The ideal person

Đằng confided in Mr Hải and several elders in the meditation hall:

• Mr Hải and everyone, after a period of practising settling the mind, I have been cured of depression, I feel responsible towards my family and know how to work diligently. I also found a job over three months ago. The work and salary are stable. I am very grateful to Mr Hải for teaching me to settle the mind so that I could find my life again. But now my parents are insisting that I marry, since I'm grown up and have an income, and must continue the family line. I don't know what to do. I said I didn't know whom to choose, and my parents seized the chance and demanded to choose for me. I don't know how to deal with it.
  Mr Hải smiled and said:
• Go home now and set out some standards for the ideal wife that you need, for your parents to choose by.
• What standards, sir?
• Say that you need a wife like this: first, she doesn't need to be very beautiful, but must have charm and be pleasant to look at.
• There are plenty of those, sir.
• Second, she must be capable and manage everything for you, taking care of her husband and children, and also attentively looking after her parents-in-law in your place.
• That's a bit like slavery in the old days, sir.
• Third, if you happen to make any mistake, your wife must be understanding and must not nag or reproach you, spoiling the family's harmony. Even if you have a mistress, she must not be jealous, or the family will be in turmoil.
• This is getting hard to find, sir.
• Fourth, this wife must obey you absolutely: whatever you say she listens, with no arguing that would upset you and ruin your health.
  Đằng said thoughtfully:
• Does this kind of wife still exist, sir? I'm afraid they've gone extinct.
  Mr Hải went on:
• Fifth, this wife must know how to cook delicious meals from cheap ingredients, so that the meals are of good quality while the family's spending remains frugal.
• Who is that clever, sir?
• Sixth, when she goes out this wife must know how to make herself beautiful so that everyone admires her and you feel proud, but she must be absolutely faithful however many people court her.
• Nowadays everyone has affairs so easily; I wouldn't dare guarantee this.
• Seventh, whenever the family faces hardship this wife must endure it to the utmost and not complain; even if you lose your job, she must be cheerful even when going hungry.
• I've seen this wife in films, sir.
• Eighth, when her parents-in-law fly into a rage and scold her harshly and unjustly, she must still stay docile, gentle and cheerful, and not show a sulking, resentful, touchy attitude.
• That's the standard of immortals who've trained for several hundred years, sir.
• Ninth, this wife must rarely be ill and have the health to see to her husband's family completely. If she is ill, she must still complete her duties before she is allowed to lie down and rest.
• That's the ability of female special agents in action films, sir.
• Tenth, this wife must not bring money home to her own parents; she may only bring her family's money home to her husband. Whenever she visits her own parents she must praise her husband and parents-in-law to the skies...

A woman spoke up:

• Hải, are you serious or joking? Where in the world is there an ideal person like a robot? And if the bride's side demanded that Đằng too have similar qualities, could he meet them?

Mr Hải just laughed and said nothing more. 🧛‍♀️

To live in this world is to live among people who are not yet saints. Everyone is still an ordinary person, so everyone still has greed, anger, delusion, selfishness, pettiness, envy, and even cruelty. If we cultivate our morality, we gradually let go of those bad tendencies, but the people around us have not let go of them, and may not even want to. Many people still consider morality foolish.

But what is very strange is that we always demand that the people around us be very good so that they can put up with our bad habits. Only a very good person can endure the faults of others. Because we are still bad, we badly need a very good person beside us. If both sides are bad, it will be very painful for... us. So whatever we are like is fine, but whoever lives with us must be very good, to make us happy.

It turns out that the strength of a person of morality is to endure the badness of others. The extent to which we can endure others' badness is the level of our morality. Enduring means not flying into a rage; it does not mean being complicit in others' wrongdoing. However cruel, mistaken, petty or greedy they are, they still cannot make us angry. But that doesn't mean we leave them alone; we have our own "scheme" to find a way to help them become better through education.
The measure of our morality is precisely the wicked and cruel things of this life. At whatever level we can no longer bear it, that is regarded as the level of our morality.