FINDING THE SILVER LINING

My China trip came to a screeching halt after a near psychotic break in my Guangzhou hotel room. In a flash, all the hopes & expectations were dashed. The mission was aborted, something died. A heavy heart overcame me, filled with emptiness & sadness. Then a rush of fragmented thoughts came flying into my head...Oh shit! How am I going to explain this...I can use the biggest typhoon that struck Hong Kong in the last twenty years as an excuse...I can make the infamous Dr. Lam as a scapegoat...or I can take accountability for my action, fess up & say I just wanted to go home. I figure I had a choice of gritting my teeth & toughing it out for three weeks or I could eat a humble pie & swallow my pride. I chose to let go rather than using will & force. So much of happiness in life is about not getting what we want & getting what we don't want. Happiness is the conditioned response to the desired outcome of any given situation. We think we have control over it but that's an illusion. It's like holding sand in your hand, no matter how hard you grip, it'll all fall through the cracks at the end. Why not just take the free & easy route, accept reality as it is. I quote my daughter, " You get what you get & you don't take a fit. " It's simple-minded & yet it cuts to the core of the human dilemma, namely our unwillingness to accept ourselves as well as the events in our lives. We keep ourselves in bondage with our self-judgements & preconceived notions of how life ought to be. By the same token, we inherently have the ability to release the hostage held in captivity & emerge as a self-liberating individual. This is a gift we all possess for ourselves. To say that I am not disappointed would constitute a lie. But with the loss of a shattered dream came something very tender & endearing, the realization of the fragility of life. As one door closes, another opens. Thus is the beauty of the human experience, our ability to take something seemingly tragic & transform it into a blessing. I once heard someone say, " It's not what happens in life, it's what you do with it that counts. " In every hardship, there's always a silver lining, we just have to surrender to it.

FAMOUS DOCTOR

OMG! China is a beast. The locals are in a race to become the most rich & famous people on earth, doctors notwithstanding. Profit motivates people & the most populous country on the planet has bought in en masse. On my first day, I met the chair of the outpatient oncology department, Dr. Lam. She carries the title of Famous Doctor in this hospital. As capitalism infiltrates the People's Republic of China, free-market system rears its ugly head in all areas of life. The underlying edict: Money buys you the best health care available. In my first meeting with Dr. Lam, I couldn't help noticing the posse milling around her. An air of self-importance filled the room. Not only was there a long line of patients waiting for their turn, she was also buffered by a host of interns drooling for any little nugget they can find. Dr. Lam was straight up pimping. She asked me gruffly what I wanted to learn. I came back with the stock response: how to use combination therapy to treat cancer & which particular herbs to use under what circumstance. She wasn't impressed. She ordered me to come next morning to follow her during her shift. However, her directive was that I needed to go to the oncology department in another building. I thanked her & left. When I showed up the next morning, the vibe of the clinic was decidedly different. It was clean & not overrun by patients. Later on, I asked my uncle how come the difference. He chuckled & said that one is for common folks while the other is reserved for those who pay a handsome fee for Dr. Lam's expertise. He added objectively: No money, no talk. While I tried to temper my judgement, my stomach was knotting up. Something was not right. It wreaked of opportunism. Upon that first meeting, I wondered if I had slipped a red envelope to Dr. Lam, I too might have received preferential treatment from the Famous Doctor.

FOLLOW THE FLOW

I've been rambling a lot about awakening. I got a good dose of it from Mother Nature this morning. I went for usual swim at dawn only to find that Hong Kong is nailed by a typhoon. Westerners are becoming increasingly enamored with the concept of Feng Shui. While mental construct is intellectually stimulating, a visceral experience is both frightening & exhilirating. I was greeted by enormous swells & wind coming from the East. I got slammed pretty good but it's all good as I'm sitting here writing about it. Feng Shui literally means wind & water. In its essence, Feng Shui is about the movement of energy & the vitality of life. Life ends when it is devoid of movement. We all go through phases of our lives where we get stuck, stagnation reigns. Stuckness is a part of nature. Stuckness will change but not until it reaches its tipping point. I saw this firsthand last night. Just before a wicked storm, there's a period of eerie stillness. In the last few days, the sweltering heat has been heinous. Nothing moved. The smog & humidity has been so intense, I swore I saw it. The locals have a name for it, Mai; something like rice-fog. Then, in one moment, everything turned on a dime. Ferocious wind kicked up & a torrential downpour ensued unrelentingly. The sky was angry & we all rejoiced. It's like the plum tree enduring the bitter cold before the sweet fragrance of its blossoms. In the Tao of life, it's the Yin & the Yang. When one energy reaches its peak, it changes polarity not by choice but by necessity. Life is a self-regulating mechanism, we just have to follow the flow. So, no worries if you're stuck. Change is just around the corner whether you like it or not. It's the only constant in life.

MY PEEPS

My stay in Hong Kong has been sprinkled with many little gems. I'm staying in Stanley Village which has a local beach scene that is uncharacteristically Chinese. I've jumped right in. Knowing that I'm about to launch into this high-powered industrial blender known as China, I'm taking full advantage of this R&R opportunity. Getting my 4 a.m. wakeup call due to jet-lag with nothing to do, I've been going to da beach at the crack of dawn. The refreshing & salty South China Sea is the perfect antidote to the sweltering heat. Upon arriving on the first morning, I was greeted by the dawn patrol; a comraderie of elderly Chinese women. They're all business. But not for swimming. Mostly, they wade around like ducks, hanging out with their buddies. It's a hydro-sociological phenomenon, a unique brand of water aerobics. Laughter fills the air, punctuated by a cacophony of cackles. They get the latest update on the local gossip & fortify their plans for dim-sum and mah-jong later in the day. The simplicity is sweet & innocent. These are playful children in the waning days of their lives. They have no clue what to make of me with my pidgin Cantonese. But they don"t care. They embrace me with open arms because like them, I too am an ordinary person. And that's good enough.

Spiritual Casino

A quote from my spiritual teacher: Put it all down & go for broke. He's not talking about going to Macau or Vegas. I guess he's a spiritual gambler of some sort. I want to piggyback on yesterday's blog. Personal awakening is multi-dimensional. While Western psychology narrows its focus on the individual such as recovery by healing the child within & authenticating the self; Eastern philosophy offers a broader psycho-spiritual bend. In Buddhist lexicon, Nirvana or Enlightenment means to wake up. Wake up to what, a cup of Peets? To the fact that most of our suffering is self-inflicted. Buddhist teachings tell us that the human condition is inherently dissatisfied with the way things are. We just won't have it! We want to control this & that, to own it. It makes us feel safe & puffs up the ego. Buddhists call this attachment. The wanting & controlling soon takes on a life of its own, creating a monster renegade which manifest in obsessive & compulsive behavior. Some would suggest that this is the underlying disease pervasive in all forms of addiction. Imagine yourself walking into a store, totally captivated by a Cartier watch. No doubt, the watch is aesthetically beautiful. But the wanting mind kicks in & you are grasping the thing. This is applicable to people as well. So, you stroll away & soon you find yourself right back at the counter, jonesing for that thing. You just keep picking it up, unable to put it down. This causes angst & pain. The Buddhist antidote is to relinquish control, let go. This is known as cessation, the ceasing of the endless cycle of cause & effect. Let's use the breath as an example. You inhale, the breath rises. You exhale, it falls. This is the natural condition & it just goes on & on. You can't say, Oh! I'm good with the rising part & I'll just hang here. But that's exactly what we do in life. At some point, the breath must fall. This is true for the body, love, stocks; anything that is part of the conditioned phenomena. By recognizing the totality of the natural cycle of the human condition, we begin to see that the world of duality can only bring suffering. Yin & Yang lies side by side, one can't exist without the other. This is the way of the Tao. It's silly but that's the way it is.

Home-coming in Hong Kong

I arrived in Hong Kong two nights ago. It is the first leg of my holy pilgrimage to Zhong Guo, the Middle Kingdom; also known as China. Hong Kong is intriguing, it is also my birth place. Coming home has been a profound experience. A flood of feelings has been unleashed, birthing a sort of recapitulation. My journey of self-discovery has taken many twists and turns. Sometimes you have to rewind in order to advance. To know the past offers a window to the road ahead. If Hong Kong represents the cosmos then I am the microcosm. Hong Kong is where East meets West, bridging the gap between the two worlds. Living in the midst of these two worlds are people like myself. I am bi-racial, bi-cultural, and bi-lingual. Being Bi is a mixed blessing. When the glass is half full, I have the best of both worlds. When it is half empty, I am a displaced person without an identity of my own. Day-dreaming in the park yesterday, I saw a Chinese woman holding hands with her boy. In that moment, an image of my Mom and I flashed before me. The floodgates opened and I reverted back to a local Chinese boy again. I was a sickly child growing up in Hong Kong. That was my assigned role in the family system. Self-diagnosing as a Chinese doctor, classic symptoms of Lung & Kidney chi deficiency. You name it, I had it. Asthma, chronic cough, skin problems and a propensity for colds & flus. Lung conditions are very difficult to treat because of its psycho-somatic nature. Emotionally, weak lung function is associated with grief and sadness. Extrapolating further, it lends to low self-esteem, shame, and the inability to self-express. Moreover, because of the kidney involvement with the lung, the kidney loses its ability to grasp the chi. This leaves the person gasping for air, fearful for his life. The result is a persistent and low-grade sense of hollowness along with the fear of abandonment. The individual is left with an anguished desire to recover something emotionally missing in his upbringing. I want to use this example to illustrate that physical sickness and emotional pain are not separate things. They are merely two sides of the same coin. To transform is to change the outside, the physical domain. External change brings about internal change, offering an opportunity for personal growth. True healing lies in a new way of relating to yourself. From that place, each and every relationship with the outside world bears the stamp of inner peace & happiness.

I'll be in China on Monday!

My China trip is special in a couple ways, personally and professionally. For me, this trip is a home-coming since I was born in Hong Kong. Spending a month in China will immerse me in not only the culture but the language as well. Because so much of the Chinese culture is transmitted through the language, speaking Chinese on a daily basis will greatly re-connect me to my roots. Professionally, this is a wonderful continuing education opportunity. I'll be doing the rounds with the local doctors in the out-patient cancer ward in a major hospital in Canton. Because my specialization is in oncology, I'm fascinated by the integrative approach used in China for cancer treatment. In addition to using conventional therapy such as chemo, radiation, and surgery; they incorporate the use of acupuncture and herbal prescriptions.

I will be in Guangzhou --->  you can look at this link for more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangzhou