溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Is Being True to Myself the Way of Heaven?
Is sincerity — not deceiving oneself — itself the way of heaven?
Sincerity is the way of heaven; to strive toward sincerity is the way of a human being.
The Doctrine of the Mean set sincerity (cheng) as the principle of the cosmos and the root of being human. Sincerity here is not mere diligence but the truthfulness of a mind that does not deceive itself. Heaven is already sincere; a person labors a lifetime to draw near that sincerity. The question branched. The Great Learning made this sincerity concrete as "watchfulness in solitude" (shendu); Wang Yangming drew it inward as not deceiving one's innate moral knowing (liangzhi) rather than obeying outer norms. In the West, Shakespeare's Polonius said "to thine own self be true," and Kant held that lying to oneself is the most fundamental of all lies.
On days when it is easy to give ourselves a plausible excuse, this question — am I honest with myself — cuts sharper.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
I know that deceiving myself is more frightening than deceiving others. A lie told to others is caught someday, but a lie told to myself quietly gnaws at me until even who I am grows blurred. "It's fine, just this much," "everyone does it" — with each moment I soothe myself so, I step one pace from sincerity. The Doctrine of the Mean says that though I cannot be perfectly sincere like heaven, the very striving toward it is the human way. I quietly ask whether I was honest with myself today.
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