As we have seen in previous essays, the root to the ability to assimilate and create lies in good virtues or moral behavior which enabled ‘收放自如’ that is essential in helping us to maintain a balance and do well in an ever changing reality. Besides moral cultivation, ‘太极拳’, calligraphy and traditional Chinese dance also help in enhancing ‘收放自如’ in our behaviour. Take calligraphy for example, in order to write the character ‘一’ (one), you need to start by pressing (放) the brush on to the paper, followed by gently lifting (收) the wrist and sweep the brush across and end it by turning the wrist gently (收 and 放) to make a delicate ‘slanted and pointy tail’.

What it does is to consciously attune the mind to the state of ‘收放自如’ so that a person can be focused, relaxed and patient, which are characteristics needed to perform delicate and meticulous works that the people in the Confucius Belt are famous for. These characters reduce the tendency for obsessive compulsive impulses or the impulses to overreact such as swiping a fly with a large hammer. When one is relaxed, the sensation of time slow down, the body becomes less tense/dense or resistant and that facilitates the Qi to circulate more freely around the body to make one feeling energetic. In fact, the very act of writing ordinary Chinese characters will attune the mind in this way and I believe it also gives people a good sense of balance because the Chinese characters will look nice only when they are written in a good proportion and this sense of balance will induce us to find the right equilibrium in our daily affairs to a certain degree.

We can also demonstrate the above with the understanding on the workings of the Yinyang frames of somethingness and nothingness or ‘刹那生灭’ as mentioned in the essay 'Lantau Island Tian Tan Buddha (Genesis)', with Yin as ‘收’ and Yang as ‘放’. According to many philosophers and scientists in this field, time does not have a set of tangible properties or we often hear others describe it as an ‘illusion’. I believe by ‘illusion’ it means that it does not have fix measurement or description and that is why we experience time differently. Say given a fix interval of time, someone on earth may experience it as one year while someone in a space ship far away may experience that same interval as only an hour. So the only way to reconcile this conundrum is to conclude that time does not have a fix value, its value depends entirely on other circumstantial factors.

A more common way to experience this time paradox is to observe the different perceptions of time when we are drunk and when we are sober. When we are drunk, the sensation of time slow down and that is why drunk people can talk the whole night without feeling bored or tired. The whole event feels like only maybe one or two hours when in fact they have already spent six normal hours doing it. If we put this behavior of time in a diagram using the concept of刹那生灭, the difference in the characteristics of these ‘Yinyang frames’ will look something like this:

I-I-I-I-I-I-I (sober/six hours)

(a)

I-----I-----I (drunk or relax/two hours)

(b)

In the above diagram, ‘ I ’ denotes the point of self awareness or somethingness while ‘ - ’ denotes nothingness, and the more sober a person is the more he is aware of himself and the sense of time. According to the concept of 刹那生灭, the more virtuous a person (or virtuous in their previous lives), the more relax he is and as such his existence generates lesser ‘yinyang frames’. This means that his existence is oscillating at a lower frequency (maybe alpha wave) compared to the more sinful people. So it is a bit like the award winning novel of ‘Folding Beijing’, I have not read it but I believe it says something like people from different classes live in slightly different dimensions and they experience time differently with some having more time while others have less.

The reason why a virtuous person is running on a lower frequency is something like this, imagine he practice the yielding characteristics of Confucianism or any other branches of moral ethics, he will always seek out to equalize the disparity between himself and others like being generous to the poor or being humble and benevolent towards the defeated and weak. As he relinquishes his self interest, he is effectively reducing the awareness of self (the ‘I’ in the above diagram) and the disparity with others, and as a result his frequency of existence is lowered like in the case of (b). On the other hand a sinful person is constantly mindful of his own interests or the ‘I’ and thus his frequency of existence resembles more of (a).

So you may ask what is the advantage of having a low frequency? For a start, the higher realms like the various heavens are running on lower frequencies, the lower the frequencies the higher up we go and Buddhists will know this very well when they study ‘四禅八定’ and the wonders that come with it. Lower frequency means one’s mind is closer to being ‘清静平等’ and as said before in the essay ‘黄大仙’, that is the foundation to all forms of intelligence and wisdom. If the mind is full of ripples like (a), then one is more likely to lose focus, has a ‘monkey brain’, easily stressed out and lack patience (a function of time) due to the interference of sin and a heightened sense of self.

You may also regard (a) as being someone who experiences great difficulties in ‘moving forward’ because the diagrams show that (b) only requires two units of effort to move while (a) need six units of effort to move the same distance or perform the same tasks. The reason for this is that the sinful emotions tend to make the mind very immersed to various experiences as if it is a kind of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) or the tendency to use unnecessary force to do something simple. For example, greed will make a person to want a lot of reward (OCD) in order to be motivated enough to do something or anger or antagonism will make a person want to react vigorously and violently (OCD) to even out some discomfort or inconvenience. On the other hand, someone who is or has practiced the yielding qualities of moral conducts will find it easy to detach from one task to another and allow them to achieve more with lesser stress and effort (fuel efficient). This is what I meant when I say ‘收放自如’ enabled the Qi to circulate more freely and makes one energetic and dynamic.

There are also situations where OCD characteristics are caused by traumatic experiences instead of sinful behavior, for example, children who grew up with ‘tiger parenting’ may experience what I call a stuttering train of thoughts. These children’s wishes are always subordinated without any good reasons and these rejections created deep impression of obstacles in their mind that acted as brakes which causes their thoughts to progress with much friction and resistance. Because of that their overall energy and performance suffers, and great efforts and rewards are required by these children to do simple things. However, if the tiger parents give reasonable explanation on their strict control then the children will show less tendencies of the above, or if their children are born virtuous then they too will have the capacity to absorb these rejections and trauma and avoided the negative effect of strict parenting (the best thing to do is don’t pay too much attention to the negative things).

This virtuous capacity has a very deep meaning in the context of 刹那生灭 or the frequency of existence, as Confucius says, ‘when the container is full, it will keel over and out pours the content’, the bigger the virtuous capacity (大器), the bigger is a person’s vault (金库). Let’s say a person is very generous and he is willing to give much away without acutely expecting for a return and this whole act may look like this:

(sacrifice) ---------------------------------(pay back)

On the other hand, a miserly person may give away something but will also expect a quick return and the whole act may look like this:

(sacrifice)---------(pay back)

The difference in the length of the two intervals between sacrifice and payback determines the size of a person’s ‘vault’ or capacity and the bigger the vault, the more wealth a person can contain, and they correspond with the characteristics of the frequency of existence.

As we know, a sinful person are often vulnerable to sinful behaviors like, greed will make them gamble or fall prey to get rich quick schemes, and pride or jealousy will make them spend all their money to buy the best and the most exclusive. Furthermore, laziness, anxiety, anger and lust will cause them to use up their Qi or energy excessively. So, taken together we can say that a sinful person (someone who did sinful things in their previous lives) will have a small vault and as a result they can’t hold on to their wealth, health and energy. In Confucius terms, they have a small container and thus the content will spill over more frequently.

In the next essay, I will use more Buddhist practices like Zen and ‘般若’ to demonstrate other aspects of this topic. I always feel that if practitioners rely on strict discipline to behave themselves, they will tend to numb their feelings by numbing certain important parts of the brain like the amygdale. I believe when if we numb our brains it will impede us from the feelings of love and compassion which are needed in assimilation and learning. That is why if we can understand the truth better then we will voluntarily discipline ourselves and rely less on numbing and its potential negative effects.