Nightclubs (1)

■Book 111 - Roving Over The World

■Written by GrandMaster Sheng-yen Lu

Many nightclubs provide wine, dining and women in Hong Kong. They cater to human desires.

Big Boss, China Palace and Big City are the three most famous nightclubs in Hong Kong. All of them boast of palatial decoration.

The boss of Happy Valley nightclub is my disciple. He told me during his heydays, he had at least two hundred hostesses under his charge.

Most customers frequent the nightclubs for wine and women. The dancing floors are most of the time empty. Customers are entertained by residential bands, singers and performing artists from all over the world.

The nightclubs in Hong Kong compete in internal decoration, wine and women.

One nightclub even goes to the extent of providing a Rolls Royce to ferry its customers from the rooms to the toilet. This show is unmatched elsewhere.

A waitress will come first to take order for food and drink. After that a mamasan will come to introduce \`girls\`.

She has an album showing the photographs of all the hostesses under her charge. The client can pick and choose the girls. When the girl chosen arrives, the mamasan will introduce her to the client.

The client can drink and converse with the girl. Later the mamasan will return to bring the girl elsewhere. When she returns, she will ask the client whether he is satisfied with the girl who came. If the answer is affirmative, the the deal is considered close. Otherwise she will introduce more girls until the client is fully satisfied.

Nowadays the dance hostesses are very pragmatic. Besides drinking and joking with their clients, they expect the clients bring them out for two purposes:

1. Supper.

2. Staying overnight (price is to be negotiated).

For the sake of money, they are prepared to entertain strangers. They do all kinds of seductive, obscene acts to stimulate their clients` sexual desires. Eventually, the male pay the female for sexual service. This is the oldest profession on earth.

As sex drive is a human nature, people will not get sick of night life.

Ration and passion are fighting in human mind all the while. To be wise, we have to transcend our passion, otherwise we will have to mingle with the rest.

I know very well the root of transmigration is greed, which stems from desire. To break the chain of transmigration between the six realms of existence, we have to supress our 

desire. Since time immemoral, human beings have to suffer because of all kinds of greed.

In my view,

material is emptiness (Enlightenment)

Emptiness is material (Mingle with the mass)

A cultivator will have to pass a gruelling test balancing these two views.

It is mentioned in a Sutra:

90% wisdom and 10% passion - - residing in Heaven realm.

70% wisdom and 30% passion - - residing in Asura realm.

50% wisdom and 50% passion - - residing in Human realm.

30% wisdom and 70% passion - - residing in Animal realm.

10% wisdiom and 90& passion - - residing in Hell and Hungry ghost realms.

\`Human beings are born from sexual desire. Greed and hatred are the causes of transmigration.\` So said other sutras.

As we have inborn desires, the Chinese saying talks about \`Seven passions and six desires\`.

It is an uneviable task after shaving off their head, all the monks must purify themselves and give up all the material pleasures.

Shakyamuni Buddha said in the Perfect enlightenment Sutra:

\` Try your best to suppress your mind, in order to feel calm and have a perfect enlightenment. The act itself is a disease\`.

According to the views of phychologists, \`If you try to suppress your passion, your behaviour will change for the worst, although you can control it for a while, you cannot suppress it for the whole life. Once the threshold is reached, you will indulge in satifying your desire and do all kinds of unthinkable acts\`.

As you can see, suppression is not a solution, and indulgement is even worse, that is why Buddha taught us the transference method:

Unclean view : To view human bodies as something very filthy; so that our passion can be controlled.

White skeleton view: Our passion will be controlled if we know all human bodies will be reduced to skeleton after our death.

Moreover, many arhats and disciples of Buddha cultivated a ritual known as \`Meditative Stabilization of Unpolished Fire.\`