A Quote from Avatamsaka Sutra

Avatamsaka Sutra (華嚴經), a Buddhist Sutra also known as The Flower Garland Sutra, is not only a good book to understand Buddha, but also a book providing profound wisdoms about views, which is a very important concept in investment.

I was helping my wife to print out my mother in law's lecture for a Buddhist meeting when I found something really astonishing in the Avatamsaka Sutra. I shall translate it from Chinese. Please note that my translation may not correct, but close. I will do it in English as well as Chinese, so that some of you can directly read it in Chinese.

無見即是見，能見一切法。於法若有見，此則無所見。

No-view is precisely a kind of view, those who have no view can witness every law (of the Buddha).
Should there be a view to the (Buddhist) law, that must be no-view.
(or, "If you have a view to the [Buddhist] law, then you can witness nothing." Sorry, I am not very sure for this.)

有見則為垢，此則未為見。遠離於諸見，如是乃見佛。

Those who have views are polluted, thus can witness nothing. Stay away from lay views, thus can witness the Buddha.

Well, next time you see someone eloquently talking about what's going on the market, please kindly remind yourself this little quote from Avatamsaka Sutra.

4images 1.7.1 and MySQL 5.0.x

Ever since my Chinese Painting Gallery moved to a new host, the site has been off for a serious database problem. My friend Ted told me that it was because 4images 1.7.1 is not compatible with MySQL 5.0.x.

Please see 4images forum for a solution.

I have to thank my friend Ted for providing this invaluable information.

How to Be Protected from the Young

People at about my age, which is forty something, may be wondering: why is that, when we were young, the old man had the ball; and when we are getting old (and obsolete), the ball is in the young man's hand. Well, that may be just my personal feeling, but I think to some extent it is true that the young is invading into our territory.

This morning, I read the headline on the newspaper: "Two Teenagers Won the Science Fair with Only 200NT". They are just junior high school girls. Their work, "A New Method to Measure Surface Tension: An Re-Application of the Connected Pipe Theory", won the first prize of the 2008 International Science Fair in Taiwan.

Every now and then we have this kind of news circulating around, and we take it for granted that young man are taking the lead in the world of science. We, the middle-ager, mostly engaged in business or social matters, do not have to worry, so we tell ourselves. But is it that safe to keep ourselves focusing on things other than natural science? I doubt.

My friend Su is a radio program moderator, and the program is about books. She invited me to her program and talk about Greenspan's book, The Age of Turbulence with another guest- to my surprise, her student. He is just an elementary school boy.

Oh, no. If a schoolboy can talk about economics on the air, then the young are not just invading in the fields of natural science. Fortunately, I found that boy can not understand the book, and he could only squeeze words out with difficulty. I felt relieved as well as compassionate.

But I still think that the middle aged can not protect themselves from the young with knowledge. In the era of Internet, information and knowledge is never an advantage of the aged. We can only at best keep up with the young. Never think about to leading or teaching them. Some of them can even be erudite.

So, what moat do we have? What 's so important and the young are lack of? Experience? May be. But mind you, the only thing that we can learn form experience is, as the famous history saying goes, we never learn from experience.

Money? May be. But that is not a real moat. The young are getting rich ever faster. They may be richer than you already.

Social connections? May be. But the young have their own social networks, and you have yours. You have already seen many companies run buy 'kids', and they run the companies pretty well, if not better than you did.

OK, I propose one. Credits. I mean not only the bank credits, but all kinds of credits, such as your work, papers, medals, honors, some good things, and most importantly, the prizes you've won.

In the business world, we tend to judge a person by historical records. And this is a very important vetting process. We don't have to evaluate a person in every aspects, we only count on his records. And a series of good records or credits is just something that the young can never acquired when young. Some may think that the credits now can be built up much faster than before, but I doubt.

Most of the Credits are built up through competitions. And it takes time to compete. That is perhaps something the old-timers already done.

So, next time when you see some young stars in your company about to compete you out of your position, don't try to start learning computers, take trainings, or even go to schools. It's too late and useless. Besides, it is not easy. Never try fighting your enemies in their wars.

You try to be the sales of the year, to take part in an important task force, to lead a challenging project, and so on. And DON'T FOCUS ON ROUTINE WORKS ONLY. Leave them to the young. You'd better make mistakes instead of making no noise.

It’s Different to Be Different

About two thousand years ago, Suma Chien(司馬遷) in his famous book, The Historical Records(史記), described Tao Ju Gong(陶朱公),the richest man in ancient China, as follows. “Sell the expensive in a way as if it were dirt, buy the cheep in a way as if it were pearls.” One would consider that is a matter of price. But price is just a phenomenon and every person has his own view, therefore, it might not be the real point. I think it is about “being different”.

If everyone, including your mother in law, thinks that something is of no value, then you just buy it as if it were invaluable. If everyone thinks that something is very valuable, then you just sell it as if it were of no value. All you have to do is being different to all the others. Some may say that this is a kind of contrarians. But it is not that simple. Being different is never that simple.

Consider a teenager who wants to be different. He does not want to be similar to his parents, brothers, sisters, and even classmates. He wants to be different in clothing, hairstyle, talking, and even foods to the extent that he manages to be as different as he can and finally turns to the fads for help. As a result, in one way or another, those teenagers that turn to fads all become similar. They are so similar that they may even look like their parents twenty years ago. Their difference is just of no difference.

If you want to be really different, you just can’t make it by being against everything mechanically. The difference has to be originated from the bottom of your heart.

I remember that thirty years ago, when I was in high school, there was a naïve painter, Hong Tung(洪通, 1920-1987). To everyone’s surprise, he suddenly became famous. Hong had never learned painting. Actually, he had never gone to any schools. He was an illiterate, and lived in a very poor and remote village in southern Taiwan. He made a living by temporary jobs.

One day, when he was about fifty years old, he suddenly found that he had a passion in painting and started painting. The villagers looked down on him and took him as a lunatic, for he made no money and could not make a living except relying on his wife. He was considered as garbage, but he’d never mind.

Amazingly, it only took several years for him to become a hot shot in Taiwan. How he succeeded will be skipped here. You only have to know that somehow he became the headlines. A lot of tourists went to that remote village just to see him. I confess here, I did, too. Taipei elites had organized an art exhibition for Hong in the U.S. Information Agency(美新處) in 1976. Everybody in Taiwan was crazy for him, even the President Chiang Ching-kuo.

But he never sold his paintings. Some had offered a price so high that the villagers can never imagine. He just refused to sell any of his work. Recall the phrase quoted from The Historical Records: ” Sell the expensive in a way as if it were dirt.” Quite a lot of people would advise him to sell at least some. Please also note that he was still very poor at that time. I think, in this case, it is a conventional wisdom to sell.

But Hong was different, again. He insisted. None was sold.

Years after, he had passed away. But people still consider him a great painter. Nowadays, a lot of so called naïve painters imitate his style of painting. Every year, children in his hometown would paint a lot of Hong’s style painting to memorize him.

One may say aftermath that had he sold his painting then, he would already be out of our consciousness, because we might take him as an ordinary painter.

He was so different to be different.

The Flower of Chikushi

The Flower of Chikushi(筑紫之華) is a variety of Cymbidium sinense(報歲蘭). The location and time it was found are still unknown today. But one thing can be sure, it was not from Chikushi.

There are white lines called "art"(藝) on its leaves. The "arts" has various patterns. Usually, the pattern of this variety is called "nakahu"(中斑). That means the white or yellow lines are located in the inner part of the leaves, while the outer part of the leaves, especially the tip of the leave is green.


The Flower of Chikushi has a strange property. If a young shoot starts growing in spring time, its leaves will all be ordinary green, no white lines on those leaves. But if the young shoots start growing in autumn, then, it will have splendid and flashy leaves. People consider its "art" unstable and therefore The Flower of Chikushi is inexpensive.

But I think this property is quite interesting. The combination of green shoots and "art" shoots makes them easier to grow and let the whole plant look more beautiful. Further more, sometimes, there are also "arts" on its flowers, and the pattern is "nakahu" as well. But not every flower of it has "arts". Sometimes, you can see different types of flower on a scape.


Twenty years ago, people think that these "arts" can not be reproduced by pollination . Nowadays, some people have shown that if the female parent has "art", then there may be some chances to have "art" offspring.

We still don't know the exact mechanism. But it is interesting, and I have tried to make one pollinated. So, let's see what's going to happen several years later, no kidding.

The last picture shows the flowers of an ordinary Cym. sinense.

AM 729

I seldom listen to the AM radios. Today, I tune the radio back and forth without any specific program to listen. It happened that I found AM 729, the Shih Hsin Radio Station(世新電台).It was Deutsche Welle(德國之音) on the air. For me, the Deutsche Welle is not the same to the BBC world service, DW is in more depth with no-big-deal kind of news, and you won't have American election or Afghanistan news all day long.

To my surprise, they had a special on how the Indonesian ex-Chinese are doing after Suharto's death. These ex-Chinese have been through a terrible life under Suharto's anti-Chinese policy. They are a bit confused. They consider themselves as Indonesian, but why is that they have to be treated differently just because they have a Chinese strain. Some are proud of being both Indonesian and Chinese.

There were some interviews in the program, so I can hear the voices directly from those Indonesian ex-Chinese. That's quite a contact.

My point here is not to discuss the Indonesian ex-Chinese problem, but the media from German that is so different from the U.S. or British ones. We all have been for too long a time reading, watching, and listening to the U.S. media, and unintentionally getting an American view. It's a situation that I thought I can do nothing about it. For if we want to keep receiving world views, we have to receive them in English, which automatically conveys an American view. I am not saying that the American view is bad, actually it is quite good, and I have been enjoying it very much. But we just want to have some other voices to listen to.

I am glad that Deutsche Welle does it in English. From now on, I have BBC, ICRT, and DW to choose.

Whatever Will Be, Will Be

It is Chinese New Year now, and suddenly, it came up on my mind that I'd better write my Blog in English from now on, at least, once in a while.

I am forty eight years old. It is a long way for me to have a computer and start exploiting the cyberspace, and, perhaps, typing as well. But that is not the most difficult part. I find writing something that is in a flash quite challenging, especially in English.

This Blog has been written in Chinese to record my life. Somehow, I think it is time for me to write in English to share with the world. You will never know how hard it is.

I was an executive of a local securities firm and futures trading company. One day, I found I'd better start my own investment business, and I did. Currently, I am an investment free lancer, to invest for my own good. I believe that value investment is what I do, I am serious.

As an value investor, I am doing fine and have a lot of time hanging around. Usually, people think I am unemployed, or I may not have so plenty of time doing nothing. But they have no idea that I am making money, perhaps more than they are doing. And that is quite strange a feeling. I am far from super rich, but enough for a humble life.

However, while doing nothing all day is my goal, it is quite boring just sit there. So I have a lot of hobbies, such as Chinese Painting, music, orchid growing, and Go, and I also translate English to Chinese for a local publisher. Among my works are The Walmart Effect by Charles Fishman and The Age of Turbulence by Alan Greenspan.

You should see how the publisher react to me at the very first time we encounter. Anyway, translation is fun and free for me but certainly not a good business to make a living. All translators in Taiwan know that. But it is something that you would spend a lot of time to do. It is so worthwhile to have a good book in hand to translate.

That's all I have to say for now, and, I hope you like it.