Rules Of The Land, Rules Of The Heart: Let Them Serve You
February 7, 2010
Society needs rules to operate properly. Without rules society would be a chaotic mess and an oxymoron. The icon for Justice is a scale which represents balancing different points of view and weighing one idea against another. The mere presence of balancing scales represents the ambiguity and imperfection of laws and rules. If all the laws and rules were absolute and certain then Lady Justice would be holding digital scales or price computing scales. Life is not black and white and the rules we live by often have their intentions subverted.
Laws are made to serve people living under them. That is the idea anyway. A red traffic light indicates stop and lives are protected and saved. Often rules become counter productive or take on a life of there own. A red light at 2:00 a.m. on an empty street still demands a driver to stop and wait, even if they are the only one on the road; it’s the law. In some places you can get a parking ticket during certain hours on street cleaning days; a law that has a logic to it. You can also get a ticket during those hours even if the street cleaners have a holiday. Like every part of life, rules require balance, they are after all here to serve us, not us to serve them.
There is a tale of two Zen monks hiking down a path. They came from a monastery that demanded celibacy. The rules were stringently enforced and demanded that the monks avoid all contact with women. The two monks came to a river and found a lovely woman in a fine silk dress at the waters edge. The bridge had been whisked away by the river. The woman was late for an important ceremony, but couldn’t find away across the river without ruining her fine clothes. Without a second thought one of the monks picked her up and carried her across the river. She thanked him for solving her problem and averting the shame that would have come if she failed to show up, or the disgrace of ruining the sacred robes she was wearing. The woman went on her way and so did the two monks. They walked for several miles, the older monk enjoying the bird songs and the younger monk stewing in silence until the younger monk couldn’t hold back his agitation. “How could you pick that woman up and carry her through the water? It’s a violation of our devotional obligations?” The older monk stopped and smiled. “Is that so?” he said. The younger monk thought about this for a moment. After a pause the older monk continued; “Anyway, I put her down on the other side of the river, but it seems you are still carrying her.”
If the older monk had obeyed the regulations exactly, he would have left the woman on the stranded on the wrong side of the river, failing his higher values to be of service in the world. Jesus once passed through a cornfield with his disciples on the Sabbath. They were hungry and ate some corn. When charged with breaking the Sabbath Jesus replied that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The trials of Nuremburg relied on the notion that rules, laws and orders are not to be blindly followed when they clash with higher moral principals.
Many religious teachings, many philosophical thinkers, and many legal arbiters all try to remind us that rules and laws are here to serve society, not the other way around.
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