Omega II: Visiting with the Sages
Day 2 - Afternoon Session - Part 4

by Alisa Joaquin

Then someone asked in the original series where did all the things the Master's said had come from.

David's replied, "Well, a lot of them were Zen stories. Sometimes the whole story in the temple or the story that the blind master will tell to grasshopper where you would sometimes see it on film. Those are all out of a lot of Chinese writings and some of the sayings themselves would come out of Lau-Tzu or out of Confucius. Actually there was this one time they gave me this big speech. And I looked at this speech and it was beautiful. But I said, 'Hey guys, this is the Disetarata. Found in St. Paul's church in Boston in 1724 or something like that. And not only that, but every hippy on the planet has read it. You can't get away with this.' So we didn't do that one. I used to laughingly say to people that, you know, they all came out of Bartlet's Familiar Quotations, but we actually had a very active research team finding stuff out for us. And there was a certain amount of creative writing, you know, making up things. Hopefully, it's seamless and you can't really tell the difference if there's some westerner in Hollywood, you know sitting by his swimming pool, making these things up. But the themes, the thing that you have to understand when we started doing that series, nobody, hardly anybody ever heard the word kung fu. If you weren't in a very special, you know family, you would never have known about it. And then, as we started to do the series, this new knowledge flooded into us and we realized we were actually involved with something that was real. That it wasn't just a story. And we actually started trying to do something good here, something correct. And myself finding out, because I didn't know anything about kung fu when I started. And discovering that, wow, this stuff works. And, you know, understand when I say kung fu, tai chi is one of the many styles of kung fu. Everybody thinks, kung fu, what about tai chi, or kung fu or tai chi, ah no no no. It's all one thing, 'cause what is it 118, well, you know there's 5000, but somewhere or other the number 118 comes up. And there's three or four internal styles of which Tai Chi is one. And Tai Chi can really be an incisive and brutal fighting technique. But it lends itself so beautifully to creating inner peace and for self-improvement, and self-realization. That it's the greatest example, there are other internal styles, but this is the one we know about. Almost everybody knows about this. And it is the great example that shows you how kung fu is not. I mean, we call them a martial art, and it has a certain force about it and confrontational quality. Because of that, because people are just, the idea of knowing some secret way of doing things that can make you invulnerable in battle and be able to knock out that bully on the beach and everything. That really captures people's minds. That is really kind of a side effect. The whole idea is to simply feel good, to improve the texture of this moment of your daily life. And of the daily lives of people around you with the softness and the easeness, that rightness that you create within yourself that actually gets out here. Am I doing this right? And that was one of the charges that Kam Yuen, our Master gave to me and he came to me and he said, 'You have to tell people about this, because they're all getting the wrong idea. All the other movies that people make, you know, they're all about revenge.' If you think about it, every single one of the films that are based on martial arts are about revenge which is such an enormously negative idea to spread around. And that it was important that we come out and explain to people what it really is about. What it's about is . . . that other thing is like an aversion of the higher will. And this energy that tries to lift you up (he rubs his chest), there's like a chakra like right here that wants you to go like that (bringing his hands up to the throat) and feel all this wonderful stuff and we get that inverted. People all the time. You know, somebody would say something like, 'GOD WANTS ME TO FUCKING KILL THIS GUY!' And they actually believe that. That's a total inversion of what is really supposed to uplift you. It's actually going like this (twisting his hands around) And if you can turn that around, I think is what we're al here to some extent. I'm not saying that one of you here is a serial killer that's trying to straighten himself out of that idea. (Big laugh) But what we're all trying to do is find that positivity, that you know, is a little lost in the rat race, in the traffic, in the domestic problems, and the thing that goes on with the IRS. Our kids getting into trouble or whatever it is that is bringing us down. We're trying to deal with that and trying to see how we can make, not just ourselves, but the things around us solve that, make it flow. You know, get Uncle Henry in a good mood. How do you do that? That guy's cranky all the time. Ever see this cartoon called "Crankshaft?" Nobody knows that? Well there's this old guy who drives this school bus. He's this great philosopher but he is always YYYAADDAADAA, like that. And you can just depend on it. And you wanna turn this guy around. Once in a while you see beneath this, how he has found a happiness, like that he's actually not going to let anybody know this, but he really feels good. And how people love him, you know. There's something so good about him, no matter how cranky, he cannot . . . he sort of would like to get everybody not to love him, leave him alone. But they just, you know, the young juvenile delinquent kids that he's always giving a hard time to would actually run to his side. This is a HUGE digression. That's what we're here for, it is try to . . . not try, but get beyond, what does trying get you, to open and to positivise our emotions. Not dispel them, we don't want to live without emotions. Without emotions what's the point. I mean, why do we have emotions if we're not here to use them. But if we can even enjoy crying, cause we have to cry. You know, tears of happiness. Tears of happiness are pretty great. But if we can laugh, that's the main thing about these moves, the breathing and this qi gong stuff. Everything is just to start feeling good. We can do that so simply just by saying, 'Pretend I'm feeling good.' And then I'll feel good. If you want to try just that, just sit here, and okay I'm going to breath in (inhaling) and breath out (exhaling) and just feel like, I'm feeling good, and if you try that, really do it. (David got us all to breath in and out.) Just go like this. You don't have to stand up, you can do this sitting in a car. In front of the television set. You just lost this big bet on the football game. And it just doesn't matter. You can take all this . . . that feels good . . . and this bad stuff . . . is . . . . gone. You have to remember to breath in (long exhale) and you'll find out that it actually only takes once to do that. You don't have to do it as an exercise, though it's fun. See you didn't have to learn any fancy moves or anything. Isn't that amazing? Didn't everybody feel just a little bit better in doing that? Somebody's going to say, 'NO!' like Crankshaft there. 'No, I don't feel any different.'" Everybody gave a light hearted chuckle at that, even David.

Then a question came from the back. The person asked how one would take negative emotion and turn it into a positive when you (in general) might have reacted negatively from someone else's negativity.

Both Rob and David said, "It's different every time."

David said that you try to find a rule, an apology, that's tough too. "I've got to apologize to this creep." He started laughing at that, and someone else said, the humility deal (sounded like Rob Moses). And David agreed, "Yeah, humility."

Rob said, "Sock 'em in the nose helps sometimes."

And David said, "Yeah." Then he said, "You know, laughter . . . If you can include somebody in your laughter. They say if a witch tries to hex you, you can laugh at her. That nullifies the black magic. I find laughter to be just the most important tool in my whole bag of tricks. From moment to moment, day to day, I used to say, nah, nah, well I like to here her story about that."

A woman stated that, "Laughter will change the power that will corrupt, and it will change anything. It can raise the vibration, change the negative vibration. Because everybody it includes, it includes everything when you get everybody to laugh."

Rob said, "Everything's funny. Sometimes it takes about five years to see the humor in it. Really, everything's funny."

The woman went on to say she remembered working with someone and he had said, "You have to laugh two minutes a day. Every two hours you have to laugh for two minutes." she wasn't sure of the advice but she did it and she would laugh for minutes at a time and it became easier for her to laugh at herself.

Then David switched topics and talked about the election (this was during the presidential race). What he said at the end was really funny and has a lot of relevance to the topic of humor.

David said, "You know this election that's boiling up. I don't mean the one the one in this state with the President's lady. We don't hear too much about that in California, but the big one. If it's big. I'm very active with my email and people are sending me, like you get these forwarded things. That tell the state of affairs in Texas or the stupid things, what do they call them 'W" that said, and all that stuff from both sides, you get all of this stuff. And people get really HOT about it, you know. And I was trying to figure out what to do, to say to people, because they're always coming to me, and I finally started saying, 'You know the way it looks to me, I don't understand the difference. But I don't even think you should think about it, you know, care about voting, who you're going to vote for or anything. I think you ought to just start thinking who you're going to bet on. Now this is . . . you talk to a New Yorker, this is really meaningful, you know. I mean what are the odds, you know. But the thing is I finally got tired of saying that and on the email, there's all of these supposedly funny, some of them are just brutal, you know, lists of things and commentaries about both of these candidates and various foibles. You know, the famous DULLNESS of Gore, right. And the stupidity of Bush. And you know. Have you ever in the world ever heard of a woman named Tipper? How did that guy find somebody named Tipper? And so when these people come up, I finally found this real answer which I think is the answer to everything. When they come up and they get so HOT ABOUT this thing and they REFORM! I am the REFORM CANIDATE and THE GREEEEEN PARTY!! How do you do that? How do you get so angry about something like the green party. And my answer has become, 'You know, you really ought to work on your sense of humor.' And I walk away. And I think that is the answer to your question. You created a breech, a social breech, right. You push this guy and thump, and he is ready to kill you and you don't know how to get out of it. And if you just, I mean, it doesn't have to be that literary a version of it, but you say, "You know you really ought to work on your sense of humor." And suddenly, there is a possibility that all of this is a joke, because you know it all is. This entire planet, maybe this whole cosmos, like a cosmic joke, that's being played on us. Isn't it?"

End of Day 2 - Afternoon Session - Part 4

Alisa Joaquin Copyright@2001.
This personal account cannot be reprinted or sold in any other form without strict permission from the author. It is being distributed here solely for your enjoyment.

Omega II Contents / Next Part
David Carradine Home / Contact Alisa