Chapter Four

Fighting in the right battle field.

If we had to go to a war, we would have to know first of all where the battle field was and who the enemies were. We would have to find out as much as possible about the enemies, such as what they looked like, what uniform they wore, what language they spoke, what tactics they used and everything about them. If the battle field was in Vietnam, we couldn't just go as near as Thailand, Laos or Cambodia. We would have to go to Vietnam to fight the enemies.

Likewise, if we are going to declare war with our mental turmoil so that we could restore our inner peace, initially we must try to locate our battle field as well as the face of our enemies. Unfortunately, this is very difficult to do as far as our mental enemy is concerned. For centuries, we have been trying to understand our minds but it almost looks like we are losing in this battle field. Nowadays, we end up with more and more people who are affected by various degrees of mental illness from stress, long term anxiety, depression, breakdowns to suicide. Through medical research, the best offer we have for mankind is some form of sedatives or drugs, if not, mental hospital and more drugs. A great number of people in our society have learnt to rely on drugs and are trapped in their vicious circle. Again, medical science still perpetually tries to find more drugs to combat the side effects of the previous drugs they offered and this cycle goes on and on. During the process of the cure, some people's lives have been totally ruined and destroyed. They expected to find some light at the end of this dark tunnel but to some of them this dark tunnel has turned into an abyss. There is no need to talk about the harm caused by the illegal drugs used among youngsters and a lot of people nowadays. Once people are hooked on drugs, it is only a matter of time before disaster strikes. Only a blind society would allow drug taking to become a culture !

What has gone wrong ? Could it be possible that we might be fighting in the wrong battle field and with the wrong enemies?

I must, first of all, say that I know nothing about how the brain works. I am sure that the brain has to have something to do with the whole of our nervous system. I am not arguing about this fact. I want to pinpoint the abstract side of our life-form, the part that we call the mind which revolves around our thoughts, feelings and emotions. We have to admit as well that this life-form(body-mind) is indeed a mystery. The mysterious part is ,of course, not the body but the mind. If the mind was that easy and simple to understand, the world wouldn't be as it is right now. We wouldn't have had people queuing up to kill themselves because of the fall of Wall Street. Ultimately, we wouldn't have had wars in all corners of the world and endless suffering amongst mankind.

People might want to ask me whether I am qualified to talk about the mind if I know nothing about the brain. Maybe this lack of knowledge has turned out to be a blessing instead of a curse. That is because I can think independently. I am not led to think that my brain is responsible for all my thoughts and that the chemicals in my brain are in charge of my feelings and emotions and they are the cause of my mental turmoil. This is the whole point as far as I am concerned. By not thinking like I was led to believe, it probably gives me a better chance to observe my inner abstract nature differently and allow me to spot the real face of the enemy and fight in the right battle field.

The complication and the difficulty in knowing the mind obviously lies in its abstraction, its formlessness as well as its rapid motion. We all talk about our mind as if we know it very well. I decided to ask the students in my Tai chi class to put their hands on the place where they think their minds are without giving them any clear definition. I wanted to see their general response to this abstract form which we think we know. The outcome was very interesting because I had students put their hands on about ten different places. It was quite obvious that the majority of students about 70% roughly, had put their hands on different part of their heads, about 20% put their hands on their chest, the rest put their hands on either the front or the back of their necks, on their stomach, on their backs, on the knees, on the point that the middle finger and the thumb meet and a couple of students couldn't find the mind. I also created a situation by throwing two wooden blocks on the floor while the students were closing their eyes. This caused a sudden fright and later I asked them where the frightening feeling landed. The outcome changed again.

These rough findings have shown the contrasting concepts about the location of the mind between eastern people and western people. It is quite obvious that western people think that the mind is in their heads while eastern people would place their hands on their chest except some intellectual people who might put their hands on their heads. Obviously, I haven't done any research among eastern people (I mean those who have Buddhism as their religion) but why am I so sure ? That is because the mind behind the chest is the Buddhist way of thinking. Only eastern intellectuals would question seriously whether the thoughts come out from the brain or the mind as behind the chest. I know it because I asked this question myself to my meditation teacher, Ven. Buddhadasa, Suan Moke, in a forest monastery in the south of Thailand, when I was a student and began to be interested in Buddhism. This was his answer: "Go and look for yourself where the thoughts come from." I wasn't satisfied with the answer then. Obviously, it was because I wanted something rather instant which could fulfil my curiosity there and then like most young people would feel. Nevertheless, I took his advice. What he didn't tell me was how difficult it was to simply look at it yourself. It took me many years indeed before I could understand. My teacher didn't tell me to think about it but to look at it instead which is very different.

Some people may feel offended if I say that intellectual people are the products of their education. We have had it drummed in since childhood that the brain is the headquarters and is responsible for everything we think and do in our life. For western people feelings and emotions rest in the heart as the abstract nature behind the chest. As for eastern people, when we talk about the mind, we automatically mean the abstract nature behind our chest where we can feel joy and happiness as well as the unpleasant and painful feelings. Old people in Thailand, who have experience in meditation, would totally disregard the brain as something which is responsible for the arising of their thoughts and feelings. They would view all this abstract nature as the product of their minds (as behind the chest) and use meditation as a tool to keep their minds in good balance. However, these rough findings have confirmed the confusion, the uncertainty and the ambiguity of our knowledge about our abstract nature- the mind, the thoughts, feelings and emotions.

As far as I am concerned, this confusion is in fact a very good sign and definitely not a bad one. It is as if we drove along a road and suddenly we began to suspect that we were taking the wrong route. This doubt is a good indication because that is the beginning of trying to put things right. If we had never questioned, we would have been totally ignorant about the right turn and would have driven deeper and farther on the wrong route which might lead us to danger. So, please don't be offended about what I said earlier.

After a good many years of taking my teacher's advice about looking into my thoughts and finding where they come from, I gradually find out for myself that this looking is not as easy as it sounds at all. I didn't realise at the time of asking the question that this is looking into my own life's drama, looking at my own tears and laughters, looking at every twist and turn of my emotions which affect every living cell of my existence and above all looking at the thoughts which bombard me as if a whole army of soldiers is firing bullets at me all at the same time. There were times when I found myself staring into an abyss where there was no way out whatsoever and within split seconds I was whisked away into heaven. Time after time, I found myself sighing with tremendous relief to be able to come out from the staggering pain so quickly. Before I knew how to look at my thoughts, in some near disastrous situation, I should have had turned into a nervous wreck and totally broken down which didn't exactly happen. I couldn't believe myself how I could handle those awful situations so calmly. It really puzzled me how life can change so drastically into something so positive by simply learning how to look into our inner-self. I began to understand why the Buddha led people to look at the suffering and the end of suffering and not the positive side of happiness. I hear intellectual people casually judging the sublime Buddha by saying that he only talks about the negative side of life, the suffering, the sorrow and that makes him a pessimist. Well, I can only warn those people to hold their horses and investigate before criticising the Buddha again. They can be very wrong. The kind of happiness which most people adore when they can have what they want is merely the suffering-to-be when they lose whatever they want. I never realised how life can be so emotionally fragile and complicated, not until I began looking into it. I also found out that apart from the major or serious mental turmoils that we all have from time to time, there are also lots of minor ones which we don't think are the problems, i.e. feeling a bit annoyed when our cup of tea or coffee does not meet our taste or our curry is not salty or hot enough, feeling agitated when our room-mates have some annoying personal habits, feeling resentful when someone doesn't agree with what we say or do not praise us when we think they should have or some very simple feelings of embarrassment in awkward situations, and so on. As a matter of fact, those minor feelings which have never been corrected, lead to the major feelings which give us serious turmoil. If we compare our serious problems in life like broken hearts, having illnesses, losing someone we love and so on as crashing a car or having a serious accident whilst minor problems in life are like driving a car on a road which is full of pot-holes. Of course, there is no major harm done to the car or the driver but it does make people in the car feel a bit uncomfortable especially when the car falls into one every few minutes. The journey is not smooth at all. It can also be compared to having hiccups. There is no harm done to our body but it makes us feel very uncomfortable, doesn't it ? We take all these minor problems for granted and really think they are part of our lives, no major harm done. As far as the Buddha is concerned, those minor problems must be sorted out and this can prevent major turmoil from happening. They seem trivial but they are like individual weak cells which spread into cancer.

It gradually itself revealed to me as well that we are indeed our own enemy and that the battle field is not out there at all, it is right in the middle of our heart, our life form. We like to blame others for the pain we have and the last person to blame is ourselves. Well, that thought has slowly disappeared ever since I began to seriously look into my inner-self. Despise the hard work, I would never wish to trade this knowledge for anything else because this is the only survival gear, the Buddha had offered to me and to mankind, which is like a torch charged with full batteries and can take us out from some dark and frightening labyrinth full of fierce animals and booby traps. Only stupid people want to throw their only survival tool away.

The knowledge about looking into my thoughts and feelings has gradually become clearer as time goes by. Despise the difficulty, I will try my best to share this with my students. Therefore, it will be easier to understand if I use the cartoon characters Tom and Jerry to explain about our mental phenomena.

We can't help thinking that thoughts actually come from our brain. Therefore, I would represent Jerry's little house in the wall as our brain (the grey matter in our skull) and Jerry as the thought. We can see right away that there are two things which are totally different here. The little house in the wall or the brain is static (please understand that I am not talking about the functioning of the brain-cells.) and Jerry or the thought is dynamic. One is matter and one is abstract and formless. The further difficulty is that Jerry who has the ability to move also moves extremely fast. We cannot compare the speed of our thoughts with anything because there is nothing to compare with.

The next thing we have to look at is that it is Jerry who runs wild around the owner's house; he helps himself to food from the fridge and messes the house up. Our thoughts work exactly like Jerry. We can dismiss all the positive, constructive and creative thoughts because they are not the problem which cause our mental turbulence. It is the painful, agonising and unwanted thoughts which we want to go to war with. These are the thoughts which keep on bothering us in the middle of the night and do not allow us to have a good night sleep. They are like water rushing out from a faulty tap and we have no control over them no matter how much we want to switch them off. This rapid motion of thoughts is exactly the way Jerry runs wild in his owner's house and the owner of the house ( the human) has no control over him because of his staggering speed.

Apart from thoughts, we also have feelings or emotion. After a good many years of looking at my thoughts and my feelings, I can say for a fact that mental feelings and emotions are the result of thoughts. Some thoughts result in positive feeling, some thoughts result in negative feeling and some thoughts result in neutral feeling or no feeling. The link between thoughts and feelings happens so quickly that we cannot spot the actual joint. When we worry about something, it feels like our heads perpetually carry a block of thoughts and our hearts constantly carry a block of weight. Behind the scene is in fact thoughts and feelings conditioning each other at a staggering speed. It works exactly like a roll of film running at speed to create motion pictures. The motion picture we see on the screen is made up of certain number of individual frames of each picture which run constantly at a certain speed. If our mental turmoil is the motion picture we see on the screen, our thoughts and feelings are the individual frames of picture which run in and out in a staggering speed.

At this moment, I am sitting in front of my mother's picture on the shrine. When I look at her picture, suddenly my thoughts run like a roll of film about all the time we spent and cherished together, now I have just felt a lump in my throat, my eyes have already welled up with water. At this very moment, my warm tears are rolling down my cheeks while my hands are busy putting more words on the computer's screen. I can also see the sadness and sorrow in my heart and the desperate feeling of wanting to see my mother, who passed away 7 months ago, to touch her, to talk to her and to tell her about my children and what I am doing in England. Then, I break down and sob.

Well, I had a good cry and had to walk away from my computer to make myself a cup of tea. The emotion is very real. Despise their formlessness and abstraction, they are real enough to cause people to have a breakdown. We think about something so dreadful which had happened to us or someone we love, simultaneously, our feelings and emotions correspond to what we thought. Feelings and emotions are very private and are extremely difficult to express. We can never find adequate and proper words to express our inner feelings right to the core. What we manage to express is only a fraction of what we truly feel. That's why we all keep on saying that no one knows how we feel unless they are in the same shoes. Experiencing feelings and emotions is a mental phenomenon that we are all familiar with, isn't it ?

To make this clear, I have to turn Jerry into a female mouse who could get pregnant and have a baby. Mother Jerry is the thought, baby mouse is the mental feelings and emotions. I have to make Jerry into a mother because if we want to abort the baby, we only have to abort the mother. This sounds a very harsh imagery but it portrays exactly what happens. If we want to get rid of our painful feelings and emotions, we have to get rid of our thoughts first. Once the mother is not there, she cannot get pregnant and have a baby. Again, some people might think that there is nothing wrong with having feelings and emotions and why do we have to get rid of them ? This is quite true. When we see the news about the suffering of refugees, the casualties from wars, the famine in Africa, Diana's tragic death, Louise Woodward's conviction, etc., we are moved with emotion. A lot of us were in tears. If we don't have feelings and emotions, it won't be worth living. Loving, kindness and compassion are emotions which are the source of all Samaritan and creative works. We definitely do not want to combat these positive feelings and emotions. Without these good feelings, the world would end tomorrow ! So, please try to understand for the moment that we are talking about the painful thoughts and feelings which drive people towards breakdown and suicide. The part that we desperately don't want to think and don't want to feel but we just cannot get rid of and in the end have to turn to alcohol or drugs for refuge. I am sure people can identify with this part of our lives. The older we are, the more we have to go through those unpleasant experiences. And now, we are reaching the point of how to get rid of these two things-unwanted thoughts and unwanted feelings.

As a result, we have to first of all identify who or what is the real problem. Is it that little house in the wall or is it Jerry ? If we have a good look, the house is staying still all the time, isn't it ? It is Jerry who is doing the running all along and driving the owner of the house (us) up the wall. It is Jerry who steals food from the fridge and stocks it in his room. Is it true that it is Jerry who is the real enemy all the time, and not his tiny house in the wall ?

It is very important at this stage that we ask the right question. I really would like to think that it is our thoughts and emotions which condition the chemicals in our brain and not the other way round like scientists have led us to think. If it is the chemicals in our brain which condition the way we think and feel, we have no choice but to use drugs and tamper with nature. If it is really the thoughts and emotions which condition the chemicals in our brain, we had to use something else and certainly not drugs. It is very important to ask this question at this stage because the solution will be totally different. If the latter (thoughts and emotions condition the chemicals in our brain) is correct, it could lead us to fight in the right battle field with the right enemies. I am quite sure that we have bombed the wrong target all along and that's why we can never kill the enemies off. Instead of getting rid of Jerry, we keep on tampering with and messing up his little house in the wall as well as creating more and more Jerry. It could be that the real enemy hasn't yet been acknowledged and therefore the solution doesn't work. Scientists have even preserved parts of the brain of important people in the past just to find out how they were different from others. The truth is that we can learn very little or nothing at all from the dead organism of the grey matter. Body-mind is one entity, not two separate things. We cannot possibly learn about our physical body without linking it to the functioning of the mind.

When the identification of the problem is not clear, the answer can easily be faulty. The way I look at the problem of the use of drugs to combat our mental turmoil is that not only we cannot identify the true face of the enemy, we also literally create more enemy ourselves. Metaphorically speaking, we throw in another mouse to catch Jerry. As a result, we cannot solve the problem because two mice won't kill each other. They will play together instead. Alternatively, we try to put out a fire by throwing more gasoline into it. And how can we epect to extinguish the fire ? Likewise, we use one thought to sort the other thought out. In other words, we use our thoughts to find an answer to cure our mental turmoil. This is what I mean by throwing another mouse to catch Jerry. Jerry is our mental turmoil and the cure by using drugs is basically using another mouse to catch Jerry. And this settlement just doesn't work out. That is why we cannot seem to combat our mental turmoil. As time goes by and society become more complex, the number of mental patients of various degrees seems to increase drastically. The reason why we cannot find the right answer for the cure or keep on throwing in another mouse is basically because we cannot think away from our thoughts.

The reason we cannot think away from our thought is that no matter what we do, we will always be the product of our own thoughts. What make it even worse is that our whole education is based on creating more and more Jerry as well as messing up his little house in the wall. What chance do we have in thinking away from our thoughts ? It is getting a bit difficult to understand, isn't it ? I am sure a lot of people do not even know what I mean by this. Please be patient and carry on reading this with an open mind and great reservation.

The way the world goes is that no matter what we do in terms of solving problems, we keep on throwing in another mouse and another mouse just to kill the first mouse off. Our heads are now inundated with mice. The whole of our universe is drowning in mice. We are actually submerged in mice crawling all over us. We try to think of an answer; that answer becomes another thought and another thought and so on and on endlessly. It is like we are standing in a room with mirrors all round. No matter what we do, we cannot get away from seeing the reflection of ourselves. likewise, we cannot get away from our own thoughts. If the thought or Jerry is the real problem or the real enemy, the next question is how can we deal with it ? If we want to kill Jerry or our own thoughts, what or how shall we begin ? When people begin to ask this question seriously, we have reached the crucial stage of our life. Our spiritual journey is about to begin. However, the question of how to get away from our own thoughts is indeed the most difficult task man has to face.

This is the point when we have to rely on some guided wisdom. We cannot do it on our own. Without the guided wisdom, there is no way we would know that Tom is in fact the key to killing Jerry off. Indeed, we have to wake Tom up so that he can sort Jerry out. Who is Tom ? Tom is definitely not another mouse ! Tom is another abstract nature we all have but don't know how to use and that is the self-awareness or self-consciousness. The conscious nature is not in the faculty of thoughts. They are two totally different functions. If self-awareness is the tool to kill off our thoughts, it doesn't look like a tool at all, does it ? Nevertheless, this is the gateway opening up to a new kind of knowledge which has the most significant impact to our lives as far as our inner peace is concerned. The sad truth is that our main stream education knows nothing about this knowledge.

When we don't even know that self-consciousness is the key to sort our thoughts out, we don't know how to use it either. People may want to argue that we all have our self-awareness and consciousness but why do I say that we don't know how to use it. It is quite true that we all have a natural level of self-awareness or consciousness. The fact is that the natural level of consciousness that we all have is too weak and it isn't strong or quick enough to know and catch the thoughts. In comparison, we all have Tom in our house to begin with but he spends most of his time sleeping in the corner and is not quite aware that Jerry has been wrecking his owner's house and the fridge. Tom is in the twilight state. Sometimes he knows and sometimes he doesn't know. He is too lazy; he just wants to sleep. This is exactly how our natural consciousness works. It looks like we know we have problems and we even try to do something about it. But for some reason, we cannot say that we are truly happy and content. This is what I mean by driving on a road full of pot-holes or having hiccups. Deep down, we have a feeling that something is missing in our life and we don't know what it is. In trying to fill the gap in life, people search for material wealth, higher status, fame and thrive on some cheap thrill and excitement. In the Buddhist sense, this kind of feeling is classed as not knowing, not aware and not conscious.

In trying to catch Jerry, the answer is that Tom cannot be too lazy anymore, he has to be much more alert and conscious. So, we are reaching a further step of waking Tom up and training him to be alert and quick to respond. Once Tom is woken up, being trained to be quick and alert, he will spot for himself that Jerry has been running riot and wrecking his owner's house and the fridge. Without waking the nature of our consciousness up, there is no way we can see the thoughts independently. Prior to waking Tom up, our thoughts and consciousness mingle into one and we cannot distinguish what is what. Nothing is clear, everything is blurred. That's why we cannot acknowledge the true face of our enemy.

Once Tom has spotted Jerry, it doesn't mean that the problem is solved. That is just the beginning of a life long journey. That is because Jerry can run a million times faster than Tom. Even though Tom has been woken up and can acknowledge the problem concerning Jerry, his skill in catching this mouse is not good enough yet. He cannot run quick enough to catch Jerry. He has to keep on training himself to run very fast. To solve the problem of stopping Jerry wrecking the owner's house, Tom has to run faster than Jerry or at least run along side with Jerry so that he can scare Jerry off.

Now, the process of waking Tom up and training him to run very fast is purely a skill. This knowledge exists only in Buddhism. In Buddhist practice, this skill is called samadha-vipassana-bhavana, the skill of developing a high level of self-awareness or consciousness. This process has absolutely nothing to do with Jerry or the faculty of exercising our thoughts. The process of waking Tom up and training him to run fast is everything we do in my Tai chi class which revolves around breathing deeply, slowing our movements right down and being with the immediate moment. Initially, the slow movement is the key which opens the gateway to the higher level of self-awareness or better concentration. All these are the actual technique of meditation or training Tom to run fast. This is also what Tai chi all about.

Once Tom can run as quickly as Jerry, the problem can be solved, Jerry will be caught and the owner's house (us) will be at peace once again. Vice versa, once the level of our self-consciousness is raised, the speed of our thoughts slows down on its own. In some cases, the thoughts might totally disappear during meditation. Once Jerry the mother is aborted, she cannot have a baby. Once there are no thoughts, there is no cause for further feelings and emotions. The mental turmoil has gone as well. Please understand that we are delving into the detail of our existence which is thoughts and feelings. And this is the actual technique of meditation. When the practice is proceeding, the faculty of thoughts is slowing down. This crucial practice can lead us to see the true nature of our mental state which will give us the right wisdom or insight. Once we have the full understanding about our abstract nature as thoughts and emotions, we can later use them wisely. So, we are not talking about suppressing our thoughts altogether or forever and make ourselves useless. The faculty of thoughts is our mental organ. It is there for us to use but we must know how to use it for constructive reasons and not destructive ones to guarantee minimum suffering and more peace in society. To understand the functioning of thoughts, we must slow them down first and this is what this technique of developing self-awareness is all about.

Without waking the nature of our consciousness up, there is no way we can view our thoughts and emotions independently. If we cannot view thoughts independently, we are trapped in a vicious circle. The more we want to solve our problems, the more we create the problems. For centuries, we have kept on finding more facts and figures and hoping that we can discover more knowledge about ourselves and the universe. In the end, the world is flooded with facts, figures and information which are no use to us in solving our mental problems at all. The majority of those facts are totally irrelevant to our lives as human-beings let alone have anything to do with our inner peace, yet a big number of people cannot start their day without injecting more facts and figures into their head by reading newspapers. As a result, we give high values to trivial matters which again revolve around wealth, power and status. We adore people who are rich and famous. We highly respect intellectual people, whose ego might fill the whole of the universe, but it is all right as long as he has a big memory box and can talk about anything underneath the sun and can produce more facts and figures and can explain abstract equations and concepts. We also spend more than three quarters of our time talking about trivial matters. We laugh at sick jokes. We do a lot of things just for the sake of it. There is no need to talk about our television programs. Basically, we are all part of this gigantic net of collecting more and more rubbish in our brains. Unfortunately, our whole education is responsible for this human tragedy. Humankind is in deep water; we have set ourselves a time bomb by not understand our life fully, yet we have no idea at all and that is very sad indeed.

I am responsible for every word I say. Please do not ask me for any facts, figures and information to back up my words because I cannot offer any of those. My approach to this knowledge is very different from what our education is based on. Our modern education is based on creating more and more Jerry whilst mine is based on waking Tom up. We cannot possibly talk about the same thing. Therefore, my Tai chi students, who have gone through some sessions of waking Tom up, would find it very difficult to convey this knowledge to their friends and loved ones. Everyone has a similar experience that they wish to tell someone but don't quite know how to put it. I don't talk about this outside my Tai chi class at all. If I cannot make people wake Tom up, there is no way I would get engage in this kind of talk. People wouldn't understand, not even any intellectual genius.

It isn't easy for me to stand here in front of all the extreme intellectuals and denounce what they strongly believe in if I don't see the need to do so. I am either mad, insane or desperately want people to know something so very important to their lives. As far as our mental turmoil and its answer are concerned, yes, I want to say that we have been fighting in the wrong battle field all along. I want to say that the chemicals in our brains do not take the full responsibility for messing our lives up. I am a woman, I have three children, I have been through all the ups and downs of my hormones and chemicals in my brain and I also know about the Buddha's knowledge. Judging from the outcome of my practice, I want to say that it is the ignorance towards our mental function which is fully responsible for messing our life up. It is our destructive thoughts and feelings such as anger, hatred, greed, jealousy, etc. which is responsible for the imbalance of the chemicals in our brains which subsequently affect our physical functioning, i.e. breathing, heart beating, blood pressure, the release of different enzymes and so on. When we can put our thoughts and feelings in good balance through meditation practice, we can also experience our physical well-being. People who practice Tai chi, yoga or awareness of breathing can clearly see the link and the interaction between the mental and physical states.

Please try to understand that I don't have any intention, not in the slightest, to confuse anyone especially young people like students. It will be very wrong and immoral for me to do so. That's why I always give people the chance to judge for themselves. If this whole thing is unsound for anyone, please forget about everything I say and don't get confused. I don't mind to be looked at as "a mad Chinese woman in the neighbourhood." It doesn't matter to me at all. Please don't worry about my feelings. I am more worried about your feelings. So, if you get confused, please breath deeply, slow down and be with your immediate moment, you'll feel better again.

Ultimately, we all need to have some guided wisdom to begin with but the rest of the effort comes down to the individual. The more we carry on with the practice of developing awareness, the more we will be free from our tormenting thoughts and painful feelings and the more we can maintain our sanity and inner peace. Through my twenty three years of experience of trying to wake Tom up and train him to run as quickly as Jerry, I know as well that Tom is always ready to curl up and sleep the moment I am complacent. No matter how much we think we have done our practice, our thoughts are always ready to play up when they have the chance to do so. That's why the Buddha's very last warning was to tell his disciples not to be complacent and that the practice was for today, not tomorrow. Among all the established religions, the Buddha has laid down the most direct and distinctive knowledge about the skill of waking Tom up and training him to run fast. In Buddhism, this practice is called vipassana-bhavana which is the term I repeated very often in my book-"Dear Colin, What is the meaning of life ?".

I have to tell the truth that it is hard work and not at all easy but do we have any better choice than this ? We can either carry on being ignorant and pretend that we have never heard about all this or at least being sceptical about the issue or try to adopt this skill of waking Tom up and prove it for ourselves. No matter how much I want to eat this apple for everyone, I can't. Everyone has to eat and taste his own apple and appreciate it for themselves. Once again, I am very sorry to put all this in your heads. I am sure a lot of you took up Tai chi just for a bit of relaxation and did not expect to hear all these things. I hope I do not confuse you too much and wish you all the best of luck in your life.