Resolving the Contradictions Between Reality and the Ideal

Xuefeng

December 20, 2019

“The reason why I have great trouble is that I have a body; if I had no body, what trouble could I have?” - Tao Te Ching

Since I have a body, then I also have worries of food, clothing, housing, life, old age, sickness, death, favor, humiliation, panic, fear, and much more. If I had no body, I would have none of these worries.

Since ancient times, from the east to the west, from urban to rural areas, domestic violence has always occurred; so how do we prevent people from suffering from it? Legislation, supervision, preaching, intervention, and other attempts have failed to prevent it. Domestic violence occurs because of families, so if there were no families, there would be no domestic violence. Therefore, the only effective solution to avoid domestic violence is to not get married and not form families. If you have no family, you will be insulated from it.

How do we resolve the contradictions between reality and the ideal?

The best way to resolve it is to have no ideal.

With no ideal, there can be no contradiction?

The most wonderful sword-fighting rule is to use no sword, the most superior mental rule is to have no intention, the best management is to have no management, and the highest ideal is to have no ideal.

After determining an ideal, you eventually find that the likelihood of achieving that ideal is next to zero because the vast majority of it cannot be achieved. In this sense, ideal equals fantasy, equals imagination, equals delusion.

Ideals are actually harmful; Liu Shaoqi, Lin Biao, Peng Dehuai, and many others’ lives did not end well because they were too idealistic. They should have followed the life principle of “Saints hold the One as the world’s style”. At that time, Mao Zedong was the leader, and they would have moved along smoothly if they had respected him as such, but because of their ideals, they lost everything. There are countless examples of this throughout history; many prime ministers had great power in their hands but became overly ambitious and ended up having their whole families executed.

There was a college graduate who enjoyed a white-collar job in a big city with a monthly salary of more than ¥5 thousand. One day, he got an idea to buy a nearly 200m² house in the city-center which cost nearly ¥3 million with a ¥900 thousand down payment, but he only had ¥100 thousand in his bank account after working for three years. How could he buy this ideal house? He borrowed money from everywhere, first he used the entire ¥500 thousand which his parents had accumulated over their lifetime, and then he borrowed ¥300 thousand from other relatives, friends, and neighbors. After he took a loan of ¥2.1 million from a bank, he finally bought the house. How did he live afterwards? In order to repay his debts and the loan to the bank, he had to quit his job. How could he earn enough money to pay off his debt and bank loan by working for others? He could not, so he opened his own business. He built a workshop in the suburbs and began blending Wuliangye wine with water and raw chemical materials. He operated his business with a bad conscience. Three years later, he had paid off all his debts and had his house renovated. Thinking that he should no longer do anything against his conscience, he went to work for a foreign-owned enterprise and became a small supervisor with a monthly salary of more than ¥15 thousand. This gave him enough money to pay the bank every month and support himself well. Two years later, the price of houses dropped dramatically and his went from the ¥3 million that he had paid for it, down to just ¥1 million. Embezzlement at his company was blamed on him and he was dismissed. With no income, he still owed the bank more than ¥10 thousand each month. He had no choice but to sell his now-devalued house. After paying the full value of his house to the bank, he still owed them more than ¥400 thousand. After losing his parent’s lifetime savings and all these many years of struggling, his house was gone and he was still strapped with a huge debt. This is what ideals do. If anyone is interested in visiting a prison to interview the inmates and record statistics, I estimate that half of the inmates landed there by their own extravagant ideals.

People are most likely to develop “great” ideals when they are young and “good” ones when they are middle aged. They will only see the remoteness of their ideals when they have reached my age. All my life, many beautiful things have come to me accidentally. In Zimbabwe, Africa, I ran a club, a bar, a fast-food restaurant, and four shops. I also rented a dance hall, a restaurant, and a hair salon. All these ventures were beyond my expectations, but none are within my current range of ideals. I run a small hotel in BC, Canada, and serve guests from Europe, the United States, Australia, Canada, and other countries. The business is pretty good but I never planned on this as my ideal.

Were I asked to leave some advice for future generations, I would implore them to not have ideals. As long as you have none, you will face no contradictions between ideals and reality. If there are no contradictions, you can live a leisurely faery life.

How does one live without ideals? The answer is this: “Once roots are established, the way will grow therefrom”. Cultivate morality, perfect your soul garden, learn and accumulate knowledge constantly, comply with the way of nature, be content with the ordinary, do not contend with others, do what you do every day and do it well, accumulate more blessings, consume fewer blessings, avoid taking the risks of doing things that violate the law, disciplines, and things that corrupt one’s conscience, then leave everything to the management and arrangement of Tao.

“It is easy to have good relationships with everyone if we want nothing from them; I would not care about the price of wine if I did not drink it”. If you have no ideals, then the devil can do nothing with you. You can then keep your mind at ease and you will then have a good chance of becoming a faery.

“Rubbing ropes against wooden boards will cut into them and dripping water onto stones will wear them down, so pursuers of Tao should exert their efforts consistently. Channels form when water flows and melons’ pedicles fall when their fruits ripen, so people attain Tao naturally when their time is ready.”