The Art of Doing Nothing

During our daily life, we often rush into things. As we get older, the day gets shorter. Why? This is because we have lots of things to do and plan. It seems as though we are constantly in a hurry.

People asked me on my last day of work: “What are you going to do when you retire in such young age?”  There was no trace of any hesitation, nor was there a whiff of concerns in answering this question. I explained I am not young. I want to take a moment to appreciate life-the citrus smell of the gum leaves to the organic shapes of the pebbles by the creek. I want to watch a spider spin its web and gaze into the endless sky.  I want to enjoy yawning like my father does and sneeze like ‘Sneezy*’ at work.

People asked me, “won’t you feel bored for doing nothing?” I said I have plenty of things to do. I will watch my garden plants grow; I will count the morning dews if any on my fig tree and watch the sky to see the clouds pass by. We can learn lots of things from the sky. I will meditate when my family members are busy working. I will walk my old mum up and down the street to strength her leg muscles.
  

I need to take my time to experience all these again, as we grow older we tend to forget. Doing nothing used to be a dream and now I have all my time for doing it. Doing nothing is not hard to do, I think I can do it and do it well.

*Sneezy- one of my work colleague who sneezes obnoxiously.

The Art of Repentance (Ksamayati)

As I woke up early this morning in preparation for the repentance ceremony (Liang Wang Bao Chang), my husband intervened: “We have to move all the retaining wall blocks from the drive way to the backyard.” Of all days it just had to be today, but I couldn’t let go of the thought of him setting up my vegetable patch on his own. Eventually I agreed to stay at home to help him, reluctantly staring at my son. Today I told him we are going repent in three aspects:

    1) Vacuum repentance – while we vacuum the house, we should think about all the mistakes that we have done. Through this, we may remove all the dirt and dust from the floor like clearing up our mind. We wholeheartedly repent for the mistakes and sincerely vow not to repeat these make in front of the Triple Gems.  Our mistakes may include our actions, speech and thoughts.

    2) Mopping the floor repentance – As we mop the floor with detergent we may connect our thoughts with the words from the Water Repentance. We may purify our mind with Dharma, repent our mistakes and refrain from repeating them. We sincerely repent in front of the Triple Gems.

    3) Moving block repentance – whilst moving the cement blocks away from the drive way, we may think of eradicating our obstacles on our Dharma path, such as greed, hatred, ignorance, jealousy, anxiety, fear, anger, desire, depression, etc. We wholeheartedly repent in front the Triple Gems within our heart; we will try to remove the internal obstacles in order to attain a clean Dharma Path.

I explained to my son that although repenting at the temple is good, it does not require oneself to repent at a temple. If for whatever reasons we cannot be at the temple, we can have our way of repentance as long as we are sincere and truly repent from our heart and refrain from repeating the mistakes, this is true repentance.