No 970 of Living Life Series 1
To be this is to be that. To be or not to be. That is what we need to know.
To live is to die. To die is to live. To work is to ear. To earn is to work. To be happy is to be sad. To be sad is to be happy. We cannot have one without the other. There will always be the opposites of sorts in life.
The sages of old in China refer to this as yin and yang. But this will only be exclusive and excludes from the purview of the masses and only for the elite. Then what is the worry? Well, let's see.
To live is to die. To die is to live. To work is to ear. To earn is to work. To be happy is to be sad. To be sad is to be happy. We cannot have one without the other. There will always be the opposites of sorts in life.
The sages of old in China refer to this as yin and yang. But this will only be exclusive and excludes from the purview of the masses and only for the elite. Then what is the worry? Well, let's see.
To be elite is to be outnumbered and be unnoticeable. To be ordinary is to stand out and be noticeable. Numbers count. There is strength in numbers.
Gone are the days when religion is so elitist and for the thinker and philosopher. The trend is for religion to be ordinary and sort of dull dull to the thinker but readily acceptable and within the mental range of the masses.
Religion is about dangling worldliness and attachment to the senses instead of trying to showcase the better alternative of out of this world goodness and detachment. Humanity has become wary of more talk and yet more talk along this line.
But after sometime, what is of the world is no different from what is not of this world, or is there? Let us see and seeing is believing they all say.
There is underlying life in this world and the next the same nature of life. There is the play of opposites and how we handle the opposites determine how we feel and what will become of us.
The poor can be rich if the poor is happy with his lot. The rich is poor if he is unhappy with his lot.
He who is in heaven may think he is in hell. He who is in hell may think he is in heaven.
But make no mistake. The man of God and saints go not for heaven or hell but for peace and release. He is at peace with heaven and with hell. To him, there is no difference.
He is Godly and at peace everywhere and in every situation. He is atop heaven and hell like depicted by the image of the good lord Lord Bo Tien 武天菩萨 with feet on the elements.
He is a picture of composure come what may. He is with God and saints and God and saints are with him for like them, he is all peace.
He is a pillar of strength like the religions of the world which provide strength and support to all humanity. Religions are the pillars of the universal house of God with heaven as the roof. The man of God too is no less a pillar of sorts. He shows what it is like to be a man of God so that others can emulate him.
He is enlightened like the Buddha. He can be the Buddha.
