Nan Huai-Chin is a teacher and scholar famous in China but little know outside of China and Taiwan. He has written over 30 books, which have sold literally tens of millions of copies in China, mostly on the black market until recently. Few of his books have been translated and made available outside China. He is an advisor to the government as well as a noted spiritual figure. Today, it is not unusual to find whole sections of bookstores in China devoted to his works. He is noteworthy for his knowledge and attainment in all three major strands of Chinese culture: Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism. When I visited Master Nan he had just finished a new interpretation of one of the two Confucian classics, "The Great Learning." This essay, originally written by Confucius’ grandson 2400 hundred years ago has been a mainstay of Chinese culture ever since.

Teacher [Master Nan; COS] thinks that there are limitations to just using management as a starting point if you really want to influence the world in the next century. What you are doing now at your Center at MIT can only impact on the sort of the higher level of management people, to help them to manage better. But then its impact on the whole society is actually relatively small.

What has been lacking in the twentieth century is a central cultural thought. There is not a single cultural thought that unifies all of these things together. There are no great philosophers or great thinkers that can develop the thinking that unifies all these questions...

The current materialism still has a lot of influences. Everyone talks about how to make money, the business. That’s all everybody concentrates on now, even the political leaders... But sooner or later people will get sick of this. In many places in the world, people are raising the question, what is the spiritual content of human life? It will definitely go this way, spiritual. But this route will be different from the spiritual route of past... It will be a new spiritual path. It will be a combination between natural science and philosophies.

This here is the most recent book by Teacher, it’s on the Great Learning. It actually mentions seven meditative spaces. Basically if you want to become a great leader, you need to go forth into these seven meditative spaces....

NOTE: Figure 1 is a drawing by myself (COS) after the conversation. One of Master’s students, Hwei En, said, it would correctly reflect Master’s thinking. Her explanations about the seven spaces helped very much to clarify my understanding.

The important part is to actually understand yourself, understand your opening process.... First, before you can become a leader you have to understand yourself, you have to be sincere in your heart, you have to be unbiased. That’s where the importance of those seven training comes in. You have to be aware and you have to stop - start.

Professor Zhao explains to me the two main principles of all meditation practices. The two key principles are (1) "always reach emptiness" and (2) "concentration is a middle piece." Reaching emptiness is the goal. Concentration can help to lead to that goal. Opposed to concentration and emptiness, most people operate in one of the following two states: "dozey" or noisy. To contemplate your mind means to see into your fear and to realize that they are empty. There are five poisons that get in your way: greed, anger, ignorance, arrogance, doubt. You have to get rid of them all...

COS: During our afternoon conversation, Teacher talked about a blind spot. This blind spot concerns our unability to see the process of coming-into-being of social reality. Usually we perceive social reality as a thing, as something that is separated from and outside of us. The blind spot means that we do not see the process of coming-into-being of this reality, we do not see the process through which we bring forth social reality in the first place. And then, I understood Master Nan such that he says that in order to illuminate this blind spot, you have to practice the seven meditational steps of leadership...

COS: If the blind spot is concerned with the process of coming-into-being of social reality, of social action, my question is, where does this stream originate? Where does this stream come from?

Master Nan/Professor Zhao: Teacher said the source is the mind and the thought. In the 20^th century, there was no philosopher who was able to putting it all together and to seeing the whole picture...

Now the question is where does this consciousness come from? Is the consciousness within our body? We have a consciousness like thinking, a thought. It’s because we are sort of reacting to what we are seeing or to what we are experiencing...

There’s another kind of thinking or consciousness, another part of a consciousness, which can just think by itself...

Let’s now focus on this question of the thought that’s related to the sixth consciousness...

Within three or five years’ time, we’re going to see major changes because they rarely use their brain anymore...

The small self and the big Self come from the same source. The mind comes from the same thing. One origin for both of them. The whole universe is just one big Self. Religious people call it God. Philosophers call it the fundamental nature. Scientists call it energy. Buddhists call it the Atma. Chinese call it the Tao. The Arabs call it Allah. So every culture, in a sense, they know there’s something there, ultimate something...