Start the new year with new soul

January 12, 2011
By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
PACIFIC DAILY NEWS

My last column wrapped up 2010, with a recounting of a taxicab driver's "Law of the Garbage Truck." It compares some individuals to garbage trucks that run around full of garbage, full of anger and disappointment. As the garbage piles up, "they need a place to dump it and sometimes they dump it on you."

The cab driver's advice: Life is too short, don't spread your garbage to other people, and don't let the garbage trucks take over your day!

In that column, I quoted the great Chinese teacher, Confucius: "Do not do to others that which we do not want them to do to us." I suggested this is a good place to start as we conduct ourselves in the new year.

Then came an e-mailed greeting card that inspired me to write today's column.

New year, new soul

Classical Greek philosopher Plato, founder of the Academy in Athens, the western world's first institution of higher learning, said, "The beginning is the most important part. ... For that is the time character is being formed."

When is that beginning? If the past is gone, there's nothing we can do to change it. The future is not here, and there is no reason to worry about what has not yet happened. I would like to think of the beginning as the here and now, as character is shaped and molded.

English writer Gilbert K. Chesterton said: "The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul."

The great American essayist and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose thoughts and writings grabbed my attention and directed my curiosity since I first set foot on an American college campus almost 50 years ago, wrote: "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

That's what Chesterton called "soul" -- a new year, a new soul.

Playwright and literary critic T.S. Eliot was bold: "For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice."

Leave it to Catholic friar and preacher St. Francis of Assisi , who urged: "Start doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; suddenly you are doing the impossible."

'The mind is everything'

Some people think "We are what we think" is just a cliche. Rather, it's an eternal truth.

Here, again, the West and the East meet.

Lord Gautama Buddha, the "awakened one," taught: "All that we are is the result of what we have thought," "We are formed and molded by our thoughts," "We are what we think," "What we think, we become" and "The mind is everything."

Buddha's words find a parallel in "Je pense donc je suis," or "I think, therefore I am," by the great French philosopher and writer Rene Descartes. Just to wonder whether one exists is already proof that one exists.

Later, the often-quoted words of Mahatma Gandhi: "A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks, he becomes."

Is it a wonder that a "no can do" attitude assures one does not succeed, and a "yes can do" assures one does not fail?

It's not unusual to find a disconnect between words individuals say and their actions, and what different individuals do after their mistakes. One wonders what becomes of people who engage endlessly in negative thoughts of others, denouncing and throwing venomous words and racial slurs.

I see hurtful words by anonymous bloggers; I see blogs by "wingnuts" on both sides of the political spectrum across cultures, devoted to what the Daily Beast's senior political columnist John Avalon dubbed "hydra-headed hysteria" -- cut off one accusation and another emerges in its place -- and in hyper-partisan talk and pathological hatred

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else," Buddha said. "You are the one who gets burned."

'Your own salvation'

Buddha's teaching, which may be found in other major religions, said: "No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path."

Yet many individuals not only decline responsibility for any unpleasant thing that occurred, but point fingers at others to absolve themselves of accountability.

Buddha advised: "Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others."

"However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do if you do not act upon them?" Buddha asked.

And so, here we are in 2011. Let's start our beginning creatively and positively.

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment," preached Buddha.

I would leave readers to ponder Descartes' question: "An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?"

Happy New Year!

A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com