The Importance of Living

The Awakening – Approach of Life 

He is seldom disillusioned because he has no illusions, and seldom disappointed because he never had extravagant hope.

A Pseudo-Scientific Formula

Mankind seems to be divided into idealists and realists.

The forces of idealism and realism tug at each other in all human activities, personal, social and national and real progress is made possible by the proper mixture of these two ingredients, so that the clay is kept in the ideal pliable, plaster condition, half moist and half dry, not hardened and unmanageable; nor dissolving into mud.

Humorist is always like a man charged with the duty of breaking sad news gently to a dying patient.

Wisdom or the highest type of thinking consists in toning down our dreams or idealism with a good sense of humor, supported by reality itself.

When a friend of Confucius told him that he always thought three times before he acted, Confucius wittily replied, “To think twice is quite enough.

The Scamp as Ideal

Facts that distinguish man from animals:-

1.               Man has a playful curiosity and a natural genius for exploring knowledge.

2.               Man has dreams and a lofty idealism.

3.               Man is able to correct his dreams by a sense of humor.

4.               Man does not react to surroundings mechanically and uniformly.  Men possess the ability and the freedom to determine his reactions and change surroundings at his will.

Man is the greatest scamp on earth.  Human dignity must be associated with the idea of a scamp and not with that of an obedient, disciplined and regimented soldier.

I call no man wise until he had made the progress from the wisdom of knowledge to the wisdom of foolishness, and become a laughing philosopher, feeling first life’s tragedy and then life’s comedy.  We must weep before we can laugh, out of sadness comes the awakening and out of the awakening comes the laughter of the philosopher, with kindness and tolerance to boot.

The modern man takes life far too seriously, and because he is too serious, the world is full of troubles.

VIEWS OF MANKIND

Christian, Green and Chinese

The question of the origin of evil, there must have been another devil to tempt this fallen angel.

The Genesis story of the reason why Adam and Eve were driven out of Garden of Eden was not that they had tasted the tree of knowledge, as is popularly conceived, but the fear lest they should disobey a second time and eat of the tree of life and live forever.

All in all, there is still a belief in total depravity, that enjoyment of this life is sin and that to be uncomfortable is to be virtuous, and that on the whole man cannot save himself except by a greater power outside.

You can’t make a man a Christian unless you first make him believe he is sinner.  Religion in our country has so narrowed down to the contemplation of sin that a respectable man does not any longer dare to show his face in the church.

Greek made their gods like men, while the Christians desired to make men like the Gods.

All souls day is set apart on the fifteenth day of the seventh moon for a general sacrifice to those drowned in water or dead and unburied in a strange land.

All men and women have passions, natural desires and noble ambitions and also a conscience; they have sex, hunger, fear, anger and are subject to sleekness, pain, suffering and death.  Culture consists in bringing about the expression of these passions and desires in harmony with this human nature given us, we can become the equals of heavens and earth.

Beautiful talented girls suffering a harsh fate are considered as “fallen fairies” punished for having mortal thoughts or some neglect of duty in heaven and sent down to this earth to live through a predestined fate of mortal sufferings.

When young, beware of fighting, when strong, beware of sex, and when old, beware of possessions.  This means boys loves fighting, a young man loves women and an old man loves money.

Let’s be reasonable.  Attitude of neither expecting too much not too little.  Man is, as sandwiched between heaven and earth, between idealism and realism, between lofty thoughts and the baser passions.  Being so sandwiched is the very essence of humanity, it is human to have that for knowledge and thirst for water, to love a good idea and a good dish of fish with bamboo shoots, and to admire a beautiful saying, and to a beautiful woman.  This being the case, our world is necessarily an imperfect world.  Rationale people do not expect either perfect peace or perfect happiness.

If you live reasonably, according to your best lights, you have nothing to fear, that peace of conscience is the greatest of all gifts, and a man with clear conscious need not be afraid even of ghosts.

“Heaven has no eyes”, Justice is blind.”

A wise woman said, “Others gave birth to us, and we gave birth to others, what else we to do are?”

The best that we can hope for in this life is that we shall not have sons and grandsons of whom we need to be ashamed.

Earth Bound

Seventy years is enough and long enough to enjoy life.

Three generations is long, long time to see human follies and acquire human wisdom, long enough to witness the changes of fashion and morals and politics.  Seventy years is perfect time to rise from the seat and go away saying, “It was a good show,” when the curtain falls.

We are of the earth, earth born and earth bound.  There is nothing to be unhappy about the fact that we are as it were, delivered upon this beautiful earth as its transient guess.  Even it has a dark dungeon; we still would have to make the best of it.

The earth, after all, is real, as the heaven is unreal; how fortunate is men he is born between the real earth and the unreal heaven.

Man is made of flesh and spirit both, and it should be philosophy’s sadness to see that the mind and body live harmoniously together, that there be reconciliation between the two.

A Biological View

We are endowed with a body, which is a self-nourishing, self-regulating, self-repairing, self-starting and self-reproducing machine, installed at birth and lasting like a good grandfather clock for three quarters of a century, requiring very little attention.  It is a machine provided with wireless vision wireless hearing, with a more highly complicated system of nerves and lymph’s than the most complicated telephones and telegraph system of the world.  It has a system of filing reports done by vast complexes of nerves, managed with such efficiency that some files, the less important ones, are kept in a attic, which may be thirty years old and rarely referred to, are nevertheless there and sometimes can be found with lightening speed and efficiency.

Then it also manages to go about like a motor car with perfect knee-action and absolute silence of engines, and if the motor car has an accident and breaks its glasses or its steering wheel, the car automatically exudes or manufactures a substance to replace the glass and does its best to grow a steering wheel, or at least manages to do the steering with a swollen end of the steering shaft; for we must remember that when one of our kidneys is cut out, the other kidney swells and increases its function to ensure the passage of normal volume of urine.

The body also keeps up its normal temperature with in a tenth of a Fahrenheit degree, and manufactures its own chemicals for the processes of transforming food into living tissues.

Above all, it has a sense of the rhythm of life and a sense of time, not only of hours and days, but also of decades, the body regulates its own childhood, puberty and maturity, stops growing when it should be no longer grow, and brings forth a wisdom tooth at a time when no one of us ever thought of it.

It also manufactures specific antidotes against poison, on the whole with amazing success, and it does all these with absolute silence, without the usual racket of a factory, so that our superfine meta physician may not be disturbed and is free to think about his spirit or his essence.

Human Life a Poem

From the biological standpoint, human life almost reads like a poem.  It has its own rhythm and beat, its internal cycles of growth and decay.  It begins with innocent childhood, followed by awkward adolescence trying awkwardly to adapt itself to mature society, with its young passion and follies, its ideals and ambitions, and then it reaches a manhood of intense activities, profiting from experience and learning more about society and human nature.  At middle age, there is a slight easing tension, a mellowing character like the ripening of fruit or the mellowing of good wine, and the gradual acquiring of a more tolerant, more cynical and at the same time a kindlier view of life, then in the sunset of our life, the endocrine glands decrease their activity, and if we have a true philosophy of old age and have ordered our life pattern according to it.  It is for us the age of peace and security and leisure and contentment, finally life flickers out and one goes into eternal sleep, never to wake up again.

No one can say that a life without childhood, manhood and old age is not a beautiful arrangement.  The day has its morning, noon and sunset and yet the year has its seasons and it is good that it is so.  There is no good or bad in life, except what is good according to its own season.

The greatest tribute we can pay to a well lives life or a thinker, “He merely lived, observed life and went away”.