No 177 of Living Life Series 1
Let us talk on two words “ receiving’ and “giving”. All of us want to receive blessings from heaven. But how many of us remind ourselves that what is more important is to give.
Goddess ever merciful and all heavenly saints give to all in need.
We too can give to one another in need. The more we give the more we receive. Blessed are those who bless others in their lives for they will be blessed by the grace of God.
While we expect the saints to give us help, please remember that not all things in life however can be changed. Do remember that there is element of fate, which is sometimes unavoidable.
When there is calm, there will be storm, and no storm will last forever as calm sea will return. Even if we are fated to experience bad days, this will be followed by good days, and good days will end up with bad days or less good days.
But while in a bad patch, we should never give up hope and have more faith in the saints. We must continue to seek the grace of God and his saints. Big issue becomes small issue and small issue becomes no issue. At least we will end up with less of the bad days even if we cannot be blessed with no bad days.
Always remember to have faith as being children of God, we have to learn to walk through our life, but if we learn on our own we can fall and will fall more often than when God holds our hand when we learn to walk through our life. But Heaven cannot walk for us. If we have faith, heaven will hold our hand while we walk so that we will not fall so often and even if we fall, we will not fall so badly. Most importantly we will have confidence that He is there to pick us up again.
Do remember though that if there is up there must be down. We cannot have all ups and no downs. Even if we have more ups, some ups are not as up as we desire them to be. This after all is the nature of life. This is the truth embodied in the octagon pakua – the yin and the yang.
Ultimately what is also important would be for us not to be affected by ups and downs. The true nature of life is that there must be ups and downs. We have to see this as the true nature of life, as the reality behind life.
The dualities of life are many. We have gain / loss, happiness / sorrow, honour / dishonour, wealth / poverty, praise / blame, health / sickness, youth / ageing. The list can go on and on. All these dualities are cyclical. One lead to the other and back again, just like the yin and yang symbol in the pakua. We are toss from negative to positive and back to negative in very cyclical fashion. We are toss between ups and downs. Heaven can pull us up from downs but all our ups will soon lead to downs.
What then is the long-term way of engaging this duality of life. We can place our life in the hands of the saints, and seek their blessings so that big issue becomes small issue and small issue becomes no issue. But this is not the end-all or the permanent fix.
We should follow the way of the lotus. The lotus while rooted in muddy water rises above the water and is untainted by the muddy water. Brethren be like the lotus, live amongst the mud of ups and downs of life but rise above to flower like the lotus to be unaffected by the mud of ups and downs.
When praised, do not grin from ear to ear and be lifted to the sky, and when blamed, do not frown and allow yourself to fall down to the ground emotionally. The same applies to the other dualities.
When you have that, you have real peace and ease amidst the ups and downs. You stand still like the dot in the centre of the pakua while the yin and yang fish symbols chase each other unendingly in cycles.
Before we can achieve this, we must learn to contain the yin and yang of life through eight practices Right Understanding, Right Thoughts, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort and Right Mindfulness. Thus the octagon pakua has eight sides to contain the yin and yang. The person who achieves this is in the centre of the pakua and has mastery of life. He stands still.
This brethren is the ultimate truth of the way of the pakua or the lotus way. The pakua way is the Lotus way. Praise be, praise be to Lord Bo Tien to explain to us the way of all the ways of the prophets of all religions for this way is not copyrighted by any religion. Praise be to the four pillar doctrine. The truth is presented in many ways through many religions but it is the same truth after all. Praise be to Goddess ever merciful. In whatever transformations and in whatever faiths, you are truly ever merciful and respond to the cries of men. You lend your hand to all heavenly saints, and to Lord Bo Tien as well.
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