Japanese Zen and chi

Traditional Japanese art disciplines like Noh (能 theatre), kado (花道 Japanese flower arrangement), shodo (書道 Japanese calligraphy) and Sado (茶道 Japanese tea ceremony) are Zen like, as in some traditional martial arts, like kyudo (弓道) and kanto (劍道). Their graceful movements are activated by chi. Those of us who have learned practising tai chi as moving meditation may wonder: How can quick movements be conducive to chi generation rather than chi dissipation? How can Japanese geidō (The way of arts 藝道) be called Zen-like or meditative-like? Isn’t Zen as a mind-body discipline should be practised as seated meditation?

In the Western world, when a person likes to have some Zen experience, chances are that he will attend a Zen meditation session/class, or go for a Zen-retreat (if he belongs to the middle-class) where he will spend a few days, with his cell phone locked and his mouth shut, doing seated meditation and having vegetarian-meals. The original idea of Zen, as it came from China, was for a Zen-practitioner to be able to practise Zen 24/7: in Zen (Chan 禪) lingo it is called: “Zen in walking, living, sitting and sleeping”. How to accomplish this?

The Japanese way of doing it is through rituals practised into perfection. During such ritual (assuming practised into perfection), a Zen practitioner can free his mind from logical, rational or worldly constraints. In Japanese Zen-lingo, the ability of doing so can be understood through the concept Jo-ha-kyū (序破急), roughly translated to "beginning, break, rapid", it essentially means that all actions or efforts should begin slowly, speed up, and then end swiftly. It is important that in the “beginning” chi will be internally generated (how it is done is another story), and then break/release/explode, and finally a sudden stop. The break is the movement with chi, and the final stop is used to stop chi from further release and hence facilitate the effectively regeneration of chi by retaining chi, and (very importantly) by storing or trapping chi which was generated by the momentum of movement itself! One example, in Noh theatre, one way of forward movement is use small steps in which each foot moves forward with sole touching the ground (like Yi-chuen’s friction steps); and in the end of the small forward movement, the toes will tilt the foot slightly upward and then gently tap back on the floor to stop the chi.

Needless to say, to perfect a Japanese geidō, repeated chi-training with great patience is required. “How to ritualize one’s daily life into Zen” will be another story of a future post. Stay tuned.

The three elements of Buddhist enlightenment in a triangle

When one word or concept is placed at each corner of a triangle, there is a special property. Each word or concept will affect the other two. In Mahāyāna branch of Buddhism, the three components of enlightenment Insight (見地) Practice (修證) and Vows (行願) can be placed in such a way. In this post, I shall briefly tackle their relationships. My approach is Zen (and Tao), without apology, and certainly is far from definitive.

When we talk about Practice in Zen, we have in mind of Zazen (坐禪), or meditation. Meditation however is a common practice for many schools of religious, spiritual and health related (both physical and psychological) disciplines or practices. The special thing about Zen meditative practice is that a proficient practitioner is supposed to be able to get into a certain meditative mode or state while walking, living, sitting and sleeping (行住坐卧).

Koans are special tools related to Zen Insight. They are like case studies. And the Insights are imbued or embedded inside the stories. These stories are oftentimes examples of successful and unsuccessful insights, both are important (for example in the famous story of "Monk slaughters a cat" [NANQUAN KILLS A CAT (南泉斬貓)] one monk got the Insight while the other monks could not). Understanding the koans presupposes the students to have understood relevant theories of the relevant Sutra. Koans are like case studies in business schools. It is easy for students to mistakenly think that they are enlightened/having got the Insight after "understanding" the logic behind the story. The gist of the matter is that the "story" facing each individual will be his personal story of tomorrow. Understanding helps but the test is always our "personal koans" of tomorrow. To take the business school analogy further, having high GPA does not guarantee a student being able to make good business decisions in future. It is always the next decision to judge whether a manager is a good manager.

Now we can answer the question of "How is Practice relevant to Insight?" The simplest way to explain is that with good meditative practice one can be in a better position to be able to do the right thing when one faces one's "personal koan" tomorrow. And likewise, without Insight, a student's Practice will have no influence to what define an enlightened person.

Then "How is Vow relevant to Practice?" The simplest way to put is that Vow is a means to direct one's meditative practice into a deeper zone (as a comparison, free divers have to be trained under different guiding principles to go into deep meditative zone, Without a guiding principle, be it Buddhist Vow or free dive hurdles, going into deep meditation is unnecessary). For common folks (like most of us) who do not intent to make Bohsavista Vow, a simple vow to be more compassionate towards people around us can give us good training direction (and motivation) to our meditative practice.

Further analysis is possible but will probably bring my readers into a purely intellectual journey outside the realm of Zen which will defeat the whole purpose of writing this post.

(edited on 26 Jan 2016)

Zen - poetry or inner experience?

Inner experience when written out in prose or verse very often looks like literature, and may well be. The difference is that an author of inner experience writes down what he considers important spiritually, the truth as he has perceived and the communication (i.e. the piece of writing) is between him and the Divine. An example (in the West) is Carl Jung's The Seven Sermons to the Dead. In literature, it is always a communication between the author and his readers. In the former, failure in communication is not a non-issue, while the latter communication failure is fatal, though in both cases a correct reading needs to be learned.

Zen stories (koans) though are in a special position. They entail enlightenment experience, yet they are embedded in drama. To fully understand the stories, one must mentally participate in the drama. In other words, one must re-enact the inner experience of the each participants in the koan. For example in the famous koan NANQUAN KILLS A CAT (南泉斬貓), a student must put himself separately into the monks, the cat, Nanquan and his famous student monk Zhaozhou 赵州.

Where then is the inner experience of Enlightenment in a koan? The inner experience of Enlightenment, if any, lies within the reader. In this regards, those who have background in literary training, in particular with training in reading plays, will have a definite advantage. That is the reason why Zen is an enlightenment route for intellectuals.

Understanding Muslims and Islamism

With ISIS's terrorist attack in Paris and the inappropriate comments by Donald Trump, I feel there is an urgent need for people around the world to understand Muslims and Islamism. People in Hong Kong generally have two ways to get to know Muslims in person. One, there is a growing number of Indonesian maids in Hong Kong. Second, there are noodle restaurants in Southern China run by Muslims (Hui or Uyghur) whose complexion is significantly different from Han Chinese.  I have been trying to understand them more in person, firstly through my family's and my relations' Indonesian maids; as well as through personal communications with Halah restaurant operators in Southern China . Besides the practice of Sufism is an internal discipline that I have an interested  in and actually wrote about in this blog, the study of which also leads me to seek further understanding of Islamism.

Indonesia being a secular society allows their Muslims to have a wider choice of actions or behavior. One example is that an elder sister of my Indonesian maid was a Muslim who later became a Christian after she married an Indonesian-Chinese Christian. Her family and village members (maids usually come from poorer rural areas) have accepted such change of religious belief. Indonesian maids in Hong Kong enjoy lots of personal freedom and material goods that they cannot get in their home village. Some behaviors local Hong Kongers frowned upon while most are welcomed. The latter include their participation in group mind-body exercises, one I previously mentioned is Zhan zhaung chi-kung and the other is Yoga (see photo). Every Sunday in Central there are free open classes for the maids run by volunteers (Chinese and Caucasians), from morning till early evening, and a student can join any time. In the park, sometimes we can even see instructors teaching them martial arts - actually wearing karate gi. Most of them are hardworking domestic helpers during weekdays (they are in particular in high demand for taking care of elderly people) and fun-loving ladies on Sundays. And when they talk about religion, they are very serious and know quite a bit. Though some of them also carry elements of their local superstitious beliefs (carried down from Indonesian's folk religion), in general they have far less into idol worship then most Chinese. In short, they are more religiously minded than an average Hong Kong Chinese (be the latter Christian, Buddhist or whatever). Religion forming part of their personality.

Communication with Muslims in China is more difficult. Chinese in Mainland China do not seem to be interested in understanding Muslim culture. In a city in Southern China, we can see Muslims (recognizable by their different complexion) operating noodle shops serving halal food or as hawkers on bicycle selling Xijiang (Uyghur) snacks such as dried grapes. Mainland Chinese just eat in their restaurant and buy their snacks without reaching out the the minority. On the other hand, Muslims also do not take the initiative to communicate with Han-Chinese. I tried to reach out with minor success. And I came to the understanding that Muslims usually prefer to send their kids back to their home town for education, with the objective of keeping their special culture.

A lot needs to be done to promote cultural exchange. And a lot needs to be done AFTER a better understanding.

Inspired by Tao Te Ching - chapter 49

道德經第49章

聖人無常心，以百姓心為心。善者，吾善之；不善者，吾亦善之；德善。信者，吾信之；不信者，吾亦信之；德信。聖人在天下，歙歙為天下渾其心，百姓皆注其耳目，聖人皆孩之。

My translation of Chapter 49 of Tao Te Ching:

A sage does not look at things from one perspective
His heart is at one with that of everybody

A pious person, he accepts
An impious person, he accepts too
This is the Taoist morality of compassion

A person who does not trust him, he trusts him in return
A person who does not trust him, he trusts him too
This is the Taoist morality of faith

Everybody feels the sage is with him
And he views through the eyes of everybody
In the eyes of the sage, everybody is a child needing protection

Paul’s comment: "Let a hundred flowers blossom, and the end result will take care of itself", the Taoist way of thought on human and public affairs. Oftentimes parents, teachers, governments, and generally speaking people in authority try to intervene too much. A tree is to be tended with care, acceptance and faith, rather than to be commanded at. And trees do compete among themselves for limited resources, most evidently in jungles around the Equator. Only through mutual trust between the govern and the governed can a solution be found on human issues and conflicts. The ball is always in the court of those in authority. Common people express their opinions and negotiate a solution, people on top need to "let a hundred flowers grow". This is the Taoist way of action, through non-action: on top.

Japan's endurance culture

Last month a Japanese friend who has emigrated to Brazil came to visit our family. Her parents emigrated to Brazil decades ago in pursue of a more care-free life style, and now their daughter in her thirties, still single, spent time every year visits her home town for a few days each time, and then takes time to do other travels en route. This year she chose Hong Kong as one of her travel stops. Temperamentally she is more like any big-heart Brazilian, but she certainly knows a lot about Japanese culture and has learned how to deal with it without being out-casted, for one simple reason, as she said, she has to deal with her relatives whose home she stayed every time when she was in Japan.

She talked about losing the War is a blessing in disguise for Japanese, otherwise Japanese nowadays will be very arrogant and myopic - looking down upon other Asians. Some of her German friends expressed the same sentiment, she told me.

We talked more about Japan's endurance culture. It is like, winning is not the key issue in any endeavor; the ability to endure grave pain (or suffering) is the real test to become noble and respectable in Japanese culture.  There are many examples. Today there are karate masters who proud to have rough skin/bones and deformed fists through the toughest training regimes. And proud to be able to punch forcefully and be able to endure similar powerful punches that will cause a lot of pain. Yet, in their daily lives they are kind gentlemen and would not (and did not) engage in street fights even when provoked.  Professional Sumo training/tournaments is one of the toughest sports. But when Yokozuno  Asashoryu was found breaking the nose of a bartender in a minor scuffle after a few drinks, he was made retired.

My Japanese friends told me that it is also the same within a family! Back home, she has to be seen to endure some sufferings! No wonder Japanese salarized men would not dare going home immediately after work. The wife would probably say, "Why didn't you make yourself suffer from overtime work!" And I am not joking....

Retired yokozuna Asashoryu

Zen in Japanese culture

Japanese culture as evidenced in its various "ways" (道) is Zen like. For example, there are Way of Tea (茶道), Way of Arrow (kyudo 弓道) and Way of calligraphy (書道). It seems that every traditional practice can be expressed as "Way of" by the Japanese. Is it just a common way of saying thing in the Japanese language without any special meaning? Or is it imbued with signification special to the Japanese culture? And what is the purpose or performance objective of such significations?

To understand Japanese, one must look at what they like to do. Japanese like to take bath in a very special way. I remember decades ago, in one of my early trips to Tokyo, my wife and I stayed in a small hotel in Asakusa, a popular tourist district with the famous Kinryuzan Temple. On the top floor of the hotel, there is a huge public bath in which male guests can do the bath ritual and soak in a huge hot water communal pool overlooking Tokyo. In addition to public bath houses, Natural hot springs (温泉, onsen) are numerous and highly popular across Japan. Every region of the country has its share of hot springs and resort towns, which come with them. The internal sensation that a Japanese seeks is a balanced chi-filled body created by hot bath, not without a short period of "suffering" before one can ease into the enjoyable meditative state. The mind is totally consumed by the hot water and the person will enter a mode of total focus that rational thoughts are supposed to be blocked out.

Most Japanese love such sensation, except perhaps some of the younger generation who feel more akin to embracing the western environment of a Starbucks in Shibuya, to see and to be seen like any Western kid. Even then, in the heart of such busy district like Shibuya, there are small cafes scattering in the side streets where, mostly on the first floor, I found a few salaried men and women sitting stoically in front of a café, very Zen like.

Japanese love Zen, and they like to create the feeling of Zen in traditional practices like tea, archery and calligraphy as mentioned above. What is meaningful in Zen for the Japanese personality? What are they seeking in Zen, as expressed in the different Ways?

First of all, it is not passive enjoyment. The Japanese Way of Tea is not like simply enjoying a nice cup of tea. If that be the case, no ceremony will need to be learned. Secondly, it is not like a quantifiable achievement. In the higher Dans, Kyudo practitioners are not being judged principally by their target scores (which being no more than 20% of the final score). Thirdly it is not just simply beauty. In Japanese calligraphy, a piece of work is not judged principally by its artistic beauty (that will make Japanese calligraphy works of graphic or abstract art).

Steps in practising/doing Japanese Ways are meticulously set out as rules. A practitioner of a Way has to learn the steps to the letter, usually in a particular order and which always requires some kind of physical pain (oftentimes involves muscular endurance pain) on the part of a practitioner. Suffering, rather than to be avoided, is an honorable act for a Japanese. What suffering finally delivers is a perfection of the steps. Perfection in a such as way that the particular movements of a Way has to be second-nature to the practitioner. Perfection also has to include the mind. The mind has to be totally focused in attending to the task. The kind of focus requires is meditative in nature. In other words, it should be in essence as in the zone as in seated meditation. This is moving meditation par excellence.

It is Zen. It is Japanese interpretation of Zen. It is attention to physical that delivers mental results. It is Tao. It is The Way!

Japanese tea ceremony

The poverty of modern amoral spirituality

Today morality is everybody's own business. In a way it is the correct approach. We have different systems of morality. A respect to different religions with their special nuances of morality is essential to a peaceful world. An essential idea to curb any attempt to over-aggressive evangelical thrusts. An essential idea to curb Governments from persecuting people with different systems of belief and morality. An essential idea that the modern world should be secular with due respects to religion and spirituality.

On the approach to spirituality, a different fallacy dawns on the modern man - spirituality can devout from any belief system. Such approach attracts some people who are disappointed by today's organized religions, for example Christianity, for people living in the West. New age spirituality seems to be synonymous with a negation of Christianity while embracing a form of Eastern religion notably Tao or Zen like. But the question is: Are Tao and Zen devoid of morality?

In the surface of it, Tao and Zen surely do look like a devoid of morality. Isn't it Tao said Good and Bad co-exist together in a person, equal in quality as well in in quantity? Isn't Zen enlightenment comes from a break-through away from worldly karma - which essentially means our inner world will not then be dictated by any pre-conditions however they were created (which has further been caused by previous karma)?

The fallacy of modern amoral spirituality is that it has assumed that practitioners of Tao and Zen begin with amorality and  ended up with amorality - and with a stronger belief in amorality at the end, the "meaning" of Enlightenments" per excellence!

To be true, without the quibbles of philosophers (analytical in nature), everybody knows what is good and what is bad, or what is moral and what is immoral. A dilemma comes for the pious man when he begins to realize that it is not easy for him to stay a good person for a continual period of time before his "other side" revolt. "The more we do good, the stronger of our urge to do bad as compensation", as Freudian/Jungian psychologists would have predicted. It also concurs with Tao and Zen teachings that good/bad exist within each of us in more or less half/half. In the Platform Sutra, our Zen master raised an impossible question for his young student to answer: "If I strike you with a stick, will you feel pain or no pain?" and he completed this Zen riddle by saying "If you do not feel pain, you are just a piece of stone and can't be Enlightened; and if you feel pain like any human being, then you will bear a grudge."

In Zen it is through a rebirth through meditation being facilitated, while out of meditation, by mental challenges fired from one's master (including the use of Koan). In Tao it is through rebirth of a new embryo through deep meditation facilitated by treating any negative thoughts (during meditation) arising from our inner self as fantasy. The ultimate objective is forming of a higher level new self into which our ego can step into (or identify with) after we have done good deed to avoid our "mental revolts". With the help of meditation, such negative energy arising from such revolts will be neutralized. And with such neutralization, we can perform our next good deed without the negative part holding us back or creating an internal voice questioning our pious endeavors. Without such understanding, New age spirituality only runs in a futile circle as best, and resulting in ego-elation or psyche dependency (towards one's master) at worst. Beware spiritual seekers!

Anything goes versus the right thing goes

Jung had warned against the vulgarization of Eastern enlightenment concept when being transplanted to the West. His warning has become more salient nowadays when the East has increasingly been assimilated into the West so far as culture is concerned. So much so there is not much difference in mentality nowadays between a University student in Hong Kong and his counterpart in America.

One such vulgarization is the saying that Taoism in practice (or practical Taoism) is defined by some as "anything goes".

If not "anything goes", how shall we, now all belonging to the West, appreciate the Taoist notion of fusing Yin and Yang as in accepting the good and the evil in ourselves (or in society) as a totality? How can we express the conception that both good and evil should be embraced? The following is one such formulation, expressed in a way that I believe, is more consistent with Taoist way of thinking as expressed in Tao Te Ching:

"We experience the self as a union of opposites in a number of ways. If the manifest self is alive in the soul, we are able to meet every situation with the appropriate response. We are kind when kindness is appropriate, and severe when severity is required. We are not afraid of our own dark side, nor are we dominated by it, but express it in a suitable manner. We see the creative spirit in the material world, and enjoy material pleasures. In short, we are unafraid to express all sides of our personality and repress none. Our willingness to be all that we are, and to embrace all of our parts, allows us to experience ourselves as whole beings. We might think of the union of opposites proceeding in this manner as sequential; first one part of the personality expresses itself, then another".

And the author, Jeffery Raff, is not a Taoist but a Jungian who considered Jung belonging to the spiritual tradition. His book is called "Jung and the Alchemical Imagination". The concept of Tao is certainly being expressed much more truthfully here then "anything goes", although Raff was not talking about Tao in the above.

One point advice for the internal arts

In Japanese TV series Midnight Diner, there is a "one point advice" for making the dish mentioned in the episode. No such advice in the manga, and no such advice in the move. Midnight Diner started out as manga, became so successful that three mini-TV series were made and ultimately this year a movie is released. Different medium demands different contents. Individual magazine manga series asks for distinct comic elements in each issue (three stories in each issue for Midnight Diner), so that readers will come back to buy the next issue. TV mini-series caters to a broader audience, in Midnight Diner the producer added one extra element: "one point advice" (or more appropriately called "key point advice") for the housewife or anyone interested to a featured dish, which itself forming part of the plot. And there are many webpages on the internet (in Japanese and Chinese) featuring how to make such dishes, sometimes with additional advice! Movie industry is different. Here you need an impressive or sustainable theme to tie everything together, scattered pieces of individual stories won't work in movie.

Book is more like a movie. An attractive theme is asked for. For example, you can write on tai chi, or better yet, part of tai chi (like standard form, tai-chi as healing, tai-chi nei gong, tai-chi pushing hands etc) as a single subject. An author cannot ramble on different subjects. The author can choose a theme, but once he has chosen a theme he cannot divert from it without raising some negative comments from his readers.

Blogging is different. True, good blogging also needs to write around a specific subject, and better yet, on a specialized subject in which the author knows a lot about, being an expert on the subject. Yet blogging can ramble around individual areas of a defined subject almost randomly. Chances are that most readers jump into a certain area of a subject through a search engine. With the overflow of information, an online researcher (defined as anyone who intends to find particular information on the internet using search engines) typically look for information from different sources. He or she has limited time to read an article in a particular blog. For this reason, the contribution of blogs and bloggers lies in whether they can shed some sights onto the mind of a researcher, on first reading. This is de-facto the requirement or contribution of "one point advice" or "key point advice".

I hope my blog posts can give researchers relevant one point advice or key point advice on the subject matters of internal arts, namely tai chi, chi kung, nei-gong, and meditation.



One point advice for Japanese egg roll: "use rectangular pan, pour egg, fold into small rectangle, pour another egg, fold again..."

The concept of Fringe and Chi Kung

Chi kung, and its related disciplines such as tai chi and meditation, is a popular exercise nowadays in Chinese communities, and is getting more and more popular in other countries among people with different nationalities. It belongs to mainstream. It was however far from mainstream in old Dynasty China. More fringy perhaps than characters in Japanese mini-drama Midnight Diner, whose patrons include yakusa members, gay bar owners, strip dancers, crooks, minor policemen, "overtime" OLs, and socially misfit of many kinds. The difference is that these fringy patrons are not persecuted in modern Japan, not so for chi healers in old Dynasty China.

Chinese history of the previous Dynasty was written by official historians of the current Dynasty. Historical writing, or history for short, was primarily written to serve as "administrative case studies" for the better management of the current Emperor and his administrators. For this reason, not withstanding the fact that the historians were truly professional, certain subjects were considered not relevant to their studies. Therefore related historical documents and records laid dormant in royal archives rather than being used or referenced. During the past decades, such archives in Beijing and Taipei were being made public to qualified academics of major Universities in China and overseas. Histories from new perspectives and on new subjects began to be written for the consumption of interested members of the modern public. Among these publications is a book called "Millenarian Rebellion in China - The Eight Trigrams Uprising of 1813" by Princeton's Professor Susan Naquin.

In Dynasty China, there were three relevant provinces around Beijing (current Shandong, Heinan and Heibei province - the last one being similar to a larger area formerly called Zhili [means "directly ruled" and indicates regions directly ruled by the imperial government of China, including the capital]). The three provinces were the land of chi kung healers, groups and followers. Meaning that the people and the environment were conducive to the creation, practice and propagation of chi healing.

A typical development pattern of chi healing in society was narrated by Professsor Naquin as follows (paraphrased by me):

Chi kung healing in the area was passed down through family lineage, not necessarily along the male line. Healers were liberal rather than orthodox. These healers because of their "magical power" and usual affiliation with fringy religious sects of either Taoism or Buddhism were officially forbidden by the Emperor. Such masters would be jailed/executed and groups disbanded. Emperor's law though was not necessarily being carried out by local rural administrators who, when a healer was not very influential, i.e. only with a small number of followers and carried out his trade discretely, would tolerate him, afterall, these healers were doing a proven practice to certain members of the communities usually the lower class countrymen who could not affect legitimate medical care. Rural administrators were also limited by the resources of administration (and persecution!) at their disposal.

Problems arose when these healers became too successful. With successful healing records (and perhaps coupled good personal publicity on the part of the master), some people in the upper class began to follow a healing master. It was easy to understand from a modern perspective in that chi healing and chi kung exercises are more beneficial than mainstream Chinese medical practices in many long term ailments.

These groups met periodically, once a month or once every few months. Becoming successful and with more upper class followers, some of these masters became quite rich. And a sizeable group of mixed sex adults meeting in private could easily arouse the curiosity and therefore suspicion of local rural people. And that in its turn attracted the attention of the local authority, which eventually ended up in persecution, sometimes local authority would request manpower support from the provincial authority. The smarter ones of the masters fled away before a crackdown, some masters being executed or jailed (but their descendants secretly carried on with now a much smaller group), while one or two bravest masters revolted against the Emperor with disastrous results. The professor documented some of these uprisings in her book.

Master and his patrons

Zen and the Japanese personality

Japanese has a personality propensity to Zen experience. By Zen experience, I don't mean Zen as written by D. T. Suzuki who spoke primarily to Western audience with a rationalistic mentality with an analytic approach to philosophy. Zen experience is an internal (empirical) perception. Midnight Diner (Shinya Shokudō  深夜食堂), the movie-TV series-manga that I speedily became fan, inspired me to look at the issue, once more.

Zen is acceptance rather than endurance. For the Japanese personality, it is not by any philosophical analysis, it is experiencing life as complete, rather than half-full and certainly not half-empty. In Midnight Diner, the patrons were living in the margin of society. Some of them had very little money to spend on meals. There was this meal called butter-rice. A middle-aged part-time singer (and part-time factory labor) would sing a song in the diner for a bowl of butter-rice (黃油飯 バターライス) and a small bowl of Tonkotsu broth. The master accepted this deal and the singer came once every week. The singer was serious about his butter rice. The rice must be very hot, the butter must first be buried inside the rice for 30 seconds (during which time he closes his eyes in a meditative mode), and after that add just a few measured drops of soy sauce. Itadakimasu! Zen like and at one with as simple as a bowl of butter rice. Simple focus with deference. The essence of a Japanese bath. A willingness and ability to submit oneself to a defined structure - without the need for rational explanations or justifications. The gist of Zen experience. A state or condition that I can see many Japanese have a propensity getting into without much effort, while westerners sweating themselves with endless arguments as to what is the true meaning of Zen.

If you are not a Japanese, probably you have to seek other routes, such as chi cultivation through chi kung or meditation - assuming that you want to experience Zen in the first place.

The Zen way of butter rice

 

Inspired by Midnight Diner

Shinya Shokudō (深夜食堂 Midnight Diner) is a Japanese manga series by Yarō Abe. It won the 55th Shogakukan Manga Award for general manga and it was nominated for the 2nd Manga Taishō. It was adapted into a 10-episode television drama in October 2009, followed by second season in October 2011, and then third season in October 2014. In 2015, a film was released by director Joji Matsuoka starring Kaoru Kobayashi as The Master, released in Japan in Jan 2015. The movie is currently showing in Hong Kong. The show is about a late night canteen in the side street of Shinjuku opening from midnight to 7 am and the stories of its fringe patrons as portrayed under the relaxing and supportive ambience created by the Master (chef). Each episode in the television series featured a special meal. One-point advice will be given to the preparation of each featured meal.

Popular and very entertaining. To pay tribute to the Shokudo and the artists who made it all happened, I shall write a few posts as inspired by Midnight Canteen.

The first post I shall write is "One point advice for the internal arts". The second post I shall write is "The concept of Fringe and Chi Kung". The third post is "Zen and the Japanese personality". Stay tuned.

Both the manga and the television series are available free on-line, for those who can understand either Japanese or Chinese.

Biased towards action

Chinese are pragmatic and they are biased towards action rather than enjoy arguing and philosophizing, for good and for bad. So much so, some people said there is no such thing as philosophy in the Western sense in classic Chinese philosophical texts as they are taught in local Universities. Although this saying might be going a bit extreme, take Tao Te Ching as an example, this text does look more like a narrative to guide action rather than a meticulously argued analytical text. Moreover, Tao Te Ching is an open text. The openness of the text lies on its usefulness as a text that can guide actions in different domains, as differently read by different readers. It has been regarded as a text to guide the Emperor to run his country (a political text), as secret text with hidden alchemical instructions (a sacred text), a day-to-day guidebook of Tao for...the modern man (!) (a self-help text), a book on chi kung (a mind-body text), an important text for religious Taoism (a religious text) etc. The same for the Book of Change I-Ching, a seemingly oracle book with different "hidden" meaning or agenda.

Recently I read Chomsky's Occupy (Occupy Central is still running in full steam in Hong Kong with more campers added daily and escalating grievances from the public). Not surprisingly, Chomsky is a man of action when his persona is an activist. He avoided unnecessary argument (or avoid being dragged into fruitless arguments). Not by evasion, but through reasoned argument. Here is a good example from a Q&A session. Good food for learning:

Q: The late British philosopher, Martin Hollis, worked extensively on questions of human action, the philosophy of social science and rationality. One of the claims he made was that any anarchist vision of a society rests upon an idea of human nature that is too optimistic. In short, he argued that anarchism is only viable if humans by nature are good. He says that history shows us that humans cannot be trusted to this degree; thus, anarchism is too idealistic. Would you mind responding to this objection very quickly, given your commitment to some of the ideals of anarchism?

A: It's possible to respond to arguments. It is not possible to respond to opinions. If someone makes an assertion saying, "Here's what I believe," that's fine -- he can say what he believes, but you can't respond to it. You can ask, what is the basis for your belief? Or, can you provide me with some evidence? What do you know about human nature? Actually, we don't know very much about human nature. So yes, that's an expression of his belief, and he's entitled to make it. We have no idea, nor does he have any idea, if it's true or false. But it doesn't really matter; whatever the truth turns out to be, we will follow the same policies, namely, trying to optimize and maximize freedom, justice, participation, democracy. Those are goals that we'll attempt to realize. Maybe human beings are such that there's a limit to how far they can be realized; okay, we'll still follow the same policies. So whatever one's un-argued assertions may be, it has very little effect on the policy and choices [66-7].

Paul's comment: the questioner does seem to have presented an argument:

If anarchism is to work, human nature must be good.
Since human nature is bad.
Therefore anarchism does not seem to work
And therefore one should give up the route of anarchism

In actual fact, it is an opinion that one (Chomsky) should give up the route of anarchism because it is not guaranteed to work. The Chomsky's answer is that anarchism is one's best available action-option and one should therefore try one's best to achieve the maximum results that anarchism can deliver, and let human nature, if counter-productive/reactionary to a certain degree, serve as a limiting constraint (like limited capital is always a constraint for any entrepreneur).  Chomsky is definitely biased towards action.

Haruki Murakami 村上 春樹

A world without walls can be created “in the quiet but sustained effort to keep on singing, to keep on telling stories, stories about a better and freer world to come, without losing heart,” he said.

“We can see [a world without walls] with our own eyes – we can even touch it with our own hands if we try hard.

“I’d like to send this message to the young people in Hong Kong who are struggling against their wall right now at this moment.”

(Murakami is the first Japanese author awarded the Welt Literature Prize by German daily newspaper Die Welt since the 10,000-euro prize was established in 1999.)

The Umbrella Revolution

Date - 30 September 2014, Place - Hong Kong 

When people speak with one voice, high mounts can be moved.

Taoism and anarchism - with a new translation of Tao Te Ching chapter 80

The political manifestation of Taoism in society is anarchism. My contention.

Lao Tze put a high values on personal freedom, and when extending the community level, community freedom. He put forward his political vision in chapter 80 of Tao Te Ching:

小國寡民。使有什伯之器而不用；使民重死而不遠徙。雖有舟輿，無所乘之，雖有甲兵，無所陳之。使民復結繩而用之，甘其食，美其服，安其居，樂其俗。鄰國相望，雞犬之聲相聞，民至老死，不相往來。

My rendition of Chapter 80 of Tao Te Ching, emphasizing its contemporary relevancy:

Divide a city into small communities with few people each
Let people use tools just good enough to serve their purposes
Let them value longevity, that comes from doing meditation at home, and therefore no need to seek for better lives further away
Let there be boats, but nobody finds any need to use them
Let there are armors but no community finds any necessity to show them off
Let people enjoy simple lives -
in which a few knots are good enough to note down important events
Let them have natural home-grown food
Let them have natural home-made clothes
Let them satisfy themselves with cozy dwellings
And let them preserve their cultural heritage
Each community helps one another only when in need
though each is proximate enough to hear one another's morning calls of roosters and the barking of dogs
Let people of each community age and die to their well-deserved natural age
and find no need to communicate with people outside

Lao Tz's anarchism was a revolt against autocracy, whereas modern anarchism, for example the anarchism of Noam Chomsky, is a revolt against liberalism of Western democracy. Lao Tz and Chomsky shared similar thoughts. Chomsky believes that autocracy is much worst than democracy. Autocracy puts suppressive power on a single person (or party) whose power will filter down to every (or almost every) aspect of citizens' life while liberalism puts it away from the government, but put it onto the hands of wealthy private individuals, companies or individual government agencies. It is easy to see that the former is much worse than the latter. In liberalism, a thinking subject like Noam Chomsky will have his freedom to develop and express his thoughts while in autocracy thinking subjects will likely be considered as enemies to the state (or party etc). For example, a former Nobel Peace Prize winner is still jailed in China today and his wife has been under house-arrest for years (for no other reason than being the laureate's wife!)

One interesting thing to note is that both Lao Tz and Chomsky put community to be the basic unit of structure of governing. It is a practical solution. We can hardly imagine a place able to be governed by individuals who decide on everything collectively on each tiny issue. But than it raises another practical issue: how to organize a community? I suppose Chomsky will say "by individual case, but a general rule will come one day".

My contention is: the danger of abuse of power in the power delegating or sharing process is forever a never-ending issue waiting for future sages to tackle. It will be there as long as we humans have that selfish genes, but then why complain? Our selfish genes made us survive and grow to this day. I can only hope our genes will not drive us to extinction one day.

Noam Chomsky - linguist and anarchist

Taoism and Inferno

The scare approach had often been used a method to prevent mass-believers to abide by morality rules, in both the East and the West. For people with intellect, this has never been necessary. A typical modern man is with intellect, like a typical reader of Dan Brown's Inferno who will find its plot more interesting than its reference to Dante's Inferno. Nobody can arrest and torture you indiscriminately and a religious leader has no power to decide who goes to Purgatory amount almost to the same thing. The scare approach does not work for the modern man.

Before it gets better it has to get worse is an intellectual insight rather than part of a scare approach.

I enjoy reading Dan Brown, primarily because of the excitement of his plot together with his mastery of the English language. Not blank business language, not everyday mass-spoken language and not "get-ready-with-an-encyclopedia" poetic language. His cannot be considered as literary, which makes for both good and bad reading depending on one's mood at the particular moment. He covered most (if not all) popular themes. He even talked about martial art in Inferno with Sienna Brooks being an expert in Dim Mak! Since this is not a book review, I will not be dealing with every single theme he visited. Besides his coverage of each theme is superficial at best, though it saves readers a lot of money and time when compared to reading popular book authors like (intentionally omitted) who uses a single theme for a complete book; the chosen theme being of no real significance but is just there to reassure the readers they are smart - having a best-selling author sharing the same view as them - and therefore they can get back to work tomorrow free from frustration. A dosage of psychological healing for the common folks.

One theme, however, I found most interesting, Brown's mentioning of the concept of context in popular debates. Context can also be understood as assumptions or more usually value assumptions or moral framework. In our debates with people sharing the same context, we take the context for granted. We seek a better option under the same context. And it creates no intellectual problem. However, when a debate is between people who might not share the same context, one needs to clarify the nature of our debate: whether it is a debate on different contexts or a debate on difference in opinions under the same context.  Brown made the point succinctly, in this case a debate on context is required. In this case the characters were talking about a debate on the ramification of genetic engineering in the form of a air-borne vector virus changing the genome of a portion of humanity - for good or for bad:

...any meaningful debate about.....will require context. ....(they) will need to develop a moral framework to assess their response to (this crisis).

Recently in Hong Kong, there is a heated debate on the implementation of universal suffrage in the city in 2017. On the surface there is the central government approach of selecting (by the government) of 2-3 (definitely loyal) candidates for HK people to choose from and there is the pan-democrats' approach of allowing open, or civic, nomination. The underlining context is that the former believes that Hong Kong people should only be given rights to make money while the latter believing that Hong Kong people should also have political and human rights of a modern democracy. The former aligns with the authoritarian context in mainland China while the latter aligns with the context of universal human rights currently upheld in modern democracies of the industrialized West.

Needless to say, both kinds of debates (on context and on options) are conducive to human progress.

Readers who are interested in the Hong Kong debate can read this interview of 17 year old student activist Joshua Wong in CNN . Incidentally the central government is using some form of scare approach...

Joshua Wong

Suppression of natural instinct

An essential concept of the internal arts is suppression of our natural instinct. Tai chi as martial art suppresses our natural instinct to tense, rather than relax, our muscles during conflict/combat situation. In situations where our survival is as stake, our adrenalin shoots up, and our natural response takes over. The naturalness of internal arts rests upon the unnaturalness of its practice. Let me explain my contention further.

Natural response represents an activation of energy, in a very specific manner. When we are being offended, we got angry. And anger is a an arousal of special energy. A natural response. Those who can control their anger usually forcefully suppress their anger. A welcoming response to the situation - without letting it into uncontrollable, and oftentimes reciprocal in nature, response on either party. Yet, suppression is, firstly bad for health, and secondly, such stored or suppressed energy may explode one day into an truly uncontrollable and irreparable situation, as far as cordial human relationship is concerned. Everybody can appreciate such possibility, and probably knows some folks are that too.

The internal art is a physical training. It trains a person the way to sublime such energy. With a successful training, such sublimation does not involve our cognition, we "naturally" (a newly created naturalness) respond in such a way that our energy of anger is transformed into an energy to open our internal blockages. A seasoned and observant practitioner can feel the "un-believability" of such self-response. Unbelievable because it is not our natural response. "How come I can feel so calm in such situation?"

In the limiting case, a seasoned practitioner can even suppress the natural instinct facing the situation of death. Religious masters are said to be able to control their natural instinct in face of death. Those of us having the experience of witnessing the death of a relation (in death bed) can appreciate the powerful (though unsuccessful) human instinct of survival against an approach death. Yet, some religious leaders trained in the internal art can die peacefully in a folded leg posture. How? By suppressing his life instinct in face of death. The mummified body of the Sixth Zen Patriarch Hui Neng is still kept in a Buddhist temple in China, although the worship of which had not been the original intention of our master (by the way, it is superstitious to do so, and not true Buddhism).  The Dalai Lama once said in his practice, he will "die" a few times a day.  Our Holiness was talking about same thing as discussed in this article.

Closer to modern rational understanding, a seasoned free diver learns the same thing as our religious masters. The free diver can suppress his natural instinct to suck in air (which will kill him when he dives), and of course at the same time will need to manage to economize his use of oxygen. The interesting thing is that if the free diver does not properly plan the length of his dive against his use of oxygen, he will die "peacefully" without any physical struggle. Like our religious master, but of course our free diver will not be mummified.

For those who are interested in sex (who doesn't?), they might be interested to know the sublimation of sexual energy is also the same thing.

Master Hui Neng

"White horse is not horse" vs " A deer is a horse"

This blog is about Tao and Zen - as meditation, internal art and everything, in the perspective of Eastern (primarily traditional Chinese) culture under the scrutiny of modern (western) knowledge base. A better understand of Tao and Zen (which is, in many respects, very similar in Chinese cultural context) however cannot be have without a comparative understanding of other, non-Tao/non-Zen traditional Chinese concepts.

Both "White horse is not horse" (白馬非馬) and "A deer is a horse" 指鹿為馬 are popular stories in traditional Chinese culture. The first is fine logical argument. This aspect of genetic trait of Chinese is still flourishing today, as can be seen by sound academic and professional achievements in areas demanding finely argued, self-contained logical systems, for example accounting. The argument can run either of the following two ways:

1. White horse is a subset of horse, hence cannot be equivalent to horse (or white horse implies horse but horse does not imply white horse).
2. White horse is a specific horse that the speaker is pointing at. And that particular horse is not equivalent to the concept of horse, by definition, is devoid from or over and above, any concrete reality.

Clever argument.

The "cleverness" when extended to the political arena becomes "A deer is a horse". The story goes like this (in essence): "When the minister brought a deer to the young (inexperienced and naïve) emperor, to the emperor's surprise, he called it horse, many in court said it was a horse (to the greater surprise of the emperor), those who said it was a deer were later killed/persecuted by the minister". Smart move for an authority figure. Result: those who uphold the truth will be persecuted, those who prosper will be people who take personal benefits above public good and rights, and who prefer to be slaves than to be free men. Genetic traits die hard.




"I'm Hongkonger. I want genuine universal suffrage"