Looking for your True Self (III)

Xuefeng

August 6, 2012

Have you watched movies or TV shows? Actors call other actors "Mom" and "Dad"; are they really their parents? Of course not! They were acting and none of the roles that they played were real; they were disguised. Someone is crying; are they really sad? Someone is killed; is the actor really dead? No and no; they were fake and everyone is fine. Everything in the play is false and nothing is real; otherwise it would be unimaginable how many actors would die on a battlefield of a war scene. None are actually dead because they are only pretending to be so.

Acting in movies and TV shows is acting, but how many people are acting in real life? People pledge their love to husbands and wives for whom they no longer have feelings, they defer to their bosses with smiles though they hate them inwardly, and they scold the United States viciously but rack their brains to send their children there. People lust after men or women in their sleepless nights but then act as guards of public morality and condemn others for acting on their lust. So who is not acting, who are not actors, and who live out their true selves? The truth is that everyone acts. Why are you acting? Because survival forces you to do so. Acting is a survival skill for living, but since it is all just acting, nothing is real, everything is false. Therefore, everything that we see in human society is false; nothing is real because everyone is acting.

You might say, “It is not all acting, some of it is real, my mother gave birth to me; that was not acting, it was real", and I will ask, "Your mother gave birth to you? Are you sure that she is your mother?". " The son had been the father and the daughter had been the mother", so who is your mother? You do not even know who you are, so how can you know that it was your mother who gave birth to you? Besides, how many mothers have you had; how many times have you been born since the beginning of time? Has the same woman given birth to you each time and has no other women ever given birth to you? Maybe the woman who gave birth to you five hundred years ago is your daughter in this life; can you say that your daughter has never given birth to you? Therefore, it is hard to say who has ever given birth to you: your mother, your daughter, or your lover. Of course, if we limit everything to within this life only, then of course it is your current mother who gave birth to you.

When someone pointed at Mary and said to Jesus Christ, "Thy mother and thy brother seek for thee", Jesus answered, "Who is my mother or my brother?". "Whoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, my sister, and my mother”. Jesus Christ was real, he was not acting, he was living out his true self.

Where is your true self?

As long as you want to remain a person, you will never find it or know who you really are. That is, if all your activities are centered around survival, catering to others, your society, your times, and traditional values, and if you still desire money, power, reputation, and sexual satisfaction in your mind and still want to be outstanding, to glorify and illuminate your family name, or to win glory for your homeland, as long as your mind abides “somewhere” or is tied by someone or something, and as long as you still have desire, demand, hatred, jealousy, resentment, fear, worry, and anxiety from within, then you will never find it either.

So, how is the true self to be found?

Continue to “Looking for your True Self (IV)”.