Making Harmony With Others

I suppose, if one needs to make harmony with his/her fellow human beings - from spouses, friends to acquaintances, one must more or less give up the truth, regardless of what kind of truth one holds: biased or objective (Of course no one can have completely objective truth). 

"No I Can't" and by Saying That, I Know I Am One of the Most Positive Persons on The Earth

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"Yes I can!", or "No, I can't", seem to be the signs of positive and negative personality for most people to identify. Over stated? Just look at those overwhelmingly "liked" facebook posts, we get idea.

Long ago I told a by-then friend of mine that "I can't do" something due to my critical illness (oh yes I was all time ill for over a decade - a decade of NEGATIVENESS!), he "kindly" preached to me by saying: "Mei, I don't like to hear you say you can't", as if I said that just by a willful "choice" - another concept worshiped by freewill addicted culture. Without his explanation I knew why he said that, because it was my "upbeat" personality that drew him to me, so naturally my constant remarks of "I can't" really did not reflect his impression of me. Obviously we had "problem" with communication and friendship died soon after.

Is It Really All About Perspective?

We often hear people saying "It's all about perspective", as if we are all equally ignorant, equally in the dark. While there's a grain of truth in this notion, I found it's not 100% true, because beside "perspective", there is are something called "dimension".

In this illustration two shadows on the walls are two dimensional shaped shadows (square and circle) resulted from viewing this cylinder from two 2-dimensional perspectives. The real "idea" of actually object - cylinder - needs to be seen from 3 dimensional view point, that is, not only looking at it from left and right, but also from "up" - a view point that breaks 2 dimensional surface.

What Is NOT True?

No Idea (band) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I suppose, that any concepts or ideas created to serve our subjective purposes, such as "justifying" our actions, validate our living conditions, even promote happiness or humanity, are NOT true. Based on this view, even humanism is NOT a truthful idea, but an idealism. The truth, pure objective truth, is neutral, even inhuman.

Do We Really See What We See?

Long time ago, a young man paid a visit to a Zen master, asking for truth. The master welcomed young man by some tea: he poured tea from tea pot into tea cup. When the cup was full, he continued pouring, so tea overflowed. The young man asked: "The cup is full, why are you still pouring?" Answered the master: "You are right. If the cup is full, I would not be able to pour fresh tea in. Same as our heads, if they are full, now new ideas could be put in. So, do you have an empty head?"

This is a legendary tale in Zen history. In life I realized, so often our existing beliefs or knowledge would not only prevent us from learning new knowledge, as this Zen story implies, they also distort our observation. Some time we think we saw "fact", but we barely saw what we wanted to see. How I took this photo of gas light lamp is a perfect example:

One day I drove past an apartment gate I saw two gas light lamps hanging on each side of the stone gate wall. I decided to go back to take some pictures of them. In my memory, the frames of lamps were all black, and I was glad because the contrast between black lamp frames and stone gray background would make a perfect image. So I went back the second day with camera. To my disappointment, the lamp frames were not black, but steel gray, and they didn't make good contrast against background as I anticipated. I wonder if the dust on lamp surface make lamps looked gray, but after I checked I found that's not true, because it was rained earlier, the surface of lamps were perfectly clean. But why I remembered they were black? Then in a flash of moment I realized why: because all gas light lamps in my memory were black! That's why! That's how my "knowledge" distorted my observation: I "knew" gas light lamps were dark colored so I "saw" dark colored gas light lamps.

So this experience reminded me the Zen story of tea cup. I think the inspiration of this story is invaluable to human intelligence, that is, only when we empty our mind, put what we think we already knew aside, can we have fresh minds and eyes for truth.

Honest Mind

Close up of The Thinker (Photo credit: Brian ⚓ Hillegas)

An honest mind would never let belief distort its observation, no matter how ugly the truth is.

Faith And Truth

Telescope and night sky (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Faith probably is the most important thing for survival and happiness, but truth is the only thing matters for an honest mind.