In the previous essay, we talked about the Taoist concept of ‘收放自如’ and how it can be used to improve our general well being. In this essay we will look at a concept called ‘心到力到’ which I discovered from the literature of the Shaolin Temple and from my own experience of participating in doing community service at the Buddhist Tzu-Chi (慈济) Foundation. Using my knowledge from ‘金刚经’ and ‘唯识’ to interpret these experiences, I realized that our energy will flow to where our hearts (心) wants it to go and our hearts’ functions are very much controlled by the three factors of karma, trauma and euphoria.

Take for example, while you were going through some work documents and your boss asked you to retrieve a certain files from the general cabinet for him. If you are the sinful type, you will probably do it grudgingly, your train of thoughts (心) will probably stutters like this when you carry out the task - ‘I w-a-a-a-alk to the cabinets and t-a-a-a-ake the files’ instead of a smooth and effortless one like ‘I walk to the cabinets and take the files’. So the stuttering thoughts are caused by them being held back by sinful emotions like, if you are greedy you will ask ‘what is there in it for me’ or if you are the prideful ones you will probably ask ‘why ask me and not him to do it’?

The whole thing happens like a reflex and I believe this is the result of sinful karma accumulated over our many previous lives, they block our thoughts and energy and causes friction (纠结), it is like the heart wants this but the mind says otherwise. You can think of it as what happen during a body massage, when the masseur try to twist and stretch your body, you will instinctively hold back fearing that the masseur might tear your muscles and tendons. This holding back will cause great tension/damage to your muscles and extra effort from the masseur like having one foot on the car’s accelerator and the other on the brakes.

That is the rationale behind why the Confucius system of governance choose morally upright candidates (through the exam) to fill the places in the government, because people who are morally sound tend to experience less friction (纠结) overall and thus more able to do a lot of work and require smaller amount of reward and pleasures, meaning, more able to achieve ‘心到力到’.

When I was in Hong Kong two years ago, I visited the Victoria Harbour at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in Kowloon. The harbor is facing the skyline of Central in Hong Kong and that view was really breathtaking. I pondered how an ordinary man and a rich man would look at this magnificent view; I believe a positive ordinary man will look at Central as a place of opportunities while a negative ordinary man will look at it as an obstacle. On the other hand a positive rich man will be satisfied to see that he has created for many people opportunities for advancement while a negative rich man will see Central as his oyster.

A positive ordinary man will see Central as a place where he can develop his knowledge, characters and acquire wealth. This positive attitude is the result of ‘心到力到’ where positive values cultivated from young or from previous lives makes them always see things in appositive way. My experience with Buddhist Tzu-Chi (慈济) Foundation taught me to serve others with compassion and this attitude will later enable one to perceive problems at work as a need to ease the customers’ problems and a chance to improve one’s skills instead of seeing problems as enemies and the customers as nuisance and sources of frustration. Cynical people may read this and say ‘yeah right’, but I can assure you if you identify your own bad karma and repent them, you will see the world in a different way because when you resolve your bad karma, you are also reducing what Buddhist call ‘分别执着’ and that will facilitate ‘心到力到’.

Another example that could illustrate how sinful emotions obstruct ‘心到力到’ is the experience of the ‘sent down youth’ in China during the Cultural Revolution. The negative youth will see this experience as a nightmare (阴影) or punishment because their pride and greed had given them a deep sense of loss when they were sent away to do hard labour and live in great discomfort. However, there were also those virtuous youth who see this experience positively and took the opportunity to reflect on their own shortcomings and find out the problems plaguing the country and work tirelessly to eradicate these problems and ease the people’s burden. Instead of nightmares, these positive youth were able to draw inspiration and strength from their experience, and many of them later become captain of industries and political leaders like President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang.

Good values work in the same way in helping bosses build large businesses, for example if Jack Ma’s objective is to scrounge the customers for profits then chances are he will just end up owning the largest shopping mall in Hangzhou, but because his aim is to enable the customers (the small and medium enterprises), he won himself the largest shopping mall in China, if not in Asia. When you serve a need, you remove the barriers between you and others and thus expanding your vault to contain something bigger. If Jack Ma only thinks of ‘what is there in it for me’, a barrier or a position of conflict (对立) is created and thus making his space or vault smaller. Similarly, Alibaba is also a company which is committed to developing the overall well being of its employees instead of one which squeezes everything from them, and it is this effective and wholesome human resource management that produces a good work force in many successful companies. When you are in congruence with others, you will remove obstacles (障碍) and open more space in your mind to release the free flowing of energy and ideas. We will talk more about this in part 2 of this essay.

What I have mentioned so far is an illustration of how the positive search algorithm, that comes with having good moral behavior, can link a person to the good things and in life. We now switch our attention to people who see Central as an obstacle and they are inclined to regard all wealthy people who own or created them as unholy or unsavory people. I believe they may have formed this opinion based on factors which they are not consciously aware of and these factors can be very disadvantageous to every aspect of their lives.

Some of them may hold this view purely out of jealousy because even though they find these assets unholy, they themselves would very much love to own them for the wealth they can generate and the pride that comes with the ownership. It is the discrepancy of wanting something and not getting it that created jealousy, and like mentioned above, it is the inherent sins of greed and pride which obstructed their minds and body to work hard for what they want. The resultant jealousy makes them feel miserable and causes them to rationalize or seek a fake parity/solace by calling the wealthy evil who thwarted their chances for upward social mobility and repressing the interests of good people. Even though some of the wealthy are unsavory people but this act of rationalization is a kind of unhealthy chest-thumping or make-believe greatness, and If not careful, can turn into rebellious chauvinistic sentiments (好勇斗狠).

You can imagine the sensation of seeing the skyline of Central as listening to the song ‘California Girls’ by the Beach Boys and the positive people will react to it with the mood found in the song ‘Surfing USA’ and made them want to do something like go on a date, socialize to have some fun, work hard to spend some money to make themselves feel good and look good. On the other hand, the negative people will react to the same song with the sentiments of ‘American Woman’ by Guess Who.

The tune ‘Surfing USA’ was mainly composed of happy chords like the major and suspended chords while heavy rock like ‘American Woman’ are made up of minor and sometimes mixed with diminished chords. We know that minor chords are melancholic by nature and this sentiment in the came about when people can’t get the good lives suggested to them in those happy songs, and this causes the disappointment as heard in the minor chords. But disappointment is a lousy feeling and they try to overcome it with power and dominance which was represented by the loudness, fast tempo and angry cut-you-down lyrics of hard rock music. Some even used creepy diminished chords in their songs to suggest revenge or trickery to get resolution. So this use of dominance and revenge in chords is like the make believe act which can restore a fake parity to those who feel disappointed in their lives.

I am not against negative people because some of them are facing external (distortion and inefficiency in the society) and internal (inherent sins) factors which are beyond their control. I hope I can see beyond the sensational surface and alert them not to be deceived by the wrong emotions because they will link people to some dark places which prevented them from finding success and happiness in lives.

To give you an illustration on what I mean by linking a person to dark places, I will talk about a personal friend of mine whom I have known since college. She was some sort of beauty queen in college and she did not hesitate to capitalize on her beauty to manipulate people’s feelings in order to get things her way. I do not know exactly what sort of emotions or motivators are involved when you do that but I guess greed, pride, jealousy and maybe some hate are mixed together to project various types of mischievous and chauvinistic behaviors (任性). All these motivators came back to haunt her years later when she got into some financial problems.

Being her friend, I tried to help her sort out her financial trouble and in the process, I witness how the negative search algorithm (bad karma) work. Here is roughly how the discussion transpired; I suggested she take plan A, but she declined because it will not yield her a big enough profit (greed); I suggested she take plan B, but she rejected because she suspected B wanted to take advantage of her (guilt, lust or suspicion?); I suggested she take plan C, but she declined because she suspected C wanted to use this as an opportunity to seek revenge (hate or guilt from having caused harm to others); I suggested she take plan D, but she declined because it will indirectly benefit someone she disliked (hate and jealousy); I suggested she take plan E, but she declined because she suspected E will mock at her financial problems and misery (pride). Finally when I tried to correct her thinking and readjust her her focus, she regarded that as a criticism instead of good advice (pride and anger).

As you can see, the sinful motivators which gave her the euphoria and glory in her earlier years are quietly programming her mind to perceive things in a way that will lead her to imagine catastrophe, antagonism and mistrust; it was almost like a traumatic mental implosion where she has to endure self-punishment and miss out on good opportunities in all aspects of her life. This mental condition resembles those of the American counter-culture people in the sixties who are anti just about everything for no apparent reason (even the deodorant advertisement on TV is offensive to them), and I suspect it was the after effects of their excessive indulgence in sinful things like sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

Lastly, we look at how sinful elements in our behavior can harm our businesses in different ways. If you have been reading my essays you will probably know that I was a student of the Japanese economic model in the 80’s and 90’s. There were some Japanese companies who like to psyche themselves with slogans and sentiments which are based on ideas like beating the competition or uphold the honor of the companies’ tradition, and these notions of greatness, invincibility (pride) and dominance (greed) are used to generate the energy to push the employees forward.

I suspect when people has a deeply ingrained belief in virtual greatness, they will need to do something that can mimic this greatness in order to maintain the belief, and that was why many large Japanese corporations at that time had strong urges to acquire high profile, expensive and loss-making assets to fulfill this subconscious urge. Even very successful companies and smart Japanese entrepreneurs can’t resist this primal urge to splurge on expensive trophy assets. Those who can’t have trophy assets will experience a mutation in their pent-up emotions and seek out other fake things like teddy bears, mashimaros and anime as means to mimic greatness.

In some cases, this pride driven motivation had in fact created very good products like Sansui’s amplifiers, Nakamichi’s cassette players, Sony’s Betamax. This fear of losing honor (pride) has created a void in their psyche and the things (the above inventions) used to fill this void have become irreplaceable, they have almost become the reasons for their very existence. That is fine when things are constant, but when the lifestyles of consumers changed or when the industry introduced game changers like new audio and visual formats, these companies become stuck.

For example, Nakamichi should have known the sound quality of compact discs (introduced in early 80’s) can easily beat that of tapes and yet they continued to focus on cassette tapes instead of doing what is obvious and reasonable. I suspect they can’t let go of their invention (losing them is like losing the very thing that fill the void) and the fear based motivation had made them very rigid and focused only on their own needs instead of those of the customers. Sony is also equally guilty of this to some extend when they hang on to their Betamax instead of making VHS video players which were what the customers wanted at that time. If they had focus more on the customers’ needs instead of their own then perhaps they can respond faster to the market conditions and stayed on top of the game like maybe, Panasonic or Toyota.

Besides pride and greed, excessive sinful indulgences can also slowly degrade people’s capability and wisdom and eat away their business empires over time. I will use my own observation and logical deduction to chart a chain of causality and hope that it reflects how things work in reality. When the bosses begin to indulge in pleasures, greed and the fear of losing these pleasures will arise, and almost like an instinct, the bosses will listen to information and opinions that yield bad decisions.

I believe the fear of losing makes them want to listen to good news and shun bad news, and pleasures also make their minds weak and tired bosses will naturally want to hear that everything is alright with their companies. After awhile, these bosses will only think of their own interests and disregard those of the customers, employees and associates, and we know that is the beginning of the end for them. When the bosses are at this state of minds, they will instinctively want to link up with people like ‘Little Finger’ (笃背脊) in the HBO drama ‘Game of Thrones’ because they can supply the vices to the bosses and tell them sweet lies which they want to hear. Then these ‘little fingers’ will instigate conflict between the bosses and their honest lieutenants in order to reduce their influence and bolster the treacherous ones. An intense mind will seek out intense and out of balance things, when the bosses are used to euphoric sensation from the pleasures, they will develop a taste for the extreme and the vain, they will develop appetite for uninformed bets on exciting high risk investments which often turn sour.

Assuming the above is true, then I understand why Hong Kong’s Li Ka Shing advises we should not be overjoyed in good times and overly fearful during bad times. Joy leads to greed, and the greed will make us overwhelmed with the fear of losing the status quo when changes come. If we have good moral conduct and always look after the society’s needs, we will perceive changes as new opportunities to serve new needs instead of seeing changes as threats or challenges to us.

All in all, in a winner-takes-all or fear-motivated system, people will tend to see the glass as halve empty, the top guys are always insecure and wanted to outdo each other in securing power while the bottom guys are always dissatisfied and are never grateful for the things they already have. Even though it is one way to drive civilization, it also produces many side effects along the way and we will need the right kinds of moral and spiritual education in order to evolve into something more advance. Otherwise we will need to rely on robots and artificial intelligence to tell us what to do in our lives.

P.S. Now that I have introduced more and more branches of the Chinese philosophy, some may wonder which schools do I actually practice. The main body of my philosophy comes from Mahayana school and it was imparted to me by the Pure Land school. However, it was the Tibetan sutra (西藏度亡经) that provided me with the last mile connection which joint many dots together to form a more coherent picture. With that, I was able to gain deep understanding on Confucianism, Taoism, Zen Buddhism and other general matters in life. From my experience, the most important element in practicing philosophy and religion is to have the right attitude of ‘尊师重道，真诚恭敬’ in order to assimilate the values and benefits of the subjects. If readers are wondering which school is the best, I can tell you that it all depends on your affinity (缘), so try everything to find the one most suitable for your character, aptitude and environment.