I mused over the title for this blog for some time. I obviously want to write about Five important things for one’s health and well-being. I guess you have read it all before those pop. psychology and health articles: 16 Steps to a Happy Life. 10 Steps to Emotional Freedom and so on. If you are like me you heave a deep sigh and mutter: “Here we go again. What is the answer to life this time!? Then, maybe you have a sneak look at the article just in case you may have missed something riveting. Generally you haven’t.
The alternative title I gave this Blog is: How to Bake a Cake with One Egg and Water. Now I am sure that would have captured a modicum of attention due to the anticipated absurdity or dazzling miracle about to be unfolded. I have dabbled a little in the culinary arts and I recall one day when my partner was overseas visiting her parents I tried to remember a recipe she told me for Chinese Mantou or Steam Buns. I am sure she told me I just had to mix eggs and water and some powdered stuff, flour. As you can imagine the attempt was as complete a failure as if I had tried to do it with just eggs and water. The flour was an added extra. Yet, it never ceases to amaze me that this is exactly what we do when we are trying to find a way to health, healing or wellness.
At the T’ai Shen Centre we work with people whose hopes and expectations from life have been dashed. Like survivors from a ship wreck at sea they have drifted helplessly in an immense isolated ocean. A map and compass is hardly a way to help survivors. They need nutrition and numerous other important needs.
T’ai Shen is a Buddhist Centre and Buddhism understands life to be interrelated and interdependent. This is where the Five Prescriptions enter. In a previous blog I wrote of my chance extraordinary meeting with a Buddhist hermit monk called “No Name” (That is the translation of his Chinese name). It was this humble monk living intensely with nature who having many hours of solitude to contemplate the alchemy of true living wrote on a piece of paper Five Prescriptions. At first they seemed simplistic. Then the old monk began to reveal the multi-layers and dimensions. (1) Spirit (2) Mind and Thought Processes (3) Relationship (4) Consumption (5) Internal and External Movement. The Five Prescriptions are interdependent. He laughed: “Now make them spin (like a top and all in unison). Then you will really live.”
Yet how often in our work with others and ourselves do we try to bake a cake with just eggs and water? To expect recovery and growth from simply taking medications or doing the occasional meditation is like trying to bake a cake with just one or two ingredients. It won’t work; or at best like my Chinese steam buns – flat!
We become unwell physically mentally and spiritually not through one cause but through many different causes and conditions. To establish wholeness in our life we must also address a variety of causes and conditions. The Five Prescriptions examines the core causes and conditions of our human life. Five simple prescriptions but a profound effect. They work. I am not sure though about the eggs and water!
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