When You Do Not Agree with Society

<When You Do Not Agree
with Society>

(Questioner) Hello Sunim,
thank you very much for taking my question.

When applying the middle way to our practice,
it is said that we must strike a healthy balance

between changing society and adapting to it.

My question is what do you do
when you do not agree with society,

and you do not want to adapt to it?

For instance, I do not agree with the politics
that are about to change in my country, in the USA

and I do not want to adapt to the morals

that I do not agree with in the political party
that is the majority of the incoming president.

How do I apply the middle way to
my practice in this instance?

(Sunim) If the motivation to want to
change the world of society rises

as a sense of frustration or rage or anger,
then you can self diagnose that

that balance has been broken.

And when that balance is broken,
your sense of your values.

Your perspective upon the world is much stronger,
and you start dividing the world into right and wrong.

You being on the right.

If you're divided into right and wrong,
the people in the wrong are viewed as enemies,

and you tend to demonize it,
demonize them.

And if you follow that logic,
a demon is somebody who can be damaged,
hurt or killed,

That leads to a violence or a conflict.

So the foundational recognition you have to
have about others in the world is

that we're all different,
we all have different value systems, perspectives.

In today's world,
we look at the past cast system

or monarchy or dictatorship,
and we feel anger at those and we feel pity at those.

But having said that, if you look at,
in human history,

we have lived far longer under those systems
that we have lived under liberal democracies.

In a way, these systems are
not unforgivable systems.

They were just another system
that human beings organized themselves in.

Even in those systems,
you have to understand that

they had their own internal logic, and
you have to acknowledge that those internal logic existed.

And if you have that understanding
or acknowledgement,

it would not elicit anger in your heart.

Love is not that high emotion or
joyous emotion.

Love can be better defined
as the absence of hate.

But having said that,
based on that acknowledgement or

understanding of the differences of others.

Then the choice becomes what am I going
to do in this world?

Because understanding how others can be
doesn't mean you agree with them

or that they're right.

That means you are free to
choose another value, another belief system.

Based on that you walk your own path.

So that may lead to a dialogue or
they may lead to a competition.

As long as you don't consider
each other hostiles or enemies.

That means that it's more efficient, effective
to use kind of peace as a driver for change.

Not only does your heart have to be peaceful
to drive change,

but the process of transformation of change
also has to be peaceful.

When we say peaceful,
we don't mean to just let the current situation be

if you don't agree with it or
be passive or accepting about it.

What we're saying is use non violent ways
to persuade to change to transform

whether that's voting,
that's public dialogue,

any other strategies that
you can employ.

Let's look at Korea for example
today.

The president out of his frustration
at the effectiveness of his rule, wanted

to solve this problem violently.

So the very person who sworn
to uphold the Constitution of South Korea was

the one who actually violated its spirit
and tried to suppress the National Assembly

through violent means
in effect enacting a palace coup.

But the Korean citizens are not reacting
to this in a violent way

they are peacefully reacting to it.

Of course, there are those of us who
are raging inside our hearts.

They're singing loud songs that almost
feels like a festive occasion

as they voice their opposition.

And there's more and more protesters, and
it's sustained, and

therefore the pressure is increasing,

They're trying to transform or effect
a transformation in a peaceful way.

So a spiritual practitioner doesn't mean
you just accept things the way it is passively.

So going back to your question
about the middle way,

if there's anger driving your actions
for change,

it's something for you to look into yourself,
to be introspective about it.

However, if you see unfairness that you want
to change in this world,

you need to actively engage.
Just do not engage out of anger.

(Questioner) Thank you very much.
That was very helpful.