No 1116 of Living Life Series 1
All of us are born with innocence. We grow up as children ever innocent and pure. As we grow, we learn to be what adults are.
We pick up many good points. We also learn the not so good ones. We become less innocent and in fact no longer innocent.
That is when religion comes in. We fall back on the good old days when we depend on family to back us up. We depend on God and heavenly saints.
But it is no longer simple. We have more wants. We become opinionated. We ask not for simple and innocent things.
Of course, even some of the innocent things of childhood, a child cannot buy. He may not have the money. In any case, money cannot buy two front milk teeth. But there is the permanent teeth. How would a child know for sure that the teeth will come?
The child lacks the conviction and knowledge. Not only is the child simple innocent and pure but he lacks knowledge and wisdom that should follow the knowledge if he is adult enough.
We may have this as adult but we lost our innocence, simplicity and if you like the purity of sorts that we are born with, that comes with us into this world.
We seem to be complicated and we must learn or rather unlearn to be pure. We may end up worse off than before. Life becomes more complex and we just cannot get out of this.
This is because we are no longer sheltered and provided by parents. We no longer can turn to them and put our trusts in people like them anymore. We have to be on our own.
We have wants and these create more havoc in us. We think of all angles - left, right and center. We get enmeshed and entangled. We have knowledge the child don't have. But the knowledge more so if wrong kind may not help at times.
We are no longer pure and simple. We become creatures of complexity. We have to turn to religion.
Houses of God are the answers but over there, there are more of those like us and these places may even be led not by pure, simple and innocent but by persons who are the wizards of sophistry - wolves in sheep clothing. We enter the liar of fox or if you prefer the cobweb of a spider. We may not know it till later.
We either get lost or grow in the Word of God out of adversity. If it is the latter, we may become contemplative and reclusive. We become meditative and have insight to get our back our childhood innocence and purity.
But our adult ego works against them. We are full of wants - often one too many. We become so polluted. We have to decontaminate our being. This is the problem of being man.
Worse still, religions are run by men and not God and saints. The pursuit of simplicity, goodness and purity is no longer simple. Men must go back to the drawing board - the basics. They must always relate to the basics at every level of spirituality. Going back to basics makes sense.
Sometimes going back to basics means doing so based on one's cultural roots and not trying to be a more non - Chinese when you are Chinese. This includes valuing the role of the Earth God or Deity and Chinese customs.
