TAO vs. LIFE

05. Who is the Great Wisdom Man of life?

Only he who cultivates himself and truly knows the truth, who knows from where the Myriad Things come into birth and to where they will be going when dead, is the Great Wisdom Man or Enlightened Man. Buddhism calls him Buddha. Taoism calls him the Spirit. Confucianism calls him the Saint or the Great Perfection… These Great Wisdom Men are Sakyamuni, K'ung Fu-tzu (Confucius), Lao-Tzu, Jesus, Mohammed, and countless others in the past generations.

The Heaven-and-Earth has its birth and death. The society of human has its ending. All the worldly wisdoms and creations will be disappeared accordingly. Because the worldly wisdoms grow out of substances, wither out of substances, having their endings, this kind of wisdoms cannot be called the Great Wisdom. Substances have births and deaths, while the root generating substances has no birth and death. He who can return to the root will get spiritual eternity…

The Great Wisdom lies in your own mind, not in its form. A practicer, regardless of a Kulapati (A householder who practices Buddhism at home without becoming a monk or a nun) or the monastic companion, will finally reach the highest level of spirit and enlightenment. But a practicer cannot be the Great Wisdom Man of life until his mind is enlightened and the nature of mind is realized. Maybe a practicer has higher reflections for life than commoners. But that kind of reflections is based on seeing, hearing, feeling and knowing. Because before a practicer becomes enlightened, his mind does not integrate with nature, so he is not the practicer of the truth.
In this world, those who would like to explore the essence of life and the Myriad Things, who think the significance and value of life, are people who have fundament of the Great Wisdom. Nonetheless, those who are mercenary, always seeing wealth and lust as their lives are contemptible and unreasonable. Nowadays some practicers are considered as fools by mundane people, while those who fish for fame and compliments were worshiped as the strongman. Their words become maxims. Their autobiographies are hot sellers from which people learn and imitate… What a pity world! What a pity beings!

By Orient Dawn
Date: Year 2001