What are the true and fake values of life?
To make the true value of life appear you have to learn to refuse all negative character traits. Your character comes from your intention, thinking, and action. These come from your heart. If you are aware of life in the wrong direction, your intention becomes like a poisonous seed so your thoughts and actions will cause suffering.
Life has true value. Once you find it, your life becomes meaningful. It doesn’t matter how difficult your life is, you will always feel it’s worthwhile.
Life has fake value. Once you follow your fake value, then no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to change. You will feel empty, worried, fearful, and uncertain.
What is the true value of life?
You have to learn one key word: refuse. Refuse whatever causes wrong intentions. Where do wrong intentions come from? From your heart, from everything you have learned in this life and in your past lives. If you go through life with bad intentions, then you learn blind ideas which give you a blind awareness. You don’t know what life is or how it works. You will follow that blindness from lifetime to lifetime and create a lot of suffering.
The first step in learning to be awakened is to know to refuse fake values. Fake values come from having a negative character. Negative character comes from your thinking ability. That comes from your intention. Those wrong intentions come from your blindness.
Question: How do you refuse?
Answer (Tim)
By observing the causes that lead you to fake values and breaking the habit.
Answer (Scott)
If you’re going to refuse, the first thing you should do is work out what you should refuse and what you shouldn’t. The test is: does it take you in a true spiritual direction? If it does, then you don’t need to refuse it; if it doesn’t, then you do need to.
Some bad things are weak, so you can “just say no”. Some bad things are strong, so you need techniques to overcome them. One technique that Vince has is to distract himself so there’s no room for the bad thing to enter his life. If he gets a bad thought, it could come in, it could ruin him, but he thinks about philosophy instead, or he pours himself into what he’s doing – training at the gym or doing Chi Gong – which fills the space so the bad thing can’t come in.
Answer (Vince)
And it’s not just to sweep it away or change it to something else, it’s to go back and observe it with someone who’s spiritual, so you can clean it out better, in a more positive way from more angles.
Answer (Monkey)
We can refuse with Will, self-respect, and getting rid of the cause of our negative values. Sometimes we have the wisdom to refuse but don’t have the Will to follow it. Someone who’s overweight needs to have the Will to lose weight. They need to have self-respect to see the value of life to eliminate the cause of being overweight.
Answer (Richard)
Wisdom: when someone approaches you with a negative interaction, you need wisdom to decide whether you want to accept it or deflect it, whether to receive suffering or stop suffering.
Answer (Asian Ben)
Two techniques are the Mirror System or the Waterman System. If someone approaches you harshly and abruptly then you can reflect that back at them to stop their behaviour there and then. Or you can use Waterman by telling them in a smooth way: if you know their character, you can let them know their behaviour is bad right away or you can wait a couple of days for them to cool down. In both cases, you have to keep your ego out of it: teaching strangers is a lot easier than teaching family or friends.
Answer (Natalie)
We can refuse by observing wisdom. We should observe what is happening and use wisdom to find what true value is and what fake value is, then try to always do things in a spiritual direction.
Answer (Emma)
Replace the negative with a positive.
Answer (Matt Horse)
Observe the negative and try to trace back to the root cause. If someone comes to you with a bad attitude, it could be because they don’t like you or because you’ve done something wrong.
Answer (Daphne)
Use wisdom and Will. Wisdom to know the Big Deal, Small Deal System, rather than making a drama out of the situation. Will to use that system.
Answer (Matti)
Have a sure spiritual Will.
Answer (Andrew)
Develop a sure spiritual Will to be in a position to observe all the Other and recognise the negative, then you can decide whether any situation is going to bring you towards that Will or take you away from it.
Answer (Michelle)
Observe what the potential results will be. If they will bring you or anyone else suffering, then you should refuse it. The way to refuse it is to bring something positive or follow a positive habit to get rid of something negative.
Answer (Matt Rat)
Will. The way to choose between suffering and no suffering is if the situation follows your true value, and your Will to follow that true value, then you can make the right choice between suffering and non-suffering.
Comment (Sifu)
The last time I asked this question, nobody got the answer: refuse. Everybody said “Do this, do that” instead of “First, refuse the negative”. If you want to smell good, the first thing to do is have a shower, but everybody said “Put on perfume.” Nobody got the answer, but today, everybody got it.
The answer has three aspects: Will, observation, and to fill yourself with the positive, or concentrate on the positive. When you concentrate on the positive, why do you need Will? Will is to build up the positive. If you have a Will to build up a spiritual positive, then what happens? You don’t have any space for the negative. The best way to refuse is to develop a sure spiritual Will.
You can make your spiritual Will even stronger just by talking to your heart every day. When I experience anything negative, I tell my heart, “Hey, don’t accept this bullshit.” By talking to your heart, you teach it the right way.
Think about the past and remember all the times you chose the right way, how much wonder and contentment came into your life. When you chose the wrong path, how many stupid things bothered you? Just talk to yourself all the time to create your pure spiritual Will.
Wisdom is not just in your head; wisdom is to practice: to use it, to do it.
A Will is different from a wish. Will needs wisdom to know what is truly meaningful and valuable in life, what is eternal in life and what is not. Most people don’t think about the eternal, but I tell you what: you already have eternal life, you just aren’t aware of it.
A wave in the ocean can be high or low; it changes all the time. When the wave is high, it’s like when you are born; when it’s low, it’s like when you die. But that’s just appearance. Truly, your essence is never born and never dies. Before the wave was high, the water was already there; before the wave was low, the water was there. Although everything seems to change, there’s always an essence that never changes. All the changing depends on something that is not changing.
If you go to see a movie and the image didn’t change, you would complain, “It’s just a picture!” You’d throw your popcorn at the screen and want your money back. But because the movie changes, you can enjoy it; yet behind the changing movie, there has to be a white screen that doesn’t change. If the screen was also changing, you wouldn’t be able to tell what you were watching. So, everything that is changing needs something that is not changing.
Whatever does not change is eternal. Your body is always changing, from the day you were born to the day you die. It’s not that one day, your body suddenly stops working and you die, it’s actually a process of changing. This is part of nature.
I used to wonder, “If Buddha has already reached the highest level, why did he die? He should be eternal.” Then later I realised that eternity is not about the appearing form. The form changes, so he didn’t try to keep it. Buddha’s true consciousness, his perfect heart, is the essence. It never dies, it is never born, but it can be polluted. The essence is like a mirror: if it’s clean, it will shine and reflect everything perfectly, if it’s covered in dust, it doesn’t shine.
Once you have reached this stage, you no longer need to be stuck in your four-element body. Your body isn’t you. It’s a tool to help you learn life. It’s a temple for you to train your Spirits. It’s a test for you to learn, developing your wisdom to see through all the tricks of life. It’s a system for you to purify your greed, hate, and stupidity.
Once you understand the true direction and the eternity which is in you, the essence – your true heart – will be free from your body. Then you will experience eternity. As we say, everything that changes is just the appearing form. All the appearing form has an essence that never changes. Your body depends on your consciousness. Your consciousness is eternity.
You have consciousness when you are a baby, when you are a child, when you are an adolescent, when you are an adult: it is always there. It is always the same consciousness: your consciousness, not mine, not anyone else’s. It never changes. What you understand changes, however that’s from outside. What you experience will change, too, but that is also from outside. Your body will change, but that is also from outside: from the air you breathe, from the food you eat, from the water you drink, from the sunlight that warms you, and from the earth that you stand on.
All this changing from outside is natural; it has to change, but that’s not your essence. Your essence is none of these things; your essence is eternity. If you don’t take care of this eternity – if you follow greed, hate, and stupidity, covering the mirror with dust – your eternal nature will not shine.
Once you understand that changing is just a part of nature to help you to learn the non-changing Spirits, then the wisdom will allow your Will to open. You will have a Will to make your heart stay pure, in a wise way, to take care of yourself.
Why take care of yourself first? If you can’t swim, you can’t help someone who’s drowning; if you want to save people who are drowning, you have to learn how to swim first. So, have wisdom, have good will, make yourself a joyful life with a good heart, a happy heart, a wise heart, then use your wisdom to share and take care of others. Then you will realise that life is back to the way it should be: perfect.
Life is perfect. You should be able to feel that perfection all the time. It’s our blind greed, hate, and stupidity which cover the mirror with dust. So, if we have wisdom to observe the true value and build up a good will, we will be able to live in that perfect feeling all the time.
This post is from a talk by Forever Wisdom Forest on 9 September 2011 at the Sydney dojo.
