Learning By Doing
by Master Lee Feng San Shifu
Translated by Sophia Lui
Edited by Ric Meyers
Often I hear people say: “If you are not my enemy then you are my friend.” This is absolutely true. However, I also hear people say: “If you are not my friend, then you are my enemy.”
Although this seems to make sense, it is not true. A non-friend can still be regarded as a friend. And he who takes a step further and turns an enemy into a friend is truly astounding, and has the makings of a good politician.
Many religions preach: “Love thy enemy.” Many people then ask: “How do we love our enemies? Why should we love our enemies?” The answers to these questions can be applied to all religious groups.
Loving our enemies has to do with having a sense of equality, and an evenness of mind which does not lose its balance. Generally speaking, if we have to understand this truth intellectually before we can apply it to our lives, then this world will be in chaos. Therefore, we will just ask everyone to accept this truth intuitively without trying to reason it out: Love one another! Love your friends and love your enemies, and you will be doing the right thing.
What I mean is, instead of trying to understand this truth on an intellectual level, we should develop an attitude of equality and an evenness of mind. We must first learn to love, and afterwards, understand how to love. This is about an all-embracing love for everyone without exclusion and is only a question of how we express that love.
I often stress that we should not have an internal debate with ourselves as to whether we should say or do something. The focus should rather be on how to say or do something. Or, if we are unable to say it, we should act first and then say it later. Otherwise there will no end to our internal dialogue, and it is not going to give us a definitive answer anyway.
Therefore, stop overthinking and just start to speak. You will know how to say it. Start to act and you will know how to do it. If we keep on trying to work things out in our minds, we will never get there. Don’t we all have this experience? Therefore, it is not necessary to first figure things out on the mental level. We only need to develop a sense of equality and an evenness of mind, and we have already solved our dilemma.
So, on the one hand is to “act it out” and on the other is to “figure it out.” If we cannot figure it out, then we should go ahead and act. If the doing is not going anywhere, then we can start to think again. In brief, we can think and act at the same time, and cultivate ourselves while acting.
“If we cannot figure it out, then go ahead and act first; if we reach an impasse in our doing, we can think about it again. While acting, we also cultivate ourselves.”— Lee Feng San Shifu