Dream, 是邪非邪 ?

 

image from www.tvscoop.tv/MartinLutherKingHaveaDream.jpg

 

What’s a dream ?

• A dream is not a dream when we are still in the middle of it, for we have no way of telling it is in fact,  a dream.
• A dream is a dream only when we wake up from the dream (and can still recall it).

The isn’t much headline news to cheer about since 2008, especially with more doomsday forecasts by celebrity-status experts the likes of  Roubini, Jim Rogers etc. Does the world need more ?

It is a crisis of confidence, and the news are thrashing the little confidence that’s left.

There are some bright spots. Check out the two stories below. I have great respect for them.

1. Michael Gill :

• “…  He went to an Ivy League college, was a top executive at a world renowned ad agency, and had a six-figure salary. But now at age 67, he’s trudging through the dark just before 5 o’clock in the morning, to make the early shift for his new job.   He’s a barista at Starbucks.
  “This was not on my goal list when I went to Yale.” ….. “
• You can read more of his life in his book ” How Starbucks Saved My Life”.

2. Ken Karpmans :

• ” … The UCLA MBA graduate is a former hedge fund CEO earning $750,000 a year. During his glory days, he traveled the world, purchased a huge house, and spent up big. One small problem though: he forgot to save for a rainy day. In 2005, wanting even more money, he tried to set up his own hedge fund using equity in his house, and then lost it all as the market crashed.
• Ken Karpmans new job: pizza driver at $7.29/ hour plus tips … “

 

• When it comes to putting food on the table for the family, no one is too good for anything.

From the perspective of the victims of Sichuan Earthquake or the  Myammar storm last year, above two gentlemen are considered very fortunate.

Even more fortunate is their ability to look at things from a new perspective, as a result of the dramatic change in their lives.

Diamond Sutra has this for us to contemplate in the last chapter (ch. 32) :

• ” 一切有為法，如夢幻泡影，如露亦如電，應作如是觀。”

 

• * Note 1 : I can’t translate above into English, kindly please google to find good translation.
• * Note 2 : Have you ever dreamed that you are dreaming in a dream ? Apparently it is very rare when you get older. So ask your kids.
• * Note 3 : “是邪非邪”, read in Cantonese “si ya fei ya”. This is old Southern expression, cannot be read as “shi xie fei xie”, which would mean competely different thing.

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Of Day, Of Night

image from  flickr.com/photos

It will be 春分 (“chun fen”) this Friday Mar 20, after which there will  be light rain around 清明 (“Qing Ming”), April 4, the day to remember our ancestors. ( “清明時節雨紛紛，路上行人欲斷魂 …”, see posting 春分 (chun fen) : beginning of 2nd Major Qi Period).

Sakura will blossom in Tokio between 春分 and 清明. The impact of  Qing Ming rain on sakura creates an aesthetic beauty of “sabi”, a Japanese concept of beauty, of simplicity, of impermanence, of incompleteness  or of  imperfection.

• On  春分 (“chun fen”), 12 hours of Day is followed by 12 hours of Night in Northern Hemisphere.
• The beginning of Day is the beginning of its end to welcome the following Night. And the beginning of the Night likewise is the beginning of its end to give birth to the following Day.
• Beyond Day and Night, there is no time like we understand it.

To our differential mind, there is Day because there is Night. Just like we “like this”, because implicitly, we “dislike” that”.  It is everywhere.  We become hostage to our views and/or our senses.

The 7 blindmen, each touching a part of an elephant, each proclaiming he/she understands “The Elephant”. All the parts are part of the elephant, but they are not the elephant itself. The elephant is the totality of all the parts plus its behaviour, its smell, its emotions, its sound etc. The real elephant is non-descript.

• Words are, therefore, often not helpful, in fact they may become barriers to our true understanding of The Elephant.

When we are really “in touch” with the essence of Day (without being drawn into calling/thinking  it as Day), we are “in touch” with Night at the same time.

Day or Night, Head or Tail, they are one.

Have fun seeing your “elephant”.

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Ordinary Greatness , 聖人無名

Dear Friends,

 image from www.flickr.com/photos

In America, each ex-President is given some fund to build a “Library” to commemorate himself.  Wonder who will visit “George W Bush’s Library” ?

Or in all American universities, we find names attached to this hall or that building, names of either the rich or the famous. When they tried to name the Medical Faculty of HKU as Li Ka Shing Medical Faculty (Li donated HK$1 Bln), it caused a big huha locally. It’s LKS Medical Faculty now anyway.

In the first Chapter of <莊子> (“Zhuang Zi”), Zhuang-zi remarked :

• “… 至人無己, 神人無功, 聖人無名 …”
• ” … zhi-ren wu ji;  shen-ren wu gong;  sheng-ren wu ming…”

Zhuang-zi put forward the three category of people of wisdom, people who have attained certain level of enlightenment.

1. 至人無己 : (Zhi-ren has attained Self-lessness)

Whatever Zhi-ren does, the element of “self” does not come into the equation as part of the cause of his action.

“Zhi-ren” is essentially impossibe for all of us. (maybe when we are asleep we can pretend to be Zhi-ren as we temporarily lose the consciouness of self !).

2. 神人無功 : (Shen-ren has attained Effortlessness)

“Shen-ren”  is not god.  “Shen-ren” does a lot of things that are good for the general public or the environment, but we don’t ordinarily realise his efforts nor  is he shouting for recognition. Like the Sun, it gives out the vital energy all the time, without being asked or without effort, the Sun does not even bother whether we pray to it or not. That’s character of 神人.

3.  聖人無名 : (Sheng-ren has attained Name-lessness)

聖人, in English is usually refered to as  “sage”.

LKS, JFK, Bill Gates, all geat personalities and philantropists, but they are not 聖人 as per Zhuang Zi. (why do they call Warren Buffet “Sage of Omaha ?”)

聖人 do  not ask for recognition, they do not know/think they are Sheng-ren, they want to be “name-less” and can be very ordinary. In that sense, the cleaners of the public toilets are all “sheng ren”, the bus drivers are all “sheng ren”, the farmers are all “sheng ren”. Of course the millions of volunteers for various charities are all “sheng ren”.

In most movies, they either feature heros/heroines or the villains. The vast majority of the name-less ordinaries fell in the middle and got forgotten totally.

The interesting thing is, nobody knows where his level of attainment is. For if anybody thinks he/she is 至人, 神人 or 聖人 then he/she is already moving away from it.  We have discussed this logic in posting  What’s in a name ? That which we call a Rose . For 至人, 神人 or 聖人, there is no focus on the level of attainment. It is irrelevant.

Enjoy detecting  the thousands of 聖人 around you the next time you walk in the street.

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Beyond 7×7 and 8×8

Dear Friend,

image from www.smh.com.au

The current economic downturn  the world over has caused much anxiety, especially to many old people in the Westernised society.

I say “Westernised society” because the family value system is that of “nuclear family”, consisting of only two generations, i.e. parents and kids (and maybe with a pet thrown in).

Then the kids leave, dropping by their parents’ occassionally during their holidays. And the parents probably have to make “appointments”  before visiting their kids (especially those who have their own families by then). They can’t just simply “walk in”. Only 30 years back, grand-parents, parents, children and grand-children would mix freely and often stay under the same roof.

• click this link: http://parentswish.com/site02/big.html for parents’ wishes in Westernised society.

In the animal world, the mother’s love is the greatest. They take great care of their off-springs until they are ready to fend for themselves.  There is no expectation of return of love and it never happen anyway.

• Human society is different because we have cultures. In one of my earliest postings we saw that Human Beings receive more Heavenly Qi because our heads are always the highest point of the body. For the rest of the animals the head is parallel to the ground thereby receiving more Earthly Qi, good for the body but less so for the brain. Just do a simple experiment walking on all fours, you will find it is very difficult to think, especially on abstract things.

Lets take a look on what 孔子 (“Kong zi”, Confucius) thought about the proper/cultured relationships between people.

There are 5 key relationships :

1. between the ruler and those serving him （君臣）,
2. between parents and children （父子）,
3. between husband and wife （夫妻）,
4. between the siblings （兄弟）,
5. between friends （朋友）.

Many people have distorted view that Confucius teaching is that convenient instrument for the ruling class to suppress the freedom of expression by introducing the concept of 孝 (“xiao”) and 仁 (“ren”).  Some call it male chauvinism.

Reading the Analects (论语, “lun yu”)  with open mind will reveal the opposite. Kong zi himself reminded once and again that  “三人行， 必有我师焉”  (“… there is always something for me to learn when I am in a group of three… “). How can Kong Zi be “stiff” with his views if he possesses this qaulity of open-mindedness ?

• 孝 (“xiao”) or  “filial piety” is typically translated as “care and love for one’s parents.

• Strictly speaking, when Confucius talked about “孝”, he has an implicit condition to it, i.e. “父慈子孝” (”fu ci zi xiao”, parental love and chidren’s filial piety), that parents should perform their 父慈.

“孝”, therefore is a response/reciprocity to one’s parental love. (this leads us to think about those parents who did not care for their children; and how their children should respond wrt the principle of “孝”). (Pls see Fen’s comment below). From the perspective of Buddhism, it falls within the realm of  缘 (“yuan”),  so  “孝” still applies.

Unfortunately, in Westernised nuclear family, kids are pampered by “父慈”, but they do not have the benefit of seeing their parents’ daily “孝” performance towards their grand-parents.  So many of these parents will not experience much of  子孝 from their children later on in their lives, or at least that’s a high probability.

Enjoy performing your 父慈, and put a low probability of  子孝 from your kids.

With that mind-set, it is probably mentally easier to venture beyond 8×7 or 8×8 (as per posting Your growth/reproductive pattern.

• And if you wake up in the morning and got a treat from “子孝”, consider it lucky strikes.

Notes :

1. “Ruler” to Confucius is not the stereotype “authoritative rulers” as what most people would come to associate wrt  rulers in dynastic China.  Just rulers need to possess some qualities that we have addressed in postings   Just Government, 仁政, The Dao of Owning Heaven and Earth , Human being (人).

2. In the original word construction, “孝” consisted of “a young person”, a son,  helping an “older person to walk safely”, to convey the idea of care and love for one’s parents.

3. As for the word “仁” , it has a “people” sign on the left and “2″ on the right, conveying the concept of good/proper relationship between any 2 persons. Therefore “仁” is to always think about others, not on self.

4. In olden days, the concept of “parents” would extend to one’s “teachers”, i.e., teacher/student relationship is as important as that of parent/children relationship. This is of course mostly untrue with modern educational system filled with “professional” teachers, where it is more about knowledge rather than value system.

5. In  论语 (“lun yu”, The Analects), Chapter 1, one of Confucius’ students, 有子 (”you zi”) recalled Confucius teaching : “….孝弟也者，其為仁之本与…”,  illustrating the two key aspects of  “仁”, i.e., that of “孝” and “弟”.

6. “弟” is the brother/sisterly care and love that one shows towards one’s brothers/sisters or friends/society.

7. In The Analects, Chapter 1 (”On Learning”), Confucius said : “弟子入则孝，出则弟，谨而信，汎爱众，而亲仁，行有余力，则以学文 …..”

Crudely translated, it means
“… as a junior, one should respect /take good care/love one’s parents when at home;

one should respect/take good care/love one’s teachers, seniors and friends when outside;

one should be mindful of one’s language and be trust-worthy; one should be compassionate to all;

and then one should associate oneself with people of good-characters.

When one is able to do all the above and still has extra energy, then go on to pick up some knowledge…”

From above, we can see the great importance Confucius placed on the issue of “how to be a person in terms of one’s conduct versus others”.

He regarded knowledge as secondary to good conduct, or simply put, knowledge possession is not beneficial without equipping oneself with good conduct.

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Zhu Geliang (“諸葛亮”): The Macro Tuner

Dear Friends,

image from www.haifurniture.com

Some of you may be lucky enough to have used an old radio before.

Unlike the digital tuning, tuning into a particular radio station is done manually by turning the tuning nob.

Typically there are 2 tuning nobs :

• Rough-tuner   : allows one to search over the spectrum quickly to detect various stations available,
• Fine-tuner      : allows one to fine-tune for better sound quality once a particular station is selected via the Rough-tuner.

In previous posting The Lungs : Your Cosmic Synchronizer, we have seen our Lung-system performs the critical function of “tuning-in” to the external environment so that our Internal Qi is in-step with Jie-Qi changes.

Since this fine-tuning process occurs on a continuous basis, we can regard the Lung-system as the Fine-Tuner of our body.

• What then is our body’s  Rough-Tuner ?

Last year was Strong Fire year (戊子年, “Wuzi-nian”), while this year is Lesser Earth year (己丑年, “Jichou-nian”).

• One is Hot and Dry, the other is Wet and Cold. The difference couldn’t be bigger.
• It is a big change, too big for a Fine-Tuner to cope, we need a higher “system” to help us cross-over from the end of one year to the beginning of another year.

This higher system is the Rough-Tuner, i.e., it must be able to detect quickly the change of  the underlying tone. In radio, this would be whether it is a Chinese news station, an English music station, soap opera station etc. In cosmic forces, the underlying tone is whether it is Strong Fire with Dryness, Dampness with Coldness etc.

Recall in past postings (such as Harmonious Cosmic Motion) that Spring Qi follows Winter Qi, and that Spring Qi is governed by Liver-Qi in our body.

• The Liver-system therefore is our body’s Rough-Tuner.

It is critical that the Liver-Qi is able to perform this incredible difficult task of enabling our body to cope from the drastic change of one underlying-tone  year to another, the failure of which will be disaster.

To ensure this happen, Liver-Qi needs to be nourished well over the Winter period. Liver-system stores “blood”, inadequacy of blood will irritate the Liver-system. That’s the reason it is traditional wisdom to eat/rest  well over the Winter period.

Zhu Geliang has mastered the art of correctly predicting the direction of change of the underlying tone, whether it was with respect to weather, human psychology or other events. He then devised strategies in advance to meet those likely challenges.

Have fun and maintain a strong Macro-Tuner. You need it critically once a year.

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