Changing Constructively

Everything seen in this vast world is entwined with impermanence. None of them is everlasting. So strong and huge a building, after a long period of time, can fall prey to toppling and destruction. It may be destroyed by some kind of natural disaster within a short time. Even pyramids in Egypt, globally recognized extremely grand and strong, must bow down humbly at the foot of impermanence in an uncertain day. Likewise, it is law of nature that impermanence will prevail upon the most revered structures of every religion someday. But we should make those destructive changes constructive by means of perseverance. Only with such adoption have religious structures like pagodas and stupas been preserved.

The vast world has also been changing with momentum from Stone Age, Brown Age, etc. to Computer Age, Internet Age and then Knowledge Age and so on…step by step and era after era. Such changes have resulted in infinite advantages as well as countless disadvantages. How dangerous are the inventions of dynamite by Alfred Nobel and of A-bombs known as WMD (Weapon of Mass Destruction) and that sort of stuff! But most of the changes are the constructive ones which can beautify the world. The diseases capable of being named only as “a miraculous disease” in the past have been gradually discovered. It is expectable that diseases for which ways of treatment are still beyond our knowledge will be deeply made out and cured in the near future. Moreover, formation of large organizations for economic prosperity and peace of the world is an example of changing constructively.

In the same way, the idea of welfare for a village or a nation gets changed and widened into that of globalization. Narrow-minded though people may have been like the small frog in the hole made by a cow’s hoof in former times, nowadays they know how to get out of the hole and gaze around all directions of their environment with an open, free mind. We really must try hard to know how to look at the environment; only then will we be free from self-conceit like that of the small frog.

We ourselves also have to change our mind, ideas, clothes, living styles, etc. if they should be done so. “A wise man changes his mind sometimes, but a fool never” goes a proverb. We should not be too doggedly stubborn to discard the wrong ideas or bad habits of ours. The right and good things we should accept and adopt. Soundly realizing that bad attitudes are only capable of bearing fruit of our downfall, we should uproot and destroy them. So we must have constant scrutiny on ourselves. But this does not convey the meaning that we have to be drifting down unconsciously along the current of modernization. We should get rid of anything undesirable from us, at the same time mending where necessary. “No-one is perfect” so goes a saying, yet, we are obliged to try to change ourselves as much as we can to become virtually perfect ones.

As the extreme end, with our own abilities we should endeavour to cause our own environments to change in a constructive manner. As a great philosopher said, “Do not try to change the whole world; only try to change the world around you,” we should strive, with firm belief and relentless nature, to let constructive changes thrive in each field of mastery of ours and our own environments.

Zwe Thit (Rammarmray)