Tuesday, September 14, 2004


If we just had faith and practice and no study, we could easily follow a blind faith, which is not grounded in real understanding.... If we just studied, without practice or faith, we would be following a theoretical and intellectual teaching (Flow 343, pp.19). We shall study while practice to have in depth understanding of the philosophy of life. I cannot answer other combination, but everything is lies within us. Think about the previous example about turn on/off the light. Have fun.

An real life example in discussion is to switch on the light. Do you need to study all electrical knowledge behind the switch in order to turn on the light? No, you just need to know the procedure (faith) and trust that it will works. Then, if you interested, you will look into it in how to change the bulb, configure plug and get more knowledge
about wire etc. This will build your knowledge on what you belief (turn on the light). If you prefer to study everything before practice, you might be in darkness until the time you take into action.

life is a repeated cycle of trial and error: of believing, acting, observing the results of our actions, and thus either affirming or calling into question our original belief. This is exactly the way of thinking for most people. Imagine when we face any difficulties, we act on something we believe in. From the results, we double check the correctness of our action.