Back in elementary school, I heard the saying: "Humility leads to progress; pride leads to decline." Then in middle school, reading collections of excellent student essays, a peer argued that humility is bad — if you're clearly good at something but call yourself inadequate, isn't that just hypocrisy? And besides, though humility is a virtue, people often say "I'm proud of you," never "I feel humble for you." Later I came to think: it's best to be honest — if you didn't do well, admit it; if you did well, there's no need to say otherwise.
But now I've come back around to thinking humility is good. Take humility as I understood it as a child: unconditionally saying you're not good enough. You score 100 on a test and say you're still far from where you need to be. The adults praise your humility, and then you feel proud inside. The problem isn't really in saying you're far from where you need to be — you genuinely are still far from it, even with a perfect score. The problem is saying you're not good enough while not actually believing it, not believing it while waiting for others to praise your humility — that's a double error. But this kind of error is still closer to being right than declaring yourself excellent. Words express the heart, but it also works in reverse — if you keep saying it, you'll gradually come to believe it. The key is "keep saying it": always saying you're still far from where you need to be, and slowly the mind is tamed, genuinely coming to believe you are far from it. Humility here means recognizing your own limitations. We all have varying degrees of ability — that's objective fact. But the more certain truth is that ability is limited. Those who say humility is bad have a point relative to what we do know — sure, we might indeed be quite good. The trouble is that knowledge is relative, while ignorance is absolute. Absolute ignorance includes not knowing how ignorant you are — and that truly is being far from it, truly having limited ability. In this sense, humility is not hypocrisy.
Taking it a step further, true humility is humility with nothing to be humble about. Humility still contains a hint of: I've done well, but I say I'm not good enough. But as I said above, not being good enough is absolute, while being good enough is relative. So what appears as humility on the surface isn't really humility — it's simply acknowledging limitation, acknowledging relativity, acknowledging what is obviously true. What's there to be humble about? But the best is to not even deliberately acknowledge it — just live with this reality. When I read Zhao Puchu's Common Questions About Buddhism, I noticed that Zhao Puchu never goes out of his way to be humble. The book addresses great questions, and when addressing such grand matters with limited ability, most people would insert a few phrases like "with trepidation" or "my ability is limited and my level is modest." Zhao Puchu doesn't. He just speaks plainly, matter-of-factly. No matter how much trepidation you express, how humble you are, what needs to be said must still be said — it will inevitably be said. Since it will inevitably be said, there is no need and no reason for trepidation. Trepidation comes from caring too much about how you appear. When humility reaches the point of no-self, it may look not very humble, but it is humble in every way.
The Diamond Sutra has a formula: "The Buddha speaks of X; X is not X; therefore it is called X." The logic is similar. The Buddha speaks of enduring humiliation — but it is not enduring humiliation, because there is no humiliation to endure. Only when endurance of humiliation reaches the point where there is no humiliation to endure can it truly be called endurance. But if there is no humiliation to endure, then it is not endurance — so we can only call it endurance. Because ultimately, enduring humiliation is closer to liberation than not enduring it. Humility works the same way: true humility is the negation of humility, but humility is closer to that negation than non-humility is. The negation of humility is not the opposite of humility — it is the dissolution of the duality at a higher level.