True Passion Requires Depth
by Master Lee Feng San Shifu
Translated by Sophia Lui
Edited by Ric Meyers
One of my students complained to me angrily that someone insulted her by calling her “a fool for love.” This is because she gets so carried away while in love. Therefore, I told her that I too have been teased for getting carried away by my all-consuming passion for martial arts. Passion, or attachment, is another one of the three poisons mentioned in Buddhist teachings. Like I have mentioned before, it all depends on how we go about them. Regardless of whether you are passionate about your loved one, martial arts, literature, or anything else, the important thing is not to do it to the exclusion of everything else — so that we do not end up in a blind alley.
If artists do not have the fire of passion, they will not be able to produce great art. If scientists are not passionate, they will not be able to become creators or inventors. Therefore, it is essential to understand how to be passionate in the right manner, so that the scope of our passion is not narrow. Rather, it should be wide like the open sky. In this way, our passion will yield results.
Passion is actually a type of intense focus on a specific subject. Instead of narrowing our focus, we should widen it so that our field of knowledge becomes wide and far reaching. When we study something, we should not only simply learn what other, wiser, men have acquired before us, but we should make use of it in some real and practical way.
In this way, we are constantly renewing that knowledge and keeping it alive so that we can, in turn, pass something of benefit on to the next generation. Only then will our passion count for something. Therefore, the way to be passionate is to increase the scope of our passion so that it is “wide” and “far-reaching.” In order to be far-reaching we also have to delve deeply enough into the subject matter so that we can create something of value from it.
The three poisons mentioned earlier are basically ego attitudes, which cannot be dealt with by suppression. This is because they will always surface whenever an opportunity arises, and, by that time, will have an even stronger grip on us. Therefore, like I have mentioned earlier, we should wisely apply abstinence, the rules of conduct and the resolution of issues in our lives, and thus cultivate ourselves in an enlightened manner.
“Enlarge the scope of our enquiry and develop focus; develop depth in our passion so that we can pass living knowledge on to the next generation.” — Lee Feng San Shifu