This is a quote from Lao Tzu.
In the past, I used to take it to mean a kind of simple cause and effect, that if you do something wrong, you will surely be punished.
Recently, I have come to think that it might be a little different. Essentially, from the perspective of Tao (Way), there is no “individual (self)” in a person, but only a part of the great consciousness (whether it is the sky, Buddha nature, Idea, or world spirit). In this case, there is no heavenly net outside of oneself, but one’s own consciousness is the heavenly net itself, and one’s own eyes are the only thing that keep it from leaking out.
In this sense, an evil person may be someone who dares to do evil while being aware of it (sometimes out of necessity).
Naturally, the person who knows all about it will not let the evil go unnoticed, and in the end, he or she will be punished for the guilt of his or her crime.
If the Tao is the realization of “truth, goodness, and beauty,” then, as the saying goes, “A bad thing is as a good thing is a bad thing,” and naturally, in order to understand “truth, goodness, and beauty,” the opposite must exist: “false evil and ugliness.
However, when a person is caught up in the “false evil and ugliness,” as long as he or she is aware of it, his or her mind will naturally become desolate. That is why many of them are ostensibly regulated, prohibited, or given low value as laws, common sense, or vices.
True freedom is a state of being aware of the true, the good, the beautiful, the false, and the ugly, but at the same time transcending even the distinctions between them.
We can do what we want, what we want to do, and what we want to do, but never deviate from the standard of “truth, goodness, and beauty” without overdoing it. And do so without overreacting.
This is the state of “Noriten ko me” that Soseki Natsume strived for, and in a sense, it may be a state of mind close to enlightenment.
Ah, I want to be a hermit someday.
See you soon.
