INTERVIEW WITH SHI MIAO HAI (SHAOLIN MONK AND NOVICE) - THE PATH TO INNER HAPPINESS

so [Music] meditation is the art of cultivating the mind this is a quote from our next guest in this room everything podcast series in the shop everything videos web series today from shaolin temple europe last day of the program monastery on time i have the honor pleasure and real privilege to talk with shimeohai who has been guiding us gently firmly and with compassion love and determination through these five days and he also was guiding us in the first boot camp i did last year that's my second time here and who is she mia hi he is a novice here in shaolin temple europe he's been living here for more than four years and way to go i think and he's also he's been educated in buddhism and shaolin arts and living and also in martial arts female high welcome thank you for the honor yes i guess this is one of the first interviews as a novice and such a pleasure for me too thank you very much my first question is we go i want to get to know better um so if you were about to put your your highlights of your of your life your biggest highlights your biggest milestones in a timeline what would you say were those milestones and why do you think it happened and what they brought you so i think something that led me here where i am now is that i started in a very early age already to think a lot about life very much and so i was a lot diversifying on life and i was searching for certain answers so i was trying to understand um the people around me and i was trying to understand myself and the answers that i found for myself i could find them back in the buddha's teachings so the more i try to figure out certain truths about life itself the more i found that my thoughts that i have are very similar to what is already being taught and what is already being given by the buddhist teaching and so i became more and more interested in the buddhist way of life and what the buddha actually taught and the more i became interested the more i also felt this this kind of being drawn to living this life in a way that i put the buddhist teaching into practice because how matter how much you doesn't matter how much you think about it and it also doesn't matter how much you talk about it if you do not really actively work on yourself and try to live what you have in your mind then all these words and all these teachings they cannot serve you so i wanted to find a way how i can really dive into um the buddhist path and so since i had been practicing martial arts already in my childhood and it was always a topic that fascinated me and something that also influenced my personality at a very young age when i came here to the shaolin temple europe i noticed for myself that the practices that we are doing here and the way how the buddhist teaching is being transmitted and is being lived it worked for me because there are so many ways in which you can put the buddhist teaching into practice in your life you don't necessarily have to live in a monastery for this but for me personally i can say that when i came here what we are doing here helped me very much it helped me very much to get to a deeper understanding of what it is like to experience buddhism and this experience is not any more an understanding of the mind but then you are understanding something with your heart and so you are really internalizing something and once you internalized something because of your deep experience you are much more able to understand it and this is what also made me become a novice here because even though as you said before i've been living here already four years and maybe i can share some things that i know but no matter how far you come even as a master one day [Music] you are still learning every day and there is still so much to learn and so much to continue on and so this is also something so important never to forget this is why we for example we bow in front of buddha statues and it is when we we don't necessarily practice any kind of submission in front of a statue but this statue is reminding us of our potential to become enlightened the potential which is already within ourselves and so every time we bow we realize um we are still on the way and it helps to to not build yourself on the knowledge that you have already but to realize um it just continues every knowledge can again lead to another perspective but it is not there just to to purely serve the knowledge but it is there to help you to continue and so yeah i am i'm very grateful to have been able to to have been given this opportunity that i could live a life like this and therefore i'm also very grateful to be able to share everything that i know with other people because you know if you really love something there is nothing more beautiful than to be able to share it give it away yeah because then this is an act out of real compassion this is true compassion is not that you have something and you keep it for yourself true compassion is you open your hands yes that's also why why the buddha taught for example that he never kept any teaching in his closed hands he gave everything he said you are your own leader right yes yes that's why you don't have to know anything more than than this than this pointing at yourself that you are you can be your own light for the nature yes what were those questions you were asking yourself before coming here about life about you i was intrigued when you say what were those questions and what they let you hear and what are the questions that you now ask and how they how they changed over time so i was deeply asking myself why they're suffering in this world and i was deeply asking myself um why there is suffering amongst the people and also within myself and i just felt very sorry for it i felt very sad for it and so this this made me want to find out it made me want to um want to find reasons for it and understand what it is inside of us that makes us create suffering in this world and makes us yeah in the end not live a joyful life and so i felt by myself being truly happy is the way how it should be and i had the idea definitely that [Music] it is possible and so i asked myself very much what is the root of these things inside us human beings and this is something which is also very essential in buddhism because the the first of the four noble truths that buddha taunt is that life yes life is in in the cycle of existence always eventually connected to suffering now what i understood from buddhism is that our suffering has three causes now all of these causes we can see them very much also in attachment for example if you are attached to how the things are this will eventually lead to suffering because you are attached to a certain way how it is right now you might want to keep it you might want to even get more of it or you want to of course be happy from the way how your life is right now but there is nothing in this world and nothing in this complete universe that stays the way it is so happiness based on an outside circumstance that we want to keep and that we want to defend will eventually always lead to our unhappiness and this is something that the buddha recognized and it is not something that he taught as buddhism it is something that he observed on life as it is and so what we try as buddhists is we try to find a way of happiness is without attachment that is without basing this happiness on an outside circumstance and this is what we call true inner happiness because it is not anymore that you are in the ups and downs of life sometimes you might have a lot of friends but there are some times when you don't have a lot of friends sometimes you might have a lot of money and sometimes you won't sometimes maybe sometimes you have a lot of viewers maybe sometimes sometimes but if you are able to find happiness within yourself you don't have to rely have you find it have you found it here um not permanently what do you and what have you discovered um definitely that experiences of this are very much possible and so if i would say um i would have discovered this on a permanent basis that is not shakeable anymore then this would be that i would claim to be enlightened but i am not betty wise yes because the way how i see it is that it is like a process it is not that i know a lot i just know what i know until now but i practice to remain in my inner center and life will give you challenges always the next challenge yes and but the more you are learning the more you are developing yourself it will get easier to find back to your center and your center will it will become more and more stable until you find one day um that you can let go of basing your happiness on outside conditions this is then completely letting go but as long as you are not there yet you can see it more or less like a process of something inside of you that is flourishing more and more so it's like it's like a seed that you plant and you need to take care of it so it's going to it's going to grow it's going to become more and more stable but it's not that now you need this seat first everybody has it already it's just that we how can i say we are very much not used to use our mind in this way but the buddha he taught this to many thousands millions of people in his lifetime he wouldn't have taught it if it would only be possible for a buddha it is possible for everybody that's why he taught and what do you think there are these key steps on the process and are the techniques that help you to integrate this experience so this is something here you have different methods in different traditions of buddhism now of course here we have the martial arts which is also a very useful tool very useful build up your character to build up your personality and therefore also you are in a way doing something practicing something that is helping you with your process not only mentally and spiritually but then also you can realize it in other things like for example the meditation so in shaolin we have also methods like qigong so learning how to regulate and use your energies also learning how to really observe your body and to know what you can do with your body what kind of potential you have because you are going very deeply into um into this body awareness but also the buddhist teaching the guidance that i receive from my masters is something that can help you to also break open things that were misconceptions that you were holding on to masters can help you very much to open up your mind for different perspectives and can correct you if you have developed or you are going to develop in the wrong direction so a master is not necessarily somebody who is like always standing there and teaching you this is not the only task of a master what i am very very grateful for for what my masters did to me is that they were guiding me to say if you are going too much in this direction you have to take a turn and so if you are going too much in that direction take a turn so that in the end actually you are going there but you couldn't see it before they've been there before yeah it's because some things are very difficult to explain by words but my masters i'm very fortunate that they know exactly what they are doing and they are educating the people so it's not about one concept and then this would be the truth because then you're going too much in this direction but when they notice this they explain to you look there are other possibilities don't be too hard or too much attached to this one concept is not the absolute truth but then you start to develop in this direction and you grab on here but you understand until you understand also also this concept is just a model of the truth what it really is but it's not for you to hold it as the highest so you're going to your inner middle yes you always in the end you understand how they helped you sometimes in that moment yeah you don't get it what are they what are the main teachings or lessons that you take from each of the masters that has been guiding you if you were to name the top one top two that of each master oh that's very difficult or maybe one or two something i learned a lot from them but it's also very important that they also they always taught me to look back at myself so it's not that a master can give you this path also for people who are outside you know not living in such a structure like we have here with masters and students and so on it's not the book or the teaching that is eventually helping you but if it is good then it is pointing on you to walk this path by yourself so if the book is giving you a concept that is supposed to be the truth then this might just be true for that person who wrote it in that moment however you have to find your own truth so and how do you find it by walking the path by yourself by experiencing it by yourself this is why shaolin temple leads perfect place right it's a very good place for it yes it's a little bit like if you would now also for the people you know we can describe this place so that's also very good comparison but to experience it by yourself is different so we can talk a lot about it we can talk how it looks here we can talk what we do here now you have as a viewer you have an image in your mind and you think this is it this is the truth and you think you know already but it's because your mind is keeping you trapped actually you don't know in fact you actually don't know anything you know nothing but you think you know yes until you experience because that's not what you think you know but that's the real experience which is always the here and now and this is uh one of the i would say the highest one of the highest teachings that my masters gave to me is to push me back to yes actually not to the teaching but to myself because it's not about knowing a lot i might be able to talk a lot i can share a lot of knowledge but it's not about this it doesn't come down to the amount of knowledge that you have it comes down to who you are and um yeah knowledge is something very good once you use it yes if it is contributing to the situation if it doesn't contribute to the situation then what is this knowledge good for it is just disturbing so if you have knowledge that is contributing to the situation then it is useful so it's a little bit like being in the present moment means to have a clear mind doesn't mean that your mind is clouded and confused by a lot of knowledge that you think is great even if the knowledge is great sometimes a person just needs somebody to listen to or or somebody that can listen to him or her how do you cultivate this clearer mind meditation helps i would say but not only meditation it is so the buddha taught there is the eightfold noble path so we have eight parts of this path that eventually leads to enlightenment and one part of this is for example right effort and right right effort means that you have to work on yourself and you have to put effort into yourself to transform your mind if you don't take this one part out of eight then um everything else also is not going to work against because they are all interconnected those eight you these days taught us how to meditate and was really in a really gentle efficient and real clear clear way and how will you explain to the viewers and also listeners who doesn't you know who are always struggling with meditation what will be from your experience and your learnings the most efficient simple or easy is i don't want to use easy way because there is no shortcut right but the most simple way to get started without you know quitting at the five minutes yes so i would say to make it very simple first of all don't take it too hard many people they really want to get something they want to achieve something they want to get somewhere but meditation is not about this when you practice meditation correctly there's nothing you have to do it all comes by itself so whatever wants to come you just let it come you don't need to get there you just let it come to you whatever wants to go you just let it go and you will find a type of peace and calmness within yourself it is not about getting something it is more about you allow yourself to be you give yourself time and space as an act of self-love as an act of self-compassion and by giving yourself this time and space by allowing it that is why then your mind won't be so busy anymore and you can clearly focus because very often we perceive in the meditation when we start with it that our mind is very busy there's a lot going on inside of us which we normally throughout the day if we don't have a sharp awareness we do not notice most people do not notice because it goes automatic and they are within these automatisms of thought processes now the reason why our mind is so busy is because we keep ourselves busy we keep ourselves busy with everything that we carry around within us this is what you encounter in your meditation you encounter everything that you are carrying around with you and why are we so disturbed by all of these things is because we do not learn how to find our peace with it do not learn to make peace with the things that we have inside of us the reality itself right yeah if you meditate you want to learn to make peace with the things that you encounter within yourself then you notice you won't disturb yourself with these things anymore you won't keep yourself busy with these things anymore if you are in peace with it can just let it be and you can let yourself be you can breathe and just let your breath be you don't have to control your breath you just let your breath naturally yeah and so this is like this type of understanding of the meditation where i noticed that many people have this misconception which is then oftentimes leading to the fact that they put even more force into clinging yes and so now we were talking a lot about just very basic meditation on the breath of course there are many other methods of meditation as well and you can try different methods because not every method has to be the one for everybody the truth yes did you say it everybody can find also a method that is maybe more working for him or her this is also something i would recommend to try out and for how long you recommend to meditate in the beginning is totally enough if you meditate maybe 10 to 20 minutes but very important do it every day because you want to transform your mind to to work in a different way to experience this life in different way and for this transformation it's it gets more and more difficult if you always stop it it's like cooking rice we are cooking a lot of rice here in the monastery if you turn it on one time and you turn it off again and you turn it on you turn it off you turn it on you turn it off it's never going to boil you want it to become good so you need to turn it on leave it there how have you gone getting to the last part of the interview how have you gone from you came here you started as a disciple then novice and what has happened shortly or briefly in this journey to become from coming here to do a program i don't don't know the story well and what have you learned like in the in these stages so in fact in the beginning i came here as a guest just like you um then after this i did the discipleship for two years and actually from the beginning of after discipleship i knew for myself that this is what i want to do and this is a place that i want to help to build up because it's not only that i'm all the time only busy with cultivating myself of course i also try to do this as much as i can within the work that i do here for the monastery but living here in this monastery it's not only about only meditating and only practicing it's also about taking care of this place and supporting the people that are living here um like a service to this monastery and to help this this place to to grow and to be able to give a benefit to the people that come here and so there's also of course a lot of like investment of energy into energy time yes building up this place and for myself i noticed already even if it gets hard sometimes it's still very fulfilling i can tell looking at your eyes your smile your focus your determination how old are you i'm 24 now wow it has very much to do with the fact that if you do something with your full heart then you can really appreciate and be grateful for what you did and you can get so much more joy from it even if you have already invested so much joy into doing it because this is in a way like we describe the law of karma the law of karma very simply put is the law of cause and effect now you have to take care to not to not confuse it with how karma is described in other religions because karma is originally sanskrit word so from an indian language but it can be that other religions also use this word but understand a different concept behind it now in buddhism when we talk about karma we talk about the universal law of cause and effect and if you invest your full heart into something that you do is what you get back if you love what you do what you do will love you back that's what i always explain to the guests when it's about kung fu practice now going through the ballet of pain yes exactly traditionally our education is called going through the valley of pain with a smile that's what i add to it the best way to walk through the value of pain is with a smile but if you really love it you'll receive so much to finish what would you say to everyone who is watching and listening this interview to cultivate themselves as a final message as a final message maybe two things just to add what we what i was talking about previously um now for those people who like not in the position that they can just simply choose what they want to do or maybe they they say i don't have enough time to to meditate so much or to practice so much and so on it's not only about that you find something that you love also what we do here can sometimes become very tough but it's more about that you learn to love what you do that you learn to open your heart and put your full heart into it like i said and surrender to it yes and so this is more the practice than to be searching all your life for something that you call your passion but it's also about you have to make it you have to really learn to to love and to put your heart into the things that you do even when it's very very small even when it seems very unnecessary or very unimportant because when you put your heart into it then it becomes important to you and it becomes very beautiful to you you will be very grateful about it and as a as a recommendation as advice for everybody i think everything starts with um with self-awareness i think everything starts with the fact that you feel yourself and have compassion for yourself and this is something that i notice many people don't have too much anymore nowadays because they are very orientated on things that are happening outside of themselves and forget to feel and to be aware of what is happening within them now there should be a balance because you can also not live only taking care of yourself but you can also not live only taking care of the outer world it has been said already in in other religions to love others the way you love yourself this does not mean only focus on the outside or only focus on yourself it means to harmonize both to find a unity of both of them and with the self-awareness then you can feel what is inside of you and you can start to work with it if you don't feel and you are simply in patterns that you have accumulated in your life because of experiences then these patterns will continue to repeat and you stay in it but once you start to feel what is taking away your happiness or what is taking away your inner peace and once you start to feel you start to experience what is giving you this inner peace then you can investigate then you can work on it if the self-awareness is very low there is not a lot which we can work on so therefore also in the qigong practice for example or in the meditation or in the martial arts before we can control anything before we can develop anything or work on anything first we have to be aware we have to know what we are doing and be conscious of it so this is something that i would recommend to everybody thank you just um what are the name of your masters so my buddhist master and abbott is master shihen zhong he is the abbot of this monastery my master for example in the movement arts but also of course they advise me in every uh in every situation of life is master xiang yi but we have more masters that are also that i also consider as my masters like master shihengswan or master chihang li and master shimyao young now all of them have given me great things for my life and i am very happy also for example with interviews like this and these opportunities to be able to give something back to them and give something back to this monastery and people you are a novice but i can tell and some of the listeners that you you you you have the you have what it has to have for a master but you are a novice but that's just the the title with 24 years old what you said how you explained so listeners chooch by ourselves and just say it in the comments about the simia high is there anything else you want to add no just being [Music] that is very important where people can find you on the internet or anyone who wants to contact with you how can well if you want to be in contact with me you will know where to find me shaolin temple europe yes thank you for your time for your wisdom your experience your knowledge and your generosity for sharing this with us you're welcome thank you my pleasure thank you so much and thank you to all of you from the shaolin temple europe shimeohai on live mastery [Music] you

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Keywords: shi heng yi, shaolin master, shifu, shaolin temple, shaolin temple europe, qi gong, kung fu, tai chi, self-mastery, mastery, qi gong master, kung fu master, martial arts, shaolin arts, shaolin training, kung fu training, qi gong training, isra garcia, selfmastery, self-knowledge, shihengyi, training online qi gong, life-.mastery, self-control, self-discipline, shi miao hai, novice shaolin temple, inner happiness, Buddhist teachings, shaolin teachings, buddha nature, discipline

Id: hX0fNKkIzR8

Length: 56min 51sec (3411 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 17 2021