EVERYONE THINKS THEY ARE RIGHT
PHAP QUANG CULTURE COMPANY
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It is subjective to think that everything we say, every thoughts we have are accurate and precise. In other words, we could say these people are opinionated and prejudiced. It means that we only judge things based on our own beliefs or feelings without consulting others; or having no constructive discussion to really find the truth. It is actually a seriously bad issue of human being. (We will refer as the issue throughout this discussion).
For example, we believed that chilli is delicious; in fact, a few newspapers had also helped confirm our belief that eating chili is good for eyes and could improve your appetite. Later, if anyone or any newspaper took the opposite view, we would insist that those views are wrong. We only relied on our own experiences and did not consider other people or experts’ opinions. We were biased towards only one side of the truth, because we did not understand that human body is so different from one to another and it reacts differently to all food and medication.
People around the world would always have different views, ideas and perceptions. Sometimes to protect their own opinion, people would take it to the extreme and that could lead to killing each other. Being subjective is actually a very basic weakness of human being. It obscures the inherent truth and makes us take the wrong path and cannot find The Truth.
Therefore, one of fourteen Buddha’s teachings is: our most dangerous enemy in life are ourselves. How insightful this pinciple is! We allow our ego in determining everything we do; we always think what we do and think are right, while others are absolutely wrong. If all people had this same thought, this world would have become more and more chaotic, human race would fight against each other forever.
The reason why people argue with each other is simple: people always think they are right. We discuss this topic today, just so when we are about to argue with others, please remember today’s discussion, to consider if our argument is too subjective or not. For example, there were two Buddhists talking to each other on a bus. One said his pagoda was the best, while the other said the opposite. In fact, their discussion was quite ordinary, but because they both had to defend their own opinion and took it to the extreme. This led to a fight and both of them ended up being injured and being taken to the hospital. This bad result was due to their bias towards their own opion, and being extremely defensive.
We all more or less have this issue. Sometimes we are right, and more often we are wrong, but the point is we always think that we are right. Rarely, due to luck, we would be right, but more often our thinking are wrong, and that could lead to disaster.
In this world, who is the one absolutely right? It is Buddha, and only Him. Those, who have not yet enlightened as Buddha, would still be wrong, though those wrongs could be very subtle. How about us? We are wrong all the times, but we always think we are right, and that is why we have done and are still doing a lot of bad things, and committing sins.
This issue is different from person to person. For example, when someone knew that we thought about going to a temple to practise the Dharma, but we hesitated because it would take a lot of time. They advised us not to think like that.. Their advice was that: even though we may lose one hour now, but in exchange, we would gain fifty more hours of happiness later inlife, therefore, we should not think it is a waste of time to practise the Dharma. This advice was reasonable so we suppressed our thought. That indicated that when listening to others, we realised that our thinking was wrong, and we was willing to accept other’s advice. When we could react to other’s advice like this scenario above, it means our issue is not too bad.
Otherwise, we might have responded as below:
– “Well, nowhere is better than home. Only evil people need to practise the Dharma. I neither harm anyone, nor kill anyone, nor steal from anyone so I do not need to practise. “
Then someone else advised:
– “Don’t think you have not committed sins. You must go to a temple to learn more about morality; Dharma could help you realise a lot of interesting and beautiful things that you have never known before.”
The advice was right but due to being defensive about own opinion abd being prejudiced, we had responded:
– “No! I’ve never broken the law thus far. I fulfill my responsibilities as a father, a husband at home. I don’t fight with my neighbours. I always finish my work and do nothing wrong. I do not need anything better. Life’s good enough for me. “
They still continued advising us that:
– “That is not good enough because you will sooner or later be old, sick then die. You are always in the cycle of birth and death so you must practice the Dharma to become better. “
But we still were adamant that:
– “I take one day at a time and life is too perfect for me…”.
The second scenario showed that we were persistently arguing back; we did not listen to other person’s advice; our issue was quite bad. We know that everyone has their own opinion but how strongly each person’s perceptive attitude or being prejudiced towards an advice is different from one to another. But how do we know if we are perceptive or subjective and how bad is this? Those, who persistenly argue back and forth to defend their opnion, are quite bad. Sometimes, to the extreme, this prejudiced and opinionated attitude could lead to violence result, even worse, someone would get killed in order to defend their viewpoints. There is no cure for those people. Some of our Buddhists are in the same category, too. Although, we have tried to advise them many times, they still instisted on their viewpoints. We could not go on forever so we stopped giving them advice. For these people, they only realise and regret only when they have bad karma.
If we are perceptive to others’ advices, not too arrogrant and opinionated, when others give us advices, we would be more willingly to accept those guidance, especially when the person giving those guidance is our Master. Being the Master, he is certainly so much better than us in a lot of things, so his advice will help us avoid suffering and disaster later on.
Those, who are too prejudiced and stubborn, will refuse to listen to their friends’ advice, even their Master’s. In Buddhism, Masters are at the highest rank because Buddha already entered Nirvana, only our Masters directly teach and guide us to practise Buddha’s teachings. Masters, who have achieved in the highest rank in the religion, are present in our lives. When we do not listen to their advice us, we would not be able to resolve that issue, because we would never learn. And only when bad karma happens to us, and only when there is no other way out, then we realise that we were wrong and too prejudiced; we regreted and would become less egoistic. That is the only way to realise about our issue of being too prejudiced and subjective in everything. The bigger our ego, the worse our issue is. When we do have less ego, we are less prejudiced and subjective and more likely to accept others’ ideas and advices.
A Buddhist once told us about his brother, who left Buddhism for another religion. Later on, his life was more and more miserable. He was so miserable that he could not realise and accept his mistake, he continued to torment his family. His younger brother had told him that “How did you live during those miserable days? You left Buddhism for another religion; the longer you follow it, the more miserable you are. You should think about it again“. Then the older brother said nothing. Before that time, he had been too stubborn and would have been very defensive about his belief. He was subjective in assessing the situation, he was very intolerant and extremely stubborn. If you are persistently prejudiced about everything and would argue about everything, you could only realise about your sickness only when there is no way out. For those, who are perceptive, who know when to accep other’s advice, could avoid many disasters later on in life.
Sometimes an opinion is just merely an opinion. For example, we suggested that: “We will go to Vung Tau province and it’s quicker to get there by going via Ba Ria route”. Another friend said: “Not good. It would be easier to go through Long Hai then Phuoc Tinh route.” So there were two different opinions and we argued a bit. Opinions like these do not cause any problems because these happens quite often in our life.
But the worst fear is when someone’s opinion is defended based on their religious beliefs. It is very terrifying when opinions are underpinned by a religion. That is, when we were already taught about a religion, and when we believed in its teachings and its Master completely, and we had the absolute reverence for them; then it would be very difficult to get rid of our prejudiced opnions. If we considered that we were right in believing in wrong religion and its doctrines, it would be difficult to make us believe in others and be more perceptive. Our prejudice would be the worst. If that belief urged us to use violence to harm others and force them to have the same belief with us, we would certainly obey and do so. We then would become bloodthirsty terrorists without having fear and guilt, and that is when innocent people would get killed. This is very petrifying indeed.
Currently, around the world, what makes politicians, sociologists concerned is religious war. Often war is caused by economic problems. They would fight for cultivated land, rivers, or canals. There were times tribes fighting for water because they could not survive without it. People could also fight for farmland, forests for hunting. Those were often the causes of economic wars.
When all countries already had a developed economy and also had the ambition to become more powerful with larger population, larger land, they would invade other countries here and there to expand their territories. This main reason had caused countless bloody wars. But today, threats of war in the world are religious beliefs. What makes us most surprised is that in this modern century with more and more advanced technologies being available for mankind, people are still blindly and crazily believe in wrong religions leading to killing other human beings. All are because of egos and prejudiced beliefs.
When someone is prejudiced, and always believe that they are right, their ego is actually very big. And their ego becomes bigger and bigger over the time. So, is it easier for people with big ego to practise the Dharma? It is certainly difficult for those people. Why is that so, and how come is it difficult? One of the sign is the difficulty to reach high level of concentration in meditation. When the ego is big, it means many parts of the brain are working hard constantly, they would not be able to stop thinking about their ownself. Big ego could cause a lot of issues in life.
We would not be able to discuss all issues and sickness caused by ego, but we must know that all parts of our brain are usually very stressful. If the language part of our brain develops quickly, we tend to talk constantly; if the emotion part of our brain develops quickly, we tend to be more emotional and get angry easily; if the pride part of our brain develops quickly, we would be very arrogant, and so on… Again when our ego is big, it pushes our brain cells to work harder and harder, it would make us too difficult to reach concentration when meditating. When we are able to concentrate, calm our mind, we would feel no physical pain. Therefore, those with big ego, would find meditation tormenting, whereas those with less ego find it easier to concentrate when meditating and the meditation time is the time of peace and happiness.
Therefore, the bigger our ego, the more prejudiced and subjective we are; and as the result, the more difficult to practise the Dharma successfully. In Western countries, many couples get divorced easily because their egos are too big, and too defensive of their own personal opinion. We often see a lot of news articles about famous happy couples. However, we also would find that one day the papers would disclose the news that they have disvorced wihout disclosing any reasons. Only those involved knew the details.
Once, we saw a movie about a big storm, having drown a ship and killed many people. The male character was a fisherman who boarded the ship. Before leaving, he asked his wife to take their son to visit him because this couple had divorced. When his wife and his son came, he embraced the son very dearly. He then invited them to eat at a restaurant. He said: “We have this meal today because of our old days”. His wife answered immediately: “Our old days were hell.” That implied they lived a very stressful life before divorcing. The time, the husband considered happy, was the time the wife considered miserable like living in hell because they were constantly arguing. We could tell that the wife was the main reason of many of their arguments. Why do people easily argue with each other? Just simply due to their habit of being overly protective of their personal opinion.
Recently, a Master, who just came back from the United States, told us that there is a strange culture called liberalism over there. One can only be questioned that whether they like or dislike something; And if what you like doesn’t break the law, no one could do anything about it, evern if it is a crazy thing. So this liberalism itself has created a culture, which is destroying human morality graduall to protect and defend their personal opinions.
Last summer, we had four children from the United State attended some courses at our temple. One morning, when everyone was doing morning exercise, only one child did not join the group. We asked him why then he replied: “Master, I don’t want to” because he thought it was very normal to state what he liked and disliked. As in the United States, if he does not want to do something and it is not against the law, no one can force him because that is a violation of the law. We were a bit surprised, since we thought it was just the education system, but did not expect it to be a culture over there. We just said, “No, you must do what your teachers, your parents tell you to, because what you want to do at this age is not always wise and right.” We found that he was confused and we were not sure if he understood what we were saying. We asked our monks to take care of him and remind him about ethics, and to live for others not for himself.
We realise that liberalism that promotes and protects every personal opinion is really terrible. As the result, people’s ego becomes bigger and bigger. And because of ego, people will be so prejudiced and narrowminded that they would protect their own opinion until the end, even the result would be to divorce their husbands/wives.
Just like those men, who are addicted to smoking cigarettes, often say that “I’d rather leave my wife than giving up cigarettes.” The statement is too cruel. Similarly, in Western culture, they said they would rather abandon their husbands/wives than abandon their personal beliefs and desires. Even though we find it terrible and unacceptable, they consider it an acceptable culture, and even worse, this culture exists across half of the globe. It is truly terrible.
Thanks to these true stories, we realise the great value of Buddhism. The prayer “Living in harmony” was translated from “Forest of oxen’s horns” talking about three Arhants having lived with each other in harmony. They said, “I do not live for myself but for our brothers“. Those three Arhants were the three princes of the family of Sakya. They left home together, enlightened together and dwelt in the woods together. They were destined to be together, from many previous lives. That saying “I do not live for myself but for our brothers” is the great Buddhism doctrine. The greatest Buddhism’s moral is around the moral of being selfless. These morals are completely the opposite of liberalism in the Western world. We should remember about this difference and should be very careful and cautious in everything we do in our life.
Asian culture tends towards controling selves and limit personal freedom. When we were children, we had to obey our parents, our teachers and any adults. It is the Asian culture that teaches us to control our own ego to help build a stable, and stronger community. It would be so great when you can control your ego.
People would respect each other; people would respect and listen to others’ viewpoints; we all live in harmony, and care for each other.
Between Asian culture and Western culture, and between the traditional morality of the Asian and liberalism of the Western, we could easily realise that these are two opposite directions. Western culture is to promote self awareness, and ego leading to devision in communities. They only cooperate towards a specific benefit, but not because of love and care. In contrast, Asian culture helps us learn to control our ego since we were still an infant, so that we must listen to others and must not act to benefit our own needs. We must think about others, and only that would help stabilise and improve our community.
However, if a Western person challenged: “It is cruel not to allow the child to do what he wants“, how should we respond? According to the Western culture, allowing children to do what they want is compassionate and humane because children are too young to know everything so we have to pamper them. However, according to Asian viewpoint, whether they like or not we should force them to obey the grown-ups’ advices. The Westerners would consider that such action is cruel. So how should we respond?
The answer is: “Now, between adults and kids who are wiser and who would know to love and to protect the others? Certainly the adults would be more knowledgable and would know how to protect their children. Therefore, it is right that children must listen to and obey adults’ advices”. So, which one would we choose, an adult’s opinion or a child’s opinion? If we chose the adult’s opnion, would we also accept the child’s? Obviously not! Therefore, children must listen to adult’s advices.
Yet they mentioned cases that adults abuse children, therefore if those children just listened to adults’s advices obediently but blindly, they would be easily persecuted. Well, speaking of these scenarios, they are only the minority. It is quite obvious that majority of adults, e.g family members, would always love and care for their children.
Hence, the question is should we develop law and regulation based on the majority or the minority? Why would we build and develop a different culture belief just to control the minority? And why should we let this culture destroy other great things around? Is it right or wrong? We could say that Asian culture has helped families live in harmony and the culture is sustainable. When everyone must comply with the cultural rules and order, and they must restrain from protecting their own personal opinion, then naturally community life will be better.
In Western countries, when the relationship of a married couple gets into trouble, they would seek help from Marriage Counselling Service. This consultancy service is extremely expensive. Each consulting hour would cost hundreds of dollars. A counselor would often ask: “What did you two disagree with?”. The wife would say: “I like to go shopping or go to the cinema in my spare time,” but her husband would say: “I don’t want that. I want my family to do more excercises to fit and be healthier. Shopping wastes a lot of money and to sitting just makes us easily to get fatter. I’m obese so I like taking exercise. ” If they could not come to an agreement or a compromise, they would end up with divorce. They would continue seeing the Marriage Counselor, and the advice often would be : “Well, now, each of you should give in a bit. This week, go to a gym and the following week, go to the cinema. You two should try to put up with each other a bit more to help maintain harmony within the family. Think about your children and if you want your kids to suffer from this disaster. Think about the family and be reasonable about your personal needs versus the overall family needs”. These people would then pay a few hundred dollars for this service.
However, we do not have this issue in Vietnam. It is because loving, caring for others, and being compromised to reach a good outcome is in our blood. Having said that, we still have those people who always want more of everything for themselves. For example, a husband may be a bit more demanding than the wife in a family situation. The wife and the kid would obey him completely, hoping one day with their love to him, he would think about his behaviour and would change to be less demanding. At the surface, some would argue that it is miserable to live like that, in accordance with Asian culture. However, let’s think about it more, because of the tolerance, and the compromise to reach a good outcome, to help maintain family happiness, it is actually a big advantage.
Similarly, if we just want to say anything, do anything when we just joined Buddhism, it would not work. Why is that so? Because everyone would leave this pagoda for other places, as everyone would want to do everything to their liking.
As Buddha’s disciples, when we practise together, and if everyone insists on keeping their own opinion, then the cult, the brotherhood would not develop further and last long. So we must learn to live in harmony. If there is any issue or if any issue gets bigger and more complicated, we should ask for support from our Master.
Now, let’s discuss about Arguments. There are two types of arguments.
If the conversation becomes rude, we would call it a quarrel, a fight. If the conversation is more intellectual and about knowledge and different viewpoints, we would call it a debate. In either situation, everyone wants to have their say and have their voices heard. However, in a fight, one would say on top of another, and do not wait for the other to stop saying before one begins. In a fight, it is considered that whoever is louder would be heard and would be right. No one would want to stop in a flight. On a contrary, when it is a debate, one would speak after another finishes. Each person takes their turn to state their viewpoints and also to tackle the other’s opinions.
Have any of you witness a fight? Initially, they would just say loudly, then they would scream. They would speak on top of the others. Their voice would become so husky, and eventually no one would understand what they said. No one gives in or tries to reach a compromise.
Before the situation gets worse, both sides just want to express their own opinions. When the fight begins, they become defensive, and just want to prove that they are innocent, while the other is guilty. No one wants to reach a compromise. The repercussion of these fights could be severe i.e. ending up with violence and imprisonment. When intellectual people engage in a debate, sometimes they would discover something new, or reach a conclusion. It is because the conversation was in order: one would speak after another, not on top of each other.
Any trial in a court room would be exactly like that. A public prosecutor would accuse the defendant, whom would be defended by a lawyer. Both sides are allowed to object the other’s sayings at any time by standing up to say:
“Objection!”. However, the judge would still be in control, and it is up to him to allow the interruption to continue or not. The judge must ensure all viewpoints are heard.
In a court, the judge is the key and the most important person, who gives the final verdict. Although sometimes the wrong verdicts are given, we must still obey. We then have to follow the process to appeal. It is the law. In court, people are not allowed to speak at the same time. People take turn, everything must be in order.
If we are an outsider of a discussion or a fight, we would notice that nobody cares about their sayings, or the others’. All they care about is their own reasons, their own benefits in the situation. Even when we try to reason with them, noone would listen. The rootcase of the issue is that everyone has the urge to win over the other. It is called arrogance, and aggressiveness. However, the bottom line is that: in this life, we want to find The Truth. That is the goal of religious followers.
So, our goal is to find The Truth. When two people argue: are they trying to find The Truth or just to satisfy their egos. The later is completely wrong. Because of the wrong objective, they keep arguing back and forth, leading to hatred and suffering later on. If from the beginning, we determined that our goal was to find The Truth, we would not have to argue or fight with anyone, we would also not take anything personal or would not have hatred.
We discussed this subject today to always remind ourselves that: as a Buddhist, how to behave when we get into an argument or debate. In reality, there are many things that we would need to get involved and would need to discuss about. However, now that we practise the Dharma, we must not use aggressive words, and we must not have aggressive behaviours any more. Life would always present us with challenges and situations where we would easily get involved in debates, arguments over small and ordinary events. We must assess what the true motive is in each situation: Is it to find the truth, or is it just our ego? Try not to get into the arguement that just talk, back and forth, as it would easily become just purely a fight and the goal is to win and get victory.
Today, together we shall change our behaviour in these situations. When we sense that the situation getting worse, we should firstly stop and pray to Buddha: “Buddha, please help us to find the truth.” That is the first step. The second step is to ask ourselves: “Are we seeking love and harmony or revenge?” and then we would pray to Buddha help us find love and harmony. The third step is to ask ourselves if we just want to satisfy our ego or find the selflessness. Then we should pray to Buddha help us to be selfless.
After calming our mind, we should find ourselves not really interested in neither victory, nor revenge, nor ego but The Truth, harmony, compassion, love and selfless morality. And then, naturally, we would alsways smile and do not want to involve in any argument. Imagine, if the other person wanted to continue arguing while you were trying to stop, they must have felt embarrassed. However, the “embarassing” result was rather better than the people involved ended up in hatred.
We have been verbally abused via phone many times, and we were really sad. However, we did not respond to those abusive language. Many people have been pleasantly surprised after listening to our seminar. They then visited our temple, and asked to take refuge in Triple Gems and had been given a Buddhist title. However, it was sad that deep down from their heart and mind, they were jealous of us. This sounded very strange. They were jealous of their own Master. Therefore, when they were not satisfied with their Master, they turned to attack us immediately. There were already a few cases like this happened to us.
Later on, when we write stories about Buddha’s life, we would analyse in depth about Devadatta’s case. It was very similar. The secret psychology of Devadatta was gradually developed, from the beginning when he first adopted Buddhism, and in the end he turned completely against Buddha. It started from the first day he paid homage to Buddha for taking refuge, to the day he wanted Buddha’s position. The result was really due to his selfishness and jealousy which were too deep in his heart and soul, therefore, even when he was Buddha’s disciple, he still envied of Him. In reality, there are many people like Devadatta. We ourselves have encountered many cases like this. We were really sad about life, and were somewhat startled by different natures and thinking of human being. Today we ccould be all sweet and caring, but tomorrow we could be full of hatred and bitterness.
One day, we were having dinner at our company, returned from Hanoi, a long trip. At that time, there was a woman came to buy our discs (record of our seminars) but we all felt that she was not really normal. First, she said: “I am an advocate of Master Thich Chan Quang and has helped sell a lot of discs.” Then she began to preach to everyone in the company. She preached continuously. We asked our disciples to ask her to stop so everyone could finish dinner. She left but came back instantly, then she said: “I want to let you all know that Master Thich Chan Quang is only at the age of my son.” It indicated that although she liked listening to the seminars, she always wanted to show everyone that that she was better than us. This behaviour was due to her ego and jealousy. It is sad, but this behaviour still exists everywhere.
There were many disciples, who learned about Buddhism teachings and took refuge in Triple Gems but still had such comment: “That Master is only good at preaching. For other things he is not as good as me, such as event organisation, business management and life experiences.” So what, really? For a Buddhism ceremony, with more than ten thousands of Buddhists, and guests from all around the country, we need more than just one person to make sure the event was organised perfectly. Eventhough, we are the Master of the temple, but we need all support from our monks and a lot of Buddhists for such big ceremonies. No one can do it alone. So we should never be too proud. We must thank Buddha, and our disciples as with their kindness and devotion to help us with those ceremonies. It is all about team work. No one can do anything alone.
However, there are many people like that in life. They learn about Buddhism teachings, but they still have to find something which makes them better than us. Even the elderly woman, mentioned above, had to state that our Master’s age was just at her children’s age, and that made her feel good.
We would find that, those people that are so prejudiced and subjective to the point of being agressive and arrogant, will suffer from bad karma. At that time, their ego would be promoted further and all their blessing would disappear. Some people could suffer from brain damage, leading to mental illness. This mental illness forced the brain to work so hard, non stop. In western countries, they use medicines to control how the brain should be functioning. If there is no intervention, the brain could be severely damanged, and not curable. Those brain-damanged patients would not be able to function normally and their intelligence become less and less. Sometimes, no western medicines could be used to cure any more. If we know how treat these patients by creating more blessings for them, it may be curable. But please remember that, those people lost their blessings when they only cared about their ego, their stubbornness, and intolerance. If they still have blessings, and if their family and friends could help creating more blessings for them and slowly they could recover from their illness. If they do not have enough blessings to be able to use those blessings that others have helped creating, then they would not be able to recover. Life like this is really miserable and sad.
Please keep in mind that before you get into any arguments, take a moment to pray to Buddha to help you escape from your own ego, from being too aggressive in winning; and we only want to find The Truth and harmony.
Whenever there is a conversation, a discussion, please remember Buddha’s teachings and pray the above prayers, so we can avoid making mistakes, commiting sins, and not being opinionated or prejudiced. The praying also would help us easily to accept other’s viewpoints.
When we were at school, we were also considered the best student of our class. Our good friend was considered the best in his class. Although we do not remember the content completely, when we were talking about the society and its own issues, our friend would accept some meaningful and useful information from
- We respect our friend very much, because he was so intellgivent, but yet he is not arrogant and agrressive. It is not easy at all to behave like that.
In our life, there would be many occasions like the above example. It is important: Not to be belligerent; Not to be prejudiced; Willing to accept other’s advice and information when it is right. Eventually, we would be less stubborn, less prejudiced, less subjective in assessing any situations, and making less mistakes. The less sin and mistake we makes, the less bad karma we would be sufferring from.
Only Buddha is absolutely right in this world. And of course there is only one Buddha and the rest are just ordinary human beings. We have been discussing about what is right and what is wrong? Who could find the truth? We have been discussing also about it is wrong to think that our viewpoints are always right. So when would we start having the right thinking?
The first condition: Do not believe that we are right at all.
The second condition: Do not think too hard. This just means we should not think too hard and too much, because the more thinking the more complicated things would get into our mind. All of our thinking are usually wrong. So the wisest thing is to do meditation to calm our mind and soul.
The third condition: Paying homage to Buddha, because we know Buddha is absolutely right.
The fourth condition: Love all beings. Because of our love and care for all beings, we would not be hungry for victory and do not want to be better than other people. Whoever we love, we would just want them to be better than us.
And finally, we must respect others. Respecting other human beings means we would be willing to listen to them, and would be willing to accept what is right and what is wrong.
We pay homage to Buddha, because He is always absolutely precise, and because of our reverence for Buddha, we would be blessed, and we would be able to realise and understand The Truth. When we do not think too hard, we should be able to calm our mind, and think clearly and objectively. When we meditate, the mind would be calm, we should be able to get rid of all the greed, the ego to assess if we were right or wrong. You often would be having the right thinking after meditation. Obviously, we could not be as precise as Buddha but almost, because those thinkings were derived from our calm and selfless mind. If we were wrong, we would be able to realise immediately. Those people would always have the right mindset. They would always find that their mind are always empty, therefore it is always calm and selfless. This helps with their assessment on all the things they see, therefore, whatever they say would be mostly accurate. We could say that those people have confidence.
The similarity of both confidence and subjectivity is that: both types would always consider that they are right. In deed, those two types of people are actually quite different. The difference here is that the subjective people are often wrong but always think that they are right; whereas the confident ones are often right and they are quite certain about that. But how do we distinguish between subjectivity and self-confidence? What are the rationale for those different behaviours? The most accurate answer is: The only aspect we should use to consider if one is subjective or confident is one’s ethics.
The confident people are the ones who practise the Dharma ethics so they are always kind, modest, calm and their confidence would derive from their blessings, and from many years of cultivation. On the contrary, the subjective people would always insist that they are right because of their greed for victory, and their ego.
There is one more difference between those two types. The confident ones would always have ethics in their thinking and assessment and The Truth would give them the strength to live on. Since they do not waste their energy in satisfying their ego, their success would be because of their cultivation, their ethics and their blessings, which have been accummulated from many past lives. Because of their strong moral foundation, they would always have the kindness and the strength to succeed in whatever they do. With the right mindset, it always allows them to be patient, and to have the strength to overcome all sort of challenges and obstacles; they would never give up.
On the contrary, subjective people insist that they are right but the cause was from their ego, not The Truth. Therefore, the further they go, the bigger the ego, so they become more arrogant, aggressive, create more bad karma and ultimately they would fail and suffer.
“Everyone thinks they’re right” topic is just one of the very basic moral themes. By referring this topic today, we hope that everyone would be more perceptive and think more objectively about everything, to be less arrogant, less prejudiced and create less bad karma. One day, we would be able escape from the ordinary thoughts in order to think calmly and objectively, and at that time we would be able to understand The Truth. As the result, we would be able to live together in harmony, and be able to build a world full of joy, happiness and holiness.
Namo Sakya muni Buddha.
