I call this triangle diagram The Game of Life. In human nature either we play victim or persecutor or hero. We switch back and forth from one angle to another on the triangle. When you are the victim you look for a hero. When you are the victim, you want to persecute those who persecuted you. When you are the persecutor, you turn into a victim, when you are a persecutor you may act as my hero. When you are a hero you can turn out to be a victim. When you are a hero you are a persecutor. The three positions alternate back and forth. We all play every single role within this triangle game.

A wise person will learn about this game and master the game and then will be able to walk out of the world. After you master this game and you come back to your life to play this game, it means that you have walked into the world again. The only way to be able to walk out of the world to be able to achieve spiritual enlightenment is to learn how to play this game, to master this game, to not play this game.

When somebody masters this triangle game, they realize the game is life scenarios. Every day we play this position, not to play that position. Each position is attachment, each position is a mask. We wear the mask when we play this, again and again. Life is a stage, life is a play. Why not play well? Why not enjoy each position rather than suffer from the position? Or feel a victim of every position that you play? Why be so attached to each position that we play, rather than look at it as life is a play, and enjoy the play and be the best actor or actress in each position. Now, every day that we wake up, we put on a mask to play a position. During the day we switch the masks back and forth. When you come back at home at night, do you have the courage and wisdom to take off the mask? Are you able to catch yourself when you attach to any of the positions that you play during the day?

In modern days, so many people have put the mask on to look good. It is so fake and they lie, they pretend, they decorate themselves, rather than enjoy who they are, where they are, rather than be truthful to their internal journey. Taoism always says emotion is good thing, we are human, be real to your emotion. But, emotions are like decorations in the living room. Enjoy them, but never pay attention them. We are human, human nature has emotion and desire. So why try to pretend we don’t have them. Why do we try to go after them?

Sometimes when they have emotions, people feel guilty about having emotions because they think that if they have emotions they are not spiritual person. In fact, that guilt will make you a not spiritual person. A spiritual person faces reality, accepts reality and walks with reality and goes beyond reality. So, emotion is a good thing as long as you able to walk with it, look beyond it, look at it as a decoration, rather than to attach to it.
A truthful person is willing to take off the mask when they return from their job, when they return to their inner self, to look at their inner journey. They are willing to be truthful facing their internal spirit, to go on with their journey and be faithful, having true dignity. Facing their inner struggle, inner emotion, they take off the mask rather than attach to the mask. So many people in modern day are so used to the mask they lose their own true identity. They don’t know who are they are anymore. They are afraid that if they take off the mask, what if people don’t recognize them any more? So that’s loss of security. That’s insecure of not being recognized by other people. They’re afraid taking the mask off will make them feel like they are losing their identity, so therefore, they’d rather put a mask on themselves, be fake, pretend to be happy, pretend to be successful.

Our teaching is that every day you are able to stand in front of the mirror and look into your eyes and soul and say to yourself I’m real today, I’m truthful to myself, and I’m willing to play with my mask like a Broadway actor or actress and at the end of the show take off the mask. But while you are in the show, enjoy the mask, enjoy being that person and be the best you can be in that person, but when you are off the show, you are able to return to your true self. Face your own soul without guilt, because you are able to truly see into your own soul and go on with your own journey.

Forgiveness is one of the three Treasures of the Tao because we all have this compassionate, loving nature, and we are able to apply it to other people. Unfortunately humans always have this nature that gives them an out from forgiving themselves. They find a way out from the emotion. Forgiveness to other people means to truly forgive yourself. If you’re able to forgive yourself, then you are able to forgive others and then others will forgive you, then the human will stay in harmony and peacefulness.

The goal of a human life is to stay in peace and stillness, to preserve the root of peacefulness. That is our goal. Now, once we lose the goal, we’re just an average person. We go out chasing after emotion, attached to emotion and feeling like a victim. If we don’t forgive other people, then we feel we have become a victim. When we become a victim we lose the fun and joy in life. We lose it. Now you have to ask yourself, are you willing to sacrifice your joy and the fun in your life by going after revenge and persecution? Not to forgive?

So if you can see the goal of peacefulness, and your goal is to preserve this, then you know that you need to forgive other people. When I forgive other people it is doing a favor to me, not to other people. The people who are doing something bad, I can’t stop them, I can’t change the world, but I can change my internal spirit, I can change myself, the way I look at myself. If I have nothing to get hurt, then there is nobody who can hurt me. So forgiveness comes from within, forgiveness is doing favor for our self. We preserve our goal, our root, our peacefulness and tranquility. Forgiveness is really from our inner spirit, it is spiritual wisdom. We have to have the power, strength and wisdom to forgive others.

To continue from my last post: Giving indeed must be a gift from the heart. The gift is from the heart, it’s not measured by how much you give. It is to give up the need to associate yourself with being poor or rich. You give up the need, give up the fear, give up the concept of poor or rich. So, a single Mother, making 8 dollars per hour can give up the fear of being poor, and can also give up the attachment to being rich, by enjoying what she has, enjoying what she’s doing, doing what she is doing wholly from the heart. Be happy with what you are, with what you do, what you have. Just like when I spent time in the mountain; we had so little to eat, we had no money at all, but we had great fun, we made great joy from what we had and were happy. Compare this to people in the United States who are ten times richer than other people.

When you enjoy who you are and what you are doing, you turn back to stillness, to the spiritual; you give up desire, you give up fear, and you become much happier. From deep down in your heart you become much happier, and so you turn to stillness. Because you turn to stillness, deep satisfaction with yourself comes from inside, and you’re peaceful. Because you are peaceful, you are gaining the opportunity to feel good about yourself, to be secure, to be strong, and therefore you are able to find opportunity to get rich, to have a better job, to have better people come into your life. Before you were so afraid and so desiring to be rich, so afraid to be poor that you lost the opportunity to be with successful people, you lost the opportunity to find a better job, better position. Now you turn around to be still, to be happy with yourself and you are able to have new opportunity, meet new people, to associate with a new group of people, and all of a sudden you are gaining the opportunity to be rich.

The thing that I am trying to explain is that the concept of happiness really combines both the material and spiritual. Spiritual must come first and then material will follow.

There are so many people who make $50,000 per year, $100,000 per year, $1,000,000 per year, and they have all this stuff, and they’re just not happy. The problem is that they have not achieved enough spiritual enlightenment to understand philosophically or spiritually what “enough is enough” means to them. Because they measure the value of their life by how much they have, and they set their goals so high, they have created a goal that is unrealistic to achieve in the short term. There’s the logic, and people track on that logic. They just aren’t satisfied with the short term goal or they set their goal beyond their ability and they are not able to understand that enough is enough.

It’s okay to get things, to want things, to be happy, to be rich, to whatever, but you can’t be attached to that. You need to empty your cup, maybe you need to give away a little of your money or your wealth, whatever it is that you are looking for. You need to enjoy at the same time by giving. Get by giving, the more you give, the more you get. But the gift has to come from the heart, and the giver has to understand that to give is truly spiritual happiness. Many people give in order to get fame, to get name, or by being forced by public opinion; not to truly give from the bottom of their heart, but to give to satisfy their spiritual need.

So give up the material need to gain spiritual achievement. Giving up spiritual need is higher, in turn with a higher return from heaven. We are not saying that you should give up all the material, to empty all the material. Our goal is still to have each human succeed to the best of their ability, to have much more wealth, be much more spiritual, by giving up the need to be wealthy or spiritual. By giving up the need, you gain the true needs in the material life and that fulfills the puzzle of one side of the hand being material, the other side spiritual, both fulfilled.