Requirement
four
Simplicity
The
next requirement which can help to speed up your mind journey towards eternity
is about learning how to be simple. I place this as a requirement because it is
quite possible to make your life simple now even before you know how to walk
the path.
You
must always bear in mind that the end of this journey that you are about to
embark on is to get rid of your self-centredness or ego. Selflessness and
simplicity share the same nature.
Eternity or the innocent world is the state of the ultimate simplicity.
How simple it is, is beyond the comprehension of normal people. This sheer
simplicity even caused the Buddha to be inclined not to teach at first for fear
that no one would understand. That ultimate simplicity is nonetheless the same
nature as the total disappearance of an ego.
At
this stage, it is about trying to prepare ourselves to be ready for that
ultimate simplicity. So, you have to do just that - trying to be and to feel simple
to begin with. The fact is that people with a big ego are not simple. In the
reverse, simple people tend to have a smaller ego. It means that as long as you
can keep and make yourself simple, you automatically keep the size of your ego
down, which will make you more qualified to walk the path.
Perhaps
it might be easier to see the opposite qualities first. People with sizable
egos tend to have at least one or more of these characteristics about them -
that is either being arrogant, conceited, big-headed, full of oneself,
superior, smug, difficult, pretentious, overconfident, expensive, fussy, or the
like. Those are all the qualities which build around the self, the extension
from the original self resulting from ignorance.
On
the other hand, the following qualities will help to keep your ego down and
thus simple. They are: being easy-going, unpretentious, down-to-earth, plain,
ordinary, practical, trouble free, undemanding, uncomplicated, unfussy, basic,
modest, economical, unaffected, humble, natural, unnoticed and so on.
If
you have passed your first requirement and are serious about walking the path,
I am quite sure that you already have some of those simple qualities in you.
Keep it that way and you will be all right.
The
higher the status you have, whether that status is brought about by having
wealth, fame or power, the more likely you will be to lose your simplicity.
High status allows your ego to bloom and flourish very nicely. In the end, you
will lose touch with ordinariness. We have seen enough examples of famous
people who are arrogant and full of themselves. Being rich and wealthy allows
you to have fleets of servants waiting on you. With one snap of the fingers,
everything is done on your demand. In the end, these people do not even know
how to open doors for themselves. It is very sad but unfortunately most people
cannot see it and struggle to be like that. Our whole culture is geared up to
fulfil that dream for people which is even sadder and more disastrous.
I
want you to see wealth, fame and power as signs of danger. They are big
obstacles which bar you from walking the path easily. Even monks are not safe
if they allow all those worldly values to take over their lives. It makes them
lose their simplicity and miss the goal they are supposed to achieve.
However,
it is not fair to say that all high status people are the same, because they
are not. Indeed, there are people who are classed as being in the upper band of
society but who can be very down-to-earth and lead a very simple life. We
admire these people because deep down we admire the simplicity that these
people can relate to.
Among
all the simple qualities I mentioned above, making yourself unnoticed is very
healthy if you seriously want to walk this path to the ultimate simplicity. It
is very much so especially if you have a great deal of talent in you. It is
rather difficult to do in our modern society where most people want to be noticed
one way or another. People do a lot of silly things, even fake illness and
undergo surgery because they want to feel special and be noticed. I remember a
story line which was depicted on the television drama 'London burning' and was
quite true to real life. The firemen wanted to find out who kept on setting off
the false alarm at this hospital. In the end, they found that a window cleaner
did it. When he was asked why he wanted to do that, he answered that he wanted
to be noticed and it brought some excitement into his life because he was bored
to death by what he was doing - cleaning windows every day.
The
lack of wisdom about the goal of life and the ultimate simplicity makes people
misunderstand life and turns something that is supposed to be healthy into a
big problem which is very sad indeed.
The
following is a check list which can help you to stay in touch with simplicity
and ordinariness.
1) Working too much with your brain and
less with your hands can make you lose touch with simplicity. Simple tasks
around the house are healthy. The lower the job you can do, the simpler you can
be. If you are young and still live at home with your parents, don't let your
mother wait on you. Clean up your own mess. Do things by yourself, cooking,
ironing, washing and so on. All this work can keep you down to the ground and
you will survive the world better.
2) Never be too big-headed and too special
so that you cannot clean a toilet. Don't let the toilet cleaning be your
mother's or a cleaner's job. Do it yourself sometimes. It can be fun and indeed
healthy for your spirit.
3) Gardening work is healthy to your
spirit. It allows you to have direct contact with nature and simplicity which
you want to achieve.
4) Never be so big-headed and important
that you cannot say sorry and bow your head to someone especially when you are
in the wrong. See what category you are in:
If
you can calmly take a criticism from someone above you, you are wise.
If
you can calmly take a criticism from someone equal to you, you are noble.
If
you can calmly take a criticism from someone beneath you, you are a saint.
It
isn't at all easy to take criticism from anyone. Most people will react with
resentment, if not with anger even though it is the truth. The reason for the
negative reaction is because the ego is dented and hurt and therefore is not
being simple enough. If you can
take criticism calmly even though what people say is not true, it means you
must have a great deal of simplicity in you. Correct if you can without anger,
of course. If not, let it go as long as you know yourself well enough that the
criticism is not true. The less ego you have, the less pain you get. Whether
you can take it up to the level of being a saint or not is something you can
work on. This book is trying to help you towards that direction. So, if you can
begin to work on it now, you might not have to work so hard later on.
5) Giving respect to those who deserve to
have respect is also very healthy, i.e. parents, teachers, elders, holy places
and people. Carefully observe the cultural differences and give respect to
whatever is important to the members of that society. It makes your mind soft,
gentle and simple.
6) Never boast about yourself and show off
your talents. It is better to make yourself unnoticed. Boasting about something
you do have is understandable though is not healthy, but to boast about what
you don't have is unacceptable as far as walking this path is concerned.
7) Always make people feel comfortable,
warm and at ease especially if you are on a high rung of the social ladder
whether it is because of your wealth, profession, fame or power. Always give
notice to those whose status is beneath you. Don't take them for granted
especially people who do menial jobs for you. Show them your gratitude. Your
smile can mean a lot to them and is worth much more than money. Take one minute
to stop, talk and praise the good job they have done for you. Show them your
appreciation. If people could do this, that window cleaner I mentioned above
would not have to set off the false alarm and many others wouldn't have to do
silly things just to get themselves noticed. The higher the status you have,
the more you can do to make people happy. You can only do this when your ego is
small and you have a high level of simplicity in you.
Once
there was a scholar who had heard about an enlightened Zen master. He intended
to find that master and ask intelligent questions. Upon his arrival, his head
was full of questions that he wanted to ask not for the sake of curiosity but
to show the master that he indeed knew a great deal about Buddhism.
The
master sat calmly with the tea set in front of him and observed the young
scholar from the moment he entered the room, gave him respect and asked the
questions. He serenely listened to the scholar's talk about his Buddhist
interest and then the questions. The master nodded his head as a gesture that
he understood what the student had said. Instead of answering his questions,
the master began to fill his tea pot with water and pour the tea into the cup.
The young man looked at what the master was doing while he kept on talking to
fill the silence and hoping that the master would say something. The teacher
did not make any attempt to talk. He slowly nodded his head and kept on pouring
water into the tea cup until it was overflowing into the tray. The young
student felt rather uneasy with the situation and the silence so, he kept on
talking and tried to reassure the teacher even more that he had great interest
in Buddhism and really wanted to learn from him.
The
master finally put the tea pot down, looked at the young scholar, gently smiled
and said softly:
"Well, how
do you like my answer to your questions?"
The
young man was surprised and intrigued by the master's speech.
"What do
you mean by that, sir? I have asked you many questions but you did not answer
me at all. I just saw you pour the cup of tea. How do I know if I like your
answer or not?"
"My
pouring the cup of tea was the answer to all your questions!!!"
The
young scholar was finally enlightened.
Using
few words to spark off simultaneous enlightenment is the nature of Zen
teaching. Well, I wasn't spontaneous enough to crack the meaning of this story
when I first heard it. Please don't think that I am patronising you. Just in
case you don't solve it either, I should explain a little bit.
The
master tried to tell the young scholar that his head was already full of
knowledge and could not absorb any more from him, which was just like the
overflowing cup of tea. Basically, he tried to take away the young man's
arrogance and his self-absorption which were the barrier stopping him from
learning.
If
you are intellectually clever, this is very much the case that you should take
a great deal of notice. Arrogance, pride, overconfidence and self-importance
are very negative qualities that would bar you from walking the path. It is
very difficult to get rid of such qualities if you have them. You need to have
a good teacher to help you. Unless you are lucky enough to have such a good
teacher to take away your arrogance for you, walking the path is almost
impossible although it looks like you have interest and want to learn.
That’s
why I make simplicity another requirement for you to learn and do right now
even before the actual practice. To be qualified to walk this path, your mind
has to be very soft, and gentle. The slightest degree of such arrogant feeling
cannot be allowed. I train my Tai Chi students to have this simple quality as
soon as they come into my class. I suggest the eastern culture of bowing to
each other to them as a package deal in attending my Tai Chi class with me. The
purpose behind this is to try to get my students to get rid of their
self-importance and arrogance which can stop them from absorbing this crucial
knowledge from me. If they can bow to me with respect, their hearts will have
room to learn. Those who find it difficult to do this will leave. It is a way
that I use to sieve through my students. A real teacher will choose his or her
pupils and not the other way round. The students might think that it is their
choice whether they want to learn Tai Chi with me or not. The fact is, they
might choose to come to my class but I am the one who chooses whether they are
qualified to learn or not in the way that they don't know. Those who survive my
class are the ones I choose to teach although there are only a few left in the
end!!!
Choosing
and sieving my students was not something I could do in the past. Whilst I
would take the absence of my students with some degree of worrying in the past,
I now take it with wisdom and gain knowledge. This ability has to coincide with
dhamma achievement and would happen naturally to anyone who is a dhamma teacher
too.
Story
time
Having
talked about how a real teacher would choose his or her own students, I
remember a famous film called Kung Fu which depicted a scene where the teacher
tried to recruit the most suitable pupil to pass on his knowledge. I used to
talk about the significance of this film in my Tai Chi class in the past but
have not done so in recent years due to the lack of time. The point that I
wanted to stress was to show the students that martial arts in ancient China
were linked very closely with Buddhism and its practice. It indicated that when
Buddhism reached China, it made quite a big impact on the Chinese culture as
well as martial arts. Shao Lin, the most famous martial art school in ancient
China was not just a martial art school but indeed a Buddhist temple. Martial
art was taught in a Buddhist temple so that it could guarantee that students
would have the knowledge about how to lead a righteous way of life first, which
included knowing how to locate the true face of enemies. Students would be told
that a real enemy was not a person for whom they had hatred and were ready to
confront and take revenge on. The real enemy was indeed hidden away in
everyone's mind. The biggest enemy of all is ignorance which breeds yet another
pair of major villains, greed and anger, which branch out more and more enemies
in our hearts. Therefore, before any martial art could be taught, students had
to learn to deal with their inner enemies first. That was how to get rid of
their greed, anger, arrogance and self-importance first. This is the only way
to guarantee that martial arts practitioners would not use their knowledge for
wrong reasons. If there was any reason for a martial arts practitioner to fight
at all, that reason had to be based on the ground of protecting goodness and
righteousness only. Without this wisdom, martial art would be reduced to a mere
self defence, if not a tool to boost one's ego.
Kung
Fu, acted by David Carradine, depicted exactly the right concept of what
martial arts should be like. Many people expected to see a lot of violent
scenes when they heard the title of this film. It was quite the contrary, the
theme of this film stressed more on how this martial artist, Kwai Shane Cane,
formed a close relationship and learnt his knowledge from his blind old
master.
The
film began with a group of 20-30 young boys in their early to mid teens sitting
in front of the main gate of Shao Lin temple waiting to be selected. Every
morning, an elder monk would come out and pointed to certain boys and said:
'You go
home. You go home...'
The
boys sat through days and nights, wind, rain and storm. The number of the boys
dwindled as time went by until there were only four boys left. They were
invited into the temple's tea room. As they were sitting around a table with
the cups of tea already having been made for each individual including the
master, the teacher invited the boys with a waving hand gesture and said:
'Please,
help yourself. You all must be very thirsty.'
The
three boys thankfully responded to the kind gesture of the master and reached
their hands to pick up the tea cups in front of them, all except one. When the
boys had finished sipping their cups of tea, the master told them very calmly:
'You
three boys can go home now.'
The
three boys left the tea room and the master asked the only boy who was sitting
with his head bowed:
'Why
didn't you drink the tea like the others?'
The
boy answered the master calmly:
'It is
only appropriate for me to drink after the elder sir.'
Finally,
Kwai Shane Cane, was the only boy who was chosen to enter the gate of the Shao
Lin temple.
As
the story moved on, Kwai Shane Cane formed a very close relationship with his
blind master who taught him how to listen to the sound of the grasshopper and
the wind, how to walk on a long piece of rice paper without leaving any traces
and so on. They were indeed all the different meditation techniques that the
master passed on to the young novice. It was a long process of how to help the
young boy to deal with and curb his inner enemies and find truth. Young Cane
grew up within the walls of the monastery and learnt the most precious
knowledge. By the time he left Shao Lin, he had become a grown man with a good
heart, well qualified in the martial arts, who never wanted a confrontation and
led a humble way of life. He soon learned that the world outside the temple's
wall was very different from the one he knew.
This
film was based on Buddhist concepts and was very well depicted. In ancient
times, the relationship between a spiritual teacher and a novice was very close
which was correctly portrayed in this film. I advise you to watch this film.
Modern martial arts films which stress mainly violence and vengeance are very
far from this noble concept.