Part One: Forbearance
Sifu: There are some people who keep losing things: they are always looking for something but can’t find it. Where does this habit come from?
Red Bull: Carelessness.
Sifu: Where does that come from?
Scott: Being too busy.
Red Bull: From being too lazy to be precise.
Sean Pig: They have a habit to be lost.
Sifu: How can those people get out of this habit? This is a good time for you to practise your wisdom and compassion. To help them, you need wisdom. If you are willing to help them, that’s compassion.
Sean Pig: Try to be more tidy and organised. I used to have this problem a bit, but my mum is really tidy so when I lived with her she stopped it from happening. She puts everything in a place and it always has to go in that place, so if you have the habit of putting something back in the same place every time, it will surely be there when you’re looking for it.
Sifu: You always have to be organised before you act, but I think there’s more to it. There’s something stopping them from being organised.
Sean Pig: I think it’s because they’re too excited. They’re not concentrating on what they’re doing at the moment; they’re too excited about what’s in their mind or what they’re going to be doing.
Sifu: So you’re saying that they’re over-excited. Always take care of practical things first. Be practical and then get excited about things. Don’t be excited and then still be excited and forget all the practical stuff.
Spiritual power is not something you develop for you alone, it is joy and all good power coming together: then spiritual power will appear. If you combine your wisdom, intelligence, and strength, you can help others enjoy life in a wise, generous, kind, and caring way. Life becomes bright.
Life doesn’t have to be suffering. It doesn’t have to always be forbearing. Buddhas call Earth and many other planets in this galaxy Forbearing. That means that you have to bear the weight of all your troubles. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want it; you still have to bear it. That means suffering. You have to bear with your suffering, but you never have to bear with joy. You welcome joy; your heart is always asking for more.
Even though you don’t want suffering, it still comes to your life. You are so used to forbearing and that you think it’s normal. That’s not the truth of life.
I learned to refuse that way of thinking. I learn to make my life bright and joyful, full of wisdom and generosity, and not following any negative feelings. Whenever I experience a negative feeling, I put it through the filter of Buddhist and Daoist philosophy. When it has passed through, my feelings become pure again. They become joyful and strong, making my heart say, “It’s not a problem. Life is great.”
That strength comes from two powers. They make me feel that it doesn’t matter how much trouble I experience, life is always amazing and perfect. They are the main subject that Buddhism teaches. Does anybody know?
Sean Pig: Wisdom and compassion.
Sifu: Yes. Compassion is love. Not human-style personal, possessive love – “I love someone” or “I love something” and “That thing belongs to me” – life is not designed for you to be possessive, it’s designed for you to enjoy, to share, to experience, and to learn.
If you are possessive, you create suffering for yourself and for everyone around you. If you learn to develop yourself to enjoy life and to share that joy, life becomes bright. To share good emotions and good intentions without being possessive is spiritual love.
Spiritual love is inside you, but if you take personal ego love too strongly, that spiritual love is hidden. How do you uncover your spiritual love? By creating a habit to make time to think about what life is. You spend most of your time thinking, “What do I want? What happens to my life? What about my problems?” You are locked in that pattern of thought. All your heart, all your awareness is locked in there, so of course you’re not going to experience anything more than that.
You know the story of the frog that was born in the well. He thought that the sky was just a small circle over his head. If the frog never jumps out of the well, the sky will never be bigger than that. If you don’t jump out of your ego blindness – your “I and my” – you will be the same as that frog. You are always busy thinking about “I” and then “my”: my problems, what I want. If you let your thinking power be limited in this way, you will never change and become wise.
Part Two: Logic
As a kid, I tried to have the habit of not thinking about me, of not thinking about anything that I want, of not being crazy to get anything or become anything. I wasn’t interested in teaching people Spirits or martial arts. I love these two philosophies because I want to understand and enjoy life; they give me strength to enjoy life without blindness. That’s why I have been involved with them my whole life: they help me think about life.
Buddhism always talks about life, not your life or my life, but all life. It always tries to help you see the complete view, the whole connection, the system of life, how it works, the essence, function, and goal. The way each one becomes the cause to the next one: cause and effect.
Each effect immediately becomes a new cause. That new cause becomes a new effect. Many causes joined together become another effect. Cause: effect; cause: effect. All these effects together create a result. That result becomes a new cause.
It made me think a lot. Everything that happens happened for a reason. If I understand the reason, I can develop my wisdom. If I don’t understand the reason and just blindly accept it, I will become more stupid. So I always give myself power to observe.
For instance, as soon as I came up to the rooftop dojo today, I saw Sean Rat teaching Morpio Chi Gong. Because my natural observing ability is always on, I could tell that Morpio’s posture was leaning to one side and that neither of them was aware of it, so I told them. If you’re observing ability is always on, it becomes more and more awakened: you see things from more and more angles. That ability means you can express and explain your feelings and ideas with logic from many angles.
When you can give logical reasons that explain your feelings from many angles, then you start to feel self-assured: you will have no fear of anything because you really know what you’re doing.
When I do acupuncture, it’s not as if I do it blindly. I concentrate on the philosophy and do a lot of calculation. One time when I first started, I was treating Andrew and he didn’t really trust me. He had to lie still in one position for a long time. When he got up, his leg was numb and he started freaking out.
“Sifu, I can’t feel my leg!”
Giant Dog was there too, and he hadn’t learned to trust me either.
“Sifu, Sifu! Andrew can’t feel his leg!”
It was a big drama. I just looked at him and said, “That’s normal. If you lie down in that position for a long time, your blood circulation will stop. Just give it a few minutes, the blood will run back and everything will be ok.”
A few minutes later, I asked Andrew if the blood had run back into his leg.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s very good, actually.”
He was so embarrassed that his ears were all red.
Part Three: Observation
If you use a lot of wisdom to observe your actions, you will not be scared by other people’s blindness because you understand what’s going on.
You are used to following your negative feelings and letting other people blindly influence you: you take that as normal. That’s where the suffering comes from. Instead, you should develop your observation power, always observing your negative feelings. For example, the way people listen to philosophy here in class. I can see that everybody is concentrating, but the way they concentrate is different. Some people are frowning, some are nervous, some are relaxed. If you want to get to a higher level, you need to be joyful and sharp.
Thinking power doesn’t have to make you frown. If you frown for too long, you’ll get bad posture and a headache. Find a way to make yourself sharp and joyful instead.
I don’t mind if you doubt what I’m saying. If you challenge me and I’m wrong, then I will learn something. I’m not interested in telling people what is true: I’m interested to know what is true. If you can help me find more truth than I already know, I will be happy.
As I have already observed the truth of life through Buddhism and Daoism and practised it for many lifetimes, I am ahead of all of you. That’s why I try to help you understand the philosophy; it’s not because I really like to be in this position. The truth is that I’m shy.
When I was a kid, I would hide behind my mum’s skirt whenever I saw someone. I didn’t like strangers pinching my cheek. I didn’t like talking to them. At school, if the teacher asked the class a question, I never wanted to put my hand up.
One time, there was going to be a class party, but it sounded really boring so I complained to another student and said we should do something else. He told the teacher that I had a better idea, so she made me stand up and tell everyone. I was scared to death; I thought I was going to throw up. Eventually, I explained my idea and everyone liked it.
When they decided to follow my idea, I realised that my shyness was silly: I had been scared for nothing. If I followed my wisdom, they would follow me and everything would be ok. Everybody was happy and excited; it was cool.
So my shyness and fear came from blindness. Even today, you don’t see that side of me, even though it’s at the core of my personality. I still don’t like sitting here with so many eyes on me. I’d rather be over there with all of you while someone else gets stressed.
My shyness is the same as any other blindness. Through wise observation, it can be removed or controlled.
This post is taken from a talk by Forever Wisdom Forest on 11 December 2011 at the Sydney dojo.
