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Imagine going to a Chinatown Sunday Dim Sum (tea brunch) with a roundtable of stimulating friends to discuss the meaning of life and to join in the sampling of successes, failures, tears, and laughter ⌠from the most mystical to the most obvious, from profundity to cornball, from Quantum Soup to Fortune Cookies.
Quantum Soup suggests a light and delightful broth with philosophical noodles. Dim Sum literally means âa touch of heart,â delicacies to be served in small portions, freshly flavored and steaming hot, brought to you continually on a food cart to entice you. You are free to choose those items that sing out to you for your enjoyment and effortless digestion.
Quantum is a popular word these days, but few know its meaning. Won, meaning âcloudâ; and Ton meaning âto swallow.â Poetically, wonton is a tasty morsel to be swallowed lightly, like a puff of cloud! Like Wonton soup in Chinese dinners, many people like it, but few bother to find out whatâs in it.
If we delve into the lingo of new physics, quantum is that elusive, cloudlike mystery of ânonbeingâ essence, which is best swallowed lightly in spite of its complexity. And, as with all Chinese food, you are hungry for more a few minutes later.
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I delight in fortune cookies! I find them one of the most ingenious of indigenous American inventions. Do you realize that there is no such thing as a fortune cookie in China, nor such standbys as Chop Suey and Egg Foo Yung? I relish this kind of creative flexibility and casual adaptation.
Before I set foot on the American shore, my notion of Americans was sharply divided between two stereotypes: the 1950s âUgly Americansâ and the singing-and-dancing Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaires. I think we all have the tendency to generalize according to our own limited experiences. Admit it! Until recently, didnât you visualize the Chinese as Pearl S. Buckâs Good Earth characters or the buck-toothed, almond-eyed laundrymen, waiters, Fu Manchus, and Charlie Chans?
My first exposure to America was as a freshman in a small college town. I discovered and became addicted to a local âgleasy flied liceâ hangout called Chinese Tea Room. It was there I fell in love with the fortune cookies! I was impressed by how those mythical sage-writers could turn out an endless supply of such often apt and succinct sayings. Both the cookies and the wisdom were always easily digestible, practical, universal, and so ⌠accessible!
Later, when I became a post-graduate intellectual snob, I belittled the âeverything in the kitchen sinkâ (actual meaning for Chop Suey) representation of Chinese food; and was gratified to see an introduction of the more sophisticated Mandarin, Sichuan, and Hunan cuisines. Always, however, the fortune cookies remained and flourished. Where else could one find such instant wisdom as ââThe only certainty is the uncertainty of the certaintyâ and âHe who trips over the same stone twice deserves to break neck!â or âYou are much too intelligent to be carried away by flattery,â and, perhaps, âParadox is ego standing on its head attracting attention!ââbut the most recent favorite is, âI opened your fortune cookie by mistake, now I am living your life!â
Crisis is a big word these days. Everybody and everything is in crisis. What does it mean? My fortune cookie tells me to look into its origin in Chinese written language: The two characters are
Wei (
) and
Ji (
).
Wei (âdangerâ) shows a face-to-face encounter with a powerful animal like a tiger;
Ji (âopportunityâ) is the blueprint or scheme of the universe. Therefore, crisis is both danger and opportunity! In crisis, if we donât panic and despair but learn to reach within for the spontaneity of our wisdom, we will be ready to take full advantage of the new opportunities opening to us.
Crisis promotes the learning of polarityâthe interweavings of seeming opposites in delicate balance: love/hate, gain/loss, success/failure, man/woman, light/dark, war/peace ⌠the entire spectrum of the yin/yang dance!
Are the fortune cookies in crisis?
Old-fashioned direct wisdom appears out of vogue nowadays. We strive for pseudoinscrutability to escape having to receive the core message. Much of our intellectual outpouring is junk and pollution. It is threatening to overrun our minds and hearts! Itâs even slithering into my highly esteemed fortune cookies. Junk thoughts are taking over the fortune cookie factory! I can see it nowâan assembly line for the New Age mystics, blissfully stuffing profundities in each cookieâs âlotusâ!
This book is a spring housecleaning for the mind and body. Quantum Soup is like great-grandmaâs panacea, good for whatever ails you! âDrink it ⌠youâll like it!â
The recipes herein are the amalgamation of my EastWest heritage, to be practiced and lived for joyful cultivation of the philosophical gourmet, to better serve you with Dim Sum goodies.
With respect and a âa touch of heart,â I offer you a light and de-light-ening feast of the mindbody. Take your time with the âcloud-swallowingâ Quantum Menu. Enjoy!
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Laughter in Chinese writing is depicted by a human with arms and legs flung wide apart, head up to the sky, vibrating with mirth like bamboo leaves in the wind.
Listen! The sound of true laughter is as open and clear as the flute-heart of bamboo. We are like that. Breathe through us freely and we make heavenly music.
But so few of us laugh like that. Saying âcheeseâ for a photograph or a tee-hee behind a hand is not a full quaking-bamboo-leaf laugh. It does not resonate through the body fully, clearing the congestion in all the channels.
To grow a proper laugh, start with the image of a baby shoot pushing up through the earth. Start with just the thoughts of laughter. Donât hurry it. Let it grow like the shoot. Wait for a genuine smile. Let it widen as a sound begins to tickle in the throat. Now let it begin to bounce around in the chest. Still, do not hurry it!
Think now of the rapidly growing bamboo, rising to the sun, leaves atremble in the fresh spring air. Allow your body to follow the leaves, expanding in all directions. Your breath is bigger, deeper, wider. S-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g. Let it grow. Watch it go. Now give it its sound!
A chuckle shakes the shoulders; a guffaw is born in the belly. Hawâhawâhawâhaw! How it escapes through the mouth and quakes and shakes and blooms and booms. Your very fingers are atingle with it. Your toes and kneecaps and hips and lips become the very sound of laughter. It is everywhere. Haw-haw-haw! (âIs that me?â you think, and laugh ever more fully and freely at the absurdity of the thought.)
Bam-bam-bam-boo ⌠bamboozling you.
Hawâhawâhaw!
One of the most highly recommended Taoist and Zen meditations is to let your hair down, stick out your belly and roar with laughter. Shall we fantasize this ritual for all the great world leaders? Laughter can be particularly purifying for them during one of those important summit meetings where they gather to decide the fate of our world.
The very same Haw-haw-haw quaking and shaking can also be a good and healthy cry.
In the Chinese writing, the same human character, with brush strokes looking like arms and legs flung wide apart, is allowing tears to gush from the openings of the eyes and all emotional and energy channels.
Why do we hide tears and insist on restraining our natural expressions of feeling?
When was the last time you experienced a hearty, releasing cry?
Tears can be a most effective cleansing ritual as well. During funerals in China, we hire professional criers to help us continue the drama of all necessary expressions of grief. We yell and scream our regrets and guilts with great gusto. By the time we have cried our eyes dry and our hearts out, we are released and at peace.
So âŚ
Cry a lot.
Laugh a lot.
Enjoy being the great and healthy human.
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In the Christian world, those who think they are Jesus Christ or God are usually confined behind walls and given therapy. They would be better offâor at least freer to roamâif they claimed to be Buddha. Buddha is not something separate to be worshipped as a supreme being. Buddha lit...
