Living in the same way

Living your life in the same way for maybe a large part of your life, towards the end of your life, would you regret doing same thing for the many years? Would you yearn for more, that you have tasted the other experience? Or would you regret thinking that you could have lived in another way which is more beneficial? Would you think that you have wasted this life? Or wasted those many years? The thought of having a next life to continue 'living' does not help anymore because you are simply not you anymore. So what would you do? How would you make your decisions, and how well are you going to stand by it?

Would you be satisfied with your life? That is the greatest question. Are you satisfied?

If not, what could we do?

A question to consider

Is everything not going well for me? Or am I not going well with everything? Hmmmm....

Perfect robots? Reflections on iRobot

Even robots with perfect codes will go haywire. That is how this world is! Dissatisfactory, imperfect and these decays or changes can happen anytime! So no matter how perfect your programming or engineering is, you cannot create a perfect robot. Because perfect is impossible in this world! This world is marked with dukkha!

However, if you create a council of robots to check on each other in case others go awry, the possibility something will go wrong will drop, but never go away!! There will always be a chance. And a higher chance humans will go wrong. So what do we choose?

Living this life

To think that you know more, so you should be more important, or treated so, you are making a big mistake! If u refuse to bow to someone who has only knowledge and no insight, it goes to show that your insight is really not enough!! One must be constantly reminded of this! After all, where did I come from, to be so important that 'I' can't lose or my body parts can't touch the ground. Know that 'i' am not so different from the other and harmony is important. Act wisely and only when needed. Do the right thing, say the right thing, to the right person, at the right time. It is a life long learning. I have much to learn, as always :)

Buddhism

Well, to me, the practice of Buddhism is to realise ourselves. To realise that we are here, not there; we are this, not that. This is who we are, this is what we are. We are only just like this, and these are what we can and should do.

Then we realise that things are also just like this and not like that. Then the only thing left to do is to constantly bring ourselves back to how we and things are and do what we should do.

Honestly speaking....

Honestly speaking, after all these years of studying Buddhism, i realise that i seriously do not know what buddhism is about! I do not know what the Buddha was talking about, what the ancient teachers were talking about, or what the modern teachers are talking about. I do not know what they are refering to or what meditation or mindfulness is all about. I really have no idea! And don't see what they mean. In the end, i only know what i know. If someone asks me about buddhism, i usually do not know what to say, i only know what i know, what do i know about buddhism? However, to resolve the situation, i just answer with the ancient teachers' answer.

Ultimately, what can i do? One can only live my life based on what one knows. If i ask myself if my understanding is the same as the buddha's or ancients? How do i know really; how can one know?? One can only live one's life based on what one knows. There is no other way. No way to live your life based on something you don't know!

Then i ask myself if i am chasing their tail to understand what they know? I can only say yes. They know something that i don't which helps them. I am chasing that in hope that it can help me too! I want to know the secret that they know! What do i know? Just trying to chase their tail.

The self meets the self

" there is a study of the river seeing the river. “The river practices and verifies the river; hence, there is a study of the river speaking river. We must bring to realization the path on which the self encounters the self.” We must move back and forth along, and spring off from, the vital path on which the other studies and fully comprehends the other.”"

The self sees the self and knows the self. But that's the only thing he can know because all other things are all other things and all the self is all the self. There is no way that we can know all about the other things but we can know ourselves for ourselves are here and not there. But we must see ourselves and thereby verify ourselves. If we do not see ourselves, then there is no way to verify ourselves. The river is only verified by the river and the self only verified by the self. There is no other way..

FAIL!!!

You must allow yourself to fail. If can't fail, can't face your own failure, u can't face the failure of anyone else..

Koans

Koans are very interesting. Working on it, you cut off all things. After having worked through it, the thing is cut off. So it is beneficial to be both working with it and solving it.

Shag to the max

Shag to the max!! I can feel my head functioning in overdrive to keep me awake and functioning. Time to sleep.

The world at peace.

Sleepy

Oh man! Damn sleepy. Been watching the korean drama Queen Seon Deok for the last few nights and then other things crop up last night. Hope i can sleep early tonight.

Mindfulness

Trying to put more mindfulness intoy life. Finally have some idea on what it really is. Realise that it is not something natural but a constant effort thing. I will try hard.

To listen

I was reading a book called Zen of Business Administration, how zen practice can transform your work and your life.

It is interesting how the author places emphasis on mindfulness not only of oneself, but of others and tells us tgat this will lead us to see and understand our customers or colleagues more deeply. At least that is how i understand it.

The union of yin and yang, or not?

I always thought the union of an easy going perwon and a picky/not so easy going person would be good since the easy going person can complement the picky person but as it turns out, this might not be true! Because, by nature, the easy going person cannot understand the picky person. The easy going person cannot unnderstand the picky person's like and dislikes because such ways of seeing the world does not exist in the easy going persons' psyche. Thus, we have a big problem where the easy going person asks the picky person for the picky person's opinion on every little thing because he thinks that since he is easy going, he'll let the picky person make the choice. But this would cause the picky person very irritated and think that such small details, can't he decide himself?? But from the easy going person's point of view, he just doesn't want to see the picky person being irritated later and maybe scolding him and being unhappy so he soughts the picky person's opinion.

So there we have a double bind!

A revisit to "The world is but a dream"

Who would say the world is not a dream and a dream is not the world? As ephemeral a dream is, so is the world, nothing ever stays still, no one knows what is about to happen. Both are marked with the 3 characteristics: impermenant, non-self, without a concrete nature, is dependent originated, suffering/dissatisfactory/imperfect. But there is one thing which never changed and never moved. It cannot be found anywhere but if we search deep within ourselves, we can find it.

Yet knowing this, we cant let go of the fake world, the insubstantial world. The greed, anger and ignorance, which in truth do not amount to anything substantial. We thus go round and round, unable to pull out.

In one MU, he sliced the world in two

About a decade ago, Keido Fukushima, Zen master of visiting Japanese monastics from Tofukuji monastery shouted right in front of the Zhao Zhou Stupa “mu” (the Japanese pronunciation of “wu”) so loud that it was taken as an unusual tribute to Zhao Zhou.~Buddhism in China Today: The Example of the Bai Lin Chan Monastery, Perspectives, Volume 4, No. 2, Monday, June 30, 2003

HA! Only all sentient beings..