The Zen of Energy · 9. Juni 2005

Today I feel like I have quite some history with asian philosophy. So much,
that it has become an integral part of my life and thinking. So much, that I
have been able to make experiences, that I would not have been able to make
without it. Because of these experiences, I feel like sharing some of my
thoughts with you. In effect, I want to help you find a way, to make similar
experiences. It cost me over 15 years of constant and not so constant reading,
thinking and experimenting to get where I am today. I have worked out pretty
much all of these experiences on my own. Personally, I think that that is the
purest way of making an experience. But I have been thankful for every little
short cut I could get from somebody else.

There were quite a couple of people who helped me on my way. It all started out
in the second half of the eighties of the 20th century. I started practicing
“Shotokan” karate at a dojo in Bruchsal, Germany. My sensei, Günther Herold
knew pretty well just to throw couple of pieces at me, so I was inspired to
work out the whole thing on my own, but not so many as to freak me off, or to
take the experience away from me. Thank you, Günther, at this place. There are
a lot of other people who helped and supported me on my way with asian
philosophy. My friend and physician Waltraud Bär, who opened up my eyes for
traditional acupuncture and the basics behind it. Also my parents, who treated
it just like any other of the many things I “faibled and dropped”, if you had
made it something special, I would probably really have dropped my interest.
And all of those listening to my endless monologues and giving me feedback and
criticism.

What Is Energy

My first crucial experience took place as I had the age of about 16. I
discovered something in my body. I had been sensing a feeling wich 10 years
later I was able to identify as what others call “reiki”, and the chinese “qi
gong”. Nevertheless I could make good use of it. As far as I can think back,
meditation and energy for me always were closely tied together.
Meditation for me always has to do with energy. The energy of my body, and
especially the energy of my mind. When a westerner starts to think of energy,
there are two pictures that, due to the way we are raised and taught, may
instantly come to mind: We either tend to think of energy as a field. Science
fiction even has brought this image to a perfection. Force fields, energy
fields, detainment fields, warp fields, fields everywhere. Or, we tend to think
of energy of something that runs in a circuit. Detained in a defined medium, a
cable or similar, the energy flows in a certain direction, making us able to
measure it.

Quite similar is the way we tend to think of energy, when it comes to asian
philosophy, respectively asian medicine. There are two pictures of energy, that
we have: The “chakra” type of energy system, which radiates in a field from a
certain point in our body, and the “meridian” type of energy system, where
energy lines connect special points inside our body. Let me tell you that both
of these views don’t even nearly live up to what energy really means in asian
philosophy. I will give you a couple of examples, to make a start:

• The “kanji” (japanese character) for “ki”, which is today most often translated with “spirit” and “mind” rather than “energy”, bluntly depicts the steam over a boiling kettle of rice. In the old, chinese form of the caracter, the kettle is still visible pretty well, the newer character is not as good at hinting at where the sign comes from. But it gives us the idea: Energy is, whatever keeps the things about us flowing.
• In traditional acupuncture, blood is one essential part that is attributed to energy. From a western point of view, you might argue, that blood is mere matter, and not energy. More of a means of transportation. But then, your thoughts are caught in our functional world. In asian philosophy, our energy is, what keeps us at a constant flow and in harmony with no less than the universe as a whole. And our blood is an integral part of it. As are all fluids in our body. And our thoughts, our perception, and…

We need to think of energy not as something that flows, but of something that
makes things flow. Therefore it does not need meridians or fields. And it also
does not need to flow. The only thing we need is to feel it, and master it.
Being able to make good use of this energy, we can also have a strong influence
on ourselves, and on others. Just as we feel our energy, others also can feel
our energy. We can use energy to harmonize the universe. Or to do the opposite,
depending how well or bad our intention might be. We can also influence our
body in just the same fashion. For this reason, I never in my life had one
single headache. I can sense a headache coming up in my mind, and simply let it
flow away. Or more precisely, but maybe less understandable: I rearrange my
mind and the core of my body, so whatever influence is not able to create the
asymmetry, which causes the pain. Unfortunately, the human body is limited,
when it comes to this ability. That’s why we get hurt. Both hurt in the body,
and hurt in the mind. However, if we practice enough, we can deal with the
latter very well all by ourselves.

Harmony

Harmony plays a crucial role in asian philosophy. But we arent just, when we
reduce harmony in this aspect to the state of a relationship between two
people. We need to extend and get the bigger picture: Harmony is the way we
want to fit ourselves into the universe. The oldest commonly known symbol of
asian philosophy, that expresses harmony, are “yin” and “yang”. Two opposites,
that melt into each other, depicted by a black and a white raindrop, each of
which is perturbed by a stain of the opposite water. Without these two stains,
“yin” and “yang” would not be symmetrical. They would just be two things
standing next to each other. Day and night are symmetrical. Labour and rest are
symmetrical. Things which are symmetrical generally posess harmony. In this
sense, symmetry and harmony are identical. And please dont take symmetry in
this aspect with looking into the mirror, or the symmetry you may find in a
butterfly. A symmetry exists between two or more things, which fit to each
other so that they support, or more like even complement each other. The
constant flow of energy between the two is what makes the harmony of the
universe.

The next “help” asian philosophy gives us, when dealing with harmony, are the
five elements. In a world of harmony, everything is in a relationship with
everything else. The nature of this phenomenon is utterly complex. One mind,
even being part of this complexity, is incapable of comprehending this
complexity. Therefore we need to sort out certain regions, which we can build a
model for, in which we have a sort of “stability”, so that we can work with it,
fill it with facts, and draw conclusions from it. The five elements are nothing
else but such a model, that wants to help us understand a world, which relies
on the principle of symmetry as a whole. Technically speaking, it gives us the
ability to model five independent entities that are connected by two
complementary flows in two different paths which are as orthogonally placed to
each other as possible. We can depict a couple of pathologic states within this
model, and draw conclusions from it for symptoms, the state of the whole, and
the pathogenetic possibilities. The only thing we have to do is, to match
reality to the model in the most accurate way. We need to find five things,
which actually possess such a relationship. If we’ge done a good job, then the
conclusions we draw from the model, will work out well in reality. Thats the
basics what is behind mapping colors, body parts, tastes, seasons to the five
basic elements. The “I Ging”, “I Ching” or “Yi Jing”, the book of
“metamorphosis” also belongs in this category, trying to work on the
relationship of people to one another and to nature.

Path Verus Target

It is a common saying, that the path makes the target, but what does it really
mean? To put it bluntly: Having a target is useful. Not for any achievement,
but merely for us. Without having a target, we frankly cannot see the path. But
that’s about all there is to the target. It helps us overcome our weaknesses.
It gives us orientation and stability. Human nature tends to need stability.
What it really wants is harmony, but that is a next level in the adventure. It
is important, that we do, and that we mean well while we are doing. I
personally think that nobody wants to live with the burden of ones meaning bad
come true. But no matter what we do in life, we can approach everything with
the same attitude and way of handling things. With the same awareness, no
matter whether we hold something precious, or a mere stone in our hand. The
effect of holding something in our hands is a sensation. Our mind inherently
tells us, whether what we perceive is comfortable or not. Further
discrimination is not required. Go with what is comfortable, trust your
stomache, and give up thinking upon prejudices rather than granting whatever we
see a pure experience before our mind. Trust your mind, it is rather good at
this, as long as you manage to eliminate the prejudice you bring in from the
world of logic and society.

If you follow a path, you will have to react in many ways. You will have to
react on obstacles, which you did not see before, and you have to react on
yourself, in case you might have left the proper path. The key to this is, that
you need to observe yourself as much as you need to observe your surroundings.
Get to know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, get to feel yourself. Get
to know what you feel like, and map it to what your surroundings feel like. You
will soon find out what suits you and what does not. Knowing your true nature
is key to being able to walk your path. Not only to be authentic (your
surroundings very well perceive whether the path you walk suits your nature or
it does not), but also to find harmony, and with that harmony, find inner
peace.

Buddha Versus Bodhisattva

Many people may argue, that if a Zen monk leads a desolate life somewhere in
nature, where no daily life stress bothers him, it is not too difficult to find
inner peace. They may add, he shall come and take their place, and see how well
it works out there. This thinking pretty well demonstrates the
“Buddha-problem”. Today, we take buddha for a symbol. Not one of us. Buddha is
way too far away of us, that we could connect him to our daily life. If I today
tell you “the path is the target”, then you don’t get any direct help from it.
You may think, that I am a philosophical nerd. Then, I can be of little
assistance to you. Even harder is it, to find a way, to get guidelines that
stem from asian philosophy into modern western life. Whatever is being said in
eastern philosophy literature has been written for a completely different
society. Many of the pictures used there we ar no longer able to understand.
But that is not really necessary. From the many different sources, and the
fact, that we can make our own experiences, we can learn and feel what Buddha
wanted to tell us, and express it in our own, modern words. For those of you
interested in my view of the world, my paper on
symmetry might be appealing to you. However, it is written in german and I
did not find the time to translate it to english yet. It is also an unfinished
piece of work in progress. I have started rewriting it a year later (2003), in
a less scientific and more practical way. It still is rather theoretical, and
needs many examples. But you might find it interesting, also reading the 2003 rewrite. It also is in written in
German. Get back to me for the papers, they’re not available online yet.

From my point of view, it should be very obvious, after reading this paper, why
for exmample all stress related diseases can easily be cured by levelling out
the potentials in our mind, that is, equalizing the energy in our mind and
body, and all immune and auto-immune disesases can be cured merely via
nutrition. Unfortunately, every physician I have met on my way and discussed
the matter with, with one single exception (thanks, Waltraud), could not give
these thoughts more than a mere chuckle. One physician, an allergologist, even
told me that my nutrition would be bad for my allergy, and make it even worse.
Fact is, nowadays I do not have any nutrition allergies any more. They all
vanished with my nutrition change, and I did not take any other treatment at
all. So now that the cross-allergies are gone, the next thing to work on is the
hayfever in itself. I am pretty confident.

Being a Bodhisattva means nothing else than living up to your ideals in daily
life. Show your surroundings, that there in fact is a way of achieving inner
peace, no matter how harmful your surroundings may be. Show them, that there is
a way to concentrate, no matter how loud your surroundings may be. It does not
matter whether I am sitting in a club with loud music or at home on my couch.
When I am reading a book, then I am reading a book, and I do that, no matter
whether there is loud music or other noise around. For those of you who tend to
exaggerate: An air hammer next to my ear is pain, not noise. Whenever I am in
pain, I can not concentrate on anything other than the pain. Thus the way to
concentrate is getting rid of the pain. Then, let all other thoughts flow
except those you want to concentrate on. Awareness is closely linked to
concentrating. To concentrate means nothing else than making sure every single
cell of your body is aware of the fact you want to concentrate on, and not
being caught in other things.