Against The Stream ~ MANY FACES
I ONCE TOLD SOMEONE
that there are four types of people in the world:
(1) Those who are beautiful or handsome
externally, but who are not so internally— that
is, in their hearts;
(2) Those who are not good-looking externally,
but who are kind and ‘beautiful’ inside;
(3) Those who are not good-looking externally,
and who are also not good on the inside;
(4) Those who look good outside, and who
are correspondingly good on the inside.
The person who I explained this to then asked me how
to distinguish good people from bad, when the outer
appearance is not always indicative of their ‘inside’.
I realized and admitted that what I had just told
him wasn’t as clear-cut and simple as the way
I had conveniently categorized people for him. We
humans— unlike other animals, which live mainly
by instinct— are extremely complex and unpredictable.
While it is true that we often function by habit,
we are more prone to change than the other animals;
one day, we will do something in a particular way,
and the next day, we might do the same thing quite
differently, depending upon our mood or feeling at
the time.
All religions tell of the eternal conflict
between Good and Evil, a conflict that is going on
inside and outside each of us. Most of us take sides
in this conflict, or get drawn into it, but because
our minds change so quickly and are not yet firmly
decided, sometimes we find ourselves on this side,
and sometimes on that side. No-one is either 100%
good or 100% bad; we are a mixture, not really knowing
where we stand from one day to the next.
If asked, "What color is the sky?",
most people would say, "Blue". Well, certainly,
it is blue, but not always, is it? Sometimes it is
gray, or white, or black; sometimes it is orange,
pink, or red. Likewise, it is incorrect to say about
someone: "He’s a bad man", for although
he might be bad at times, there would surely be times
when he isn’t bad.
Here is a quotation from The Gulag Archipelago,
by prominent Soviet dissident author Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
"If only there were evil
people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds,
and it were necessary only to separate them from the
rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing
good from evil runs through the heart of every human
being, and who is willing to destroy a piece of his
own heart?"
As a species, we are still evolving, though
from what to what, we are not sure. Now, with improved
communications and ease of travel, people of different
religions and cultures intermingle, until the edges
become blurred and not so distinct. It is an age of
rapid change, and as a result, there is a lot of confusion
and conflict; but if we are not too rash and can restrain
ourselves from destroying everything in our impatience,
much good will come of it. We will probably emerge
from it— like a butterfly from a chrysalis—
as more-balanced, tolerant and wiser human beings.
Surely, we shall all need to make compromises in this
transition period, and that is seldom easy, but the
fact that we have survived this far is ample testimony
of our ability to do so.
Now is a time for ‘traveling light’,
a time to sort through the baggage we have collected
over the ages, to discard the obsolete and unnecessary
while retaining the essence of our experiences—
things that are valuable and useful in any situation.
It is like embarking on a refugee-boat, where space
is very limited and few possessions can be taken along:
before boarding, we must decide what we shall take
with us: only the bare essentials. If necessary—
as most refugees know— we can get by with very
little.
Buddhists are fond of saying that all living
beings have ‘Buddha-nature’— that
is, the capacity to become enlightened, though this
doesn’t mean that they will become enlightened
as animals, fish, birds, etc. It means that, after
many lives in many forms, they will finally wake up
to Reality, as human beings; the human condition is
therefore looked upon as very fortunate. It may be
that we have ‘Buddha-nature’, but we should
realize that, along with the capacity to become enlightened,
we also have other propensities— darker aspects—
that impel us to behave badly and cause suffering.
And in most of us, the lower urges are stronger than
the impetus for good— just as darkness is stronger
than light. Some people might not agree with this,
and say that darkness and light are equal, as in day
following night, or that light is stronger than darkness.
Well, we all know that day follows night and that
night doesn’t last forever; but for the sake
of my illustration of Man’s nature here, I still
say that darkness is stronger than light, because,
look: we don’t pay for darkness, do we? It’s
free, whether we want it or not; but the electricity-bills
we have to pay show that light is not!
Yes, maybe we do have ‘Buddha-nature’,
but we have ‘animal-nature’, ‘demon-nature’,
and ‘hungry-ghost-nature’, too. What is
‘Hungry-Ghost-nature’, you ask? Well,
the Buddhist scriptures say that, as a result of karma
done in previous existences, ‘hungry ghosts’
are miserable beings who can never satisfy their constant
hunger because of their immense stomachs, mouths the
size of a needle’s eye, and necks, arms and
legs so thin that they look like twigs. Well, I don’t
know if there really are such beings— I’ve
never seen any— but there are many people who,
though well-dressed and good-looking, behave like
Hungry Ghosts; their greed to acquire and possess
is unquenchable; this is what it means to be a Hungry
Ghost!
Most people know the old fable of the Goose
that laid Eggs of Gold, but it illustrates very well
what I am talking about here, so it will do no harm
to repeat it:
There was once a couple who had a remarkable
Goose that laid an egg of solid gold every day. For
some time they were happy and content with this; who
wouldn’t be? But, as the Goose continued to
lay the daily egg of gold, the woman and her husband
came to expect it as their right, and took it for
granted that there would be an egg of gold every day.
No longer did the man ask his wife: "Did the
Goose lay today?" when he came home from work.
Thus, they came to look upon this wonder as commonplace.
Of course, it wasn’t long before their
expectation turned to greed, which grew and grew,
like a cancer— as greed does— until the
man said to his wife: "Look here, this goose
lays one egg a day, no more and no less. It must have
a great store of gold inside it, from which it produces
the eggs. If we kill it and cut it open, we’ll
be able to get all the gold in one lump, rather than
waiting for it in pieces, day-by-day". Seeing
the logic of this, the wife reached for the knife.
But alas! After the goose had been killed and disemboweled,
there was no gold to be found! Their grief and remorse
knew no limits, but too late. Overcome by greed, they
had destroyed their good fortune!
Each of us has his own life to live. Should
we not think for ourselves and decide what we want
to do with our lives, and which way we want to go?
Sometimes, it may mean swimming against the stream,
as many people seem to have no minds of their own
and act like sleepwalkers or zombies. If others want
to follow the way of Hungry Ghosts, that is up to
them, of course, but does it mean that we have to
do so, too?
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