Stages of Self-Cultivation - The Hero's Path

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?

The Importance of the Family for Attaining Happiness

When a need is not met, suffering occurs. The greater the need not met, the greater the suffering. Therefore, in order to solve human suffering, an understanding of human need is critical. Because suffering opposes happiness, human needs must first be met in order to achieve human happiness.

Though each human being is unique and constantly is a state of transformation, all human beings share a fundamental human nature. One central foundation of this human nature is the need for relationships that are intimate, deeply caring, loving, and built upon stability, dependability, responsibility, and a sense of permanency. Another central foundation of human nature comes from our nature as biological entities; we have the need to reproduce and raise offspring.

The family is the best and unrivaled way in which both these needs are best addressed. Only the family can provide relationships that are intimate, deeply caring, loving, and built upon stability, dependability, responsibility, and a sense of permanency. The family is also the best and unrivaled way wherein reproduction is safest and in which children are raised well.

There are variations among families; some are healthy and functional, some are unhealthy and dysfunctional. Some families are more intimate, deeply caring, loving, and create safety, stability, dependability, and responsibility. Some families lack these virtues.

These variations come from differences in behavior. These differences in behavior ultimately come from different values. Different values manifest through different understandings and different degrees of self-cultivation. Different understandings of values and different degrees of self-cultivation form character, and character dictates behavior, and behavior changes family life.

Family life allows one to attain relationships that are intimate, deeply caring, loving, and built upon stability, dependability, responsibility, and a sense of permanency. These relationships fulfill fundamental human needs, and create happiness where otherwise there would be suffering.

Therefore, to attain happiness, one must fulfill one's needs. Because one needs intimate relationships, one needs good family life. Because one needs good family life, one must have the right values, right understanding, right cultivation, leading to right character, right behavior, and right family life.

To ignore this reality is to perpetuate ourselves in a state of stress and suffering.