If you lose your way home, follow the stars and they will take you there. (Image from Hubble Telescope)
I often think that explaining events we and other people use to express an opinion can be seen as two sides of the same coin. Like the tossing of the coins in the I Ching that can foretell the future based on reading the present. Sadly, our popular culture often depicts this as nothing more than fortunetelling and untruthful.
I’ve often wondered what defines something as truth for one person but falsehood for another. It’s a tough question. It’s like sticking to principles when their foundations no longer hold up. Take the fifteenth century, for example, when common knowledge claimed the Earth was flat. People based their understanding of the world on what turned out to be a false premise.
The extension of knowledge leads to wisdom and understanding of what we consider our world, the universe, and the cosmos. It’s how this chapter “Explaining conjunctions” works to show how words and meaning can change as we see events in a different light. It is often how we see ourselves and how our own opinions can change based on looking at things differently than how we originally thought. I like the word usage of the idea of how opinions are made based on a “false premise”. A great example is the insights we’ve gained from understanding quantum physics, where we’ve adapted principles to incorporate knowledge that was previously beyond our grasp.
A false premise is often thought to be something that defies logic. An incorrect proposition that, by forming the basis of an argument, will almost certainly lead to an invalid or logically unsound conclusion. 
Sometimes a lie is crafted intentionally to support a conclusion or inference, ultimately distorting the truth. Often, our perspectives weren’t entirely wrong, just incomplete. To what popular culture may call a “half-truth”.
Which brings us back to the everchanging cosmos and the mist from which spirit, and all things originate and how our “standing on principle” can lead to a belief in a false premise over time. Nothing can stay the same because it can’t. Because everything, no matter how much it struggles against the contradictions it faces, must eventually change. And that change always occurs best in looking from the middle of things like the ancient lodge pole. Looking side-to-side to see which way is best based on both inward wisdom and outward circumstances.
Like the pendulum, spirit always finding its way back home—perhaps even to the stars as cosmic dust—its journey is shaped by what may be seen as memories it gathers along the way, returning to its center, renewed once more. Principles often changing as we become universal looking to the stars and to what Genghis Khan called the “eternal blue sky”.
My travels with Lieh Tzu / Interpolations along the Way
Chapter Eight – Explaining Conjunctions
131. Grudging duality
When can be the proper time to live and die? When can be the proper time to come forward or stay behind when what you do or do not do or say or do not say cannot be wrong? Only the time you do them. How can any principle be right or correct in one circumstance and be wrong in another? When the method we used yesterday was wrong, we may need to discard today and use tomorrow. How can there be any sense to it?
Mr. Shih of Lu had two sons: one loved learning, the other loved war. The first presented himself as a teacher to the Marquis of Chi, who admitted him to the Court as a tutor to his sons. The second went to Chu and presented himself as a strategist to the King. Who was pleased with him and put him in command of the army. The two men’s salaries enriched their family, and their rank brought honor to their parents.
Mr. Shih’s neighbor, Mr. Meng, also had two sons who were trained in the same professions as the sons of Mr. Shih. However, he was extremely poor. Envying the wealth of Mr. Shih, he asked him how his family had risen so quickly in the world. Mr. Shih’s sons, who happened to be home to the time, explained what they had done. Thinking his family could do the same, Mr. Meng sent his sons to follow the example set by the sons of Mr. Shih.
One of his sons went to the province of Chin and presented himself as a teacher to the King of Chin. The King told him:
“At present the princes of the states are in violent contention and are occupied solely with arming and feeding their troops. If I rule my state in accordance with moral teaching, this will be the way to ruin and extinction.”
The King of Chin had the right arm of the son of Mr. Meng cut off as an example to others and banished him, telling him to go home. Mr. Meng’s other son went to Wei and presented himself as a strategist to the Marquis of Wei. Upon his arrival the Marquis chastised him, saying:
“Mine is a weak state, situated between big states. The bigger states I serve, the smaller states I protect; this is the way to seek safety. If I rely on military force, ruin and extinction will be a question of hours. But if I let this man leave unharmed, he will go to another state and cause me serious trouble.”
For his trouble, the Marquis had the second son of Mr. Meng’s left foot cut off as an example to others and sent him back home to Wu. Upon his return home, Mr. Meng and his two crippled sons beat their chests and cursed Mr. Shih. How could such a duality occur?
As if two conflicting cosmic forces deciding who could be right had acted. Both sets of sons, both those of Mr. Shih and of Mr. Meng had followed the same course of action. But with vastly different results and outcomes.
It had been as if the two families had been in a duel or even in a race against time. Not against each other, but against forces in the world they could not control. As Mr. Meng was upset with Mr. Shih, he and his sons went to him to confront him with the terrible events which had befallen their family. Mr. Shih sadly answered:
“Pick the right time and flourish, miss the right time and perish.”
After a time of tense and woeful glances amongst those assembled Mr. Shih continued:
“Your way was the same as ours, yet you failed where we succeeded. Not because you did the wrong thing, but because you picked the wrong time to do it. 
In any case, nowhere is there a principle which is right in all circumstances or an action that is wrong in all circumstances. The method we used yesterday we may discard today and use again in the future; there is no fixed right or wrong in deciding whether we use it or not.
The capacity to pick times and snatch opportunities and be never at a loss how to answer events belongs to the wise. If you are not wise enough, even if you are as learned as Confucius, trouble will stay with you wherever you go.”
Mr. Meng and his sons reluctantly admitted that what Mr. Shih said it was true and showed him no more ill will. They grudgingly went home knowing nothing more needed or could be said and consoled themselves as best they could.
What can be said of knowing when to act and when not to? Who can know? Who can say? Can it be that we must grudgingly trust the duality of our life’s events to lead us simply to our destiny? That good must follow bad until we stop seeking them and aspire only to our own nothingness. Knowing what may have been, what was good for another and bad for ourselves or someone else depends only on the time when we do them. Knowing this, how could the outcome have been any different? 8/8/95
Number one hundred thirty-one of one hundred fifty-nine entries.
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