Circle

We often draw circles for ourselves to stand in it. For whatever we good at or we think we good at, we draw that circle and lock ourselves in it. For example I have drawn a circle for myself for more than 20 years. I told myself that I am good in IT. My reason for this was I had many papers (University degrees) and many years of experience in this area. I thought I can never walk away from it and yet there is a new challenge coming up that I had to let go of this circle and walk away from it. It’s exciting and risk taken but I am willing to take up this challenge. After my bowel cancer operation, I see things differently. I have an urge to change my life style. I met the hospital chaplain twice during my 11 days at the hospital. I had two long sessions with her (who I have already forgotten her name) about fear, death and pain. I knew there are lot of people who have no family to go back to and long for someone to talk with. I also know many of us fear about death. I want to get into this kind of job to talk people out of fear. I have desire to work in this field but my husband and my mother reminded me about the circle they have drawn for me. I was lingering between money and job satisfaction. Whether I should or should not walk out of this comfortable circle that I have drawn for myself for that many years. We often confine to the circle we drew and hardly look outside the circle. There are so many exciting things happening around us and yet we let this circle restrict us to explore.

My sister has inspired me a lot in this. She never draws circle for herself. She has wide range of experience in jobs. She moves from one job to the others with different skill set. She is now in a job of her life that she can explore herself fully in management. She enjoys all her jobs. The job I admire most was she worked with different clients and experience different challenges with them. One day she came home with a story of the Cat Shit Hell and next day she told me the man with cancer who didn’t need to take medication for pain. I want to see her great stories with my own eyes. Although now she doesn’t need to work with her clients as a carer but she still has so many stories to tell. I want a job like this, full of colour, full of challenges and full of love and understanding for others. I am going to abandon my circle and move onto something wild and exciting. 

Hearing

Today is Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva celebration. Today is the day to remind ourselves to hear not only the external sounds but the sound within. Our hearing ability is far beyond what we can imagine but most of the time, we have selective hearing. We hear what we want to hear and react to what we don’t like to hear. We don’t know how much energy we have spent on the words that hurt us. This can carry on for years or until the minute we step into our own graves. It’s funny though for the person we spoke the words that hurt us might have forgotten. While these words are imprinted on a piece of iron in our minds. Do we have to torture ourselves like this? We know how to hear but do we know how to analyse what we have heard? If someone said you are stupid you get angry straight away. Do you agree that you are stupid? Is this true that you are stupid? If you are angry that means have accepted that you are stupid. If you are angry then the person who told you that you are stupid has succeeded his/her mission. This is our habit of dealing with things that we like to react. When we hear people say good things about us, we react with happy feelings inside us; when we hear people say bad things about us, we react with anger and resentment. We have collected so much rubbish in our subconscious mind (Sankara) through our six doors – eye – seeing; ear – hearing; nose – smelling; tongue – tasting; body – touching; mind – thinking. What to do with all this rubbish we have received into our subconscious mind? We need to understand what we received through these doors are things that temporary brings us pleasant or unpleasant sensations. These temporary sensations keep changing and have no self. ("No Self" means that the concept of "self" has no referent which has absolutely independent existence.) Because we are lacking of the understanding of these temporary changing sensations we suffer (because we are attached to them) We think they are real to us. It doesn’t matter if it’s a praise or scold from someone; we are attached to these words. Most of the time we just take in what others give us and we have no second thought about them. Do we have to take in people’s insults? No, we don’t. We have the right not to accept them. There is a story in Buddha’s time. Buddha was once insulted by an angry man. However, he did not lose his temper. The angry man got even more angry and asked why Buddha was not angry with his insults. Buddha asked the man if he ever bought gifts for his friends. The angry man replied that he certainly did. Buddha had asked if someone refused to accept his gift then who did that gift belong to. The man replied, in that case, gift would belong to him. On hearing man’s reply, Buddha calmly said, “In the same way, since I do not accept your insults, they remain with you.” 

Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva practises on hearing the world sound of sufferings and yet we practise on hearing all these like and dislike of words from others. We react to things we receive through our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind. We keep feeding ourselves with aversion and craving which do us more harm than good. We can get out from the habit of reacting by simply being aware.

Human nature – Competition

Competition is quite a serious sickness in human nature. We can see it happens in family, siblings, friends, colleagues, partners and even compete to our own self. We like to compete with others. We want to be the best and be top of others. This competitive feeling can control us to do things which others see as stupid or ridiculous. We are scared that others are better than us and so we compete. I remember when my children were little. My brother liked to compare his children with mine in school report cards and other stuff. So I often hide the truth from these people. I often tell them my children are doing ok even though they excelled in their school work. I don't want to put pressure on my children and I don't like people to compare my children with theirs.

Last night we had a great talk on this topic with my children. I asked my girl if her brother is doing better than her, will she get jealous? She said she will. She also admitted that she got jealous with her brother since he was born. She said it in a very truthful way. I understand her feelings but I never experience this kind of jealousy. Since young till now, I don't need to be jealous of my siblings because I have the world in my hands. May be this is how I  was brought up. My parents never compared me with others. I had a great childhood.

I know this kind of feelings are hurtful feelings when we can not be better than others. We feel threatened when someone is better than us. I feel sorry for these kind of people who continuously need to compete with others. Some people have a need to compete and win at all costs as a means of maintaining their self-worth. They feel threatened if they find themselves losing. The root of wanting to be better than others is craving and hatred. Actually we have six states of existence in our mind. We can be an animal when we are being ignorant/stupid; we can be a hungry ghost when we are being greedy and crave for more; we can be in hell when we have ill will; we can be Asura when we are full of anger and jealousy; we can be in heaven when we are feeling bliss and happy; we can be human being when we are in between of good and evil. We are living in these six states of existence and we suffer without knowing we suffer. That is where Buddha's teachings come in. Buddha showed us to recognise our human nature; closely observe it and see where it comes from; analyse it and see what is the true nature of these feelings; learn not to let these feelings become our master instead we are mastering these feelings.

The power of reciting Buddha's name

Last night I attended a Dharma talk. The talk was about five precepts and how we can help ourselves and children to observe these five precepts in the Western world. Then someone asked the nun what makes the nun change her initial practice from Zen meditation to preaching the pure-land and reciting Buddha's name. She told us this wonderful story about how she came to pure-land teaching. Here is her story: She met a nine years old girl who had terminal cancer. Her mother wanted to poison her so she could die quicker since she had another three children to feed. When the nun heard this, she went to visit this family. She saw the girl was in pain. She helped her to repent and taught her to recite Buddha's name. Within the same day, the girl passed away in peace. The nun said in this situation, how could she taught the little girl meditation. This is so true. When we have a healthy body and mind, meditation is the best way to understand ourselves and purify our mind but when it comes to young children and old people, recite Buddha's name is the best way to transform our trouble mind to become calm and at ease.

This it funny though, this nun is coming from Zen meditation to pure-land practise and I am from pure-land practice to Zen meditation. You may ask why? I hardly could recite Buddha's name with one point mind. I was quite frustrated that I couldn't calm my mind. I was looking for a method which I could calm my mind so I could recite Buddha's name better. So here I am in zen meditation. This is very true to me that once I practise meditation, I can recite Buddha's name with a one pointed mind. Don't get me wrong though, meditation is the best way to understand ourselves and purify our minds but when it comes to the crunch, reciting Buddha's name is the best way to transfer our fear, doubt mind into a peaceful mind. Maybe my practise is not skilful enough in meditation therefore when I was in pain, my equanimity was weak. I used recite Buddha's name to divert my attention away from severe pain. It worked every time. I love the combination of meditation and recite Buddha's name.

My mother asked can she recite Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva? Sure, why not? I have heard a story about an old woman she recited Om Mani Padme Cow instead of Om Mani Padme Hum. She still got the benefit of purify her mind as long as we willing to practise, recite Buddha's name is also a way of meditation. It doesn't matter we recite Amitabha Buddha, Sakyamuni Buddha, Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva or Om Mani Padme Hum, I think we will achieve the same result – purify our mind. There are so many benefit of recite Buddha's name. We can transform our suffering (such as trouble, worry and fear) mind into a calm and peaceful mind. We have better control our mind than just letting it run loose. We have no time to talk about other people's affair or thinking about our past or future. Buddha's teachings have psychic power over our transformation of our mind, speech and body/actions.

Merit

Years ago I met a friend. She was from Yi Guan Dao (一贯道). She got my family and I into her group. I protested on the fact that I became a member not in my own will. She said the more people she could get them the more merits she would get. I told her then she has no merit because we got in not by our own wish. Why people look at their merits like their bank account balance? Why people do ‘good’ for the purpose of building up their merits? I can not understand this. Offer a glass of water to a monk will get merit; Get people into taking Triple Gems will get merit; chanting the Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva sutra in the seven month of the lunar calendar will get merit; become a vegetarian will get merit, etc. There are all sorts of merits we can collect like gold coins in any of the online games. Why on earth a Buddhist become like this? This is because we lack of understanding the true meaning of Buddhism. People like my mother will tell you, she is a Buddhist but please don’t ask her what are Buddha’s teachings. She goes to the temple to make merit – burn incenses, prostrate to Buddha and donate money. She chants every morning. She believes the more she chants the more merits she will get. I also couldn’t understand why people have to count how many times they recite Buddha’s name per day. There are retreats that encourage people to count how many times a person prostrate to Buddha, how many times a person recite Buddha’s name per day and at the end you will get a prize. I thought we practice to attain our inner peace, but instead we get into this competition game of how many times you can chant/recite/prostrate. I wonder how a person can calm his /her monkey mind by clicking the counting machine to count each reciting of a Buddha’s name.

The Temple battlefield (old article I wrote back in 2009)

 

Every 7^th moon Luna calendar month, there are funny things happen at the temple. This year is the most extraordinary one. The first day of the month lots of people attended. I went there 45 minutes earlier and had found there were many seats taken. People either placed their glasses or belonging on the table to declare the seat has been taken. My sister and I had been pushed by a mother and daughter. She came late but wanted to sit in our seats. So she pushed my sister and I to somewhere else. That was okay no big deal for this. On second day the situation got worse. People even placed their name tag on the table to declare the seat have been taken by so on so. Even some seats have no personal belonging someone would come to you and said this seat has been taken by so on so. I have been pushed from one side of the temple to the other side then from other side to nowhere. This is amazing. I stopped going to the night chanting after the third night because I don’t want to see this chaotic event.

 I can chant at home peacefully and no one push me around. Although Shi Fu often said chanting at the temple with a group can motivate us to be diligent and the power of the group chanting will be much stronger than at home. This is very true especially when we chant the Lu Xiang Zhan. I can melt myself into the chanting but I never can do it at home. Shi Fu also said going to the temple can be a place to practice our cultivation. This is also true. I totally agree with this.

One day my friend from the temple rang and asked why I was not going to the temple. Was I sick? I told her no I am well and healthy. I told her the thing I saw at the temple. This is even more amazing. She said: “Yes, people go to the temple to place their personal belonging from every noon to make sure they have a place to sit.” She then offered me that she can save a seat for me because she was doing the same thing. She placed her pair of glasses on ‘her’ seat every afternoon. I was shock.

I thought Buddhists can live harmony but not quite. The Buddhists in our temple are amazing in a ridiculous sense. I don’t want to fight for my place at the temple. I am tired and don’t want to be part of the temple battlefield.

Pandora Bodhicitta

One and a half years ago, I got into this Pandora charms. My friend told me he bought a charm for his daughter every birthday since birth so he can give her a whole bracelet with charms when she turns 18^th birthday. I liked the idea but I didn’t have any action until one day in November 2009. My daughter alerted me an advertisement on Pandora charms. I asked her whether she wants one. She said yes. So my Pandora saga started.

I went on internet to look for them and studied them. I bought her a bracelet with 19 charms within 2 months. I showed it to my colleagues. My colleague Martin said I am insane that I spent that much of money in one bracelet.  I showed it to my sister and she said she wanted one. My inner self told me I want one too. I found so many excuses to pamper myself. I kept telling myself if I don’t love myself who will. Here I was again going onto the internet to search for “MY” own Pandora charms. I had lost myself completely for the beauty of this Pandora Mara. It was in my mind while I was driving; eating and sleeping. It had my total attention. I think my eyes could only see Pandora charms and nothing else.

Tuesday 30^th of March 2010, that day my mother fell over and I was nursing her at her home. I stayed at her house that night. She was asleep and I had nothing to do. I spotted a little booklet at her altar. It is the Diamond Sutra. I started to read it out loud and could see my Pandora saga right in front of my eyes. Where was my equanimity? I was trying to grasp onto something that I think it was important in my life. Something could give me a momentary happiness that satisfied my own ego. I thought I was enlightened from the Diamond Sutra but not quite. I was still so obsess with these tiny little charms.

Until 30th of April 2011 before mother’s day, my sister came and wanted to get more charms. I looked into my Pandora jewelery box and found no room to put any more charm. I was shock that I have spent that much of money to collect these charms. I reflect back the past 16 months that I was into this madness. I could see there is nothing wrong with Pandora charms. It is something wrong with me that I let myself into this Pandora saga.

Jeweleries and other worldly things such as fame and money have no definition of good or bad. It is we who prioritize them as important in our live. When we step back and look around, we realize we have chasing something like a noon in water. Before I couldn’t understand why some temples have a sign – turn around is shore (回头是岸) and now I understood. 

We often see jeweleries hang on the Bodhisattvas’ pictures. The Bodhisattvas are not attached to them. These jeweleries are as pure as lotus buds hanging on their bodies. I could see Pandora charms are as pure as lotus buds. It’s just me who attached to them to create this madness. Once again I discovered how crazy I was and had a great laugh. I still wear them though but have lost the sense of obsession from them.