Mastering the Material World

Here I am again after going silent for a week. Last weekend was a terribly hectic one: I had the Saturday morning and afternoon working with colleagues on the database; and immediately after that I had to rush for a wedding dinner.  And Sunday was a catch-up session with a friend from US. I did not have a single minute to spare for blogging.

This is the last weekend before Chinese New Year. All the places are jam-packed with last minute shoppers. The red madness of CNY has begun! There will be an exodus of cars from the city, heading north, south and east, back to kampungs and small colonial towns where the young and the old will feast, gamble and banter with joyous abandon. 

I'll be looking forward to some peace and quiet here in the city, a much welcome break from the stressful stream of issues which I had to tackle over the past week. It's also a good time for me to finally attend to all the annual bills--assessments and taxes that I have to pay at this time of the year. 

We Chinese celebrate money unashamedly, and with actual money too: angpows--red packet gifts filled with money--flow freely during Chinese New Year as a symbolic gesture of wealth distribution. Money needs to flow to generate luck and prosperity. We wish each other worldly success, not peace of mind, not enlightenment. These are but cherries on the material cake. The cake always has to come first.

The Chinese has many superstitious beliefs. But they are embraced with humour and good fun. Chinese geomancy (feng shui), numerology and astrology are part and parcel of our everyday lives, determining things like the orientation of homes, the opening date of business and the suitability of life partners. 

Fortunately, or unfortunately my own family never had the practice of gambling as part of CNY celebration. I say unfortunately because I've always envied how my Chinese friends have such fun gambling with cards and mahjong all through the night until dawn, as part of their CNY ritual. 

The material world is one which requires a unique set of skills to navigate. These skills are not unlike those that a good gambler possesses--the ability to assess risk, balancing risks versus rewards, of keeping one's emotions in check and having the ability to assess trends. The material ocean is full of turbulent waves and fierce winds, but with the necessary skill, one could learn to maintain a steady ship, harnessing the forces of the elements to reach one's destination.

I've written a lot about spirituality in my blog but I must stress that its pursuit is not at the expense of the material world. There's much that we can learn from the Chinese embrace of materialism. CNY is a good time to remind ourselves of that.

Worldly comforts only come when one is comfortable with the world. And being comfortable with the world means that one is able to pursue and even enjoy its many pleasures and yet at the same time remain unattached to them.  That is the key mastery one must acquire in this material world.