EQUALITY — COOPERATION — HARMONIOUS LOVE
Full moon day of the seventh month, Tan Hoi year (1971)
NGUYEN MINH THIEN
I. INTRODUCTION
The motto (devise) of Minh Ly Dao rests on three guiding principles: Equality — Cooperation — Harmonious Love.
The word tieu (also read as phieu) means a raised marker or banner-pole. The word ngu properly means speech, or here, a phrase or set of words. Together, tieu ngu means a phrase, or set of words, that sets forth the rightful purpose and lofty aspiration of a lineage or branch, so that each member may grasp in outline, and hold ever in mind, the purpose of that lineage or branch, and act accordingly.
II. EQUALITY
Binh (level) means: even and level, without unevenness or difference in height, like the surface of a pond or lake when the wind is still. Dang (rank) means: grade, degree, or rank. Combined, binh dang (equality) means being on the same level as one another, of the same degree, neither higher nor lower, neither more nor less.
In worldly terms, equality is explained as: before the law, and in matters of religion, politics, economics, and so on, all people are alike. But one may well ask — how many nations have truly put this principle into practice? For the laws now in force are merely laws devised by worldly people gathered together using their ordinary minds, and are for the most part still incomplete; they concern themselves chiefly with function, and give little thought to essential nature.
That essential nature is the Way (Dao), is Innate Conscience and Innate Ability, is Heaven-given Truth and Buddha-nature — that is, the Original Source, the very root of Heaven, Earth, and Man (the Three Powers).
Everyone alike possesses the Way within, or an equal original nature; every person resembles every other, each unique and without a second. Thus in this world, only that one essential nature is equal and everlasting; all else — the manifest world of the ten thousand things — is difference upon difference, ceaselessly changing.
The Buddhist scriptures call this essential nature “unchanging yet responsive to conditions, responsive to conditions yet unchanging” — meaning: the essential nature never shifts, and yet when conditions arise it manifests; though it manifests according to conditions, it remains ever unchanged.
Now, if we wish to choose a true standard of equality, we must take this essential nature as the true measure of equality, for it alone is everlasting and unchanging.
III. COOPERATION
Cong means: to join two differing parts, or several parts, together to form one overall, greater result — also called joining forces. Tac means action, deed. Cooperation (cong tac) means: many people combining their strength, some stronger, some weaker, lending each other a hand to accomplish a heavy task together.
The book Dao Hoc Chi Nam [A Guide to the Study of the Way] offers an illustration: “A lovely garden is a gathering of countless individual things — from the smallest pebble, to the faintly green water winding beneath rows of brightly colored flowers, beneath stately clusters of pine and cypress. This effortless joining together creates a setting harmonized in color and fragrance alike, and a whole refined feeling for the person who beholds it.”
It is not only beings of this earthly realm that must join together; even the human realm and the realm of Heaven — mortals and heavenly beings — must cooperate for there to be joy and beauty. This manner of cooperation is called “the union of Heaven and Man,” meaning Heaven and Man joined as one.
The ancients said: “The one root scatters into ten thousand differences; the ten thousand differences return to the one root,” meaning that the countless differences all return to a single source. Without cooperation, how could this return to unity, this return to the Way, ever be achieved? Fellow believers should always bear in mind these two words, Cooperation, for only then can we reach our goal. For no reason whatsoever should we allow enmity or division to arise among us, for that is to imprison ourselves within the gate of birth and death.
Moreover, we cooperate for a lofty, righteous purpose, of common benefit to all people and to society as a whole — not for personal gain, nor to seek private wealth and status for ourselves.
The Dao Hoc Chi Nam further says: “To join forces without harmony is, in truth, not to have joined at all. Only when joined together within an atmosphere of harmonious love does the desired result follow. Joining and harmony are as form and shadow. Joining is the house; harmony is its foundation.”
IV. HARMONIOUS LOVE
1. The word Hoa (Harmony)
Hoa means to be in accord with one another, to join together in joy. Its opposite is a divided heart, given to opposition and mutual attack.
In this world, every person has a different temperament. To achieve harmony, it cannot come from one side alone. All must be of one accord, setting aside minor matters, holding firm to the greater principle — that is, choosing a shared purpose to serve. The temperament we each have now is not our innate, Heaven-given nature, but something formed over time through habit. Whoever has firm resolve may gradually train themselves, abandoning bad old habits, and so return to their original goodness. Buddhism calls this method of practice “habituation.”
The Dao Hoc Chi Nam says: “Harmonious union does not mean surrendering oneself to the crowd, letting one’s life simply drift along. To be in harmony with others, without carrying out one’s determined purpose, is a harmony untrue to its own name.”
2. The word Ai (Love)
Ai means to love others, to regard others as one’s own limbs and body. But the love spoken of here is not the ordinary, narrow love confined to oneself; it must be extended, impartially and without limit, to society, to humankind, to all people under Heaven.
The Dao Hoc Chi Nam says: “A love that is noble and sacred can resolve the ten thousand affairs of human life.” The best course of action is to judge others less, to love them instead, and to guide them so that all may progress together with the world.
Thus the two words Harmonious Love form the one path leading to the ultimate goal of the Way. Only when the secular and the sacred lean upon one another can a state of Great Harmony — a paradise on this very earth — be established. And so it is said in verse:
Love embraces every living being,
Nurtured and sustained by a single hand.
Sweet rain falls evenly through the world’s upheavals,
Great grace showers down as the age transforms.
The stream runs dry when far from its source,
The sapling withers when the house lacks soil.
Knowing the Way, knowing others, cultivating one’s place —
Great Harmony among all things could never go astray.
V. CONCLUSION
The Motto of Minh Ly Dao consists of three guiding principles: Equality — Cooperation — Harmonious Love.
Elsewhere, people raise up the two words “Liberty,” yet without Equality, how could Liberty ever be attained? Thus Liberty and Equality are cause to one another. As for Fraternity, it is a broad love — but the Harmonious Love of Minh Ly is one of reconciliation, of merging oneself with the world as one, and it is this that reaches the true ultimate meaning of Fraternity, of the Way itself.
I earnestly hope that fellow believers will attend closely to the Motto of our own faith, and strive with all their might to put that Motto into practice — for only thus can the teaching of Minh Ly, entrusted to us by the Three Founding Sages, be preserved and expanded. Hereafter, our happiness, and the happiness of all humankind, shall flow forth from that very Motto.
With utmost sincerity and faith