IN the midst of endless national crises and personal disorientation resulting therefrom, it is sometimes safer to seek refuge in the timeless thoughts and deathless philosophies of the East.

We Filipinos can learn a great deal from them.

Take, for instance, the penchant of Filipinos to bash national leaders seeking solutions to the nation’s ills. The Chinese would have said: “Sometimes towers are measured by their shadow; great men by those who speak ill of them.”

For the one-track-minded, obstinate negotiator, the Eastern Arabs would advise: “Better to have the camel inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.” The virtue of compromise in elegant metaphor.

Our own Filipino poets have often pricked the bubble of the boastful braggarts by referring to our own common rice fields. In the rice fields, they say, the best stalks are those that bend heavy with grain, not the proud haughty stalks that stand erect, full of emptiness.

The Eastern Zen philosophy is based on the spirit of self-reliance and effectively coping with life through mind-and-body techniques.

The old TV series Kung Fu flashes back a scene of the master and the student-grasshopper underlying the value of self-reliance. With the former facing the student with both his fists closed, the master asked: “Grasshopper, is the bird I hold dead or alive?”

With the student unable to answer, the master said: “If you had answered the bird is alive, I would squeeze it to its death; if you say it’s dead, I will simply open my palm and set it free.”

“So shall it be, grasshopper, your fate is completely in your hands—no one else’s.”

A grim reminder to those afflicted with mendicancy to a foreign power and a clinging attitude to government dole-outs.

In the Zen philosophy, both the teacher and student share the work burden as a normal work ethic. Once, the student, sensing that the teacher was too old, removed his tools to spare him the load. At dinnertime and for three days the old teacher refused to eat. His philosophy, “No work, no eat.” The student returned the tools to him.

 Contrast this with many Pinoys’ endless creative ways to skip work, cut corners or hide from responsibility.

The success of the Chinoys in the country, on the other hand, can be attributed to their patience and die-hard work ethic. Says  Chinese Lao Tzu: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.”  Then he plods along, content with the thin profit margins to  the Pinoy’s “quick buck mentality since, as he gamely started, the Chinoy said, “I have plenty of nothing and nothing is plenty for me.”

Being an ethnic minority, the Chinoys have dealt with the marketplace with extreme caution. “There is no prosperity in anger,” they say.

India, cursed with overpopulation and generally barren land, is today one of the world’s most respected economies.  Indians learned to make do as their favorite proverb says: “If there is no wind, row.” Apparently, they have learned to make haste slowly.

Indians were probably internalizing what their beloved Mahatma Gandhi disclosed: “There is more to life than just increasing its speed.” The trouble with the rat race, they say, is even if you win, you are still a rat.

Devastated to unspeakable ruins during World War II, Japan, meantime, proudly stands today as the globe’s model economy. The Japanese favorite proverb: “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” An anonymous saying quoted: “Don’t be discouraged, it is often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock.” No wonder Japan has been the mother of many inventions.

The Japanese Bushido philosophy, on the other hand, expresses a code of ethics emphasizing patience, frugality and constant self-improvement which permeates all levels of Japanese society. This has become part of the social ethos of Japan.

Contrast this patience to the Filipinos’ Latin temper and quick-fix syndrome; frugality against a “sweepstakes”, “lotto” and “fiesta” mentality; constant self-improvement to the “bahala na” attitude. Then one sees the resulting effects on both nations’ economies.

Boye de Monte, in his book Japanese Ethics in Business, describes Japanese corporate life as a combination of feudal authoritarianism and humanism. Confucian influence has defined  loyalty to one’s superior as paramount.

 In many zaibatsus, for instance, absolute obedience and blind loyalty to the corporation and the chain of command is demanded in exchange for an almost perpetual material, social and even spiritual well-being of the employee.

But if for nothing else, however, people can still draw inspiration from Filipinos (being one of the happiest races in the world) for their incredible sense of humor.

The Pinoys’ answer to the Westerners’ quip that “the cure for insomnia is to get lots of sleep” is “the storm will come late, it has been delayed by bad weather.”

Free Enterprise is a rotating column of members of the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines, appearing every Wednesday and Friday.