Chinese Wisdom
Сomment: The wisdom of the Chinese people is often very profound. For example:
“The one who points out your flaws is not always your enemy, and the one who praises your virtues is not always your friend.”
My Response: This is absolutely true. The most important thing for a person is to correct oneself along life’s path. And someone who points out your flaws is doing enormous work on your behalf.
In order to discover these flaws on your own (let alone correct them), you would encounter countless obstacles, bang your head against them, and get into trouble. People sometimes end up in prison, get free after a few years, and have to start all over again. But if someone can truly point out your shortcomings, and you are able to feel them, understand them, and recognize them, that person spares you enormous suffering.
Comment: Yet we often consider such a person an enemy: “He exposed my flaws, he humiliated me.”
My Response: Humiliation is a different matter. I can feel my flaws and still rejoice that someone has pointed them out to me. But the one who says nothing, or even flatters me, perhaps he does so maliciously so that I will not pay attention to the corrections I need to make.
Question: So it is not in vain you keep saying that someone who criticizes you is closer to you than someone who praises you?
Answer: Yes, of course.
Question: Do you listen to someone who suddenly tells you something about yourself?
Answer: I very much wish I could.
Quote: “What happens, happens at the right time.”
My Response: We must accept this apriori as an axiom. The thing is that everything comes from the world around us and has its own path of development. Therefore, all that unfolds in front of us comes from this great mechanism in which we exist as small participants.
We need to understand that everything happening around us in society or in the universe as a whole occurs according to a vast plan, and we are within this plan. Our task is to fit into this plan, not to change the external flow by any means, but to correct ourselves so that we adapt to it.
Question: And then I will feel that whatever has happened, has come at the right time?
Answer: Yes. It has come on time, properly and correctly. And suddenly I begin to understand the correctness of everything that happens and how perfectly it suits me.
Question: And I have no regrets?
Answer: There is nothing to regret because everything happens outside of me, before me. And what I am shown are just the steps that I must take within myself to perceive everything correctly, to agree with it, to connect with it, and to move forward in resonance with it.
Question: That is, in harmony with it?
Answer: Yes, in agreement with it.
Quote: “He who drinks the water must remember those who dug the well.”
My Response: Beautifully said. And one must be grateful to them because the one who dug the well was not thinking only of himself, he was thinking also of me, anticipating my need.
Therefore, I am deeply grateful to him and must, in some way, repay him, whether simply with my heartfelt attitude, or perhaps by doing something good around that well myself. In general, even a warm, grateful feeling toward the one who opened a source of life for me already helps to correct the world.
Question: This sounds very much like a Kabbalistic approach. That is, instead of focusing on the pleasure I receive from the water, I turn my thoughts to the one who dug the well for me. Should a person behave this way in life, for example, by digging wells for others in turn?
Answer: A person must feel that everything he has around him and in the world was given to us by our ancestors who left it behind. And we must do the same for others, and for future generations.
Quote: “Misfortune enters through the door that was opened to it.”
My Response: That depends only on the person.
Question: Am I the one who opens the door to misfortune?
Answer: Yes, naturally. It is us who do all this.
In fact, the world is filled with boundless, absolute happiness, but by our own attitude, we turn it into the opposite. This is why it is said allegorically that we “open the door” to misfortune.
Question: And what if I were filled with the thought that the world around me is absolute happiness? If I constantly thought about this and strove toward it, would I still open the door to misfortune? Would misfortune still come to me?
Answer: This is our egoism. In truth, it exists within us so that we may learn to recognize and open far more doors to what is good. But we use it incorrectly; that is the problem.
A person is essentially unhappy. He is given an egoistic desire, a foundation, a character, an aspiration, but only so that he may correctly sense in advance what to avoid and how to adjust himself. Yet he uses this desire in the wrong way.
Question: Is that why he opens the door to misfortune?
Answer: Exactly. He keeps stepping on the same rake. Imagine there are “rakes” placed on the ground to show you the right path and to guide you to walk between them. But instead, you constantly step directly on them. This wrong perception of life stems from the fact that we relate to it totally incorrectly. That is, in fact, we fail to understand that egoism itself shows us how to walk properly and what to avoid. But we use it in its direct sense, and so we step on the rake again and again.
[249819]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman,” 11/10/24
Related Material:
Japanese Wisdom, Part 2
Japanese Wisdom, Part 1
An Unhappy Sage
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