By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
Pacific Daily News
To a thesis, there are antitheses; to the Chinese yin, there's a yang; Buddhists who see war also see peace, and peace pairs with war. After day there's night; after birth, there's death.The concept of journeying is spoken as "samsara" in Sanskrit -- a cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. The cycle continues, as Buddhists, Hindus and adherents to Jainism believe. The interactions between thesis and antitheses bring a synthesis, the yang finds the yin, and the wheel of life turns. In common parlance, "your turn will come."
My mother, who died of starvation under the Khmer Rouge, taught me as a child that humans argue and don't always accept each other's views. But she insisted I would learn maturity if I disciplined myself to listen to what others have to say. She called the process, "learning to live a human being's life."
My father was taken away and executed on the day the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh. The man I thought had failed to comprehend a child's incapacity to absorb so much recited in his after-dinner evening teaching that only when different minds meet through humbly talking, listening and thinking does a man's true vision emerge.
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