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BITESIZE | A Shaolin Master's Guide to Self-Mastery, Negative Thoughts & Finding Inner Peace | Master Shi Heng Yi #671
00:23:51
Today’s guest belongs to the 35th generation of Shaolin Masters and began practising Kung Fu at the age of four. In the 38 years since, he’s acquired a wealth of knowledge in Chinese martial arts and Zen Buddhism.
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- [00:00]
A
Today's bite sized episode is sponsored by the Way I have tried so many meditation apps over the years, but I've never come across one as good or as effective as the Way. I find it a fantastic way to start off each day and it has really helped me feel calmer, relaxed and more present. In fact, I love this app so much that I recently decided to invest in the company and join them in their mission to get more people meditating. Meditation has been shown to have all kinds of benefits. Reducing stress, increasing calm, improving focus, and over time has even been shown to result in positive structural changes in the brain in areas linked to memory, focus and emotional regulation. But of course you only get those benefits if you actually do it. And that's one of the main reasons I love the Way so much. It makes it really easy to establish a meditation practice that sticks. The Way are offering my podcast listeners an incredible 30 free meditation sessions to get you started with your practice. To take advantage, all you have to do is go to thewayapp.com livemore welcome to feel Better Live More Bite Size your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 426 of the podcast with Master Shi Hung Yi. He belongs to the 35th generation of Shaolin masters and began practicing Kung fu at the age of four. In the 38 years since, he's acquired a wealth of knowledge in Chinese martial arts and Zen Buddhism. And in this clip he shares a beautiful concept and caution that our thoughts may shape our destiny and explains why cultivating greater awareness of our inner world could transform the way we experience our lives. One of the most powerful things, to me, at least that I heard you say recently, is that we should not harm others with our words, but also we should not harm others with our thoughts. That's something I've been thinking about a lot over the past few days. I think many people hearing that will immediately go, yeah, I get it with words. You know, be kind, be compassionate with how you talk to other people. But the fact that you go one step beyond that to say don't harm people with your thoughts. To me, that's really, really interesting. Perhaps you could elaborate on why you think that is so important.
- [03:04]
B
Let's just take it as a conceptual idea, okay? I'm not saying it's the truth, but it is something to think about. There is the saying that Watch your thought because your thoughts are forming your words. Be careful about your words because your words are shaping your actions. Be care of what type of actions you're doing, because they are shaping your habits. Be careful about what type of habits you have, because they are shaping your character. Be careful what type of character you are cultivating because it shapes your destiny. Okay, so what I'm saying is that there is a chain, a chain of cause and effect. Your thoughts affecting the words, the words affecting your actions, the action affecting all the way down until your character, until what you are going to encounter in the future described before as destiny. So, and this is the reason why everything that in this world has taken place form everything. Let's put it simple. There was a time on this earth where we didn't have any rocket flying. There was no rocket. Technology has went on. We have rockets flying and landing. So the question is, how did it happen? So there must be a person who somehow saw something in his mind. Our mind can see things that are not even existing yet on this earth. This is the power of the mind. And the first thing to, let's say, bringing from the world of thought something into this world. This is done by the word, then by maybe writing them down, then by visualizing it, and afterwards by constructing it. And then it starts to take form. But the beginning of every form comes from an area which is formless. The mind. It's already when you look at the person, what is your mind connection to the person? What inside of you without speaking, what is your energy inside towards a person? And this is the important part.
- [06:09]
A
If someone is listening to you and thinking, okay, I understand the theory there. But in real life, for me, I struggle with this. I have colleagues at work who really irritate me and I think they're lazy and they don't do their job properly. And so I am left having to do more because they're not pulling their weight. I understand, master, what you're saying. I should not harm those people with my words or my thoughts. I can just about hold it in and not say it with my words, But I'm being consumed by negative thoughts about that other person. Where might you suggest that they start?
- [06:59]
B
This type of question, this type of setup right now at the end, is going to boil down to how important is your life to you? Which means if you are willing to wake up already in the morning and have these negative thoughts affecting your day, then going into work, dealing again with all the mind conflicts that you have, go home in the evening still thinking about what happened during the day, and continue like this for weeks and months and years, and there will always be some non satisfaction about the way of how you are living, this is one type of choice. So you stay in the situation where you are right now. Because trying to change other people, at least for me, is no way. It's not working. So I wouldn't even, let's say, invest time in trying to change other people. So the first idea would be, are you able to stay in that situation imagining that all of the colleagues out there, they would never change? Are you still able to figure out a way for yourself to stay still, remaining in a state of the mind that is not destroying your health? If you say, it's impossible, I am too much attached to the surrounding, to what the other people do or don't do, then there's only one way. Either you're going to stay in that situation and take all the health issues that were going to come on the long term, or you are setting your priority and say, no, this is my life. This is not the way how I like imagine my life to be. Waking up and going to bed with like, negative thoughts or unhealthy thoughts. And then you must change your surrounding. That's it. There is no, there is no alternative to these two things, taking into consideration that we cannot change other people and cannot change the outside circumstances. So either you change yourself or you change the surrounding and the environment that you are placed upon. But now comes the problem. If you think, you just say, okay, then I'm leaving this company and I'm moving to the next one. You're going to. You're going to meet the same problem.
- [09:50]
A
Yeah.
- [09:53]
B
Why? Because it's not the problem of the people, it's the problem because something inside of you is not able yet to solve this challenge. And this is where, again, it's about self mastery.
- [10:16]
A
Yeah.
- [10:17]
B
Meaning everything that you feel is a challenge to you. Ask yourself, what is it inside of yourself that is causing this conflict, that is causing this challenge for you? And solve it inside of you. This is where to look at and in the moment this happens, something very valuable has been developed there. It's not an easy way. It's not a most common way that people do, but it is the way that from many, many centuries and millennia, different traditions have embedded in their way of being.
- [11:03]
A
And yeah, yeah, I love that. And if I could just share in my own life, I would say what you just said there at the end, that's been the biggest change for me over the past five to 10 years. It's this understanding, this deep understanding that it's all internal. The world is going to do what the world is going to do. It's my reaction, my interpretation to the world that determines its outcome on me. And once you get that and you live like that, you access a kind of freedom that you didn't know existed. Because until you get that, you are living in a world where you think that the way you feel is down to externalities. It's other people, their behavior, their actions. Once they change, I'll be fine. And then you realize, wow, I could be waiting a very long time for that. The only thing I have agency over is myself, my inner being, my inner thoughts. So I just want to echo what you said there. I love it. It's something that I have cultivated as a practice in my own life with incredible benefits. And I'm delighted that you are sharing that message with the world. What are some of your favorite practices that enable your students or the wider public to do that self investigation and go inward to learn
- [12:42]
B
something that is really useful for the beginning. It can be the simple realization. When I wake up in the morning, in the moment I like start to open my eyes. In the moment all the five senses start to become active. I wake up and automatically my awareness is being driven outwards. I'm looking for something outside of me to look at. I'm noticing all the sounds that are around me, what I feel, let's say, on my skin, to all the sensations of my body. In the moment you are awake, your awareness is being drawn outwards. It's a natural process, it's naturally happening. The first realization is that there's also another area of watching. But not watching something outside of you is watching what goes on inside of the body. So literally meaning sometimes trying to figure out if you can watch inside yourself and let's say, then feel what other areas of the body are you made out of? Meaning the skeleton, the bones, the muscles, the tendons, the organs. So sensing what goes on inside of yourself, the same is like listening. Not listening to what is like around you in terms of sound, but listening inside of you. What signals is your body, yourself? What can you, what, what can you identify listening inside of yourself? So the point is there are two ways where your awareness can spread to either you are losing your awareness with outside circumstances, or you can sometimes just catch back your awareness and bring it back to you, which is literally then sometimes called. Well, that is mindful. You are mindful about what's going on about yourself. And this is the very, very first step of being able to differentiate. There is something that lies outside of you, obviously, but there's also another area, another perspective, how you can walk through the day but still have your awareness with yourself. It doesn't mean one or the other is better. We need both, we live in both worlds. But it's the first realization that to have proper adjustment, to really know which buttons do I have to turn or do I have to push in order to, let's say, improve my well being, to improve my life. I think you need to know and have a picture of all areas that make our life, that make our existence the way as it is. And this means it's a big part of who are you? Who are you? What are you? These 20 minutes or these 15 minutes in the morning, everybody is still sleeping. This is the time that now I'm dedicating purely on myself. So therefore, I would say regardless of what type of exercises, what type of awareness enhancing exercise it is, it can be breathing exercise, it can be sitting meditation, it can be the combination of meditative practices combined with movement and breathing, which is like what nowadays people know as qigong. Yeah. So any type of these methods is perfectly fine. But the main point is that in the moment you are starting these practices, your mindset also must hit. And that means you must really tell to yourself, this is my time. Now there is turn off the phone, don't look on the phone, anything like this. Have this feeling. This is my dedicated 15 minutes.
- [17:24]
A
For many people, it's the start of the day and the end of the day where they have an element of control over their time. Many people in the middle of the day, they feel they have lots of obligations, things to do, work, errands to run, whatever that might be. So I'm hearing you're saying first thing in the morning, some dedicated time for meditation, breathwork, introspection, whatever it might be, can be incredibly helpful. How do you feel about behaviors that people should be doing last thing at night? For example, do you have certain routines that you would recommend people think about adopting last thing in the evening before they retire to bed?
- [18:09]
B
Something that you can do in the evening is just be grateful for what happened during the day. Regardless of how hard the day was, regardless of which challenges you had to face during the day, it is just a very helpful practice to never forget and be grateful about your possibility. First of all, who just experience all of this, I know it's for some people very, very hard maybe to understand that if the day was like really challenging, how can you still be grateful in the evening before you go to bed? Well, but that's exactly the Point because if you don't do it, you're going to go to bed with a quite different state of the mind, which is not going to help you or the next day, and which is also not going to help you for the future time to come. So because the day is about to end, it's good to still have some type of practice. That's what, what I call it. It's a practice of gratitude. Be thankful. Be grateful for what happened on that day, regardless if it was a hard day or not. Because this is now where it comes to, like I said, habits, conditioning yourself and the way how to sometimes make your life a little bit lighter.
- [19:49]
A
Why is it that you feel gratitude is so important?
- [19:57]
B
Because you are elsewise missing a big part of, of the purpose of why you're here. A big part of your sense of life. Let's say like this. We can complain about all type of things the whole day long. But what helps me to realize sometimes is we can complain. We can complain and we can experience in the first place because we are somehow alive because we have come into existence already. There are other. Well, I don't know how to say it now, it sounds strange, but there are other beings. Maybe they don't even have a body. They have never come alive. They have never been born. They cannot even complain. So you have been given this gift of being able to walk on this earth right now. So having the existence right now, being able to lift this life right now already, that is quite a big, big gift. Don't take it for granted. It's not good to take your lifetime for granted, even if you have difficult time. Of course,
- [21:31]
A
For that person who is really struggling in their life and there's something that they heard from you. They thought, yeah, I can make a change. I can transform myself. I don't want to live life the way I'm leading it today. But they don't know where to start. I wonder if you could provide some final words of inspiration for them, please.
- [22:01]
B
It's not going to be words of wisdom. It's going to be action. Sometimes we are just thinking too much. We are thinking too much, okay? But remaining where you are and just thinking, thinking, thinking all the time is not going to make it better. So my very first suggestion would be put in a new structure of the day. This can mean already you wake up 10 minutes, 15 minutes earlier than you usually do. And in these 10 or 15 minutes, you put in any type of practice. It can be sitting, meditation, reading, exercise. It can be movement. It doesn't matter. It's very very helpful to just put in directly some practice, some action, some doing except for just dwelling thoughts in the mind looking for the proper way of how to now start the transformation. The transformation already happens in the moment your daily structure starts to look different.
- [23:15]
A
Hope you enjoyed that bite sized clip. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and leave Listen to the original full conversation with my guest. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my bite sized Friday email. It's called the Friday five and each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles or books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across, and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small yet powerful dose of feel good. To get you ready for the weekend, you can sign up for it free of charge@drchatterjee.com Friday 5. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.