How can one self-cultivate and improve both the self and the world? One must first become aligned with natural order. When one becomes aligned with natural order, he can understand naturally how to be in harmony with others, and can now expand the reaches of his virtues. When he expands the reaches of his virtues, he cultivates the world around him toward the better.
What does it mean to become aligned with natural order? It means rid oneself of evil, and to place everything good in its proper places.
Man desires what is good, but his understanding of what is more or less important is confused, and this leads him to harm.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with delicious food. Delicious food, in fact, is good. Our desire to protect life is also good. But when we value delicious food over our the protection of life, we may wantonly kill animals for their flesh. In doing so, we ignore natural order, which is to value life over delicious food, and so create harm.
Such it is with all things valuable and desirable. When we value wealth over family, we create suffering. When we value ambition over benevolence, we create suffering. Ambition and wealth are still good things, and are better than the evils of sloth and poverty, but they have their proper place in the grand scheme of things.
To cultivate oneself means to put everything in one's heart-mind in their proper place and order. Only then can one be in harmony with oneself and others.
How does aligning oneself put oneself in harmony with others? Because when one fully understands human nature, he can understand all human individuals, and know what is the best way to interact with them.
When a doctor treats a patient, he must understand what a healthy patient looks like. He must understand the healthy functions of each organ, the proper balance and order of bodily elements (homeostasis), the order of cause and effect within bodily dynamics, and so forth. Then he can examine what exactly is dysfunctional about his unhealthy patient, understand his woes, and apply the best medicine to correct his body toward a healthy state.
So it is with harmonious interaction. To be in harmony does not mean to be submissive toward those aggressively wrongful, but rather to understand how to work with them toward the improvement of self and other. By understanding healthy human nature, and seeing the discrepancy from health in an individual's dysfunctional state, one can begin to help others with best efficiency and effectiveness.
Once one understands and manifests natural order, one can live the fundamentals of harmony. Once one becomes harmonious, he can then expand the reaches of his virtues.
How does one expand the reaches of his virtues? He takes the natural, spontaneous virtues he has in limited situations, such as care and compassion for his family, and expands this toward his friends. After having expanding these virtues toward his friends, he continues to expand them to his local communities (place of worship, schools, etc.), to his nation-state, to the world and all of humanity, and to the earth and the cosmos.
In this way, all beings will benefit from the cultivated person's virtues. And in doing so, the cultivator expands and strengthens his virtues, becoming a greater and greater hero.
As he expands the reaches of his virtues, the entire universe benefits. The entire universe benefits because this hero has understood and become one with the Way, the natural order, and can apply its principles and essence to help all living beings. He works in harmony toward the improvement of self and others. How can the world not benefit from such individuals?
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