In going back over one’s past one remembers all too much foolishness. Yet how can I forgive anyone else if I don’t forgive myself? And how can I believe that now, as I have become and matured, I am no longer a fool? If “judge not that you be not judged” means anything, it means that we must look at human affairs, including our own, as we look at nature:

In the scene of spring there is nothing inferior,
nothing superior;
Flowering branches grow naturally, some short, some long.

Our deeds, our feelings, our thoughts, and our sensations just happen of themselves, as the rain falls and the water flows along the valley. I am neither a passive and helpless witness to whom they happen, nor an active doer and thinker who causes and controls them. “I” is simply the idea of myself, a thought among thoughts. Taken seriously it…