WHO AM I?

Yesterday, I caught up with a dear friend after a long time. While 2023 was a year of health challenges for me, it was also a year of tremendous upheaval in my career and personal beliefs.

We humans, consciously or unconsciously, tend to cling to certain ideas, ideologies, beliefs, or value systems. We then use these as our yardstick to judge others, labeling their actions as right, wrong, or unacceptable.

The problem is, each of us plays the role of judge, jury, and executioner, creating our own laws and passing our own sentences. If everyone is a judge, what law is the right one? With nearly 8 billion people and 8 billion sets of laws, how can anyone survive?

To survive, we might choose to ignore everyone else's laws, turning a blind eye and deaf ear to everything. Alternatively, we must realize that living in this world means not clinging to anything. We don't need to cling to the image of being a good person, a successful person, a moral person, etc., and create suffering for ourselves. We then seek a path to escape suffering, only to find suffering in the very act of seeking. How many times do we suffer?

Many people think, "That's their problem. I'm open-minded and creative. I do what I want, regardless of what others think." However, your way of defining "open-minded" or "creative" is also a form of attachment, and you use it to judge others. You label them as narrow-minded, ignorant, or backward. Isn't that just using your own law to judge others?

From birth, we are bound by the value systems of our family, school, community, society, and nation. We naturally internalize these as we grow up and navigate life. If we conform, we are called good citizens, obedient children, and good students. If we deviate, we are criticized and become outsiders.

Gradually, we realize that we can either conform, reshape the mold, or create our own mold and become the leader of our own tribe. Either way, there is a mold, just different in size, thickness, and color. We then compare our mold to others, criticizing, judging, and condemning their molds. Everyone becomes exhausted and drained in the battle to defend their mold, believing that theirs is the best. Isn't that true?

To me, it doesn't matter if you have a mold or not, if you understand me or not, if you judge me or not, if you like me or not, because everything others think, say, or do comes from their own mold. Am I supposed to spend my days arguing about whose mold is right in a market with 7 billion molds? There will always be differences. No two people have the same value system or life experience. No two mold makers are the same. So why should we cling to it? When we find common ground, we collaborate joyfully. When we don't, we go our separate ways. When we are meant to be, we meet. When we are not, we part ways. It's that simple.

Life is already complicated enough. If we add to it the debate about who is right and wrong, whose mold is better, we will only add to the suffering. We need to know where we stand and what state we are in, because ultimately, this life is a journey of self-evolution. There is nothing to fight for or gain. We come into this world empty-handed and leave empty-handed. The experiences in between are what we create. And we create and take responsibility for our own lives. Why judge others? Why waste time fighting their mold? Perhaps we should focus on ourselves, on the judge within us, on the mold we have created and are suffering from. How do we transform from being to non-being, from attachment to non-attachment, from clinging to non-clinging?

It's easy to say, but you don't understand until you've been through it. Once you do, everything becomes clear, simple, easy, light, and refreshing. "It's not easy to laugh out loud," another friend shared after going through a life-changing experience. Can you put everything down and laugh? Can you let go and see that nothing matters? Can you be okay with whatever is happening to you? Can you overcome your fears and anxieties about the uncertain future? Laughter, it turns out, has a rich philosophical meaning when viewed through the lens of someone who has just had an epiphany.

However, simply recognizing the vastness of the universe and the limitations of the ego can be a starting point. Questions will arise. Answers will gradually become clear. The right people will come along to guide us. The universe will speak. Otherwise, if we let ourselves