgment, with emotions. So we recognize good as bad, because they appear bad. We think it's bad. We point out something that is clearly bad as good. So we twist them intentionally or unintentionally. This mostly happens amongst ordinary beings. They're not aware that it is ourselves that swap around the reality, that twisted the reality. What is supposed to be right becomes wrong, we point out is wrong. What is actually wrong we point out as right. Not only that, we even hold grudges against the gods, against the world, against the rest of the world, against heaven or whatever. We hold grudges against everyone for whatever happened to us. So this kind of thing will worsen your condition to be honest. So everyone asked: If you say so, Venerable. How are these things that we observe in society swap around, if you say that we do not see things clearly. How come this happens to the good people and how come that happened to the bad people? Venerable Zhong Feng did not answer straight away. Last week I said that this is a very wise way. Even Socrates or Aristotle I think Socrates or Plato's the Greek philosopher, they do the same thing. I don't know the term for it. It's like people ask you a question, you don't answer it straight away. You ask them a question back, so that they reflect on their own. This same goes for Buddha. That's the wise people here. So he asked them back: So tell me, what do you think is good and bad? He didn't answer. These people say: If someone beats you, hurts you or scolds you is bad. If someone respects you, gives you a very preferential treatment, it's good. Venerable Zhong Feng says: Not necessarily. And then they keep going: If someone is being greedy, or holding the wealth on their own or taking without permission is bad. Someone who preserved their integrity becoming a very uncorrupted official is good. I mean they follow the rules, follow the book. To be honest, what they're trying to say is that if they appear to be clean, uncorrupted, because they follow the book by the letter, it is good. Venerable Zhong Feng says: Not necessarily. Everyone keeps saying that like something that we call common sense in the society, Venerable Zhong Feng says: Not necessarily. He keeps repeating that word. So everyone says: Okay Sir, since you say that, please tell us why. Venerable Zhong Feng finally replies after this: As long as it helps people, benefits people, then we shall call it good. If everything they do, or you do, is only for the benefit of yourself, no matter what that appearance is, it's bad. He said it more straightforward: As long as you benefit people it is good, if you benefit yourself, it is bad. By extending a little bit, if you actually help people, then even in appearance you might be hitting, you might be scolding, they're good, you're actually helping them. If you're only helping yourself or trying to raise your profile, what we call the PR stunts, publicities, even you might appear as very respectful, very polite, I actually know in business polite, respectful they're bad, they're not good. So hence when people say they're committing good deeds, it must rest on the standard of whether they actually benefit the public or others. If they do, it's real. If it benefits the public, it's real. If it only benefits oneself or one associates, then it's fake. The deeds are not good. It's not real. The good deeds are not real, hence the karma is not real. It's not gonna be the same. So he brings out many examples to support what is real, what is fake goodness. Real goodness follows the heart. Fake goodness or not real goodness follows others. One who follows the heart, they do it because it's right. The others, they follow whatever the others are doing. Oh 你放生, I will follow you 放生. Something like, they just follow whatever everyone else is doing without knowing what they're doing. Or even worse, they follow what others are doing because these people are getting fame and respect, even though that person is following his heart and not asking for that, but this second person saw the good benefits and they do it. But they are not for real, so. Also he went into very nice wording, like that of the Tao Te Ching道德經. I'm pretty sure that throughout the world, everyone loves that. It's a Taoist text as well. 無為而為者真. I don't know, I can't give it just my explanation, but I would just follow it honestly. What they say is: If you do it without the sake of doing, then it is real. If you just do it for the sake of doing, it's fake. That's what I can say. You have, we should all reflect on this. Now he moves on to the second one which is a new one for us. What is crooked and straight goodness? Okay, so crooked and straight is about good deeds, right? If we just do it to get people's recognition, approvals and all that, I think it would be crooked based on the examples which I will share. If it's based on: I gotta get this thing done because this is what people need right now and I would do it no matter what happens. Then it's straight. To make this easier on us, Mr. Liao Fan has given us examples. What did he give as an example? He gave a very concrete one. The sage, we call it, Confucius, Buddha, Mencius, the sage would rather take someone who is 狂狷, who is a bit off the road, like they don't follow the conventions, they're a little bit rebellious. They'd rather take someone like that and train them as their students than taking someone who is called 謹愿之士, who is like: they do not follow their heart, they just do it for the recognition. To go in depth of this is a very interesting thing, because a lot of times we might say: Oh, this person is very good. He agrees with everyone, a yes man. He never conflicts with people, he's always very nice to people. We call it 謹愿. However, if that person only has that without any core values and principles to stand on, then would you use this person or someone who disagrees and makes you angry rather than lying to you and trying to make you feel better? I don't think so. Obviously they don't do it intentionally but they would rather disagree with you, they would rather feel the anger, your anger or the anger of their boss then not telling the truth. So that's I think is what is meant by these words: 聖人則寧取狂狷 至於謹愿之士 雖一鄉皆好 而必以為德之賊 This is even worse. He explained even in depth. He said the sage rather takes someone who is not following the conventional social norms, but still straight at heart than someone who appears to be polite and nice and got all the good praise from the village or from his or her associates, but this person is (actually) a thief of virtues. Thief of virtues means that they are not following it from the heart, they're doing it from the surface. So they may be a goody two-shoes, we call it: goody two-shoes, but they are not really good in the strictest sense. Because when the time comes to test them, for example, some problems happen, issues arise or maybe in an organization, something's wrong and this person does not have the backbone to stand up and say something's wrong. He might be easily swayed to the conventions and say: I should not conflict with my boss and I should just say yes. However the person we call off the road, I mean a bit straightforward and very hard to deal with, might just say: No this is wrong. I don't think this is right. Because this is what will happen, you should change this, you should not go on with this, and the boss might be angry or everyone might be like: Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this? But after one or two days, they might think: Oh yeah we shouldn't do this. So this is what sages and the gods in the heavens and all the gold standards are in comparison to us humans. so是世人之善惡 分明與聖人相反 Hence the standards of good and bad of ordinary human beings are different from the sage. And then he went on to say, if we use this standard everything becomes wrong for ordinary people. The heavens and earth, the spirits, the beings in the spirit world, when they judge based on merits, faults, good and bad they follow the standards of the sage, not ours, not the common people. They do not follow the 俗, 而不與世俗同取舍, they do not follow the ordinary people, because they are not seeing things as they are. So when we plan to have 福 by accumulating good deeds, we cannot 徇耳目 we cannot just follow what we hear, what we see, we cannot follow what it appears. Sorry what is apparent, rumors and all that. We must always follow the depth of our heart. The most subtle part of our heart. So we need to dig deeper and deeper and deeper. What is my real intention? What is really underneath there? And from the depths of your heart, we wash it, we make sure it's clean, it's pure, it's real. We do not allow any sense of desires or personal calculations in there. So to make it more concrete, if the heart of helping people is pure, then we call it straight. If there are some semblance of trying to get on people's good side, we call it 拍馬屁(butt kissing, boot licking,) Sorry. 媚世之心 So trying to, I don't know in English, we call it: kiss the boots, kind of thing, of other people, then we call it crooked. And then he used another example, if we truly love people, we help people with whatever we do and it comes from a loving heart, then it's real. If what we do is from the heart of hatred towards the world, 憤世嫉俗 in Chinese. If you do not like the world, if you hate the world, you hold a grudge and everything in there and whatever you do is from there, then it's crooked, even though you're doing good deeds. If we have a true respectful heart, then it's straight. If we have the heart of trying to prank others, or trying to mess around with other people, then it's crooked. All these (examples) are very minute, very very fine, so we need to take a more in depth look. We don't look at(judge) others, we look at ourselves. Please do not use Liao Fan to judge others. Otherwise, your life will be full of endless afflictions, it's meant to give you happiness not affliction. So if we use it to judge others, then we will have a life of affliction, because this is not the Pure Land, everyone makes mistakes. This is my own commentary and we need to use this (standard to judge) ourselves, because only then can we reach the real goal and our level is up and then we can help other people, according to what their standard is. Number three: what is hidden and obvious? We have talked about real and fake, crooked and straight. Now the third pair is Yin and Yang. Yin is called hidden and Yang is called obvious. If we commit good deeds and let other people know it, like we purposely let other people know, then this is called obvious goodness. I do it literally, so we do it in the spotlight. If we do it without letting other people know, then we call it hidden which is 蔭德(hidden virtue). In the Chinese world, in the Asian world, this is a very big thing. And I would like to give this context 蔭德(hidden virtue) is such a big thing in the Chinese world especially. These words are included in every, almost every important text, the Confucius text, the Taoist text, even the Buddhist text as well, because 蔭德(hidden virtue) is what completes a person, that makes a person a sage. Even some people, for example, might not be known for generations until someone reveals this person’s good deeds and this person, you can imagine, his 蔭德(hidden virtue) is really deep. So 蔭德 is hidden goodness, it is a hidden virtue. They do it without letting other people know. They just do it and people don't even know that this person is doing such a big deed. Like, they might have saved the world or something and they just go back to normal and wash the clothes or mow the lawn. You don't know this person is actually a hero, something like that. So do not be sad if no one knows about your good deeds. Trust me: The heavens will give you an even bigger reward than the person who get it for the name or accidentally known by others. So he continued by saying: Good deeds done without other people knowing are called hidden virtues. The heavens will repay them, that means the law of Cause and Effect will give them a good reward. And the people who do it, for the obvious reason, for the spotlight, or the people who do good deeds are shown to the world, they will enjoy the things of the world. People do not know that. Fame is a form of fortune, which is a form of reward. Fame itself is prohibited in everything, whatever you're doing, you should not aim for fame. There are a lot of cases where people enjoy fame more than they actually deserve. People might praise them over the top. They are not necessarily that good or they are not necessarily that capable. They always oversell themselves or the people around them oversell this person without knowing. 享盛名 而實不副者 多有奇禍 in English means that people who get the fame, which is the fortune, more than what they actually deserve will always have debt, that debt transforms into a form of calamities, personal calamities, family calamities or natural calamities. So they will need to pay for it, if they oversell themselves. So these calamities come unexpectedly, they will not expect something to happen, maybe they lose all of their money investments, maybe they have someone suddenly defame them, stuff like that. It happens a lot and this is something very hidden, because we can't go into people's profile and dig or we can't read people's minds. There's a lot of this. On the other hand, people who did nothing wrong, but they were being wronged, wrongfully, if they did not commit any wrong deeds, however they were defamed or even accused wrongly. You can observe it in their next generation, their descendants usually get fortunes, because of the same thing, they have good debt(credit) of positive karma. People who enjoy fame more than they deserve have a debt of negative karma, so they all need to be repaid, the balance. This is what Liao Fan is trying to tell us: Yin and Yang, hidden and obvious goodness. So the difference between hidden goodness and obvious goodness is very fine. And before I continue with the fourth pair, there were cases, there were many questions in our dear Youth Group. They asked: What if people do it on social media? They're asking for charity, stuff like that? And these people are leading by example. Does it mean: these people are trying to aim for obvious goodness, even though they're trying to promote certain charities, or is it because they are just doing it for the sake of stunt, PR stunt, trying to get publicity? So how do we look at this situation, real situation, using hidden goodness and obvious goodness using this standard? From my opinion alone, obviously, please follow Master Chin Kung’s … But what I'm trying to say is: hidden goodness, the core of that hidden goodness is you do it without needing other people to know. Whether people know or not, it's none of your business, you just do it. Then it's hidden goodness. Whether it was being exposed by other parties without your involvement or anything, it's fine. It would come out naturally anyway. My Master Chin Kung has donated a lot of things. He didn't promote himself doing that. A lot of people, obviously they would say: Hey, this is what the Master did. He didn't say that on his own. So that is still considered as hidden goodness. If it's obvious goodness, what I'm trying to say is: This is about the heart. Everything here, the eight pairs of kind of goodness, in opposite form, they are all about the heart, is the intention, pure or not. So obvious goodness, obviously, I think mostly refers to people who do it for the spotlight, for the PR stunts. So in this case of celebrities, politicians or anyone of high-profile nature doing this kind of promotion of kindness, obviously is a good thing. You're promoting good deeds. But whether they're doing it for the sake of fame or doing it for the sake of charity, only the people who have attained enlightenment or in the heavens know, we don't know. So we only hope that they will do it from the depth of their heart. If you're promoting goodness, charity, do it earnestly, don't ask for any publicity or any stunts. Just do it earnestly. If they do it earnestly and it becomes public knowledge, it's fine. It's still considered as hidden goodness. But the best thing is you do it without people knowing. Okay, so the fourth pair is right and wrong. So everyone's like good is right, why can good deeds become wrong? So Liao Fan just brought out a straight example during Confucius times. The country of Lu had a law. They decreed a law in Lu that whoever was a citizen of Lu, that was back in the Warring States period, citizens of Lu that helped to pay the ransom to get back the governors or the concubines of Lu’s royalty or the Lu’s government from other nations, back then China was not united, China was divided into hundreds or a good amount of small nations, similar to Europe. So if you paid the ransom to get back the governor’s or ministers of Lu who were being held ransom by other nations, then the Lu government would reward you for your deeds. Mr. Zi Gong, one of the students of Confucius, did that. However, when the people were returned back to the government, he did not accept the gold, the reward, he didn't accept the reward. Confucius heard and he scolded him saying: How can you do that? Zi Gong: Oh, sorry teacher. So what Confucius said while scolding him: Zi Gong, this is your shortcoming. You have made a mistake in this part. Why? Because every single deed, every single minute detail done by the sage can influence the whole society. 聖人舉事 可以移風易俗 So anything a sage does will affect the whole society, because they are respected, revealed. So everything they do will influence a lot of people. So if they do it right, they can truly educate the people to be good. So, hence, with this responsibility and influence, you cannot just do it because you think it's right. You cannot just do it because it suits you. Yes it might be good for you, good for your name, uncorrupted and all that. But why did Confucius say that? Isn't it good not asking for a reward in return for good deeds? Isn't that called a hidden goodness, something like that? No. No. Let's have a look. So Confucius did not leave him hanging there, he came and he finished up. He said: Right now, nowadays, during his time, the nation of Lu, there are very few rich people in this nation. Zi Gong, there are very few people who are rich. There are a lot of impoverished people in this nation, Zi Gong. If you for the sake of your own personal 廉潔, for your own personal standard of my corruptness, for your uprightness and not receiving the reward, how can the rest of the people do that? You are a good administrator of this government. You have the money, you have the wealth. However, the rest of the population, 80 or 90 percent, I am making up the numbers, but the point is that a lot of people are not rich enough like you to do that, to not accept the gold. If you do that(not accept the gold), no one else would dare to do that. Because if all of Confucius’s students do not do that, how can we do that? We will be shamed by the rest of the society. 自今以後 不復贖人於諸侯矣 So this means, from now on, because you did that, the rest of the people cannot afford to pay the ransom to get back the people of Lu or Ministers of Lu who were held hostage by other nations. Because they do not dare to ask for the gold and they don't have the real gold to pay the ransom to get people back. On the other hand, his other student was called Zi Lu. The First student was Zi Gong. Mr. Gong, okay, the other one was Mr. Lu, you just think of it that way. Apologies, I can't do it well. Mr. Lu also saved a person, this time, from drowning. The person who Mr. Lu saved, repaid him by giving him a cow. Back then, a cow meant a lot. Nowadays, it would be just like giving a farmer a tractor. With a tractor, they can farm more land and earn more money than by using the hand. So imagine that you save a person right now and that person gives you a tractor. So he accepted it. He smiled and said: Oh, yeah, Thank you! Thank you! If we follow the ordinary standard: Oh, Yeah (the first student) didn't accept the reward, he should be praised by his own teacher. And (the second student of Confucius) accepted the reward, he must be scolded by the teacher for being greedy. No, Confucius smiled at (the second student) and said: Oh, good, good, good! You did the right thing! Because from now on, in the nation of Lu, there will be a lot of people who will be saved from drowning. So from the ordinary eyes, the eyes that are untrained, Mr. Gong, who did not take the reward for paying the ransom to get people back and Mr Lu who accepted the reward in the form of a cow for saving a person from drowning. and Mr. Gong doing the right thing, Mr. Lu is supposed to be wrong. But Confucius turned it around. He's a sage, right? Confucius praised the student who accepted the reward and he scolded the student who did not accept the reward. But we understand why. As long as we're doing good deeds, we do not look at the current situation, we look at its influence. So we do not say: This is a good deed. So it's good. No. Are these good deeds leaving a good aftermath to society? Does it help society? Does it improve society or does it make it worse? Mr. Gong’s situation is good now because he did not take the reward. But in the long term, less people will be returned back to their home country of Lu because less people will be able to afford to pay the ransom without taking the reward. So that's what (Confucius) meant. In aftermath, number one is aftermath, what's the aftermath, good or bad? And then do not talk about now, but talk about the future, talk about long term, it's not about short term, but about the long term. It's not about right now. It's about the aftermath. It's not about one person, but about 天下, about anything under heaven. That means it's about the world. It's not about individuals that do good deeds, it's about how this individual’s good deeds influenced the rest of the world. So right now, using this understanding that we have just gained, this theory, a person might commit good deeds right now. But if those good deeds, the aftermath is actually negative, then even though it appears to be good, it's actually not. So hence wrong, fake, wrong, or it's not good. On the other hand, the same theory, the opposite may appear to be not good, but in the long term, the influence is good, beneficial to the rest of the world and you can help them. So it might appear as bad, but in fact it's good, it's real goodness. It might appear as a bad thing, but in the long term, it's a good deed. So we just think about it in the opposite form. And the reason is: It influenced the aftermath. So in the aftermath, a lot of people will truly benefit from following this example. So then we call it good. If these deeds, right now, appear as bad, but it helps a lot of people in the long term, then it is good. He did not just stop there, he made it easier for us and helped us by saying: 然此就一節論之耳，他如 So he brought up another example, not just good and bad. He said: 非義之義，非禮之禮，非信之信，非慈之慈 So he said that something that appears as not so righteous turns out to be righteous in the long run. Something that appears to be impolite becomes polite; it actually helps in the long run. Something that appears to be breaking the trust appears to be trust in the long run. Something that appears to be uncompassionate ends up being compassionate in the long run. So how do we make sense of this? From my experience, I can only talk about 非慈之慈. What appears to be not compassionate is compassionate in the long run. For example, your own parents, I'm talking about very small ones like your own parents, you have parents, you have a child and this child wants a toy, wants to be rewarded for his hard work, using money or something: You should pay me one dollar for washing the dishes for you. So if we use compassion as the standard for the ordinary people, we might actually say: Yeah, Sure! We should reward him or we should reward him with one dollar for washing the dishes. So from here it appears to be kind, however in the long term, this person, this kid will grow up with an idea that everything I do must be rewarded in monetary form. If not, then I will not do it. So what happens when this person grows up and has to deal with societies with a lot of complexities and sometimes it asks her or him for help. She was like: What's my reward? What's in it for me? So this is not compassionate to this person. If on the other hand, if these kids or these students of yours are throwing tantrums when they buy toys and you hold firm on your standards and say: I do not entertain tantrums and tempers. Obviously, you do not hit or anything, it's illegal. What you do is you do not give any response to these kids, you just leave them throwing tantrums there. You just stay still. In Buddhism, we call it Ding Gong(定功). We have practiced meditative tranquility, you know. This is when our meditation comes in form, right? The kids are throwing tantrums, we just hold still. Do not let them take any advantage of that. They know, now they know, you might appear uncompassionate now, in the long run, they will no longer use emotion to judge things. They will be rational, they will be a very well-rounded person. They will know like: Okay I should not throw a tantrum just to get what I want now. I should be patient, stuff like that etc. So education in this way, we understand this meaning. For example, these kids do not want to eat broccoli or peas, so you do not let them eat dinner for one night. And you do not eat dinner for one night. You just sit there and not eat dinner. And the kids looking at their own parents not eating dinner, and they themselves do not have dinner. So the kid was like: Oh yeah yeah next time, I cannot do that anymore. So these are the ways to educate. And the whole point is to help this person in the long run. To bring this chapter even closer to the adults Venerable Hong Yi(弘一) is a big name in the Chinese world, and I would love to introduce him to the rest of the world. Master Hong Yi, who is a very important figure in the Precept School of Mahayana Buddhism in China. 南山律宗 弘一大師 So Venerable Master Hong Yi is also under Venerable Master Yin Guang who is the patriarch of our Pure Land school. So he really respects Master Yin Guang. So he's the only student accepted by Master Yin Guang, Master Yin Guang swore not to have a student in his life and he broke this rule for him, (he made an) exception for him. So Venerable Hong Yi, he also has a similar method of education towards his own students who are adults like us. Every time his students did something wrong, he did not say a word; he just sat there, not eating the whole day. And then obviously as a student when you look at your own teacher not eating, you're like: Well, someone's doing wrong. He didn't say a word, he just sat there, not eating when everyone's eating. He did not say: You cannot eat. Just let them eat, but he's not eating, he's just sitting there. And then everyone did not dare to eat anymore and started to reflect on what they did on that day. So this is how you educate things, this is how sages educate people. 非信之信, we can talk about that in the form of not promising anything that is wrong. So we might not follow the promise that we have made earlier that appears to be harmful to themselves and the society. In the long run, it's actually helping them but I can't find anything concrete yet. Next round, I will try my best to enrich my stories. So that's the fourth opposite: that’s the fourth pair of goodness, fourth type of goodness. The fifth pair is 偏正. So 偏 means like: it's not bad, it's good, but it's not full, it's not perfect, it's not fully good. We call it crooked as well, but translation is a bit hard in this part, we call it 偏正. In English, I'll probably find it in the Green Book later. So one way to describe this pair is on the point and off the point. This fifth pair of types of goodness refers to using one example, there is a 宰相 Prime Minister in ancient China. When he finished his duty, he returned back to his country, his own hometown. Everyone respected him, he's as heavy as the 泰山, the highest mountain in China, like the Himalayan Mountains. And there was a normal ordinary villager who happened to live nearby who was drunk. He went to his residence, the residence of this Ex-Prime Minister and scolded him incessantly. He just went in front of him and back then that usually would get you a good beating for that. I mean back then they would get 杖者二十 三十 (a beating) but this Prime Minister who was being kind, his name was Prime Minister Liu. His surname was Liu. Prime Minister Liu was not moved, he did not get affected by this villager’s commotions. So he said to his servant: Do you not know he's drunk? Why do you have to be angry with a drunk person? He's not in control of himself. so he closed the door and said: okay, please go away, bye-bye! After a few years, this person committed deeds that were punishable by death and he was executed for his crime. Prime Minister Liu started to regret, back then if I taught him a lesson that might appear to be very petty, he might done something as petty as scolding the drunk but if I give him a heavy enough lessons that puts it in his memory not to do things out of his... like, not to do things without thinking of the consequences, then even though the punishment would have been small, it could have prevented him from committing the deeds, such as now, which were punishable by death. I'm pretty sure his crime was in the category of class A felony something like that, like we call it murders, stealing, raping stuff like that. So I'm pretty sure Prime Minister Liu was a kind person. He did not think that far ahead, but he said: if I punished him slightly back then, I would have helped him from losing his life now, because he committed an even bigger crime, because he might say: see, I can even, scold the Prime Minister without consequences. He didn't scold the Prime Minister for whatever political reason, he just scolded him without reason because he was drunk. So back then the Prime Minister said: I only have the intention of trying to be kind, trying to be compassionate. However I did not know, this little compassion of mine has helped to fester, help him to fester his unwholesome deeds, helped to encourage his unwholesome deeds further and encouraged him to do bad deeds further. So it did not achieve the standard that he was trying to do and the consequences were that this person was executed. So this is what we call: off the point, off the line, I don't know how to say it in English. I'll try to find it next week, sorry guys. But what it means is using a good heart. This person is real, Prime Minister Liu really is a kind person, but he unintentionally committed something that was bad. All roads to hell are paved with good intentions, something like that, not as serious as that, but it's something along that line. All roads to hell are paved with good intentions, trying to save someone, ending up getting into a conflict and messed up, and doing something that you never thought you would possibly do, like World War I or II, something like that. And also there are cases where people are bad at heart, but their deeds are actually good. Well, the world is round , my friend, it's not that simple, it's not a straight line, it's round. So now we look at things in one dimension. So there are certain rich people's households. I'll finish up in this story, there are certain rich households back in ancient China who have met upon a large-scale famine. Hence that means lack of crop harvest, hence a lot of people go hungry, famine. Poor people who have nothing to eat, they do not care anymore about law and order, because you're hungry, right? They will all rob for food, anything they can bite on in the market. So these merchants, including this rich person, they're trying to report (the robberies) to the authorities, however the authorities do not care or don't have the capacity to care. Everyone is doing that and these robbers, impoverished farmers turned into robbers, got worse and worse, they got braver, they didn't even care about the potential of being caught and executed anymore. They just robbed, obviously it hurt a lot of people. So this rich person, I'm pretty sure, wants to protect his own property, because the government did not care, he just took matters into his own hands, vigilante. But what did he do? Because he's rich, he has a lot of guards and all that, he just ordered them to capture all these robbers, tie them up in the house and then use whatever punishment they have. So because of that, because there's still a person of influence doing this, trying to protect their own property, unintentionally they helped to maintain stability and peace in the society. 眾始定 Otherwise these robberies will get worse and worse and worse and more frequent. so yes they might be in …, but if they're creating all the mess in society and this rich person, this is what happened, this rich person who had a lot of properties met up with bigger circumstances of famine and a lot of people going hungry and they rob the the markets, like, what we call Walmart or … And this person does not think of: oh I want to protect the nation or something, he just says I want to protect my property. So he called a few (of his), we call them PMC’s, private military contractors, or his own security guards, and they captured all of these looters. So you can imagine in South Africa if there are a few influential big moguls who ordered a few militia to capture all of these rebels, or all these trouble causing people, it doesn't matter why, capture them up, creating peace in that region. It might not be out of their heart or for nation and country or the big grand noble ambition. But this is also a form of good deeds, guys. This is also helping this, objectively helping this society to maintain a certain level of stability, not allowing this to fester. So when someone's doing this, even not from their kind heart , we also need to respect that, guys. … So I can apply this to the charity as well. So if we think about charity, yes, this person might do a PR stunt, but the objective fact is: this person has done good deeds. That probably helps a few people, we need to give them the credit. They do good deeds, yes, they might not be real, hence not achieving the level of a sage, but in the current world situation, it's better to have people doing it for the sake of a publicity stunt, than no one doing anything at all. So think about that. Okay so basically that's the fifth one which I will repeat strongly again next time with a proper word to describe it. My apologies, I didn't do much research in advance, and I'll finish up with this, I think. His (Liao Fan) summary was: Prime Minister Liu was trying to be kind and compassionate and not prevent this small-time villager from committing a big crime that was punishable by death. He is right at heart, he's 正. He's on the right path, however his deeds are not complete. So it's wrong. It's incomplete, off the line, in the sorry 正中偏 偏中正. Do you have any idea how to translate this? This is hard, so imperfection in perfection, perfection in imperfection. All right there's a gray line, okay, there's a silver lining. I'm so sorry for this bad wrap up. So what I'm trying to say is there's a silver lining in even the good person. So this person is kind-hearted, but they unintentionally allow bad things to continue, because they are just focusing on kindness, but not thinking about the consequences. And there is a bad person who is, not a bad person, there is a person who is not really kind-hearted, not empathetic, but unintentionally he does something that is right for the society. so this is what we call silver linings, okay, that's the fifth pair, the silver linings. So a good person might have done something bad unintentionally and this person who is not quite good, not empathetic, we don't call it "bad", okay? not quite empathetic, he ends up doing something good for the society unintentionally. So never judging one way yeah. So I would like to stop here in the fifth out of eight pairs of types of goodness. I will continue and repeat (these lessons) again at the official Liao Fan’s session for Youth Group next week. So thank you very much for your attendance today! And thank you everyone.
