A way to enlightenment

Education has two levels or components. At one level, education offers knowledge and information, providing people with a range of skills, from literacy to science and mathematics. At a second level, education teaches people to discover themselves, to fulfill their natural gifts and to pursue the truths of life. The first level we can achieve in any type of school system, whether it is western or eastern, state or private…When we compare education systems at this level, we assess students and look at math test scores, grades in physics and other subjects, and so on. But at the second level, it is much harder to assess, and we do not usually provide comparisons of how countries are doing in it. Partly, the problem is that when we look at the education we acquire in relation to our life skills and our knowledge of life, school is just one part, difficult to disentangle from the influences we get from the rest of society. Life skills are obtained not only in schools but they are a self-study experience and a lifetime procedure, which is something we can get from family, friends, from our own experiences at home and in our countries. So, during all of our lifetime, we are in a school of learning, we are growing ourselves to become enlightened human beings, seeking our gifts and purpose in life.
As I examine my own personal views, at both levels, I feel the American education system differs substantially from the Chinese system. In some aspects, the American system is superior to the Chinese system. But I will discuss this in the second paper. Now I will discuss in more detail the self-discovery components of education using my own personal experiences. I will tell stories about some of my friends, people who look like anyone else to someone from outside, but who appeared in some special periods of my life, enlightened me with their special gifts and ideas, maybe they left or we did not keep contact later, but whom I always looked as teachers, helping and guiding me during my long, painstaking path to enlightenment. So I wish one day I could be a teacher too, to enlighten others as my teachers have enlightened me.
My education in China and coming to America
I had low self-esteem when I was a teenager since I was born in a poor village in Northwest China. I was struggling because of it, until I went to college, and graduated and worked. Then I knew how important education was. My studies and the college experience made me realize how important it was for me to take this opportunity and channel it towards the benefit of my people. My province has some unique historical sites and I studied Economics of Tourism in college, with the feeling that I had a chance to find the direct solutions to help to change the poor socioeconomic situation of my people.
After I graduated, I went to work in International Trade Promotion Council in my hometown; most of our jobs were organizing travel groups for governmental officials and state-owned enterprises to go abroad, visiting and studying foreign experiences and finding trade opportunities. But I was disappointed for I found most of those trips were wasted and not produced for the benefits for the people. So I left my job. I became a government Audit Officer that I thought had authority to control some wrongdoings in the government. I could perhaps make a difference this way. But I was disappointed again because I found many serious wrongdoings in my own work experiences. My specialty involved the auditing of public funds in projects relating to many issues such as poverty reduction, rural development, rural education support, and environment protection. Through my work, I found significant waste in public investments. Supervision is often ineffective and funds end up in the wrong hands. Meanwhile, I observed, researched and communicated with people about my findings. I found that under the veneer of economic prosperity, there are deep problems in the Chinese system, leading to the unequal treatment of people; greater suffering for the powerless and poor; and an excessive exploitation of natural resources that has led to a deteriorating environment and quality of life.
Despite all the problems, I felt there was little I could do in my job. Most of the time auditors cannot fulfill their duty. The impact is small and limited by bureaucracy and politics. I began to feel doubts about my ability to generate change.
At this time, in my work, I met Mr. He, an agriculture expert in a project financed by the Word Bank. He told me that the failures in my job were not my fault, but the problem of society at large, which pushes honest people to distort their ideals in order to serve and cater to the system. If you did not adapt yourself to the job, you would feel pain. The alternative was to escape. He encouraged me to study English and leave China, which was what he was doing as well. He said he was doing this for himself and his daughter. He hoped his daughter would not live a life like ours. After 8 years, he finally was successful, left China and migrated to Canada. He had to do a few labor jobs at the beginning, but he was happy, for he had found that he and his daughter did not have to compromise their principles in their work and in their lives.
My meetings and interactions with Mr. He furthered my education enormously. It led me to ask some serious questions about China. What is wrong with the way our society is evolving? Why have so many emerging social, environmental and other problems been left untouched? Why so many people are treated unfair? Why is our population silent, without voice in determining their future? As adults, how can we bear to let our children face the same uncertain future that we had to face? My lack of self-esteem in my younger years had now completely evolved into raising questions about the unequal treatment that my poor countryside fellows were suffering, and the plight of the common people in China, guiding me to realize the need to fight for civil and human rights.
So, life experiences are keys to our education, influencing future life. And even negative feelings can be something, which will benefit and make a difference. I realized this during my struggle with my feelings about my country’s and my own situation, with the help of my friend. Everybody has a special gift and can achieve something in life. One must find out this gift and follow it. This is what the self-discovery level of education is about. So it strengthened my will to be a teacher, who can help others to find out their natural gifts, to help people as my friend enlightened me.
I have many other inspired friends, who have contributed to my education. Another one is Xiaoqing, Jiang, who is a Buddhist. I met him at the same time I met Mr. he. Jiang was an accountant in our local’s party newspaper. But his knowledge was far beyond accounting, ranging from ancient Chinese books to current policy issues, from religions to metaphysics. We talked about sutra and we both agreed that a good religion was about love and kindness. He taught me about Buddhism, its ideas and about meditation, which he believed could bring peace into our sorrow hearts in this abnormal society. For more peace, he decided to decrease his personal desires. So he influenced me to become a vegetarian, which I did after half a year of struggling. Later, I could face money and petty favors --which auditors would face all day in our job-- with an honest heart. Later, I also decided to give of my own money to help the poor and the weak by creating the Shining Phoenix Foundation， although my salary was very low. Now I understand the influence Jiang had on me. He made me understand that if you cut your own personal desire, you will have a more open heart to the broad world. He also introduced me to read Chinese old books like Lao Zi, the Analects, for there are also good political ideas in the ancient Chinese culture which the modern Chinese school system does not teach.
The third influential person in my life education was Li, whom I also met at work. Just like Jiang, Li also had special talents, even more like a fortuneteller than a scientist. He told me he could see the talents in me and which could make a contribution to our people. So he decided he would train me as a traditional master trains a student. This education went on for a period of about five years. There were many unforgettable training and learning experiences. Here I will give one example. We listed out most of my personal shortcomings, and he helped me to overcome them one by one. One of them was I would get angry very easily if I found out people in my audited projects or my colleagues did something wrong. But Li asked me to control my temper at any time. He said people around me are institutional victims; the system has led them to bad behavior. I should not blame them personally, instead, I should be more tolerant and understand them. I could work together with them and bring about more significant changes this way.
Li also influenced me in other ways. He was one of the first to introduce me to religion. He had visited Europe and brought me a DVD of Moses: The Exodus. From that time, I began to learn about Christianity. He always encouraged me to study in America, which I did. Li became a Buddhist after I left China. He forbids me to contact him except when I had made great progress in my life. He said his task as my teacher had finished. He believed that I would learn much in the United States, achieve what I wanted in life, and make great contribution to our people, but that it would not be easy and I needed to be very strong to handle any difficulties on my own.
Since that time, in1998, the fire of pursuing truth has been burning in my deep heart and has never died. Some power is waking up in my soul. What I experienced, heard and saw, always made me sad and sometimes angry, but from these feelings I learned and I matured, with an urge to learn more in school, to think and to write. I read books from western writers of the enlightenment age and Chinese contemporary liberal authors. I read the articles of Professor Mao Shoulong, a prominent Chinese political scholar, who studied one year in America and came back to China, and who wants to be the Chinese Tocqueville. I met Professor Mao twice and asked his help on my reading of political books.
Through my life experiences I realized that I needed to quickly grasp intensive, complete and systematical knowledge to help me in any cause that benefits the poor and weak in my country. I needed to go to America and continue my education, at both levels of education, by learning in graduate-level universities, but also by meeting new people who would teach me more about life and truth. When I told friends about my decision to study in America, most of them supported me, but they were also worried about me. Professor Bai Jiandong once said: “if I could, I would go to study in America. But to a woman, a life of study is difficult. You sacrifice lots of common enjoyment, like the thorn bird.”…But it is not sacrifice, because the thorn bird has to do that, she is driven to and is happy to do that”. I said. The move to the United States did indeed involve a lot of sacrifices for me. The preparation of English, taking tests, applications, failures suffered sometimes, sickness, the separation from my son, and many more struggles were as hard as can be, but now that I am here in the U.S. I can say with conviction that “the life we call blessed is located on a high peak”. I know that I took a very important step in my life-long learning, in my way to enlightenment.
My experience in America
My education has increased enormously since I came to the United States as a World Bank Sponsored Scholar in 2007. The first level of education got a boost as I enrolled at Sipa, Columbia University as a master’s student, in a Economics program. Although it was a challenging time, my knowledge was expanded in many different ways. I liked the way the American education system pushes you to think and explore new areas of knowledge. Education in China was much more structured.
My new experiences with American education also led me to become more curious about education as a field. As a result, I applied to a doctoral program. It is a new leap in my education that will take me closer to my goals of being a teacher and influencing people through my own teaching.
But I have also learned a lot in America at the second level. Life takes you in unexpected directions and one of those directions was my experience with religion, which was completely new to me.
I began to get to know the life of Christianity after I watched the movie the Exodus back in China. When I came to America in 2007, I first studied in California; I participated in Bible study with a group named the Church in San Jose (a protestant group). I spent almost every Tuesday noon with this group. I got familiar with lots of American and Chinese Christians, such as Kate Mama, May, Bruce and so on. They were singing songs, sharing stories about their communication with God, stories of how they conquer difficulties in daily life because of their faith; they would also read the Bible together and explained some parts to new students like me. Every Friday, they had a family gathering and invited me to attend. On Sunday, all of them went to Church, sing songs, sharing stories, and someone would give speeches.
I also attended Catholic Churches. In most of these churches, people were happy and kind. Especially they liked to sing songs. I remember the first time when I listened to their hymns. I was so moved that tears came down from my eyes. I liked the way they treated each other as sisters and brothers. In their hearts there were no boundaries among nations because their perspective is that all people are children of God.
They treated each other as Gospel Friends, and they were inclusive of people from mainland China. They were excellent speakers and answered questions like the best of teachers. They deeply believed in their religion and this inspired them to share it with others. In China, people are discouraged from learning religion. The government feels that religion can disrupt the ruling power of the Chinese Communist Party. But my experiences with the Church in San Jose led me to believe that religion is a very basic, universal part of humankind which should not be controlled by the government.
These first religious experiences influenced me a lot because they are vehicles for people to show their love and affection together, in a communal yet so personal way. It is an experience we do not have in China and it is a gain in my life’s education.
I have also gotten some knowledge by learning about Sufi, a branch of Islam I met an American Sufi Master A in Berkley. He was a Catholic before he converted to Sufi and he seemed very enlightened. It was the first time I heard about Sufi. Sufi’s idea that Truth and God is love has inspired me further. Sufi is not just a religion but a way of life, a way that is focused on love as a path towards enlightenment. This power of love makes one learn from who really cares about you; in turn, this power will make you give love and share your good parts with others to become a good teacher. This made a lot of sense to me because the people who have made a positive contribution to humanity and helped it to grow have been people who are enlightened, following a life of love. These are great teachers and masters we know as Moses, Lao Tsu, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, etc. Also, there have been great inventors, artists, and healers, who have been enlightened, because of their love for what they were doing and because of their love to contribute their natural gifts to serve others. Many revolutionaries have affected the world, but many have failed to move societies in a positive direction because of the absence of enlightenment, love, with motives that come from the heart. Many leaders in China have been operating from the head not the heart, although some were indeed trying to help the country. But they failed. Real change must come from changes in people’s hearts. So, if you want to be enlightened and provide help to others, you must live in love. This is what I learned from the Sufi master.

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The most important lesson I have received from my life is I realized the power of love. This idea that everyone should care about each other and live in love have influenced me deeply.
My life now is oriented to becoming a humanist, a universalist and a teacher myself. I will be able to transmit ideas, knowledge to enlighten people, to make human life better and add a brick in human civilization. In order to be a good teacher, I will continue learning through my lifetime, at different levels, in my way to enlightenment.

Finished at September 29, 2008
Revise at July 16, 2009