Creed 101.-Beginning exercise: new points of view

First, I'd like to thank Kol Drake about the email he sent me. I wish I could have sent you an answer, but my email isn't working very fine for some reason :S . He showed my other points of view of the Jedi Code and he related it to other cultures/religions' beliefs, which I found really interesting. He really helped my to find some answers to my questions, so, thanks Kol Drake.

Returning to my homework. After I posted my Beginning exercise, I was asked to ask myself about any misconceptions about the Code I might have. At first, I thought I hadn't any questions and that everything was clear for me. I understood the basics of the Code, but after a lot of thinking, I realised that I had doubts about more subtle parts of it.

There is no emotion, there is peace

As I said before, emotions are an important part of the human nature. We wouldn't be humans without our emotions, and they are necessary to understand and know ourselves. If we try to ignore and suppress them, one they we will explode and that will make us fall to the Dark Side. So emotions are a fundamental part of our life and ourselves, but they can destroy us, too, if we let them rule us or we ignore them. I think, too, that a Jedi must feel compassion and unconditional love for all the living beings, because that's where the desire to help springs of. And, obviously, compassion and love are very powerful emotions. The problem starts when we let emotions cloud our judgment. As I said, peace is achieved by balance. So my first questions was, what does exactly "balance" mean and how do we achieve it without destroying ourselves?

I liked very much Kol Drake's point of view of this first line, and after reading it several times, I found a first answer to my question. I quote him:

This sounds a lot like the Buddhist view of the mind. That the mind is naturally peaceful and our thoughts and emotions are the disturbance, like momentary ripples on the surface of a pond. [...] But another part of it is it is like saying the orange peel is not the important thing, it is the entire orange. So saying that there is no emotion would be more like saying emotion is the illusion. Emotion is the surface of peace. Understand your emotions; do not give importance to your emotions. And the natural path to that is peace.

So, peace isn't something "foreign" we have to achieve, it is already inside of us. Our natural state is peace, and emotions are just temporary disturbances in that peace. We are more than emotion, emotion is only the first layer of our mind, and there is much more after it. So we mustn’t let ourselves centre is something as temporary as our emotions, nor let us be controlled by them. We must understand them, find the cause of them, and let them go, because they are just temporal, just disturbances provoked by our interactions with the physical world, and they don't represent ourselves. And that is balance. Acknowledging our emotions, discovering the cause of that emotion, and then letting them vanish in our inner peace.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

I like too Kol Drake's observation of that ignorance is needed to achieve knowledge. That reminded my of something my mother used to said, "Sometimes it is necessary to unlearn what you have learned". Knowledge and pride and our tendency to believe that we know better that everybody else can make us to avoid or reject other points of views because they aren't similar to what we believe in. So, to be wise, we need knowledge, but we need too to be able to be ignorant as a child, so we can absorb new forms of knowledge without the barriers society has created on us and critical to be able to decide what new moral codes/creeds/actions/way to see life/religions are good to us and which ones are not.

I have a question, too. I don't remember exactly how did it come to my mind, but it just did, so I', going to post it here. Can be the thirst of knowledge (something I value a lot and that I personally have) be a thirst of power and, in the end, be a path to the Dark Side? I'm having problems with that "Jedi do not seek power" line that so often appears in Star Wars. Because Jedi do seek power. They train so they can be more powerful in the Force, they study so they can be wiser and etc. I suppose the difference between a Jedi and a Sith in this topic is that the Sith's desire of power is oriented towards themselves, and that Jedi's desire of power is oriented towards the rest of the world. But what about knowledge? Knowledge can be oriented towards a lot of things. Do the Jedi orient they thirst of knowledge towards themselves or/and towards the rest of the world? I'm confused.

There is no passion, there is serenity

I don't have any questions about this line, but I agree with Kol Drake's point of view of this line and it helped me to clarify some aspects of this line.

Kol Drake said:

This is similar to the first line as you noted but, “emotion” seems to be the “what”. “Passion” is more like the “how” or the “why”. [...] Instead of having the passion and drive and motive to do something, just let that go and do it. Passion will dissolve into the automatic groove or the action itself.

I find this absolutely true. It happens to me when I write of play my guitar. Instead of centering myself in playing a soft song with emotion and feeling, just play it as you feel it and let happen what must happen. The result may surprise you.

There is no chaos, there is harmony

And, to finish. I didn't write anything about this line because I wasn't supposed to, although I find it really important. It has always been the most "literally true" and important line to me and was especially helpful after the death of my mother. And I try to remember it every time I watch the news on the TV, so I'd like to post here my opinion.

I've always thought that harmony doesn't mean "light over darkness". It doesn't mean life, or happiness or joy. In the same way, harmony doesn't mean "darkness over light", or sadness, or death, or disaster. There is harmony when darkness and light are balanced, are equals. So between all the death, the wars, the epidemic diseases, all the daily problems that affect us, all the chaos that is around us, there is harmony. Because there are deaths, yes, but there are also births. And there is sadness and hate, but there is joy and love, too. Chaos and peace are the two sides of a same coin. There can't be the one without the other. So, for me, everything is as it should be. We can't expect a world of happiness because in that world there wouldn't be harmony. So, as Qui-Gon said "nothing happens by accident". I don't know if there is a bigger plan for the Earth, but, for now, I know that everything is as it should be.