The preacher said, “The best thing that we can do is to leave everything in God’s hands. Realize that only he knows what is best for us. Don’t insist on your way but let God decide your path.”
photo courtesy of aloshbennet, Flickr
Replied the master, “If I followed your advice, I would wake up everyday and do nothing. What you are seemingly advocating as courageous faith is really a cowardly act of avoiding responsibility. What your God would probably want you to do is to have some spine and own up to the decisions you make. Realize that whatever happens to you is no one’s fault but your own (yes, it’s not even God’s fault even though you’re too afraid to admit that you blame him). Realize too, that nothing is ever good or bad. It is only within a particular situation or frame of reference that they are good or bad for you.”
“This is the key to wisdom: Be a mirror. A mirror reflects but never judges whether what is reflected is beautiful or ugly. It simply shows reality as it is. Be a mirror. Be silent. Judge not.”
Back when I was still unmarried and living in another city that was close to the sea, I used to hang out with my friends at the beach. Sometimes we would even spend the night there.
I remember this one night. It was near midnight and we were outside sitting on the sand chatting and feeling the sea breeze blow through our hair. One of us suddenly says, “Hey, look at the moon.”
It had been cloudy a bit earlier but now the sky was clear and the full moon hung like a big ball of light in the sky. The sea was calm and the moon’s reflection on it was quite breathtaking, the ripples of the waves caused the light to glint and dance. It seemed the reflection was even more beautiful than the moon itself.
Earlier tonight, I walked on the dirty, wet streets of the city I now reside in. The heavy rain from earlier on had abated. A passing car almost splashed muddy water on me as it sped across a small puddle. I glared at the car’s tail lights and was about to move on when I caught the moon’s reflection on the puddle. It was a full moon and it was beautiful.
Too often in life, we chase after those things that are beautiful and try to avoid those that are ugly. We run after prestige, money, power, good food, good wine. We don’t like pain, and we don’t like to experience hardships.
Yet, we should remember that the moon casts a beautiful reflection whether it casts it on the sea or on a muddy puddle. The moon is still the moon and its beauty is not marred by the medium of reflection.
Life has so many facets and forms but underneath it all, our substance is the same. We should learn to see the beauty in life, whether it takes the form of a rose or of a rat. These are just external manifestations of the same inner core and substance.
In the end, we should recognize the beauty of all things, of all people, and accept that we are all reflections of the one truth, that we are all part of each other, and that there is no beauty or ugliness apart from ourselves.
When the sage points to the moon, the idiot looks at the finger.”
Experts come and study the nature of the finger. They form theories and doctrines around it. They organize the Church of the Finger and create rules and laws about how the finger should point, when it should point and in what angle it should point.
Amidst all this, they do not see the moon.
Scriptures and religions are all pointers. The Bible is not God, and the Koran is not God. People have built entire belief systems and organizations, have fought wars and endured torture and hardships, for the sake of furthering their beliefs.
