To live easier

To live a easier, happier life, we have to be live harmoniously with our surrounding situations.

To live harmoniously with our surroundings, we need to have less conflicts.

To have less conflict, we must be easily adaptable with the surroundings and situations.

To be easily adaptable to the surroundings and situations, we have to have lesser clashes of opinions with people and with situations when they do not go in the way we want them to.

To have lesser clashes of opinions with people and with situations when they do not go in the way we want them to, we need to decrease our attachments to our opinion on things or issues.

When we have less attachments to our opinions on things and issues, then anything is not a problem anymore.

However, we still have a problem, which brings conflict, which causes us to be unable to live happily. People fault us for our lack of opinion.

Having a lack of attachments to our opinions brings many problems in the modern society. So we must have attachments to some kind of opinions and ideas. So what kind of opinions and ideas should these be? When should we be attached to our idea? What are the principles that govern it? Can these principles change too?

A tribute to Ah Gong

"Ah Gong!! 早!! (Morning!!)"

"Eei! 早,早(Morning, morning)."

On the way to school, I would usually pass by Ah Gong, sitting on the steps, resting after his morning walk. He does this, everyday, with great difficulty on his roller supporter. Then he would attach a string to his supporter and then relying on the handle bars of the stairs, climb up 4 stories all the way back home and slowly reel up his roller supporter when he reached the 4th floor. He used to swim too but stopped 1 or 2 years back.

Ah Gong is actually my neighbour upstairs. It all started when my mum asked me to call him Ah Gong, and I continued for the next 11 years. A nice jovial guy, with his cap, grey bermudas and white shirt, doing the same thing everyday, constantly, though with great effort. I have always wondered how he manages such a punishing task daily and never knew why he did those long morning walks. He moved, a step at a time, each step with enormous effort, pushing his roller walker forward, step by step.

A weak yet strong Ah Gong. Self reliant, he never let me help him up the stairs, prefering to walk up himself. I wonder if i would have such strength at his age... I highly doubt so, even at my age. I never really talked much with him, 95 percent of the time not exceeding the 2 lines at the start. Nevertheless, there is a certain part of him, already deeply etched in me.

Dear Ah Gong, I never really knew you. But my friend, constant companion throughout the last 12 years, you may not know your impact on my life, but I'll always remember you.


"Going to school?"

"AH(yes)!! Ah Gong bye bye!"

Prayer of the heart

All misdeeds through endless past,

Born of ignorance, greed and hate,

Committed through body, speech, mind,

I now repent at Buddha's feet.

Karma arises of the mind,

And of the mind is repentance found.

If so the mind disappears,

Karma follows and so falls through.

Mind gone,

karma lost,

both being empty,

Such is called of true repentance.

I now vow,

In the Buddha's Hall,

To follow through,

With the Buddha's Way.

To bring to shore the limitless beings,

To cut through all greed, anger, delusion.

To master all the Dharma Gates,

To step right through to the unsurpassed.

To all who gathered,

I bow to your feet.

In reverence, determination

And in repentance.

Please bear witness to this vow,

I beseech you all Great Bodhisattvas.

If one day, my heart is shaken.

Please help me regain my way.

Just a random post

Oh well, 2.30am on a CNY eve with nothing to do and no school today. After reading a few friends' blog enteries i just decided to write a random blog entry.

Over the last few months, life has been comparatively harder. However, it has been just as rewarding, if not even more, it has been testing, which reveals my flaws, attachments, impatience even more.

It seems my memory is getting worse though, not sure if i am getting stupider, I cant really seem to understand the lectures nowadays. And everything seems to be moving at a much faster pace. Since i cannot remember what was the last lecture, i naturally cannot follow up on the next class. Looks like i'll just have to work harder and put in more effort. I think it should be true that memory detriorate with age and it is more difficualt to learn things when you get older. Taking jap2 now, everything is so fast that i sometimes seem so utterly lost in class.

As such, i am going to make the best use out of my new year holidays to catch up on all my subjects and hopefully give myself a head start after the new year.

Recently, i have been getting my life in order, setting up a schedule of what i am gg to do at what time of the day. Like morning wake up do metta

May I & all sentient beings be free of enmity
May I & all sentient beings be free of anger/hate
May I & all sentient beings be free of bodily suffering
May I & all sentient beings be able to continue to be happy

then sit up, do 10 min meditation. Then start the day. Bow to Teachers, Bow to Buddha, then eat breakfast and am out of the house to school. Chant while on the way to school.

Study study study, do my best, make the best use of time, every minute, dicipline dicipline dicipline. Do what I have to. Then go home, the time i like the most, read a dharma book while on the train. Then go home, do homework, dicipline, dicipline, dicipline. Then bow bow bow, then chant then sleep. Been trying to do the metta before sleeping but always forget about it...

This metta thing is quite fun, something i learnt from kaizhao shifu. He was really a nice monk, a bit gangster style, but very funny.

Then been attending a zen course by Kwan Yin Chan Lin. So far it has been rather fun, solving Koans and hitting the ground. Still stuck at the first gateless gate koan, the Joju's mu koan, but at least i have finally followed thru with a proper meditation course and started following a method to meditate. Trying my best, hopefully it help me live better.

I have only been reading Zen books recently, those from Subong Zen Centre, chinese versoin though. Someone recommendad this book on the biography of Shunryu Suzuki, maybe i'll go borrow it tmr from library. It is called Crooked Cucumber btw. I also read 2 books, during the hols. Reincarnation by Meckezie, talking about the boy reincarnate(some ppl would not like this word) but i'll use it. THe other book is a book on Zen by Shunryu Suzuki called Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, super impressed and inspired by it. Ok, now i am getting very sleepy, will turn in now.