Do Not Regard Yourself as a Dish

Xuefeng

April 5, 2020

Gaze up at the starry sky; the universe would still be brilliant with one star missing. Look at the river flowing; it would still surge forward with one stream missing. Recall history; the earth would still rotate if a sage were missing. Consider yourself; the world would still be happy without you. Be humble, low-key, ordinary, common, and do not regard yourself as a dish. Looking back at every landscape that I experienced on my journey through life, I found that many people descended sadly because they took themselves as a dish.

Zhang Guotao, one of the founders of the Communist Party of China, was once the vice chairman of the Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic. He was the leader of the Red Fourth Army and commanded a hundred thousand soldiers. What a powerful pillar of talent and command; he finally froze to death in a shabby nursing home in a suburb of Toronto, Canada.

Why? Because he took himself as a dish. When the Central Red Army led by Mao Zedong and the Fourth Red Army under his leadership joined forces, Mao had only slightly more than ten-thousand soldiers left while Zhang had more than a hundred-thousand elite soldiers. Zhang felt that he should be the boss and he began looking down upon Mao. So their strife, both covert and overt, began. Zhang finally left the Party Central Committee, left the collective, and his ending was very sad.

Genius is born and Mao was placed here by the Greatest Creator. Though Mao was sometimes impoverished, his courage, bearing, and foresight could not be compared to the elites of his age. When Mao’s comrades took themselves as dishes, their tragedies became inevitable.

Lifechanyuan has been through seventeen springs and autumns, and many members who regarded themselves as dishes have left it along the way. Originally more than two thousand Chanyuan celestials, now less than two or three hundred remain. The remainder are all honest people who feel that they are not dishes, but it is precisely these remaining two or three hundred Chanyuan celestials who have witnessed the history of the development of Lifechanyuan, and they have enjoyed the stunning scenery of their journeys through life and LIFE.

In 1994, I drove a dilapidated, open-top jeep through the jungle, alone in the Binga region of northern Matabeleland Province, Zimbabwe. As I entered a small town, a large group of people gathered around a drunken native and yelled at him. As I arrived, he rushed over to me and shouted: “This is my boss; this is my boss”! As he pointed his index finger toward me, I felt that my dignity had been violated, so I replied loudly and sternly: “I am not your boss; I am not your boss”. The drunken guy meant to flatter me but he was criticized by me, so he walked away a little grimacingly. The booing people laughed at him, but on the other hand, they seemed to be calling me an unworthy creature.

I later became annoyed and regretted it. My attitude had been so ugly; I could have befriended the guy, danced with him, and made everyone happy, but at that time, I thought that I was awesome and I felt like I was a dish and became humiliated later as a result. This incident left me with an indelible memory, still vivid after a quarter-century.

I became wiser after that incident and learned much from it. My biggest lessons were to never regard myself as a dish and to never look down on a seemingly ordinary person. Even if you encounter a beggar, treat them with courtesy, and definitely, never consider yourself superior. I had not yet learned Laozi’s Tao Te Ching at that time. Had I learned it, it would have been “All glare tempered, All dust smoothed”, and I would never have made such a low-level mistake.

Never look down on an ordinary person, never leave the collective, the masses, or the main group, and never regard yourself as a dish. When you think that you are superior and are not willing to associate with honest, simple, and ordinary people, no matter how freaking awesome you are, you are actually nothing more than flatulence in the breeze.