Balance and Discernment

I sometimes find myself at odds with prospective students. The typical student of the martial arts I teach likes to see himself as broadminded and capable of accepting alien paradigms. But what he really means is that he will accept everything Eastern and esoteric and nothing remotely Western, mundane or orthodox. I also find myself at odds with the brave new cynics who scoff at anything that is not purely material and repeatable under laboratory conditions. In truth they reject any notion of morality, soul or responsibility beyond their own physical desires and fashionable political whims.

I have been both a gullible willing believer of everything AND a hard-nosed materialist cynic. I think it is only now that I'm starting to achieve a balance of discerning that some things are true while others are false and it is not always obvious out in the world, where the truth lives. So I do not believe in magic, mystical powers and superhuman feats, but I know quite surely that there is such a thing as moral right and wrong. Such a position could not be more unfashionable as it lies somewhere outside of the two main populist factions of our time, the pagan and the atheist, the tastes of which being remarkably similar.

There are people who will remain in one worldview for their whole lives whilst others will undergo a dramatic and profound change of heart. Some may undertake a second radical change of direction, though it isn't so easy to accept that you've been wholly wrong twice. Of course, the existence of absolute truths means that some people are fortunate enough to recognise the truth from the outset. Such people are freer than the rest of us to enjoy fruitful lives.

The tools of discernment are none other than faith and reason. These are the two great winds that will steer a ship towards the truth, rather than our being tossed around at the mercy of the waves, or determinedly setting out to disprove the ocean.