Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai Chungli, Formosa,
February 25, 1989 (Originally in Chinese)

A medical team once went on a search for the key to longevity, hoping to share its findings with the public. It visited a number of primitive tribes and remote areas, where the inhabitants lived longer than the normal life span and looked younger and more innocent than most people.

On the first leg of its journey, the team visited a tribe of good-looking people. Although some of the tribesmen were well advanced in years, they still looked happy and healthy and had beautiful complexions. "What is your secret?" The doctors asked, "Why is it that you are able to live so long, yet remain young and happy?" They had little to worry about, they said. They had enough to eat, and had no competition, complicated business dealings, or jealousy among them. They just lived together naturally and peacefully. They ate simple food that was neither too spicy nor too sweet. They had no chocolate, for example. They did not even know what candy was, so their teeth were in good condition. (That's what I heard. I don't mean that you cannot eat candy.) So the doctors learned and recorded their findings about the key to longevity, which included not eating too many candies, sweet cookies, or spicy foods, and experiencing no competition, jealousy, business problems, or disputes.

Then the team moved on to another special place, where the inhabitants revealed a new secret in addition to those the team had already recorded: having less physical relations with one's spouse. They stopped having such relations after they had had two or three children. This way, they saved more energy and lived longer. Well, the doctors recorded this, too.

Then they came to a third place. It was more prosperous, exciting, colorful, busy, and noisy, and was enjoying a business boom. The first local person they met was an old man. Despite his elderly looks, white hair, and wrinkled face, he looked fine. With great respect, the doctors asked him what his secret was. He ate, drank, and indulged in daily merrymaking, he said, adding that he also smoked, consumed meat, and had new girlfriends every day. The doctors shook their heads and said, "Wow! This is new to us." The man's comments contradicted all the earlier concepts that they had learned about longevity, which were to eat simply, lead a pure life, and have fewer sexual relations. How come everything was upside down here? In great surprise and admiration, the doctors exclaimed, "Only God knows why this is so!" It was beyond their understanding. So they gave the man a cigarette to make friends with him. Then they took him to a bar, where he drank alcohol as though it were water. The doctors then admired him even more. One of them could not help but ask, "May I ask, uncle, how old you are?" And what was his reply? "Thirty," he said.