Not too long ago a reader pointed out to me an inconvenient truth in my essay, 'How Thoughts and Emotions Changes', where the set of philosophy on Brigitte Lin’s beauty actually belongs to another Taiwanese actor, 甄珍. When I realized that it felt almost like giving the film award to the wrong film, there is no place to hide the error and we believe in giving credit to where credit is due or else all the talk on lofty philosophy is just empty talk. Die-hard fans of甄珍 must have been gleefully calling Brigitte ‘翻版’ and that can be very annoying in the ears of Brigitte’s fans.

Something needs to be done and I have been doing some research on it and found out this is how authoritative voices in the industry described Brigitte’s beauty; if you look at Brigitte’s facial features (eyes, nose, lips, cheeks, etc.) individually, they are not exactly very spectacular, but when you put them together, they will fit in a very perfect proportion and produce a nice end product. People in the past used to be very poetic.

This aesthetic philosophy is even more difficult to understand than that of 甄珍, I believe you can say that it means a virtuous soul is able to use ordinary material (unspectacular features) and use it to create something great (perfect proportion). This is almost like ‘随心所欲 而不逾矩’ which I have mentioned before, or ‘无障碍’ which means unimpeded by limitations or obstacles (unspectacular features). Enthusiast of Kungfu will be able to relate to this very easily, it is the enlightened state of being that enables a Kungfu master to turn unspectacular things like a blade of grass or twig into lethal weapons. But I found an even better explanation of this philosophy in one of Brigitte’s film, ‘在水一方’ where we get to see what it is and what it is not.

In the movie, Brigitte played the character of 小双 who can thrive in very difficult situations while her husband 友文, played by 秦汉, failed in his career despite having a good education and unyielding support from friends and family. The focus is on why people perceive challenges in their lives differently and sinful emotions affected their success and failure.

We begin by looking at why 友文 can’t write and how his sinful emotions inhibits his ability; his jealousy makes him arrogant and combative and he writes because he wanted to challenge other noble laureates when noble laureates mostly write out of their love for writing instead of wanting to prove a point. Arrogance also makes him discriminates and trivializes his wife’s work by calling them vulgar (庸俗). Arrogance gave rise to disgust and violent behavior which then created the tendency to want to bully his wife, and the bullying later makes him self-deprecate and develop the warped idea that his wife look down on him. This is a bit like how soldiers who suffer from PTSD tend to get illusions of war from innocuous things like maybe the sound of fire crackers or loud machines. As a side note, it is for the same reason why Luke Skywalker warned Kylo Ren not to strike him with hate and anger because PTSD will follow him for the rest of his life and distorts his perception of reality, and he is more likely to skew towards decisions that bring disaster and hardship.

As you can see友文’s inner world is full of obstacles (心有千千结) or his bad karma such as pride and arrogance makes him see obstacles when they none. To illustrate how sinful emotion stunted 友文’s writing further, we assume that this essay is the topic of a discussion forum and if the participants like to gossip, they are prone to commit the sins of ‘绮语’, ‘妄语’ and ‘恶口’, because they have the habit (a peculiar symbiosis) to drift to sensational places due to the effects of excessive entertainment. Maybe they may imagine that in real life 秦汉 bullied Brigitte Lin and perhaps he also likes to gamble, and that’s when the discussion comes to an unproductive or embarrassing end. Similarly, sinful emotions also stifled友文’s writing or the flow of ideas the way bad gossip can choke the discussion. For that reason I must put a firewall here to curb people’s enthusiasm – focus only on the story instead of the actors’ personal lives.

I will cite two more examples to show how sinful emotions like greed and pride can obstruct our progress in life. There is this Youtube video on the casual conversation among three friends in Hong Kong which describes the negative effects of greed very clearly. One of the friends complained about the bad attitude (greed) of some taxi drivers this way – they do not like to take passengers on short trips because the fare is low, then they do not want to go to further places like the airport because the queue is very long and they are also not willing to go to the New Territories because they may not get another passengers there on his return to Hong Kong island. So, greed makes them very calculating or afraid not to get something and thus developed many mental obstacles which prevented them from doing any work.

This next example on pride can reflect more clearly how sinful emotions have created友文’s mental obstacles of arrogance and disgust and turned him ‘意志消沉’; we know that several years ago there was a big street protest in Hong Kong and I had the chance to listen to some of the protestors’ grievances. I can summarize their grievances with this simple analogy, let’s say these protestors protested because of the lack of business opportunities in Hong Kong and you may advise them to go look for opportunities in Shenzhen, they will then say that they can’t work with the officer in Shenzhen because he spits in a spittoon and it disgust them. Then you suggest they go to Zhuhai which again did not work out because the officer there eats dog meat. Finally, you advise them to go to Dongguan, but again they declined because the officer there keeps a mistress.

These are the ‘neuron circuitry’ or search algorithms that show how 友文’s chauvinism and antagonism has created ‘心有千千结’ or an extreme/narrow scope of thinking (转牛角尖) which prevented him from even writing the first chapter of his book. So, if we have the full set of various sins, we can imagine how little space there is in our hearts and mind and it is precisely for this reason that we have dimensions like ‘无间道’ where ‘间’ stands for ‘空间’ and ‘时间’ or the space time continuum. But I must say that the above only represented a certain portion of the overall protestors, there are many other protestors who are very intellectual and have justifiable grievances and the administration is very sympathetic with them.

So when I misrepresented the philosophy of Brigitte’s beauty, it felt like a very mild form of obstacle (心结) because it is not done on purpose or with bad intention but it shows that inaccuracy or injustice (sin) is like a discrepancy which created a gap that prevented people from crossing over; or an uncertainty/ignorance that made people stall because they do not know whether to turn left or right. Similarly, unrepented sins and karma is also a kind of discrepancy or gap which frustrates our brains from crossing over to evolve into a higher state.

On the other hand, 友文’s wife小双 was quite the opposite, she appears to be born into a poor family and later orphaned. She is very flexible and not choosy with what she does, she can teach music, compose songs and write lyrics. She doesn’t need grandiose projects to motivate her and can perform well in these jobs which 友文 regarded as vulgar. She has to shoulder the role of the breadwinner of the family and has the temperament and grace to put up with her husband’s verbal abuse and compulsive gambling habits.

You may wonder if a person is facing so many obstacles then these ‘road blocks’ must have been obstructing her thoughts and energy and she shouldn’t be able to perform well in her career and be a supportive wife to the end. What is it that enables her to manage all these? This is what the Taoist philosophy call ‘收放自如’ and the Buddhist call it ‘生活禅’ or the state of ‘无障碍’, and all these comes from a person’s moral cultivation either in this life or previous ones.

The Buddha says that our reality is not permanent (remember 一波未平一波又起?) and that means we must keep changing in order to thrive in this binary realm, and thus we need to find continuous equilibrium to stay relevant and prosperous. For example, a CEO may be able to hatch a plan which is in equilibrium whereby different interests such as the customers, employees, board of directors, shareholders and policy makers can agree to. But sudden changes to the market caused by foreign competition may compel the CEO to recalibrate everything to seek a new equilibrium. If the CEO can’t change then you can say that he can’t ‘收放自如’ and becomes like a broken clock which can only tell the time correctly twice a day.

We take dancing to demonstrate this point because it involves continuous fluid movement and reader can form the picture more easily. Good dancers must find a good balance between the music and the body movements, as the music changes, the whole body must also change in tandem, meaning the face, arms, shoulders, waist, hips, legs and the music must constantly seek new equilibriums or else it won’t work. If the dancers’ thoughts are stuck in some trauma or euphoria, it will obstruct her mind and body from seeking continuous equilibrium in her dancing and that’s when you say the dancers can’t flow. Artists who were broken by fear and depression like Kurt Cobain or Sylvia Plath may still be able to produce remarkable works but their scope is very limited and they don’t lead a happy life. Similarly, artists who are too preoccupied with their good looks and social media popularity also tend to become very limited in their dynamism and are often branded as ‘flower vases’ or a broken clock which can only tell the time correctly twice a day.

What causes the fear, euphoria and frustration to stick in the artists and the CEO and prevented them from progressing? If you understood the part of the essay on 友文 then you will know the answer already, but I can give more examples to enrich our understanding on this matter.

While I may not know much about dancing or the work of a CEO, I do watch a lot of snooker matches because I used to play that game. Steve Davis, who is a multiple world champion, once commented that if players can soak up the pressures, then they can bring out the best of themselves. All the players who play at the top level have received the same amount of technical training and have put in an equal amount of effort in perfecting their games, what sets them apart is how well they can control their nerves at the most critical moment. Pressure will make players doubt themselves, hesitate in their games, stiffen their shoulders and arms and their minds will become preoccupied with the fear of losing. This fear comes from none other than their inherent/acquired sin or bad karma like greed, which makes them fearful of losing the tournament’s prize money or pride which makes them fearful of losing face and the glory of becoming the champion. If you don’t believe that pressure or fear dulls our abilities, look at the fantastic snooker they can play once their brains regained coherence after the score has reached an unassailable stage. So, we now know that self confidence comes from virtues which make one not fearful of losing, and the notion that moral cultivation makes one lazy and boring is a big misunderstanding, it is bad karma and unresolved sins which make people lazy and boring.

If you are a professional writer then you can probably tell that my writing is not as smooth as it could be because I also experience those友文-moments occasionally. These ‘意志消沉’ moments are strong in some mornings when I just woke up from sleep, I will have many hesitation in writing essays which contain many pop culture elements because they are regarded as vulgar. But after I do my morning qigong exercise, these negative thoughts will go away and I will feel a sense of exuberance ‘心开意解’ and my energy and thoughts will flow again. Maybe Qigong exercises can help ‘宅男’ overcome some of their problems because they are said to be ‘意志消沉’.

My master told me that I have those bad morning feelings because I smoke cigarettes and drink too much milk tea (a depressant) at night and those things choke my meridian and cause those lousy morning blues. After I do those qigong exercises, my meridians became unblock and restore the dynamic ‘收放自如’ or continuous equilibrium again. Perhaps the reason why Jack Ma is always positive and dynamic is because he is able to do ‘收放自如’, and that could partly be attributed to the practice of the ‘太极拳’. For example, let’s say he has an opinion on how things work and then he meet someone who has a different opinion, ‘收放自如’ enables Jack Ma to put aside (收) his opinion without feeling frustrated so that he could work out (放) a win-win compromise with the other party. However, I must caution that if you really wanted to learn ‘太极拳’, it is better to learn from a master because without moral guidance, people will use the dynamism to do reckless and audacious things and their energy will spill all over the places to form more bad karma. There are more to ‘收放自如’ but it is better that we stop here for the time being so that readers can digest the meaning in the essay.

P.S. Perhaps fans of other starlets in the Chinese language section may not agree with my choosing of 甄珍 and Brigitte Lin to represent the philosophy of beauty, but I did so because I have to consider what impact it might have on the stars themselves. Those who have had a lot of experience in the industry would have learnt how to give and take (收放自如) and thus they will not let things affect them too much. If you give the title to young stars then they might feel dizzy and we know it is not good to let people peak too early because they have not developed the emotional capacity to deal with fame and success.