Feng Shui, both science and superstition

I remember on several occasions, walking into the office of chinese bosses, mangers, high-ranking executives, they have a huge picture of a mountain behind their seat. Could be a Chinese painting, a photograph, or a western painting even. And in front of where they sit, on their desk or in the centre of their huge office, there is a water-based decoration. It can be a small tabletop waterfall, or a mini size water fountain.

When asked, I am often told this is good “feng shui”. There is even a chinese name for it, in hanyu pinyin, Bei4 Shan1 Wang4 Shui3. Meaning on your back is a mountain and you are watching the water.

The rationale is, the mountain on your back serves as a Kao4 Shan1, can be understood as something to “back” you up. And water is a symbol of wealth; so having water where you can see it is like having wealth reachable.

Feng shui is a Chinese study of how to choose a place for you to stay and how to decorate your house. If you ask me, I do not believe in this feng shui explanation in a little bit. But for something that has fans in the millions on our mother earth, I have to find what why. (Just like I tried to find out who invented the concept of marriage)

My research left me the ability to embrace this whole concept of feng shui as BOTH a scientific and superstitious thing.

To keep the explanation simple, I will use this Bei4 Shan1 Wang4 Shui3 example.

Long long time ago, life is hard for human beings. They either stay in caves, or make simple houses with wood and branches.

With living conditions as hard as then, any evolve-abled living thing will try their best to make the environment work for them rather than against them.

A few things they decided then, as the priority for finding a place to stay

1. Near a water source for obvious reason. You will die in 3 days without drinkable water
2. Water source should be able to last a long time, so they do not need to move house often.



This is where the Wang4 Shui3 part comes in, able to see a water source. Often a river is chosen because flowing water means there is a readily source somewhere. And after many failures and success in finding a place with good water source, they realize this readily water source is usually from a high point, like a mountain.

The scientific reasoning is simple, mountain force wet air current to rise along its slopes whenever there is the slightest wind, as it goes higher, temperate drops due to higher altitudes, the wet air decrease in temperature and condenses into rain or dew at the mountain top, and flow down as river. (Read about convectional rain in wiki)

I do not think the humans then understand this; they just realize from experiences that if they are near the mountain, the river as a source of constant water supply is highly dependable. Besides, the mountain also provided a few other advantages.

1. They can choose a place with a little height on the mountain so that it is near the water and at the same time, not bothered by floods when there is one.
2. Good view to watch for intruders from a higher point of view.
3. Even if there’s no intruders, a high point of view often gives a good view and relaxes the mind
4. Air is fresher
5. The constant water supple flowing from mountaintop enables many readily food to be grown in mountain. E.g. Tapioca, bamboo, potatoe, mushrooms for gatherers and wildlife for hunters
6. And whatever reasons you can find in today’s world why people like to stay in high level apartments or in the hill or mountain (check out property prices in hong kong for houses in the hill)

And thus the Bei4 Shan1 part, having a mountain behind you. The “back up” is more like its rich resources of food and constant water supply.

This good knowledge, as with any normal human being, would want to pass down to one’s children so they do not find a crappy place in the future. However, at a time where you still need to get water from the river and not a tap, people, especially the Chinese, likes to “godify” (to make something into god or a divine being) any knowledge even if they can use basic reasoning then to explain to their children.

If you are a Chinese, some point of your life you must be introduced some concepts of superstitious. It’s just a Chinese thing, and this feng shui knowledge is no exception.

And after two to three thousand years of adding salt and pepper to some very simple reasoning of finding a place to stay and decorating your house, we have today’s Feng Shui. A scientific reasoning turned superstition.

So next time, when someone tells you a bizarre Feng shui reason of decorating his house or choosing a plot of land, try to use my way and find the source of this reasoning. It could be fun if you have the time.

Misconceptions about buddhism

I have met enough people with misconceptions about Buddhism that drive me to write about this article about my understanding on this subject. Back since the days I was researching myself about the “Creator God”, I was researching Buddhism as well.

Here goes.


1) Buddhism is NOT a religion, its more like a philosophy of life

Contrary to what many people believes, there is no “god” in Buddhism. If you read the ORIGINAL scriptures, there was never any mention of a conscious highest being in the world. Rather, the highest being was regarded as nature (non conscious, non judging) itself. The Indian prince who started Buddhism, he is gone forever. He did not become an immortal or something. He became a “Buddha”, which merely means he is enlightened, but that won't make you an immortal, just a very happy man due to enlightenment.

In fact, the scriptures discourage the practice of praying to idols. Like wooden carved statues or stone made idols. The reason is simple, Buddhism encourage you to THINK, and people who pray to idols tend to “leave everything to god/Buddha/miracles and believe all is going to be fine” and not use their brain to understand the ultimate source of suffering

2) Buddhism invites you to challenge his teachings.

Yes! It is stated in the scriptures actually. The reason is simple. Buddhism wants you to THINK, and not just follow blindly or repeat a verse inside the scriptures over and over again without knowing what it meant.

3) Buddha do not require you to go to temple and pray

Frankly speaking, nowhere in the ORIGINAL scripture will you see him saying, “build a temple in my name and worship me”.

In fact, the scriptures discourage the practice of praying to idols like wooden carved statues or stone made idols, for the very same reason I stated above. Buddhism encourage you to THINK, and people who pray to idols tend to “leave everything to god/Buddha/miracles and believe all is going to be fine” and not use their brain to understand the ultimate source of suffering.

4) Happiness through 100% understanding

What Buddha hope we achieve is very hard to attain by most human beings. To put it in a simple example:

Say one day, an enlightened man meets an enlightened lion. The man understands it is but nature for him to want to run away from the lion as it might eat him, as this is how the meat-eating lion is designed by nature to react.
If the lion fail to catch the man and eat him, the lion will not curse and treat the man as enemy, as the lion understands the man is just doing what he is designed to do. If the lion manages to catch the man and eat him, the man will not blame the lion, as this is how the lion is designed to do.

Thus, enlightenment is really a 100% understanding of how our world works and embraces it. However, Buddhism advocates more towards compassion towards everything in the world, including plants and animals. That is another higher level of enlightenment above my example. So in this higher level of enlightenment, the man will not even run but offer himself as food for the lion. As for the lion, it will force itself to be vegetarian instead.


5) Retribution, how it works

This is a very complicated theory in the scriptures, which till today, I have yet to fully understand because there is too many sub theories that branched out from the most original writing, and all those stories on 18 levels of hell did not help. But what I understand, just my very humble understanding, is this.

Because the “good” and “bad” in Buddhism is really very relative and most of the time, depends on one’s state of mind, education, upbringing etc, its hard to say whether a particular retribution is “good” or “bad”. Therefore it is more like
One’s conscience at work and what goes around comes around (watch “The butterfly effect”)


Buddhism spread from India to china, Japan, South east Asia etc etc in early days going thru many different cultures and many different explanation by people of all sorts, including clever people, ignorant people, greedy businessmen, ambitious politicians, therefore you see all sorts of different practices of Buddhism in many countries. The Indian prince must have foresaw with the education level of the general public at that time, to spread his words and at the same time, making them understood is impossible with all those that will twist his teachings for their own secret agenda. Therefore, he added the part that encourages people to challenge his teachings (which could already be twisted when it reached a particular person) and always have independent thought with 100% understanding on any matter.

These are about the most common misconception I heard from friends. Let me know if you have any questions, I am not the more knowledgeable “Buddhist” but I also want to hear counter arguments to help myself fully understand Buddhism thoroughly too.