Reigenkai

　

The Chinese proverb “Misplaced Benevolence” forewarns that unwarranted sympathy or pointless altruism will lead people to self-destructive behaviour.

The origin of this proverb dates back to a time when Duke Xiang of the Song region, who was at war with the Chu region, felt that it was inhumane to attack an enemy suddenly before they were ready, thus he refrained from attacking and lost to Chu. You risk being at a disadvantage and making significant compromises if you wait for others to be completely ready before acting. Therefore, the best way to save others is to first ensure that you are invulnerable and then use your remaining capacity to save others.

In any undertaking, prioritizing your own interests without regard for others’ can cause you to become isolated from society, while putting aside your own interests in favor of others’ will make it difficult for you to maintain your own position. 

Helping yourself today will enable you to save more people tomorrow, should you desire to do so. Since your interests will always align with those of others, true and right benefit means that nothing will last if your interests are slanted in one direction. 

If a husband and wife make the most of each other’s strengths, compensate for each other’s weaknesses, and live in harmony, the home will be serene, successors will be born, and permanent prosperity will be achieved.

A family will disintegrate in one generation if one member acts too egotistically and seeks to exclude others. So, when the other and the self encroach on one another, the self of tomorrow emerges. 

Going back to your roots will reveal that your current self was created as a result of the harmonious union of your mother’s and father’s selves. Similar to today, tomorrow’s respectable version of you will result through cooperation with others and with society as a whole. So, our new selves are created through the harmony of self and other in both the past and the future.

Farmers grow our food, textile industries make our clothes, and real estate developers construct our homes, which is why we are still here today. And so, we exert every effort to advance society and give others better goods. Many people participate in this system, creating profit and enabling our way of life. 

Similar to how people’s cultural preferences would destroy humanity if they tended toward material culture and ignored spiritual culture. Thus, we will create a utopia where all of humanity can coexist and prosper when we create an ideal civilization in which both the spiritual and the material are in perfect harmony. This demonstrates how everything in this world prospers over time when opposites unite and create true harmony. 

If, like the people of our present era, we exclusively focus on our own narrow egos, not only will we destroy ourselves, but the world will also become a violent and sad battlefield because conflict and friction will never go away. 

True peace, coexistence, and co-prosperity are only possible when we reach the ideal halfway point between ourselves and others.