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Justice Dwells In The Heart
By peace | November 28, 2007
Liu Bang said, “Justice dwells in our hearts. In everyone’s heart, there is a yardstick that measure what is right and what is wrong.” This is the only thing which I would look up upon Liu Bang, the rogue, rascal and villain in the show, The Conqueror’s Story 楚汉骄雄. Richard is the only one in the family who admired Liu Bang and Han Xin(韓信). I would not admire such person like these two. I took pity on Xiang Yu and Yu Ji. Xiang Yu was a noble man who keep his words and is devoted to his love. On the contrary, Liu Bang was so flirtatious. He had so many concubines.
Han Xin deserves death. Liu Bang was smart and did the right thing to stop the evil from prevailing. He had paid a great price in possessing the world. So what if he had gained the country? He had learned his lesson. Tears in his eyes, he said he had paid a huge price for everything. He had lost his best friends in the process, especially Xiang Yu, someone whom he would love to play chess with. For breaching his peace agreement with Xiang Yu, he betrayed his friend as well. So what if he was well-known for his leadership skills? There was injustice done to Xiang Yu and the rest of the people indirectly.
Right or wrong, is just a measurement in our heart. In every body’s heart, we have a ruler, just like what Liu Bang said. We see this world with our heart. We see and we judge. We use our ‘ruler’ in our heart to ‘value’ what we see and experience. Based on our upbringing and our education, each of us have a set of our own good and bad values. How good is good and how bad is bad, is all subjective and each of us have our ‘invisible scales’ whereby we will ‘add’ or ’subtract’ mentally in our own minds and hearts (when dealing with any kind of situation and person). The more bad things a person does, the more points are being deducted from the person. This person would ultimately leave a bad impression in our heart.
Liu Bang’s son asked him,”How to be a good Emperor?” He told his son about looking at the cloud. When he was young, he always looked at the clouds. Clouds come in various shapes and forms. Clouds are always clouds. They can be as simple as you think they are. You do not need to imagine too much nor too hard. He wanted to tell his son that by having a simple and pure heart, it would suffice to be a good king. This ultimately lead to the basic — be honest and sincere in everything that you do. If you are honest, pure and sincere, people who follow you. Justice will automatically prevail.
The Chinese Idiom: Good Advice Jars the Ear
The meaning of the Chinese idiom “Good Advice Jars the Ear” is that a piece of sincere advice is often different from one’s own ideas and thus one might find it difficult to accept it. This idiom came from Historical Records – Old and Well-known Families. The whole sentence reads, “Good advice jars the ear yet benefits one’s action; poisonous (effective) medicine tastes bitter yet is good for curing one’s illness. I hope you will listen to what Fan Kuai had said.”
In 207 B.C., Liu Bang led a rebellion which eventually overthrew the Qing Dynasty. After his troop invaded Xianyang, the capital city of the Qing Dynasty, Liu Bang went inside the Qing Palace to look around. He saw splendid buildings and numerous treasures everywhere. Everywhere he went, many beautiful ladies inside the palace bowed to him. The more Liu Bang saw, the more curious and interested he became. Therefore he decided to live inside the palace for a while to enjoy himself.
Fan Kuai was a general under Liu Bang. When Fan Kuai found out that Liu Bang wanted to live in the palace, he asked Liu Bang, “Do you want to have the entire country or do you just want to be a very rich man?”
Liu Bang answered: “Of course I would like to have the whole country.”
Fan Kuai said sincerely, “When you entered Qing Palace, you saw countless treasures and thousands of beautiful ladies in the palace. All these things are the very ones that caused the collapse of the Qing dynasty. I hope that you will immediately return to our base camp. You must not stay in the palace.”
Liu Bang didn’t listen to Fan Kuai’s advice and still prepared to live in the palace. His adviser Zhang Liang said to Liu Bang after he heard about it, “Emperor Qing was unjust. That is why the common people have rebelled against him and defeated the Qing army. You have overthrown a violent emperor who had harmed his people. You should be diligent and thrifty. Now you have just entered Qing’s palace and immediately you wish to have fun and entertainment. Good advice jars the ear yet benefits one’s action; poisonous (effective) medicine tastes bitter yet is good for curing one’s illness. I hope you will listen to what Fan Kuai had said.”
Liu Bang woke up and realised his mistake. He quickly gave orders to close up the palace. He then took his troops and went back to their base camp.
Topics: Philosophy, Stories | 4 Comments »
November 28th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
[...] interesting. Today was the last episode; and this last episode was the best part of all. I learned Justice Dwells In The Heart. I also learn that honesty(a pure and simple heart is all it takes) is what it takes to accomplish [...]
November 29th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
[...] are bad if they condenses at the wrong time when my children want to go swimming Just like what Liu Bang said, the clouds are just clouds. The clouds are just so simple. You do not have to imagine too [...]
November 30th, 2007 at 1:31 am
[...] are bad if they condenses at the wrong time when my children want to go swimming Just like what Liu Bang said, the clouds are just clouds. The clouds are just so simple. You do not have to imagine too [...]
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:05 am
[...] friend’s house, saying goodbye to Clara, I saw this picture above, the familiar cross, THE CROSS that my family used to put. Memories, and I could not help but went near it. I never know the words [...]