Interesting article about contemporary America and Confucius:
http://turnabout.ath.cx:8000/node/16

Sexual Orientation is a Social Construct that should be Abandoned

There is no such as "sexual orientation" as having intrinsic character. Why? Because "sexual orientation" arises out of discriminatory attraction. Discriminatory attraction arises out of the confusion that equivocates lust and love. This confusion of lust and love is specific to a certain understanding of human relationships. Because this certain understanding of human relationships is specific to the individual and the culture in a specific historical context, "sexual orientation" cannot arise through an understanding that removes lust from love. In effect, our sexualization of everything, from our relationships to people and people themselves, leads to a social reality in which there is such a thing as "sexual orientation." Therefore, "sexual orientation" can only arise from a specific cultural context that arises from a certain understanding of human relationships, and is not part of fundamental human nature.

Because "sexual orientation" is not part of fundamental human nature as is socially-constructed, we have the potential to assess its merit and either continue using it or discard it. Because "sexual orientation" has no merit, and causes suffering, "sexual orientation" should be abandoned as a social reality and individuals should cultivate themselves away from manifesting "sexual orientation." Because lust is the intrinsic evil that leads to "sexual orientation," cultivators should rid themselves of lust as much as possible in order to abandon "sexual orientation."

"Sexual orientation" arises out of discriminatory attraction. Sexual orientation can only exist under the assumption that an individual can be sexually attracted to one form, but not another. We understand sexual orientation through affirmation and negation; homosexuals are sexually attracted to the same sex, but not the opposite sex. Heterosexuals cannot be sexually attracted to the same sex, but are attracted to the opposite sex. Bisexuals are attracted to both sexes, and cannot be attracted to neither sex. Therefore, our concept of "sexual orientation" only arises out of a concept of discrminatory attraction.

However, the nature of attraction is that it is neither truly discrminatory nor truly non-discriminatory, but rather empty of inherent nature. Attraction cannot be truly discriminatory, because it has no bounds and changes over time. One can find one's spouse attractive, and then in a few years find them unattractive or even repulsive. In purely sexual terms, one can find human beings sexually attractive, and then later find animals sexually attractive. Sexual attraction in minimal before puberty, grows during puberty, and declines after a certain age. Attraction, and especially lust, constantly changes and has no bounds. People can literally be attracted to anything. However, attraction cannot be truly non-discriminatory, because no one is attracted to every thing simultaneously. In fact, attraction can only exist in the context that certain things are either attractive, unattractive (neutral), or repulsive (direct opposite of attractive). Foods taste good because other foods are tasteless or taste bad. Some people are beautiful because other people lack beauty or are ugly. (Though the perciever can possibly attain a state in which of all food tastes good or all people are beautiful, this transcendent perception cannot give rise to attraction. If every food is equally tasty and every person equally beautiful, what is there to be attracted to?)

Because discriminatory attraction has no inherent, unchanging, fixed basis, neither can sexual orientation. Sexual orientation cannot then be an inherent, unchanging, fixed characteristic of any individual. Furthermore, sexual orientation can only arise out of lust, which can be, to a fair extent, controlled and diminished through proper self-effort, and can be shaped in certain directions through the conditions and environment one finds oneself in.

Romantic discriminatory attraction arises out of the confusion that equivocates lust and love. Whereas true love can be extended to all beings, caring and cherishing them regardless of condition, circumstance, form, and history, lust does not work this way. The nature of lust roots itself in attraction, which as explained, must intrinsically find other things as unattractive or repulsive. This process of finding things attractive, non-attractive, or repulsive is discrimination. That is why attraction necessarily involves discrimination. Because this discrimination into attractive, non-attractive, and repulsive has no fixed characteristic and can be changed, shaped, and suppressed or developed, discriminatory attraction has no inherent nature nor intrinsic character. That is why one person can find his spouse attractive one year, less attractive the next, unattractive another, and eventually repulsive, without the spouse radically changing. Same with favorite foods, clothing styles, friends, dating partners, and so forth. Whereas love can be unconditional, attraction is everchanging. Therefore, romantic discriminatory attraction cannot be explained by love, but by the confusion of attraction as love.

Because sexual orientation discriminates based on gender or sex, this discrimination cannot be explained by attraction in general, but only specifically through lust, which is attraction in its sexual form. Without lust, there cannot be sexual orientation.

This confusion of lust and love is specific to a certain understanding of human relationships. What is this understanding? This understanding is that other human beings can be related to as objects of pleasure, objects of attraction, objects to be discriminated among for the sake of one's self. This is hedonism as applied to human relationships. Specifically with regard to "sexual orientation," people extend this hedonistic understanding to the conception of "romantic relationships" as being intrinsically lustful and sexually-based, with the understanding that this sexual attraction is unchanging, fixed, and inherent to one's personality.

However, this is not the case. Attraction is malleable, changing, unfixed, and not inherent to one's individual personality. Because this certain understanding of human relationships is specific to the individual and the culture in a specific historical context, "sexual orientation" cannot arise through an understanding that removes lust from love. When one understands love as separate from lust, in their purest forms, one understands that love necessarily involves unconditional care, boundless benevolence and compassion, and willingness to suffer for the other person. These elements are separate, and in practical expression often contradictory, to attraction (lust or otherwise). Because attraction is by nature fickle, changing and unfixed, attraction can only impurify true love. That is why many individuals in the Victorian era had and expressed deep love for those they had intimate relationships with, whether friends or family, whether male or female. To them, "sexual orientation" would be nothing more than the direction of one's lust, because one could love someone regardless of which gender or sex that person is.

Therefore, in effect, our sexualization of everything in our modern, Western culture, from our relationships to people and people themselves, leads to a social reality in which there is such a thing as "sexual orientation." Everything is sexualized these days. Commercials constantly appeal to sexual attraction. Our clothes emphasize bodily contours. Dating is not about finding the right marriage partner, but about a sexual relationship. Mainstream music is inundated with sexuality. Pornography is becoming more and more acceptable. People are taught to believe that they are little more than thinking animals, and so are encouraged engage in lust this way (even though animals simply do not experience lust the same way humans do), and social "scientists" take current historically-specific modern trends of our hypersexuality as "evidence" that we are, "in fact," little more than animals. Because sexuality is so inundated is everything we do and experience because of our hypersexualized culture, we have trouble understanding that lust and love are actually separate, and we have trouble perceiving this separation correctly. Because we cannot separate lust and love, we believe that romantic discrimination is love, and because lust is intrinsically sexual, this discrimination manifests itself as "sexual orientation," which we falsely understand as being part of love.

Therefore, "sexual orientation" can only arise from a specific cultural context that arises from a certain understanding of human relationships, and is not part of fundamental human nature. Because one can understand love and lust as separate and mutually exclusive, and change one's heart to expand one's love and diminish one's lust, romantic discrimination, sexual attraction, and therefore "sexual orientation" ceases to become neither meaningful concepts nor social realities. There is, in fundamentally human reality, no such thing as heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, or asexuals. These concepts only arise out of lust and sexual attraction, which is ever-changing, unfixed, malleable, changeable, given direction by self and society, encouragable, and supressable.

Because "sexual orientation" is not part of fundamental human nature as is socially-constructed, we have the potential to assess its merit and either continue using it or discard it. Because lust hinders true love, lust should be diminished as much as possible. And because "sexual orientation" can only arise out of sexual attraction, which is lust, "sexual orientation" must necessarily be abandoned when one abandons lust. "Sexual orientation" provides no good for individuals or society, self or others. When people define their marriages and love based on "sexual orientation," they define it on sexual attraction, which will hinder the cultivation of true love. "Sexual orientation" also divides people, not simply because of discrimination, but because attraction discriminates. When 1.5% of the population is "homosexual," "homosexuals" will have difficulty finding marriage partners simply because of reduced demographics. Finally, when people marry those who they cannot have children with, a greatly wonderful aspect of life is absent. Therefore, because "sexual orientation" has no merit, and causes suffering, "sexual orientation" should be abandoned as a social reality and individuals should cultivate themselves away from manifesting "sexual orientation."

Because lust is the intrinsic evil that leads to "sexual orientation," cultivators should rid themselves of lust as much as possible in order to abandon "sexual orientation." Why is lust evil? Because it reduces other people to being objects from which to extract pleasure from. When one person is lusting after another, he or she is not concerned with the well-being or benefit of the other person; rather, he or she simply wants something from the other person for his or her own pleasure. Therefore it is a great impediment to true love, which is based on unconditional care, boundless benevolence and compassion, and willingness to suffer for the other person. Thus, lust should be abandoned.

The sexualization of everything and the cultivation of lust brings upon a confusion between love and lust, which then defines "love" as "attraction." Further emphasis on lust results in "sexual attraction," which by its discriminating faculties creates socially-constructed divisions of "heterosexual," "homosexual," "bisexual," "asexual." This hypersexualization and lust at extremes results in pedophilia, sexual abuse, rape, and other sexual wronghoods and abnormalities.

Through Catholicism, I was introduced to the greater concepts of right and wrong.
Through Buddhism, I began to understand that following right and avoiding wrong protected and benefited myself.
Through Confucianism, I began to learn to take joy in right and become saddened at wrong for others' sake, and to fully understand why that is.


As I grew up, going through local public schools up until middle school, I was never exposed to an actual system of ethics. Sure, there was the usual authoritarianism that public schools invariably indoctrinate into its students, the superficially supervised playtime in which only physical violence is somewhat stopped (but certainly not verbal or emotional) but not reformed, and of course the 'government and citizenship in a nutshell' activities. But if you asked me anything about ethics, or what it meant to being a good person, I might reference something I learned in class about "random acts of kindness" or recycling to help the environment. I can't exactly recall how deeply I thought about right or wrong acts, though I did have a big problem with how friendship was conducted during my elementary school years, but I certainly couldn't have given you a straight answer back then.

And when they taught us sex "education," I didn't even think to bat an eye at the fact that they were showing everyone how to use condoms right in the middle of class, or the fact that people did not discuss why sex should be done only in certain social situations and what those situations were (in a steady dating relationship? or only after marriage? were one-night stands acceptable assuming mutual consent? how do you ensure mutual consent without losing the 'romantic' atmosphere, or at least the sexually-charged feelings of the moment?).

When one of my 6th grade friends talked about his drug experiences, and later on in 8th grade, his experiences in having sex, I both felt deeply uncomfortable, but a bit excited for him, and had no idea why I had these mix of feelings. Even if I could express them back then, I certainly couldn't justify or explain why.

I had been going to the St Andrew and Paul Korean Catholic Mission since I was in elementary school, but ethics were told, but not actually taught. I never encountered an actual explanation as to why pre-marital sex was wrong, maybe outside of something vague like "God wants you to..." And unsurprisingly, once most of the kids I knew from the church got out of their parent's control, they committed all the sins (or what I'll refer to as "near-sins") they were told not to, because they never developed a strong understanding of why they shouldn't do certain things.

So what do I mean by "sins" versus "near-sins"? If a sin is pre-marital sex, the near-sin would be dressing in lingerie to a Halloween party. The explicit sin is the extramarital sex (adultery or fornication), but the underlying vice is lust. So even though dressing in lingerie to a Halloween party, or dirty dancing for that matter, is not explicitly written out as a sin (as extramarital sex is), it's the same depravity at work. So the nature of all these activities should be considered to be sinful.

Bellarmine was different, but to varying degrees, depending on the teacher and the setting. Same basic conservative morality, but certainly different teaching approach. Some teachers were more rigorous than others, namely the great and universally honored Dr. Dalton, guiding us through moral thinking and development. Do we really want to live in certain ways? Do we really want to live in a society that purchases Disney merchandise made through exploitative child labor? Is there something greater to life than grades and the material wealth that supposedly comes from higher education? For the first time, I had teachers that explicitly told us that "freak dancing" (dirty dancing that simulates the act of sex) is wrong. This was the beginning of formally and consciously tackling these questions.

Still, while going through Swarthmore, and my atheistic/materialistic phase, I was hard pressed to explain to my fellow students, who were much more liberal than I ever was at my peak of liberal affiliation, my more conservative views. The best I could do to counter the idea that "having sex before marriage is like test-driving a car, you need to do it before you make the purchase" was to point out that people aren't cars. But I couldn't really articulate myself beyond that, even after putting further thought into it. I knew that there was definitely more to sex, but I couldn't give a logical explanation beyond something that might be considered 'merely' poetic or unrealistically romantic.

The closest justification I could come to expressing was through evolutionary psychology. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was attempting an examination of fundamental human nature in order to establish a sense of what we should do and shouldn't do. I was tired of hearing that everything was a social construct, or that things are "not necessarily true" and have exceptions as a reason to disregard the entire principle (because it did not account for 100% of reality).

So in terms of the premarital sex question, I could point out that human beings have evolved to require heavily parental investment in their children (babies are born premature, and children really need parents to take care of them in a purely physiological/biological sense up until puberty, and even afterward, parents must teach them how to incorporate themselves into society for survival's sake), and their behavior (including emotional reactions to various social and biological stimuli) must have evolved to seek partnership relationships with the individual(s) they have sex with. So human beings are definitely not supposed to have one-night stands with strangers, with no sense of obligation, because the implications for the survival of our offspring are disastrous. Instead, we've evolved to psychologically demand stability from our sex partners, which, in social terms, culminates in the institution of marriage. A violation of this biologically innate demand for stability in our mates will cause us significant distress, physically and emotionally.

But explaining why people are predisposed to act and respond in certain ways because of its evolutionarily-mandated drive for survival is hardly a foundation for morality and spiritual development. Seeking only survival of oneself and one's offspring often, in fact, runs contrary to our understanding of true morality and ethics. After all, rape could theoretically be justified if evolutionary survival were to replace ethics, because this is a way of maximizing one's offspring potential. And surely, by virtue of having human hearts, we all find reasoning utterly deplorable.

After graduating from Swarthmore, I began to attend the Zen Center of Sunnyvale partly out of intellectual interest, but partly because I was interested in joining a religious community again. I had left the Catholic church because I couldn't reconcile various aspects of its theology with itself, so I thought I'd investigate a religion that was known for its logical rigor.

And logical it is! I could go on ad infinitum about Buddhism, but with respects to morality, there are two big principles at play here; karma and compassion, which in a sense reflect two sides of the morality coin.

Karma describes cause and effect. (The Sanskrit literal meaning is "action," but one cannot talk about action without its results in Buddhism.) Karma can be understood to have two components - 1. the physical, seeable results of the action and 2. the intention behind them. These two factors will combine to produce an effect that returns to the doer of the karma. So karma could be described as "volitional action" that creates a specific result to self and others.

For example, doing community service for Habitat for Humanity in order to improve one's college application would involve good physical, and seeable results. However, the volition is not so pure; the intention was not compassion, because the point of the service was not to help others, it was to help oneself. Because the compassionate intent was not there in doing the good, the 'merits' (or colloquially, the benefits for yourself) of the community service is muted to some considerable extent. On the other hand, if someone accidentally steps on a bunch of ants while taking a stroller, totally unaware, the act is physically harmful but the intention to harm was absent. The results of this action is also muted to some considerable extent, perhaps completely and totally. The volition is a critical component of the merits produced.

Karma also has a reinforcement effect on your mind. If you keep doing compassionate acts, you will become more compassionate. If you keep doing malicious acts, you'll keep becoming more malicious. If you keep indulging your greed or lust, you'll become even greedier and more lustful.

Compassion is less difficult to explain. If you have the intent to alleviate others' suffering and bring them happiness, it's naturally you'll avoid certain things and commit certain actions. For example, becoming vegetarian is advocated because one will be freeing livestock animals from harm. You might donate to charity simply because the charity will inevitably help people.

So with regards to premarital sex, because sex in an unstable relationship can really end up hurting people, a good Buddhist will avoid having sex recklessly. And because indulging in lust will bring about more lust (and lust, or greed, is one of the "three poisons" that causes suffering), sex in general is to be avoided as much as possible. So certainly, one-night stands are not looked favorably upon. I would even argue that upon these grounds, a compassionate individual would have sex only in the context of marriage, because this is the safest and most stable scenario for his would-be sex partner. A lot of anxiety and confusion arises with premarital sex, and if you truly loved someone, you would keep him or her from experiencing that. At the least, you ought to assure your loved one that you'll always be there for him/her (which is one of the central elements of, of not in and of itself totally equivalent to, marriage) before you start having sexual relations.

To further my point, I'll quote from the Buddha himself, who describes in the Culakammavighanga Sutra (found in the Majjhima Nikaya of the Pali Cannon) a person who commits sexual misconduct as a person who

has intercourse with women who are protected by their mother, father, mother and father, brother, sister, or relatives, who have a husband, who are protected by law, and even with those already engaged.

It's pretty clear that the Buddha did not look favorably upon extramarital sex, whether it's premarital sex or adultery.

(At this point, I'd like to refer to the fact that mental health problems (eg depression, suicide) are strongly correlated with premarital sex, particularly for the teenage age range. I won't discuss this evidence further in this post, but I certainly will soon in the future.)

From a strict interpretation of the Buddhist perspective, premarital sex results in harm because it engages oneself and one's partner in lust, and the instability of the non-marital relationship creates anxiety in both sex partners. Furthermore, the risk of pregnancy always haunts the couple, no matter what contraceptive is used. If a fetus is aborted (and in Buddhism, life begins at conception), murder is committed upon one's child, which of course is evil karma. If a child is born, he or she is born into an unstable family situation, and there are various harms resulting from that as well. So premarital sex results only in harm, the least of which is indulging in lust and living in anxiety, and the worst being either ruining a child's life or murder itself.

A similar analysis could be done on the "near-sins" of dirty dancing or lewd appearance. They arise lust in others, they arise lust in oneself, both of which is bad in and of itself. But this lust can result in harm later on! At Swarthmore, there used to be (and perhaps still are) an annual campus-wide party in which women dress in lingerie. Not too surprisingly, the vast majority of rapes during the school year occurred during that one night. By arousing lust in others, you are putting both yourself and others in grave danger.

Of course, I'm not justifying that a woman who dresses lewdly "deserves" to be raped. No one in the world deserves such a heinous experience, for any reason whatsoever. But I do liken the situation to one in which one approaches dogs with rabies. In that situation, no one deserves to be bitten, but one should certainly avoid that situation for his own safety!

So in Buddhism I found the justification of morality as "do not harm others" and "try to benefit others." Rather than speaking of individual rights, in which you could do whatever you wanted within those boundaries, harmful or beneficial, Buddhism talks about causality (karma) and compassion.

One of the things I found in Confucianism that I found to be lacking in Zen cultivation was finding the spiritual and sacred in all worldly things, the transformation of mundaness into richness, channeling suffering and the lesser desires into forces of benevolence and virtue.

The essence of Confucian morality is incredibly difficult to explain because it is infused with spirituality to the point of oneness. Confucian morality is not simply united or integrated with spirituality, they are one and the same. A separation between morality and spirituality comes only from a lack of cultivation.

The point is further muddled when we consider the fact that other religions have something of a claim to this effect as well. For example, Buddhists can argue that a highly cultivated individual will naturally act ethically. In Mahayanan Buddhism, when one perfects one of the six paramitas - charity, morality, patience, effort, meditation, wisdom - one perfects all. While I do agree that the perfected individual of any religion does not morality and spirituality, the emphasis on this oneness as critical for the path of cultivation lies best with the Confucians. The intermediate Buddhist cultivator will have a lesser ability to integrate the two than the intermediate Confucian cultivator, even though the perfected ideal (the "sage" in Confucianism, the fully-enlightened Buddha in Buddhism) is the same, because of the difference in emphasis for practice. An opera composer needs to develop different skills in order to create the 'perfect opera.' In doing so, he can choose to see the poetics of the text as primary, with the musical score and plot following naturally. Or he can see the musical score as primary, with the poetics and plot following naturally, or he can see the plot as primary, with the poetics and score following naturally. Whatever focus he chooses, he will produce different products based on that focus than had he chosen a different focus, until he reaches a stage where all skills are fully mastered.

To return to Confucian ethics, each action has an ethical dimension because it inevitably effects others. Ethics, especially in Confucianism, is not about the individual, but rather about relationships. The concept of individual rights is superceded by the ideal of harmony. Harmony is expressed through ritual, propriety, and ettiquette. Ettiquette, in fact, is the outwardly manifestation of ethics. A handshake in the Western culture, or a bow in the Eastern culture, are symbolic acts both of ettiquette and ethics. Propriety has an important place, because it emphasizes order and ettiquette, and is infused with a sense of sacredness about every action. Ritual, ettiquette, propriety - these are all orderly and harmonious actions that connect us to other human beings and the cosmos in a profound and sacred way.

So to apply this understanding to sexuality is intellectually fascinating, but more significantly, empowering and enriching. Sex, to a Confucian, is among the most intimate of relational acts, and the most intimate of the marriage relationship. Sex is tantamount to an expression of the closest intimacy. Intimacy, by definition, cannot be established with multitudes of people, but rather with a select few. Exclusion is necessary for the closest and highest intimacy to occur. Therefore, to have sex with many individuals means to express the highest intimacy with many individuals.

But do people who have sex with many individuals really have the highest intimacy with all of those individuals?

The answer, practically speaking (and Confucians are strong on practical ethics), is no. Clearly, even if at some point the couples felt intimate, that intimacy is no longer there, by decision (excluding cases of death).

The marriage bond is built upon a promise of intimacy and security. If sex is to have spiritual and sacred meaning as an act of intimacy, it should be reserved only for as few as people as possible. As few as people possible ideally means only one person. That one person should be one's spouse, because no one else in the world is expected to be as intimate in which sexual relations are appropriate.

So why is sex so natural to be chosen as the act of sacred and spiritual intimacy? Becaise Confucians believing in transforming the lesser desires into virtues, finding the spiritual in the mundane. As I've established before, sex undeniably has strong emotional feelings attached to it, and is certainly physically highly pleasurable. So the Confucian takes these spontaneous, natural responses and transforms them into something sacred, spiritual and noble. They no longer become simply pleasures of the body and heart - they have spiritual meaning!

Sex then becomes an expression of "I love you" with physical, emotional, and spiritual meaning of the highest intimacy. And in order for this expression to be most meaningful, sex should be reserved only for husband and wife, after they have verbally dedicated themselves to each other.

Contradictory Positions

So far I've discussed the importance of family, filial piety, and the intrinsic evils of divorce. But I've also described dysfunctional families, established the condemnability of bad parenting, and admitted the necessity of divorce in extreme situations.

It seems contradictory to uphold something in one post, only to later take the opposite aspect and decry it. If family is so important, why do I decry certain family forms over others? If filial piety is so virtuous, why do I scathingly blame parents for maligned children? If marriage is so important and divorce so evil, how can I make exceptions for certain situations?

My purpose in writing these posts is primarily to describe causality so that the reader can assess the implications and destinies of his actions. If someone is considering divorce, for example, he will need to weigh the dangers of staying together (for example, exposing the child to hostility or even violence) against the dangers of separation (for example, the child loses a father figure or mother figure). Each situation is different, so we can never say that "divorce is always the wrong choice" or vice versa.

Same thing goes with family type. Perhaps a domestic-atomistic hybrid is better than having no family at all. Perhaps neglectful parents should be honored via filial piety anyway, though it might not be the most 'just' course of action. Or maybe filial piety should be disregarded in the name of cultivating oneself. If a daughter needs to resent her neglectful and corrupted mother in the process of growing into a better person, then this period of resentment is for the better.

Or even my post on appearance. Some tattoos, such as the infamous "tramp stamps" are truly unjustifiable, but others actually might have the potential for fulfilling the idea that appearance should be used to inspire others toward greater change. For example, a friend of mine has the words "praxis" and "theory" tattooed on her left and right wrists. I still cringe knowing that her body has been altered in some way (which I do even with 'normal' pierced ears), but her tattoos certainly fit the notion that appearance should be geared toward inspiration.

The idea is not to establish hard and fast rules regarding everything, but to deepen people's understandings of what's really going on, and what's to come as a result. Because only with a deeper understanding of reality can we make better decisions when dealing with the ever-present complexity of human life.

The Intrinsic Dangers of Divorce

There are three intrinsic dangers of divorce. First, the child is taught that family members are disposable. Second, the child is deprived of a parent. Third, the child is deprived of seeing how a harmonious, successful marriage relationship works.

Even if the divorce is not acrimonious, both in terms of the events leading up to it and the process of divorce itself, the child will learn that family members are disposable. A divorce is by definition a breaking up of a family, and so is a discretion against the family bond. The child learns by example that his relationships, no matter how intimate, are undependable. This sense of undependability creates a sense of fear and anxiety about relationships in general, or outright suspicion and hostility.

Divorce that occurs in non-extreme circumstances (extreme circumstances including abuse, violence, adultery, severe neglect, abandonment) teaches children the atomistic conception of family and relationships. They teach children that relationships are like private contract, and/or that people are sources of pleasure that when they become burdensome can be disposed of. If the divorce is truly conflict-free and nonchalant, then the child is taught that individuals they have intimate relationships are disposable or replaceable, and really don't matter.

In a divorce, the child can lose either the same-sex parent or the opposite-sex parent. Either way, the child loses a critical role-model, from the "functional" perspective of family. If it's the same-sex parent, the child loses a role-model to explain how to deal with and grow into gender roles. A boy without a proper father will have difficulty knowing how to act as a man as he grows older. If it's the opposite-sex parent, the child loses a resource to understand the opposite sex from. A daughter will not know how to deal with the different types of men that could potential hurt her, nor how to tell the difference, as well as if she learned these things from her father instead of her mother.

The loss of a parent, an intimate family member, is emotionally devastating, and needs no further explanation here.

Finally, the child is deprived of experiencing and seeing how a harmonious, successful marriage relationship works. Instead of working problems out, the parents give up and call the marriage a failure. So the child learns the problems, but nothing of the right solutions. So the child is left not knowing how to properly resolve conflicts, and may become suspicious or hostile toward relationships in general. The child does not learn to value harmony enough, nor does the child learn how to successfully pursue harmony.

To all those who argue that divorce is not an evil, you yourself are committing an act of evil. You are like someone who goes up to a sick person and tells them that they are healthy and have nothing to worry about; only disaster and great suffering will result.

Divorce may be a necessary evil, and I will never argue against this all-too-frequent situation where divorce is a necessary evil, but we should never deny that it is indeed an evil.

There has never been a case where...

There has never been a case where the parent has raised his children well and they treat him badly. There has never been a case where the parent has raised his children badly and the children treat him well.

There has never been a case where the parent has raised his children well and they do not love him back. There has never been a case where the children love the parent and the parent has not raised them well.

Parents influence their children before they are even conceived in the womb. By choosing who to marry, he is choosing who will become the other parent of his children. When the child is born, he and his spouse chooses who the child will spend time with (friends, teachers), what is emphasized within the family (which will shape the child's values), what the child will be exposed to (television, books, school), and so forth. The parent, through words and actions, constantly educates his child from his moment of first consciousness. Truly, the parent acts as God for the child.

Therefore, parents must take all the responsibility for their children's failures, exactly as leaders must take all the responsibility for their subordinates' failures.

A parent who fights perpetually and acrimoniously with his spouse endangers his children. Either the child must take a side and develop anger against one parent, or must ignore the issue being fought over. If the child takes a side, he must denigrate the parent he deems as wrong. In doing so, he damages the child's practice of filial piety. Inevitably, the child's lack of filial piety will be turned against the parent pushing him to take a side.

On the other hand, if the child ignores the issue being fought over, he will practice stupidity, acceptance of injustice, and acceptance of disharmony. By not investigating who is at fault and why, he practices stupidity and will lack wisdom. By not finding blame and rectifying wrong, he will accept injustice. By accepting fighting, he becomes at ease with disharmony and begins to believe it to be the natural and inevitable state of things.

If a child is wise and mature to be aware of both possibilities, he must face a great inner struggle.

A parent who deeply neglects his duties as parent endangers his children greatly. Either the child will recognize the fault or not recognize the fault. If the child recognizes the fault, he will have a great hindrance, a great obstacle toward cultivation of filial piety.

If the child does not recognize the fault of his wrongful parent, he will accept the parent's habits as acceptable and not requiring severe amendment. In accepting this, the child will absorb these habits and harmful personality traits into his own being, and his own future family (spouse and children) will be exposed to the same dangers as well.

If the child is wise and mature to be aware of both possibilities, he must face a great inner conflict.

A child who grows up with parents loving harmoniously will be happy and fully capable of loving his future spouse with care and tenderness.

A child who grows up with parents dutiful and loving will be happy and fully capable of raising his children with love and able excellence.

That is why good parents deserve the greatest praise, bad parents deserve condemnation, and all parents in fact deserve how their children treat them.

The Spiritual Force of Practicing Filial Piety

In cultivating one's humanness, one should take the natural, spontaneous virtues of his heart and expand upon them to all of humanity and beyond into the cosmos. When one practices love for one's family, one's heart is awakened to commiseration, pity, compassion, care, and all the noble virtues. Because one's heart is awakened in this way, one can use these forces to have commiseration, pity, compassion, care for all others, friends and strangers.

Many people experience true love only when they first have children. This is the first time in their lives they understand sacrifice, undying and unconditional care, and are fully willing to suffer for their love.

When people become parents they also naturally begin to develop commiseration for both other parents and children in general. Because they can know fully the difficulties of loving and raising their own children, they naturally begin to have compassion for other parents who struggle. Because they fear their own children hurt, they naturally begin to have compassion for other children who struggle or are in pain. Becoming a parent not only brings one in union with one's children, but begins to put one in union with all other parents and children as well.

Parents who are cultivators should then take this natural commiseration and cultivate it, developing its depth and extending it to the world. Seeing every person as someone's child, they should ask themselves "how would I like someone else to treat my child in this situation?" Would I want someone else to lust after him/her? Would I want someone else to disparage him/her, or otherwise hurt him/her? Would I want someone else to convince him/her of foolish things? In doing so, cultivators naturally develop deep pity, strong ethical conduct, and great benevolence.

Those who truly love their husbands or wives should also ask themselves "how would I like someone else to treat my spouse in this situation?" Seeing every person as someone's spouse or someone's future wife or husband, they should inquire within themselves. Would I want someone else to lust after him/her? Would I want someone else to disparage him/her, or otherwise harm or hurt him/her? Would I want someone else to convince him/her of foolish things? In doing so, cultivators naturally develop deep pity, strong ethical conduct, and great benevolence.

Those who truly love their brothers and sisters should also ask themselves "how would I like someone else to treat my brother or sister in this situation?" Seeing every person as someone's brother or sister, they should inquire within themselves. Would I want someone else to lust after him/her? Would I want someone else to disparage him/her, or otherwise hurt him/her? Would I want someone else to convince him/her of foolish things? In doing so, cultivators naturally develop deep pity, strong ethical conduct, and great benevolence.

To love someone deeply means to care for them deeply. In caring for someone deeply, one's care becomes unconditional. To be unattached to conditions means to love someone without demand of conditioned things, first including physical appearance, then personality, lastly personal relation, and then completely unconditionally. When one masters these things, he sees his beloved in all others and cannot bring himself to harm others.

However, among the four types of familial love (spousal, parental, sibling, and filial), filial piety has a special place.

Why is filial piety special? Because filial piety is easily aspired toward, but most difficult to manifest. To bridge the gap between aspiration and practice demands such great self-cultivation, that anyone who can master filial piety can become a truly noble person in mind and heart.

Why is filial piety worthy of aspiration? Because our parents' love is far deeper and vaster than the world's oceans combined. A parent's love is so strong that a parent is willing to die and suffer eternally for the benefit of his/her children. A parent's love is so intense that every moment of a parent's life, awake or in slumber, is filled with the nagging anxiety of the possibility that at any given moment something horrible might be happening to his/her child.

When I was in college, I hadn't return my mother's phone messages in a long time. At one point she left me a message that said sadly, "I just want to hear your voice." Only years later did I understand what that meant. Even if the conversation is short and with little content, it's meaningful to the parent; my mother just wanted to feel that I was safe, alive, and well.

There is no human force in the world stronger than a parent's love. And if there is any justice in one's heart, one ought to at least attempt to return the great love and care to one's parents.

How is filial piety and love difficult to manifest? Because unlike parental love, filial love does not come naturally. Animal parents naturally care and sacrifice for their animal offspring, but the animal offspring never sacrifices its life for its mother. No animal can even recognize its own mother after a certain age. There is no biological origin for filial love. Filial love comes exclusively from a human heart.

How is the human heart capable of filial love? Because the human heart has gratitude. Only when one is grateful for the love another gives him, can he truly appreciate this love. One must be grateful for not only the material comforts that one's parents give him (such as clothing, housing, food, and the products of wealth), but the profound love of one's parents.

How is the human heart capable of filial love? Because the human heart has imagination. Though one may or may not yet be a parent himself, he can take his own experiences in loving others (his children or otherwise) and use his imagination to extend this understanding of love to that of his parents. Through this imagination, he attains commiseration and harmony with his parents.

How is the human heart capable of filial love? Because the human heart has justice. Because a parent's love is so valuable and rich, and given to a child without expectation or condition, a person with any sense of justice will attempt to return this love. When one is given something good, small or great, one feels that he/she should return the gesture. Why is parental love any different?

To master these qualities requires one to truly expand and deepen one’s heart. To sincerely embark on returning a parent’s love, one’s sense of gratitude and justice must be great. This sincerity then leads one to truly understand his parents love and to return this love.

As one masters these qualities, one benefits himself and others. As he becomes more grateful he becomes more happy in his life. With gratefulness comes a sense of richness, for when one treasures everything he has, he feels truly rich. With justice, one becomes more compassionate and seeks to return the goodwill given to him from anyone. Through imagination, one becomes more sensitive and understanding of the joys and sufferings of others, allowing him to become harmonious with them.

To appreciate one's parents fully, one must truly master gratitude and appreciation; sensitivity, understanding and wisdom; care, compassion and love. In mastering these qualities, he can extend these great virtues to benefit the world.

How can one return a parent's love in practice? To do this is full measure is nearly impossible. One can shelter, feed, and clothes one's parents, but this is not fully repaying one's parents, because this is not the essence of a parent's great love. A stranger, a government, an organization can provide shelter, food, and clothing. The essence of a parent's great love contains the unconditional care, neurotic anxiety, and willingness to die and suffer greatly. This love is extremely rare in the world, and what is truly valuable. These are the things that must be returned.

But, except for a theoretical few, one can only come close to returning in full this great love from one's parents. So how can one attempt to repay one's parents?

First, by sincerely attempting to repay this love in full. Even though such a feat might be impossible, one is not human if one cannot even attempt to try.

Second, by having children of one's own can one pay homage to one's parents. When one becomes a parent, he loves as a parent and begins to truly understand his parents. By giving his children the same or greater love his parents gave to him, he pays homage to the greatness of his parents’ love for him.

Third, one can teach one’s parents profound teachings that lead them to greater happiness. If one’s parents are deficient in morality, one should help them self-cultivate. If one’s parents are lacking in spiritual character, one should help them self-cultivate. For a son or daughter to help one’s parents in this way is extremely difficult, but very worthwhile.