ON DEATH: A PILE OF FIREWOOD AND A PATCH OF JOB'S TEARS GRASS →

Maggie H is a Global Explorer and Wellness Guru from Hong Kong. Among many spiritual endeavors, Maggie practices and leads Qigong meditation to help people around the world find their inner balance. Find out more about this practice and join her weekly on ICBRKR's live Qigong Meditation stream every Wednesday.

Story one

A couple of months ago, I was watching a documentary of a Buddhist monk and calligrapher who has been living alone for 30 years in a remote mountain area situated in Korea. The crew were filming every second of his life of solitude in the mountain while staying with him for a few days. Since it was right before the winter season, the monk was busy gathering firewood on a daily basis. He has one rule that he adheres to while gathering the firewood. No matter how desperate, he only gathers dead trees and branches. By removing the dead branches scattered around, he keeps the mountain area in a neat and tidy condition.

Upon returning to his small hut, he was chopping and cutting the firewood and piling it up neatly in the barn. The camera then caught a corner of the barn where old and well dried firewood was neatly piled up with a small wooden name tag nailed at the top. The tag was written in calligraphy that read '茶毘木, Dabi-mok' which translates into 'firewood for Buddhist cremation.'

After being asked by the crew what this signified, the monk answered, “If I die suddenly without having prepared the firewood, someone has to do it to burn my body. The dead should not owe anything to the living.” He wants to live 'Not snared, like the wind in a net.' — Wander Alone, Like a Rhinoceros, Khaggavisana Sutta

Story two

Buddhists use prayer beads, and I also own several, made up of various kinds of materials such as different types of wood, seeds, stones and crystals. In Korea, there is actually a plant named 'prayer beads,' which is also known as Job's tears seeds. Extensively available in the Asia Pacific region, these plants are commonly used to make beads for jewelry, tea, medicine, and food. There are several interesting aspects about Job's tears seeds being called 'prayer beads.' They are hard and shiny on the surface, but are very light to wear and carry around. Most importantly, they have a natural hole in them. How wonderful is that? Just string them and voilà!

In the olden days, old Buddhist monks and nuns would wear prayer beads made with Job's tears seeds around their wrist. After knowing that it was time for them to leave the body, they would walk deep into the mountains and find a good spot to sit down and die alone, meditating. Their bodies wouldn’t be found for a long time, even after the flesh and bones completely returned to the earth. Only one small sign, which is the last amazing thing about Job's tears seeds, remained: no matter how well dried or how long they have been used as prayer beads, after merging with the earth, they sprout and grow new plants the following spring. Put simply, they regrow year after year.

My Buddhist nun teacher once told me what when we hike up the mountains and find a small patch of Job's tears grass in a sunny spot, we can infer that there was a nameless practitioner who left a sign behind and returned to where he or she came from.

Recently, we heard news reports about the demise of tens of thousands of people from all over the world. It's truly tragic that some people's lives will be reduced to mere numbers and statistics. I cannot help but wonder how many were prepared, and how many were able to leave any poetic signs behind.

May their souls rest in peace.

See you soon, at the next ICBRKR live Qigong Meditation stream, every Wednesday.

Maggie H is a Life Cartographer, Eastern philosopher, Qigong master, Buddhist and Taoist meditator, Feng Shui practitioner, and researcher of Buddhist scriptures. She lives in Hong Kong, and regularly travels to both India and South Korea to further her spiritual growth and development. Her lifelong motto is: "benefit to all humankind."

To find out more about Maggie's work, check out her website and join other ICBRKRs around the world in her live streams every Wednesday. Check the app, under Global Live Streams, for exact times in your location.

A BURGLAR'S PROMISE: A TRUE STORY ABOUT KARMA →

Maggie H is a Global Explorer and Wellness Guru from Hong Kong. Among many spiritual endeavors, Maggie practices and leads Qigong meditation to help people around the world find their inner balance. Find out more about this practice and join her weekly on ICBRKR's live Qigong Meditation stream every Wednesday.

This is a true story I heard from Ven. Hye-Guk Sunim.

About 30-40 years ago, there was an old abbot at a small Zen temple in the high mountain ranges of Korea. The abbot had been wanting to rebuild the main building of the temple as it was old and falling apart. Everyone donated money, and finally there was enough money gathered to start the work. So the abbot announced the news and thanked everyone for their generosity.

That night, the abbot was awoken by a burglar demanding the donation money. The abbot refused to give him the money. But the burglar was not ready to give up either. The burglar pulled a knife out and threatened to kill the abbot.

The abbot said “It's not my money, so I can't give it to anyone.” The burglar didn't have time to play games with the abbot, so he said, “What do you mean? I know you have the money, and I want it now, or I am going to have to kill you.”

Then, the abbot calmly told the thief, “You seem to need that money more than the temple, as you are ready to kill someone for it. Remember, I am lending this money to you so pay back whenever you are ready.” The burglar took the money and off he went.

Ten years went by, and one day, a gentleman visitor came to the temple for the abbot. The gentleman said, “You lent me money ten years ago, and I came today to pay back the money with interest.” The abbot smiled and said, “Was that you? I couldn't see your face because it all happened in the dark.”

Ten years ago, the burglar tried to steal the money. He had gone bankrupt and lost everything and was heavily in debt. He didn't think much of what the abbot had said about lending the money as long as he had the money and kept his hands clean. Maybe because of the blessings of the abbot and the kind donors of that money, he was able to start a new business and become very successful. However, in the back of his mind, he couldn't stop thinking about paying back the abbot who may or may not remember his face.

The gentleman thanked the abbot for putting the temple project on hold for ten years and rebuilt the main building of the temple better than the abbot had planned, as the interest.

This story teaches different lessons to different people, even to burglars. What Ven. Hye-Guk said after the story was, “A promise was made in the dark between the two before the burglar took the money and ran. The burglar would have to pay back the money at some point; even if it is not in this lifetime, it'll happen in their future lives which will leave them wondering why one is always giving and the other is always receiving.”

According to the law of causality, the burglar paid back the debt he accepted knowingly and unknowingly because his conscience pricked him. However, some people might have chosen to ignore it, thinking that they can get away. Well, the law of causality catches up pretty quickly no matter how fast you run.

If you feel that you are always the giving one, consider that you are paying back your karmic debt from the past. Moreover, now that you understand the law of causality, start creating many new causes for the future with good words and intentions.

See you soon, at the next ICBRKR live Qigong Meditation stream, every Wednesday.

Maggie H is a Life Cartographer, Eastern philosopher, Qigong master, Buddhist and Taoist meditator, Feng Shui practitioner, and researcher of Buddhist scriptures. She lives in Hong Kong, and regularly travels to both India and South Korea to further her spiritual growth and development. Her lifelong motto is: "benefit to all humankind."

To find out more about Maggie's work, check out her website and join other ICBRKRs around the world in her live streams every Wednesday. Check the app, under Global Live Streams, for exact times in your location.

QIGONG MEDITATION: A POWERFUL IMMUNITY & SELF-HEALING BOOST →

Maggie H is a Global Explorer and Wellness Guru from Hong Kong. Among many spiritual endeavors, Maggie practices and leads Qigong meditation to help people around the world find their inner balance. Find out more about this practice and join her weekly on ICBRKR's live Qigong Meditation stream every Wednesday.

The hardest thing about being on a diet – more than dieting itself – is going right back to where you were at lightning speed unless you change your lifestyle permanently. It takes months to get there and days to come back with guilt and self-hatred in a gift bag.

Nature has an amazing ability to go back to its original place. The original place for our body is a healthy and balanced condition, as we were born. Other than physical injuries such as cuts, bruises and scratches, most of our illnesses are caused by the insufficient flow of qi (life energy, bio-electricity), which reflects your unbalanced mind due to stress and unhealthy lifestyle. When your mind is kept unbalanced for a while, differing from person to person, the flow of qi to the weakest part of your body gets blocked or becomes sluggish first. When that happens, the body shows you signs through symptoms. If the symptoms are ignored for a period of time, the illness spreads to the neighboring organs and their functions.

The key to maintaining good health is noticing such signs at an early stage and adjusting them back to a balanced state before they get worse. Our natural healing ability works with a 30:70 ratio. If the illness is less than 30 and your healing ability is 70, your body will bounce back to good health by having a rest, good food and moderate exercise. However, if it's the other way around, such that the illness has reached to 70 and your healing power is less than 30, that's when you have to seek medical help on top of rest, food and exercise.

The best way to boost your natural healing power is through the mind, which controls the qi flow in your body. The meridian system, which is the path where qi flows, is not quite recognized in modern medicine, although it is being accepted more as an alternative healing method. However, the meridian system has been the main practice in the East for thousands of years. Certain incurable diseases with unknown causes and cures, such as ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), Alzheimer's disease, strokes and so on can be easily explained with the meridian system.

Qigong healing is basically boosting the flow of qi in your meridian system. It's like jumpstarting a car that has a flat battery. We use another car with a full battery to boost your system so that your own power generator starts going again, thereby charging the battery for your car to run at good speed again.

The first step of self-healing is trusting your own natural ability to bring your condition to its original place, like the yo-yo effect in dieting. The second step is letting it naturally surface by setting the body and mind in a perfectly balanced condition through meditation rather than forcefully working on it.

Our next session is going to be a little longer (30 minutes) to exercise our natural healing power. If you have friends or family who need immune boost or self-healing, please feel free to let them know.

See you soon, at the next ICBRKR live Qigong Meditation stream, every Wednesday.

Maggie H is a Life Cartographer, Eastern philosopher, Qigong master, Buddhist and Taoist meditator, Feng Shui practitioner, and researcher of Buddhist scriptures. She lives in Hong Kong, and regularly travels to both India and South Korea to further her spiritual growth and development. Her lifelong motto is: "benefit to all humankind."

To find out more about Maggie's work, check out her website and join other ICBRKRs around the world in her live streams every Wednesday. Check the app, under Global Live Streams, for exact times in your location.

A Zen Master's Super Memory →

Maggie H is a Global Explorer and Wellness Guru from Hong Kong. Among many spiritual endeavors, Maggie practices and leads Qigong meditation to help people around the world find their inner balance. Find out more about this practice and join her weekly on ICBRKR's live Qigong Meditation stream every Wednesday.

Photo credit: Mr. Lee Gilwoo

Ven. Hye Guk Sunim burned off three of his fingers in his early 20s, right before going into 2 years and 7 months of meditation where he wouldn't lie down for the entire duration.

I have met many practitioners who possess abilities beyond the normal range of human capabilities. Korean Zen master Venerable Hye-Guk Sunim was one of them. My first connection with him was over the phone, because I was living in Canada at that time. I boldly made a call to his monastery's general line for my burning questions. The lady on the phone wasn't sure if he'd be around to take the call, but she put me through.

After one ring, he himself picked up the phone. The first call lasted only a couple of minutes and I was given a mantra to practice. About a year and a half later, I stopped over in Korea for a week on my way to Hong Kong. Although it wasn't planned, I had a sudden desire to go see him at his monastery, so I got on the chartered bus that left at 7AM the next day. As it turned out, his monastery only allowed outsiders in one day a month – the third Saturday of each month. Somehow, that was the day I arrived and everything worked out for me, as if I had preplanned the whole trip.

When I got on the bus, everyone seemed to know one another except me. As we got closer to the monastery, a kind-looking old lady, who turned out to be the organizer of the monthly visits, came to me and asked if the Zen master knew me. I said no because we only spoke once on the phone briefly a while ago. She immediately replied, “Of course, then he knows you.” I doubted it, but everyone on the bus seemed to be agreeing with her.

After listening to his dharma talk and following a Bibimbap lunch with mountain vegetables, I had a chance to sit down with him. Naturally, we picked up where we left off as if we were continuing our phone conversation in person.

On the way back to Seoul, the kind lady told me a story. Once, a publisher had wanted to publish a book on all the dharma talks the Venerable Hye-Guk Sunim had delivered over the past 20 years, expecting that the Zen master would have saved all his scripts on his hard drive somewhere, as one does. Oh, but the Zen master was a computer illiterate. Apparently, he never had any scripts for his dharma talks, so he never saved any. The publisher panicked, but the Zen master promised he'd rewrite the scripts from memory. In the end, as expected, the Zen master produced the entire dharma talks for the publisher. But the story doesn't end there... Some of his dharma talks were privately recorded by his followers, and the recordings and scripts are identical word for word — even after 20 years!

How is this even possible? Because when he was preparing, delivering and recalling the talks, Ven. Hye-Guk Sunim was in the neutral, perfectly balanced state of body, mind, and spirit.

Let's imagine we walk into a stranger's living room for the first time and leave after 10 minutes. What would you remember? If you're an art lover, you'd remember the person's art collection. If you're into sports, you'd remember the trophies on the shelf. It really depends on what kinds of filters you normally use to gather information and blur out the rest.

Life becomes much simpler and painless when we are able to see things the way they are. All filters are lifted as we put our body and mind in a neutral, meditative state.

Sometimes, things are just what they are.

See you soon, at the next ICBRKR live Qigong Meditation stream, every Wednesday.

Maggie H is a Life Cartographer, Eastern philosopher, Qigong master, Buddhist and Taoist meditator, Feng Shui practitioner, and researcher of Buddhist scriptures. She lives in Hong Kong, and regularly travels to both India and South Korea to further her spiritual growth and development. Her lifelong motto is: "benefit to all humankind."

To find out more about Maggie's work, check out her website and join other ICBRKRs around the world in her live streams every Wednesday. Check the app, under Global Live Streams, for exact times in your location.

Find your tribe on the ICBRKR app, available on iOS and Android, and share your positive energy with like-minded people.

Relaxation & Focus : The 2 Basic Elements of Meditation →

Maggie H is a Global Explorer and Wellness Guru from Hong Kong. Among many spiritual endeavors, Maggie practices and leads Qigong meditation to help people around the world find their inner balance. Find out more about this practice and join her weekly on ICBRKR's live Qigong Meditation stream every Wednesday.

Photo by Zen monk and photographer, Venerable Seonam Sunim

Tap-tap... tap-tap-tap.

That's the sound of a big split bamboo stick tapping on the shoulder of a monk.

It is a common scene in a Zen temple when monks meditate. They sit down in a big room facing the walls and the head monk quietly paces around the room holding a big bamboo remonstration stick. The head monk gently and rhythmically pats on the shoulder of the monk a few times with the bamboo stick, when anyone dozes off or gets lethargic. This is not to inflict pain but wake him up and others, with the crisp and clear bamboo sounds, so they can come back to the focused state of the mind.

When our body is in deep relaxation, which is a similar state to falling asleep at night, all thoughts disappear from our head and our mind becomes quiet. That's when the brain waves go down to the slow and deep state of Theta, which is right before we fall into a deep sleep of Delta. In the Theta state, our body switches to a maintenance mode of healing, restoring, balancing, recharging, and resetting. That is the reason why we feel like a new person after a good night's sleep or a good meditation session.

Up to this point, there is no difference between good sleep and meditation.

The difference is this: good meditation keeps the body and mind in full relaxation, so the brain waves stay in Theta and do not go down to Delta, which would be sleeping.

The bamboo stick makes sure that your mind stays focused on the present moment. This is the kind of focus where there is absolutely no intensity involved. It is almost like looking at a beautiful flower, that is focused enough. With this relaxed body and focused mind, we can reach deeper into our consciousness.

Having said that, this can be challenging for many beginners. To those attending my group meditation sessions who are heavily stressed and physically exhausted, I encourage them to just relax and not worry about falling asleep. Many people these days are in dire need of relaxation. Without practicing how to relax the body properly, you can't even think about focusing the mind. So in my meditation classes, please never feel bad for snoring or sleeping the whole time. For my part, I will take it as a compliment.

Physical relaxation requires a bit of practice, and once you are able to relax your body whenever you need, we can then work on the focus part.

In our next session, we will be more mindful of the relaxed body and focused mind. By continuing this practice, we will naturally achieve a higher level of consciousness.

I look forward to connecting with you again at the next ICBRKR live Qigong Meditation stream, every Wednesday.

Maggie H is a Life Cartographer, Eastern philosopher, Qigong master, Buddhist and Taoist meditator, Feng Shui practitioner, and researcher of Buddhist scriptures. She lives in Hong Kong, and regularly travels to both India and South Korea to further her spiritual growth and development. Her lifelong motto is: "benefit to all humankind."

To find out more about Maggie's work, check out her website and join other ICBRKRs around the world in her live streams every Wednesday. Check the app, under Global Live Streams, for exact times in your location.

What Is Qigong Meditation? →

Maggie H is a Global Explorer and Wellness Guru from Hong Kong. Among many spiritual endeavors, Maggie practices and leads Qigong meditation to help people around the world find their inner balance. Find out more about this practice and join her weekly on ICBRKR's live Qigong Meditation stream every Wednesday.

Qigong (氣功) is a millennia-old ancient Eastern practice of balancing the body, mind and spirit by cultivating the energy centre (丹田, Dantien) in our body through body alignment, breathing and meditation.

Our body runs with bio-electricity (氣, Qi), which is the same energy (space energy, electricity) that exists in space. When we were born, we came in this body as a battery of certain capacity containing certain amount of qi to last a lifetime, and this battery power determines the quality of our health and life expectancy.

Put differently, we're able to increase the power of harnessing the unlimited space energy for healthy body, clear and focused mind and spiritual advancement (wisdom) by increasing the power of the energy centre.

There are various ways of practicing qigong, and my specialty is Neigong (內功, Internal Power) practice of mostly sitting down and circulating qi internally by breathing and meditation. With this Neigong power, I engage your energy to help you go deeper into a meditative state. Being in a deep meditative state puts our body and mind in an optimal state to effortlessly handle any tasks, and consistent practice of being in a deep meditative state will lead us to a higher level of consciousness (super consciousness).

Starting from noon this Wednesday, I am hosting 20 minutes of live guided-meditation sessions every week with ICBRKR. No matter where you are, we will all be connected spiritually as one, as we will be connected globally via the internet. I look forward to connecting with you all!

Maggie H is a Life Cartographer, Eastern philosopher, Qigong master, Buddhist and Taoist meditator, Feng Shui practitioner, and researcher of Buddhist scriptures. She lives in Hong Kong, and regularly travels to both India and South Korea to further her spiritual growth and development. Her lifelong motto is: "benefit to all humankind."

To find out more about Maggie's work, check out her website and join other ICBRKRs around the world in her live streams every Wednesday. Check the app, under Global Live Streams, for exact times in your location.