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Some Morally Ambiguous ‘Bad Education’

A senior policeman ‘educates’ his junior, ‘About only 10% (of society) are with good people (好人). Bad (or evil) people (坏人) also make up about 10%. What about the remaining 80% then? When no one is watching, they will run red lights. With drinks not finished, then anyhow putting them in roadside motorcycles’ baskets (i.e. littering). Right and wrong is then dependent on the situation… The reason good people cannot be more is that the 80%, of neither good nor bad people, when regarding good people who are always by bad people bullied, they then play dead. At most acting concerned, they actually do not care a bit.’

Unless enlightened with all-knowing wisdom, it is impossible to know exactly how many absolutely good, absolutely evil and ‘morally convenient’ people there are. Strictly speaking, those who are always good must already be enlightened, while even those very evil cannot always be evil 24/7. In this sense, in terms of worldly people, we are all morally ambigious. The spiritual challenge is to be increasingly morally clear and consistent, with pure Dharma education increasingly put in practice. (Even when no one seems to be watching, karma is always operating.)

If we choose to be morally ambigious, pretentious and/or callous, even when facing situations where the rights and wrongs are clear, we are surely not good enough, to that extent potentially evil too. The actually also morally ambugious policeman who offered ‘Bad (black) Education’ (黑的教育) then hands two caught morally ambiguous youngsters to an also morally ambiguous gangster who wanted to capture them. Throughout the rest of the story, the audience is left to decide if it was an act more right or more wrong, just as the junior and youngsters were left to make sense of it.

The gangster in turn offered some ‘Bad Education’ for ‘refomation’ of sorts. Catching the youngsters cheating him with perfuctoriness and punishing them for their prank, he claims that, ‘To be a bad person is also to be a person [with integrity]!’ (做坏人也是做人!) Now, that is truly morally ambigious — a criminal ‘teacher’ who arbitrarily decides what is ‘too wrong’ to be right, versus what is ‘not too wrong’, thus alright. With murky lessons ‘bad’ for digestion, perhaps that is the point. ‘Bad Education’ teaches how the self-righteous are actually morally ambigious.

Please Be Mindful Of Your Speech, Namo Amituofo!

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