Chinese
Knowledge
Of the
essay " Mochono and his philosophical puzzler ", that is finished in
the same Website, I have summarized his final part, since there there are
valuable contributions of the millennial Chinese culture, especially of the
Taoism and of the Buddhism, which also reached development in China. It seems
to me valuable to notice this ancient and richest source of knowledge, which,
on having been confronted then with the cultural revolution of Mao Tse Tung,
produced a new order in full evolution, growth and expansion, so much that at
present, with the beginning of recognition of the property deprived inside a
socialistic system, we are present at an unpublished economic, social and
cultural opening, which undoubtedly has to provide us still big surprises. The
study of the compared religions and the oriental philosophy will make possible
us to achieve a mental opening to a vast humanistic vision that will provide us
with new hardware to think and to change the difficult reality that today
affects us.
/////.....
The human being is fully human when
it is capable of going beyond where it is "impelled" and to come to
the ambience in which he is “ free and responsible ”, where he decides. The
human being is dehumanized when he stops being a person in charge.
The ethics imply the free one
acting, choosing with freedom a course of action or conduct, but this freedom
turns out to be completed by the responsibility, for answering for the proper
acts.
This free election bears the access
to the universe of values, this are universal, qualities or norms of conduct
that can help to take opportunely a better decision.
The human being, as integrity
bio-psicho-socio-spiritual, acts ethically on having chosen at freedom and with
responsibility, morally illuminated by a horizon of transcendental values.
This overlapping between the ethics,
the morality, the freedom, the responsibility and the values, gives us the idea
of the intimate relation and the necessary existing interconnection between the
above mentioned concepts, and serves to understand the ethical crisis through
that we live at present. The postmodern life style precipitated a fall of
values, of the normative morality.
The postmodernism, with his
materialistic pragmatism it has led to the ethics completely it costs, where
everything is allowed, everything is equal, the same a donkey that a great
teacher, there are values, neither models nor rules, only it is adored to the
golden calf. But considering the social capitalist model lacking in human
values, criticized both by Juan Pablo II and by George Soros, we must remember
here the wise Biblical judgment: " of what it costs to the man to conquer
the world if it loses his soul ”.
Today to this society with crisis of
values she is called the society pluralist. It is characterized by a great
conglomerate of the people, much more than in the antiquity; it is lived
differently from the small circle of the family, the quarter, the people. There
is a great miscellany of the people, of ethnics racial and of cultures. The
pluralism is so quantitative and cultural.
In the society pluralist there is no
a moral unit from the normative point of view, whereas in the old society there
was a narrower relation of the parents with the children, with religious more
important and deeply rooted values.
This society pluralist, of that time
raises us a major demand to have an ethical behavior and to be mutually
binding.
Although the traditional values have
disappeared or are in retreat, nevertheless, there appears now the enormous
importance of the individual conscience as he guides interns before the absence
of external guide. A good education is priority of that time directed to
forming the conscience of responsibility, to inculcating healthy values, to
encouraging the emergence of the intuition in the individual conscience as
instrument that allows to discover the hierarchy of transcendental values that
guide ethically our action.
This way, although the traditional
values have fallen down, this ripeness of conscience allows equally to the man
to discover the only senses of the existence and to fulfill his mission in the
world.
In a society pluralist it is lived
in a relativism. Cultural pluralism exists but it must not make a mistake with
ethical pluralism that must not exist. The morality cannot be relative, any
morality protests absolutely, which must be, must be (without understanding
this as rigidity).
It is a question of finding
something absolute in the society pluralist that allows to be a mulberry tree
in the above mentioned society; some value that everybody recognizes.
There exists absolute that that does
not do differences of race, cultures, religions and that is in all: the common
condition humanizes (that in potency and essence is spiritual and divine).
We all are mortal and we share the
same penuries, miseries and human happy moments in the way towards the
spiritual perfection.
The common human condition is an
absolute, not ideally abstract but tremendously concrete value personified in
the similar one that I have in front of me.
When one starts discovering what
joins all of us in the society pluralista, there begins then to be more
solidarity and brotherhood, one is perfecting the moral feeling.
The common human condition is an
absolute value because it is something that us comes out, it does not depend on
us.
We discover that his condition of
absolute, transcendent value, it joins it spiritually with the purest Christian
values: " it loves your neighbor as to you himself ” the paradigm is of
that time to imitating. We find this way an absolute anchoring of the moral,
this piece of news been founded on an absolute value that is the terrestrial
common human, simultaneously and celestial condition, all the men are equal
because they are mortal, with his kindness and nastiness. To be mutually
binding implies respecting the human condition of other, uniting, helping. We
must perceive the common thing, which us fraternizes: we all are finite men
opened for the infinite transcendency.
It is necessary to be united, to see
what he afflicts to other.
In this society pluralist the
individual is isolated, alone, sometimes delivered to if same, it is not
provided like earlier with the help of other.
There are problems and common needs,
sometimes the wild consumption is chased, there are bankruptcies in the health,
the feeding,
the education, the juridical safety.
The life is difficult, there are
anxiety and fears that must be conquered.
It is a possible moral being helping
the brother, the similar one, answering to this claim and hoping that also it
should help us.
It is necessary to look for a
solution to the crisis of the contemporary ethics. There is not enough the
rational categorical imperative of Kant directed to the subjectivity of the
individual, his willful postulate that he says: " it works only according
to the maxim that it does that you could want at the same time that it is a
universal law ”; since any person of bad conscience would proclaim then that
the law of the forest is a universal law.
The today imperative is to revalue
the ethics, it is to inject again spiritual values to these so empty current
ethics, light and superficial; we must recover the transcendental values that
guide the moral conscience, which they allow us to distinguish the good of the
evil. Only in the measurement that we could elucidate clearly this we will head
for a moral illustrious conscience.
A suitable balance between the
imagination provided by the feelings and the proper knowledge of the reason,
not only allows to overcome the old clash Romanticism - Rationalism
but it turns into the instrument
adapted to gesticulate correctly in the reality.
Hence the importance of
strengthening not only the rational attitude but basically any spiritual
education (be or not strictly religious) and mutually binding that,
emphasizing, in the principios and Christian values it privileges the value of
the love to the family, to the neighbor, to God, and think about how to realize
the supreme Good.
Also, from a psychological point of
view, the benefits multiply geometrically, since a person who gains access to
the universe of the values and it spends his time and his conduct fits to
to realize them, he finds a meaning,
a sense to his life; it does not live already in vain, there overcomes the
neurotic triad of our postmodern time (the violence - aggression, the depression
- suicide, and the addictions, alcohol - drugs-power) completing this way his
individual existence and his community participation across his work and works,
becoming useful and united for himself and the community.
This approach allows to recover this
way the initiative, creativity and individual responsibility, the man is a
maker of his own destination again; it will not even fall down in the consumer
conformism of doing what others do not in the dictatorship of masses of doing
what others demand that it should do.
Also it turns out to be valuable to
investigate the approach that, to assemble the man with God the principal
religions (of the Latin I will re-go well together) have on the spiritual
dimension of the human being, since we will be able to discover a great
conceptual wealth and he practises.
In the famous epic Hindu poem
Baghavad Gita (Celestial Singing or Singing of the Fortunate) placed
historically approximately 1400 years before Christ, taking as an excuse the
development of a great battle, describes the highest spiritual dialogue between
Krishna (as the God's embodiment) and his faithful disciple Arjuna.
It is Baghavad Gita a compendium of
the deepest spiritual educations of the philosophy hinduist and it reaches in
East the height of the Bible in Occident.
In his part VII, titled Spiritual
Discernment , says Krishna:
“ Listen now to my words, oh
Arjuna!, and you will know like with the fixed mind in Me and observing the
educations of the Yoga will go so far as to meet me.
But, between the million men of the
race, few ones they have sufficient discernment to wish the perfection.
And of the few ones who wish it, it
turn out to be very rare those who reach her, since it are counted those who
know my essential nature.
Earth, water, fire, air, ether,
mind, reason and equity represent the óctuple form of my low nature.
But, also, I possess my top nature,
which is the beginning that supports in the universe the counterfoil of the
creation.
Because I am the Creator and at the
same time the Destroyer of the universe.
All the objects of the universe
depend on Me, and I sustain them as it supports the thread to the line of
pearls in which they are thread.
Oh prince pandava! I am a moisture
in the waters; brilliance in
the sun and the moon; in sacred
monosyllable, AUM in them You Forbid; sound in the air; virility in the men; it
calls in the fire; life in all the beings, and the Yoga of the yogis.
Recognize me, Arjuna, as an eternal
seed of all the beings. I am
knowledge of the wise person and the
splendour of the hero.
I am the fortitude of the fortress;
the love to the straight action in whom they serve by means of straight
actions.
Three qualities of harmony, activity
and inaction are in Me, although I am not in them.
Suggested the men for the illusion
of these three qualities, do not understand that I them come out, immutably and
imperishable, still in the middle of his unnumbers changes and vicissitudes.
Difficult it is that the human sight
comes out the dense illusion produced by the qualities; but there will come
directly to Me the capable ones of seeing the light of my flame.
Those who cannot come out the
illusion will not come to Me, because they do not meet Me, but they adore the
gods of the material and sensory world, who are the real only ones for them.
Those who adore me are four classes
oh prince!: the poor wretches, the investigators of the Truth, the conceited
ones and the wise persons.
The best of all is the wise person
who recognizes One, it lives in the world of One and acts illuminated by the
knowledge.
Very much the wise person loves me
and I love it moreover.
I himself am loved by my me like
because it has been identified by me and only it lives in Me.
After many lives, the wise person
comes to Me and recognizes after me as Everything.
Difficult it is for the ordinary men
to find one of these wise persons, called mahatmas.
Those who lacking in knowledge,
adore such and such god with variety of rites and ceremonies, find that one
that is in accordance with his nature.
But he knows, Arjuna, that although
the men adore a lot of gods and images and forge many concepts of the Divinity,
so that some seem in contradiction with others and with me, in the fund they
all presuppose me.
His faith in the gods and images is
dawning of the faith in Me, and on having adored them only they want to adore
me, although they ignore it.
Really I say to you that when with
sincere faith they adore, they reach of
My the benefits that of his god
impetran.
Such is my love, my knowledge and
justice.
But warn, oh prince!, that the
reward of the desires finite is also finite.
The men of short understanding ask
for perishable things, and, therefore, they have to give them in reward equally
perishable things.
Those who adore the false gods go to
the shaded worlds been ruled by the shaded gods.
But the wise persons who meet Me in
essence, as being Everything in One, come to Me, to my world of Reality, where
there is not shades, where everything is real as light that removes the
darkness.
The lacking ones in spiritual
discernment believe that I, the Unshown one, demonstrate visibly to his eyes.
But you have to know, Arjuna, that
in my essence I am not visible to the eyes of the men.
After the forms for Me come, I
remain invisible for the ignoramus.
I have not been born and I will
never die, although the blinded world ignores it, because it takes the shade as
the substance.
I know, Arjuna, the innumerable
beings that have happened before my eyes for the wide field of the universe.
Also I meet those who now are in the
field.
And also (formidable this mystery
for the men) oh prince!
I meet all those who in forward will
tread the field.
But of all of them - spent, present
and future-, nobody meets me completely.
I have all in my mind, but his minds
cannot contain me in essence.
The men are dazzled by the illusion
of the pairs of put up, and instead of the Unit they see the antithetics forms
of attraction and repulsion.
But some of them are already free of
the illusion of the pairs of put up and know that I am Quite in One.
Those who like that meet Me, take
refuge in Me as nursing in the breast of the mother.
They strain for escaping from the
wheel of births and deaths. They meet the Eternal one. They meet me. They know
my works, my knowledge, my universal Dominion.
They know that any life is my Life;
that any adoration relapses into Me
With the harmonious mind and the
heart full up of love, they meet me in life and in the hour of the death ”.
When 600 Years before Christ, the
Lion of the Law and the Compassion, Prince Siddartha Gautama (Buddha) went out
of his palace to seeing for the first time the world, it discovered the old
age, the illness, the suffering and the death. Perplex for this vision it
decided at his 29 years to tread the dusty ways of the India in search of
responses to the puzzlers of the existence. Turned into migrating ascetic made
a pilgrimage of place in place without finding the truth, until it decided to
sit down to pondering under the shade of the tree Bo, proposing to remain
there: up to reaching the supreme knowledge. After long and fecund time to
ponder, it reached the supreme light, transforming in Buddha, the Illuminated
one.
Then, the Light of Asia, the Master
of Compassion and Friend of the Humanity, decided to transmit to the world the
nectar of his knowledge and assembling his disciples said to them:
“ Pay attention to these four Noble
Truths:
Existing as a separated personality
condemns to the suffering and to the pain.
The supreme cause of the misery is
the desire to possess and to preserve the possessed thing.
The liberation is achieved rejecting
all the desires except that of straight knowledge.
The Footpath of the Liberation and
of the discontinuation of all the opposite ones is Octuple Noble Footpath, the
footpath of the immortality ”.
Eight holy virtues, perfection or
footpaths of lighting of the Sakhyamuni (Buddha) are: the straight credence,
the straight aspiration, the straight word, the straight conduct, the average
rectum of life, the straight effort, the straight attention, the straight
meditation. By means of these eight footpaths of lighting the supreme
perfection is reached and one enters the Nirvana, which does not mean any
annihilation but everything opposite: the expansion of the narrow conscience of
the personality up to including the universal spirit and be unifying by the
spiritual underlying nucleus to all the creatures.
As perennial legacy (and perhaps
foreseeing the Kantian error), the Tathágata left to his nearest and faithful
disciples his most valued spiritual treasure in these words:
“ know that although the doctrine of
Buddha is one, this one is unfolded in two: the doctrine of the Eye, the day
pupil based on the words and the rational concepts, directed to the masses and
the scholars; and the doctrine of the Heart, internal, based on the supreme
compassion and charity, on the intimate spiritual communion; you must give the
last one special attention, since still the ignorance itself is preferable to
the Knowledge of the Head if this one does not have the Knowledge of Soul to
illuminate it and to direct her ”.
It tells the legend that Buddha was
one day sat in company of a disciple much next to the shore of a lake,
neighbor to the high summits. In this moment, slowly an elephant approached the
shore of the lake, and after observing his image reflected in the calm and
crystalline waters, it moved away.
To a little time, they saw to
approach a walker the same shore. After looking at his image reflected in the
calm mirror of water, indicating the same one this man exclaimed:I am, I am!.
Buddha of that time said to his
faithful disciple: " it looks, the elephant has turned out to be the most
wise of the two since after looking in the water mirror it was not recognized
and moved away, whereas the man
in his ignorance it been thinking
about being recognized, without realizing his error,
since you have to know, dear
disciple, that the real one I is more
there of the bonds of the Maya
(illusion) ”.
Contemporary to Buddha, in China it
bloomed a doctrine, the Taoism, which involves achievements in the metaphysical
order, related more to the myth and the cosmogony than to the history; as that
the symbolism and the images have major importance than the historical facts to
which they allude.
Lao Tse, in reality prepared the Tao
Te King based on the most ancient cultural contributions (between them the I
Ching, Book of the Changes) being his governing idea thought in the first
instance as beginning of the universal impersonal order, which in his
successive metaphysical, social, political and moral makings gave life to the
whole Chinese thought, so much that of Confucio as that of Lao Tse. This way
the conception of the Yin-Yan is of an extraordinary wealth, principles polar
complementary, more than put up, where the imbalance between them determines
the absence of harmony.
For the Taoism the conscience of
"me" takes possession of the action, spoils her and spoils it,
because it subordinates her - more or less clearly - to his own ends.
The receptive acceptance (and not
passive) of the will of the Sky is the one that is represented repeatedly in
the Tao, by means of the symbol of the "vale" and the “ spirit of the
vale ” (Ku Shen); it is the law of the wise person, and acting in accordance
with this law - without bearing in mind the particular desires or the proper
will - is the way planned by the Sky, it is to come to the Tao, since the law
of the ground is the Sky, and the law of the Sky is the Tao.
In his chapter XVI, To return to the
Root, the Tao says:
“ Your goal is the maximum of gap.
It preserves the steadfastness of
the peace.
The things are born and they enter
the existence, but from there: we see them returning to his rest.
It looks at everything what it
blooms: each one returns to his root.
To return to the root is to find the
rest.
This rest means retrogression to the
destination.
To return to the destination means
to last constantly.
To know the constant thing is to be
illuminated.
But not to know the constant thing
is to fall down in the blindness and the disaster.
The one who knows the constant
thing, includes it everything.
The fact that everything includes it
is just with all.
Being just with all it is universal.
The universal thing is the rhythm of
the Sky.
And what is in rhythm with the Sky,
it is with the Tao.
And what is in rhythm with the Tao
lasts eternally.
Although his body dies, it will
never perish ".
Here the text shows a proper vision
of indifference of the wise person who knows that the things of the world have
his vital cycle and that then they return to his own essence (to not shown).
Also the I Ching says: the Sky is the forefather and rector of everything what
exists.
In the primitive Jewish educations,
in the secret sanctum of the Hebrews, the celebrant was saying in the certain
days to the Supreme Priest: Schem-Ham-Phoras?, that it means what is his name?
(the God's name). And the Supreme Priest was answering: Yod-He-Vau-He, or in
the only one word: YEV or YOH, which there was meaning God, the nature and the
man, or the unspeakable and inexpressible thing, human and Divine I. It is a
favor to this indescribable, inexpressible and incommunicable me, since the man
rises over all the rest terrestrial beings, all the animals and the whole
creation. And it is thanks to him as the man himself he communicates with Me
Infinitely, with God himself. God like that says to Cradle in the mount Sinai :
“ I am the one that is ”.
When Jesus Christ, the humble
carpenter of Galilee, the most sublime expression of the divine love that trod
on the ground, began his continuing sermon and better than the primitive Hebrew
educations, he emphasized the divine fundamental quality: " God is a love
for on all the things ”, and proposed to the man to act to his image and
resemblance: " love the some to others as brothers that you are; this is
the Law and the prophets ”.
The invaluable values transmitted by
the Master of Love and Sacrifice have resisted the test of the time and help to
the human being to cross this vale of tears in his evolutionary spiritual way.
This way the Faith, the Love, the
Hope, the Solidarity, the Charity constitute the heart of the Christian
education and a moral regulation adapted to any epoch and place (“ I Have here,
I am with you up to the end of the times ”).
Beyond the human bankruptcies, on
having transmitted the prescripts of the Saver of the World, and dogmatic
excesses that took place along the history and that now are in healthy review,
the Christian educations are essentially good in his spirit and they are named
to last in the heart of the humanity (“ If you continue in my word, you will be
truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you
free ”).
To this height of the essay, I know
that the reader has to wonder....
and the rabbit?... The rabbit that
could already accompany me is not physically between us.
His name was Mochono, was white with
black spots in the loin, the ears and the snout.
Of course, only it was necessary to
him to speak; he saw the TV in the couch with my wife and the babies, was
tasting the cables that were staying to his scope, and had a strange behavior
that always intrigued us. When we were stopping in the way of the small later
court of the house in which we were living, he began a rare circular dance
about one, was turning and returns which a calessa without any apparent target
that any more was not to demonstrate his interest and taste before the human
presence.
Why would it make Mochono this?.
To where does the flame leave when
we extinguish the sail? (Koan, thought seed - that produces a mental shock - of
the Zen Japanese Buddhism).
Perhaps the strange behavior of
Mochono remains as one more of the bottomless mysteries that accompany us
during the life, or perhaps some day is allowed us to know it.
Still the most negligible thing and
in puerile this appearance in relation with everything (“ As well as it is
above it is below ”, Hermes Trimegisto): the small puzzler of Mochono sends us
to Everything major, to the Great Question.
The important thing is not to
forget, it is to be awake, it is to tackle the way.
The most important thing is not the
goal that always steps back infinitely, but the search; it is there where it is
learned, one finds the sense of the life and the spiritual conscience is
forged.
Very interesting investigations are
current at present in reference to the spiritual dimension of the man and his
ethical and moral consequences, so much in the aggiornamient of the principal
religions (there are really important the recent declarations of the Pope Juan
Pablo II in " Crossing the threshold of the hope ", and the World
Declaration of Ethics prepared by the World Parliament of the religions-Chicago,
1995-), as in other philosophical - spiritual fields, for example the realized
ones for the University of Seven Rays in New Jersey, the USA, and those of the
Lucis Trust Foundation in London, England, both answering basically to the
teachings of the out-standing spiritualist Alice A. Bailey: " service to
the humanity is a service to God " (that without effort we recognize
coincidental with thinking and working of the Mother Teresa of Calcuta).
Big spiritual changes begin to be
outlined in the world: in the middle of the struggle against the iniquities of
a wild capitalism lacking in values human and unable to promote them, there is
one to be reborn of the religious feeling in the peoples, conscious that is not
enough to gain access only to the worthy and proper consumption of the modern
life but also it is essential to find a response to the puzzler of the
existence and a transcendent sense to the proper life.
The postmodernism is suffering,
there are perceived the last death rattles of his hollow morality and his
unsuccessful rational secular, empty and superficial ethics.
Behind the sterile postmodernism
dawns already the ultramodernity;
there resounds the voice of the
silence and the distant scream of the spirit:
the Man has died, God lives!.
The idea perishes reduccionist
of the homunculism, of the fictitiously autonomous and profligate man. There
grows the conscience of a placed, determined freedom - inconditioned, with
responsibility to be decided before the values, to realize them and to come out
towards the Absolute one.
There is reborn purified the
spiritual essence of the human Being and across the prayer and meditation
(forward and up) there are opened to him the portals of the fifth kingdom and
of the way of top evolution (“ Nobody can come to Me, if it is not attracted by
the Father who sent me ”); he being possible to gain access to the most
abundant Life and to reach the Lighting (“ I am the Light of the World, who
avenges Me be not walked by it between darkness ”).
It him is feasible of that time to the
human Being to syntonize his small will with that of the Creator collaborating
with the divine work, being able to the end to exclaim: ": do to him Your
will, this way in the Earth as in the Sky! ”.
That this way is.
Bachelor in Psychology Juan Martín
Nuñez
