Life is full of ups and downs. This can be classified as yang and yin where yang is up or optimistic and yin is down or pessimistic. Here is a story:

Two businessmen were told that people in Africa did not wear shoes. The optimistic one immediately said that, This is wonderful! I can sell shoes to everyone there. It would be a good opportunity and I should go there to start selling shoes. On the other hand, the pessimistic one said, How can you sell shoes there? If people do not wear shoes at all, how am I to sell shoes?

Who is right and who is wrong? In this situation, each of them could be either right or wrong. Being too optimistic can land ourselves with dangers and lose rationality. The pessimistic might miss some good opportunities. Being careful and prudent is good but do not be too conservative otherwise we will not be able to see potential opportunities. All these play a very important part in either giving us good times or bad times. We never know when we can strike gold. People spend millions in Research and Development to improve so as to compete in the survival of the fittest or drilling the ocean to find black gold.

Optimistic people see everything as beautiful and when we are happy the world is beautiful. Pessimistic people always see things as being difficult and they give up hopes and neglect opportunities easily. We can be determined but we should not be stubborn. We need to persist with what we should persist with. Be cool, calm and collected and use your wisdom to find the balance. Keep the balance of yin and yang and make a correct choice according to the time and the development of the situation. Good times and bad times always alternate. There are valuable lessons for us to learn in both situations.

We have the original mind which is different from the normal human mind. Our original mind is pure while the human mind can be contaminated. We lead a life according to our attitudes, perspectives and own value which lead to a series of actions, habits, and mould our personalities. There is this inner desire to succeed and achieve our dreams to have good times and better life. We have inner desires to pursue worldly enjoyments but actually these worldly enjoyments are changing and will soon disappear. For example after a few glasses of drinks, it can turn out to be suffering by vomiting them out. After a night of sinful pleasure can turn out be to be infected with HIV. Worldly pleasure can end ones life, or end up in regret.

There are rules to abide when we decide to do something. Firstly the values and standards in our mind must be right. If our decision is based on material gain or loss only, we might finally gain something. If we gained something but lost our principle of life, we have not actually gained anything because if damage is done, we cannot buy back later with money. It is perfectly fine if we can have gain and profit without hurting our conscience. If we have to go against our conscience in order to have this gain, then we have to think many times. The damage done can have a very serious consequence and compensation can never be adequate to repair or repay. Good times can become bad times when repayment is due.

The gain in material things can never balance the loss in our conscience and damage to conscience is very hard to compensate. When we feel very difficult to come to a decision in any situations, using the conscience to decide is the best. Our conscience will tell us whether it is right or wrong. They are our teacher and the instinct or conscience is very pure and divine. The disciple is the human mind which must listen to the master, the conscience. In the practice of Tao of Heaven, we use our First Heavenly Treasure to help us to decide in a very difficult situation by focusing on our true self. By using it, thats the moment where we communicate with God (Lao Mu) to advise us. We can calm down our inner desires and let our true self be the one to make decisions.

When we desire for some gains or profits, it is always good to be aware and ask who will benefit from them. Is it the flesh, the body, the conscious self, the feelings or the true self! How long can this benefit last and if we want to avoid a loss, we should also ask who will then suffer from this loss? Is it my money or other peoples money? Will I be careless in doing so? This mental consideration before doing any actions is very important to give us either good times or bad times, in the short run or long run. Practising Tao will help us to avoid making wrong decision because we are most likely not to do things to hurt our conscience.

As we continue to improve our spiritual cultivation, our spirit will be more willing and stronger, and external difficulties can no longer obstruct us in many ways. Anytime is a good time. We can even comfort other people facing hard times because we can elevate our mind and make ourselves happy even if we are facing hard times. Our adversities may be more than them, but through realization of life, we still have the ability to comfort ourselves and them.

This is the advice from my Heavenly Teacher JiGong:

And a life of the True, the Good and the Beautiful is one where you must be able to apply your marvelous wisdom to explore fully the impermanence of life; and not only to chase after the beautiful scenes before your eyes. All the beautiful scenes will fade away with the merciless time and tide. Take a look at those ancient heroes! How many of them can conquer the merciless time and tide; how many of them can conquer heaven-and-earth? Therefore, when this short-lived life cannot be lingered on we can only borrow its shortness to create the permanent. Hence, a clever person will definitely make use of the shortness of time to set up an eternal and divine undertaking.

Author: T.A Chew