On December 13, I wrote my column “The Way of Water” about why I try to eliminate my ego by cleaning floors.

Basically, I was saying that both Confucianism and Buddhism emphasize physical action — mopping a floor or sweeping the ground in an effort to purify the mind.

The next day, I received an e-mail from Mr Greg Cusack, an honorable retired US statesman in Iowa, endorsing my effort in “putting spiritual values into play in our daily lives.”

He then asked: “I am curious: do you find that your remarks along this line are welcomed and understood by many of your readers in China? I hope so.”

I hope Greg can pardon me for not having answered his question sooner, as I was not sure I have an answer.

I do have friends and readers who practice spiritual values in their daily lives, though they may not mop floors as I do. Some do volunteer work of all kinds, some donate items to the needy, and some always have a good word to others. They follow the way of water — lying low to elevate others.

But are there many such people in China, or the world at large? I don’t know. I seem to have more acquaintances who rant more than reason and curse more than bless. And only a year ago, I still had an ego big enough to undermine my power to reason.

Rediscovering true self

Although an definite answer to Greg’s question still eludes me, I was thrilled to come across a very famous figure over the weekend who also champions home cleaning as a best path to rediscovering our lost true self that’s clean and quiet in oneness with nature.

Her name is Yangjin Lamu, whose meaning in Tibetan is a heavenly girl with wonderful voice.

In 2011, she won the Best New Age Album award at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards, becoming the first singer of Chinese nationality to have been so honored.

On December 21, my wife and I attended the launch of her book, “The Dawn of the Era of Mother Earth,” in an art gallery in Shanghai.

She began the ceremony by singing soul music with a small band for about 40 minutes, which moved many in the audience to tears. I had expected her to talk a lot about her new book, but she didn’t.

After the song, she told us personal stories and answered our questions about how an ordinary person like her could be awakened to live a simple but happy life.

“Home is the best place to be for a woman,” she said. “How a home looks reflects a woman’s inner world.”

She said she had moved many times. Each time she moved, her new home would become “leaner” with redundant things given away to friends or those in need.

“If you live in a messy and overstuffed home, your body will feel clogged,” she said. “After you clean your home, your body will immediately feel good. This is what Zen Buddhism means by cultivating one’s heart through an external environment. Once you’ve cleaned an external environment (a messy and overstuffed home), your inner world will be clean, too.”

On her recent move to Shanghai, she joked: “Oh my, when I opened my storehouse, I found there were still so much stuff around (LOL).”

As I read her book later, I found this line: “We’ve bought and accumulated so many things that are useless because of our greed.”

Indeed, greed is part of our ego, which is hardly rational.

One more suit

When it comes to shopping, especially buying clothes, many women are not that rational, Yangjin Lamu notes. “They forever need one more suit.”

By giving things away to friends or those in need, she writes, one can practice charity while keeping his or her home clean and simple. “If you keep doing this, you will find unimaginable happiness in simplicity.”

She used to be a successful entrepreneur — in the 1990s she helped found Cheezheng, a big-name Tibetan medicine company — and had little time or concern for her home.

“In those years when I was busy with my business, home was nothing but a place to sleep in,” she writes in her book. “Like a firefighter, I flew here and there, and hardly had any time to take care of my home. I didn’t realize how important it was to do household chores, like cleaning and cooking.”

In retrospect, she says, business success didn’t necessarily make her happy. “Who was I except that I stood for Cheezheng?” she asks. “More and more people came to me, but in most cases it was about money ... Strange faces came and went, hardly touching our deep, honest selves.”

Business success did give her a sense of achievement, but not necessarily a source of happiness, she recalls. It was in 1998 that a devout Tibetan Buddhist and astrologer predicted that she would be the best exemplar of practicing Buddhism at home and that she would go to the West in 10 years.

“I was young and stubborn then,” she says. “I still lived in the world of my ego, unaware of my true self, although I respected my master.”

Her master passed away shortly thereafter, and in 2008, she found herself meditating in Colorado, US. “When my master’s prediction came true (in 2008), I began to understand him better,” she says. “What an ignorant and self-important child I was when I was with him, but he always smiled at me, full of mercy.”

When my wife and I first saw her last weekend, Yangjin Lamu smiled at the audience, herself full of compassion.

As I listened to her song and story, I came to realize that one’s true self is indeed clean and quiet, free from frustrations.

If you have a chance to read her book, you will find this: “When one mops a floor or cleans a home otherwise, one naturally moves around, and when one’s body moves around, one’s mind gradually comes to a stop ... In particular, you will heave a sigh of relief after you mop the floor and sweat a lot. At that moment, you rest in satisfaction, free from frustrations.”

Zainab Salbi, an Iraqi American who founded Women for Women International when she was only 23 years old, has helped around 300,000 post-war women around the world to survive.

Then she met Yangjin Lamu and said her life was changed because Yangjin Lamu helped her understand peace as something broader and deeper than absence of war and economic prosperity.

A beautiful mind, Salbi says, brings about real peace because it melts worldly injustice with love, it doesn’t combat it.

Indeed, if people all over the world learn to sweep away their egos by cleaning and clearing their homes, there will be no divide between “us” and “them” or between East and West.

The name of this weekly column comes from the famous Taoist saying that the ultimate good is the way of water.