There’s No Need to be Right

I encountered some differences with a couple of friends recently. We couldn’t see eye-to-eye on some issues. In the beginning, I did try to explain or defend my position but gradually, I decided to let go, put it down. Why? I ask myself. Why not? I answered myself. It wasn’t a matter of utmost importance in life.

During my younger days, I would never allow any argument to end without insisting and affirming that my opinion was right. I always had to have the last say. I did win many arguments because I really was right but at times, I also won because my voice was louder than the person I was arguing with. It just felt so good to be right. How can I be wrong? That’s what I used to tell myself.

But now, somehow I do not get the thrill out of winning arguments as much as before. It’s not because I’m tired of arguing but because I don’t see a need to argue and explain my position over every single thing in life. To get all agitated and heated up just to prove and convince someone that I am right? What do I gain out of it?

This so-called satisfaction or feeling of being triumphant over another in an argument, how long can the feeling last? Is it tangible? Does it go into your record as one of the achievements you’ve made in life? Chances are the feeling will disappear the moment you turn away from that person.

So what if I am right? More importantly, is there anything wrong to be wrong? Whether right or wrong, acknowledge it and move on. We’re not put on this earth so that we can argue. We are meerly growing our ego whenever we convince ourselves that we are right.

While I was contemplating over this issue about differences in opinions, I received several timely teachings of Krishnamurti again. Yes, someone just seems to know what guidance I need in life. The guru says all our thinking, no matter how noble, is the outcome of our experience and knowledge, a reaction of memory. Action without reaction is what he advises. Thought is the process of choosing and when you choose, you’re actually making a decision and the decision creates opposites – good and bad, right and wrong.

Sounds like only don’t know. Am I right? Hehehe. :p

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Daily Quotes from J Krishnamurti

Action without reaction
The idea, the concept, the pattern is born of our thinking, which in turn is based upon our conditioning. All our thinking, however noble, refined or subtle, is the outcome of our experience, of our knowledge. There is no thinking without the past. Our thought is merely the reaction of memory. And what I am talking about is action without reaction, which means living without thought as the reaction of memory.

From listening there is an action
Do you understand what I mean by a reaction? You insult me, you say something which I don’t like, and I react; or I like what you say, and again I react. But is it not possible to listen to what another says without reacting? Surely, if I listen to find out the truth or the falseness of what you are saying, then from that listening, from that perception, there is an action which is not reaction.

Decision creates a contradiction
So what we are trying to do is to feel out the totality of action. There is no action without the background of thought, is there? And thought is always choice. Don’t just accept this. Please examine it, feel your way into it. Thought is the process of choosing. Without thought you cannot choose. The moment you choose, there is a decision, and that decision creates its own opposite – good and bad, violence and nonviolence. The man who pursues nonviolence through decision creates a contradiction in himself. Thought is essentially born of choice; I choose to think in a certain way. I examine communism, socialism, Buddhism; I reason logically and decide to think this or that. Such thought is based on memory, on my conditioning, on my pleasure, on my likes and dislikes, and any action born of such thought will inevitably create contradiction in myself and therefore in the world; it will produce sorrow, misery, not only for me but for others as well.

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ps: I can hear ZMSS shouting at me: “Don’t check! Only don’t know! Just do it!” Yeah…it’s slowly sinking deeper into me.