Patience is the Best Prayer?

I did not find my purple quotation book - I found my mum's big book of quotations instead - which she purchased long time ago. Flipping through the "Prayers" topic - there is this quote supposedly quoted by the Buddha - "Patience is the best prayer".

Is this true? Perhaps yes in some situations - anyway - patience in my current situation is kind of "bearable" for these few days. I am left alone as usual - after bringing up my points and someone turned it into something else - anyway, that left me some time to work on the camp preparation.

My next assignment tonight - write a "meditation script" :) Hehe, this will be quite interesting, I think, using Datuk's script and adding something to it - hopefully it will turn out right!

ttg

...

What a night... At 11pm the traffic was still bad with bits of paper on the road... Seems like some accident might have taken place... Turned out it was a huge lorry broken down and was parked at the left lane of the road... plus one other car and one taxi which have also broken down - before and after the lorry...

Progress on being a vegetarian - quite good - getting vegetarian packed lunch now - managed to eat vegetarian meal for dinner as well.

Progress on meditation - 3 continuous days of meditation! It has also conveniently become a time for me to "think/reflect" - which is not really that good - today I'll put down my thoughts on paper - before I start the actual meditation...

ttg

I Wanna Be A Witch!

Ya, I want to be a kind and wise little witch, just like the picture I put up in my YM. This idea came up about 10 days ago when I was doing spring-cleaning for my work laptop. Although the motive behind the spring-cleaning was kind of unfortunate - I was so frustrated at work I just decided to do something else - but not something which is too personal, cause it was working hours. My colleague (much as I dislike her working style and she was part of the cause of the frustration - she's still a good friend) commented that my spring-cleaning effort is like a housewife. So she googled up some housewife pictures - 50's housewife - for me to put up in YM. And me, out of my frustration towards her - refused her idea but this witch image just popped up in my mind. So, I googled up "cute witch" and found this image... And the idea stuck...

Why do I want to be a witch? I want to be like a witch with a broomstick - use the broomstick to clean up stuffs, to make magic, and to fly! Translate that into more practical terms in life - I want to sweep off the unwanted things in my life, sweep away the negative things, sweep away the rubbish, then I want to use the broomstick to create "goodness" in my life. With the bad gone and the good in - then I can "fly" i.e. live my dreams! A bit silly, I don't even have a clear idea on what I want - but right now my personal aspiration is "Create a better world by creating and being a better self". I am so attached to this witch idea that I really want to copyright this, just like the high-heeled healer (a book I got from AL's library but have never read past the first chapter)

Which brings me to the copyright issue. In today's world - is there really something which can really be ours, which can be copyrighted? Not really, once something is created, it will be replicated, it will be changed - I do wonder if we, the human race are using our intelligence correctly? However, put that in business term - without inovation, without competition, there will be no advancement. If this ever happens to me, I guess the best advice to fall to would be the Buddha's advice - everything is impermanent.

It is so easy to become attached to things or to people. As I was doing meditation yesterday (ya, my first real meditation at home which lasted for half an hour), suddenly this memory of a pocket size purple coloured proverb book came into mind. I must have put it away for at least a year. It just suddenly springed into mind, and I had a very strong urge to look for it, and it must have been about 11pm. Anyway, I managed to sit through the 30 minutes and went to bed after that - was telling myself, it has been at least a year - and I had no need for it, and I don't really have a need for it now either - it's only the feeling of wanting to see it again, wanting to put it somewhere where I can know I own it, and probably forget about it again in another month or so.

Read in a book on rebirth which I took home on Wesak Day - human brain cells is completely metabolized in a certain period - but some memories of previous experience would still remain. I guess this must be it - when we get attached to something, when our mind processed something, it will stay in our memory until one fine day - we will either happen to see it again when we scan through our database of memories, or when we see something of similar nature in reality - then it kind of strikes us "Hey, I have seen this before, I know this". Funny, when I think about this I can relate to what the books said about death and last thoughts, what you're attached to will play itself like a flash show during the last moments of your life. If I'm attached to a lot of things (which I am), it'll probably flash through when I die and I would probably be reborn to live it again.

Hmm, and it kinds of make sense - do I really want to relive it again? For another 100 years if I'm lucky and get reborn again for another 100 years and till infinity... Not to mention whatever material things I have accumulated, even "experiences" - I will never be able to bring it with me to the grave or to my next existence. So it really felt silly to keep things - just in case I need them. I figure of my entire "wealth of material things", this would probably be the breakdown:-

• 25% is redundant and can really be thrown away
• 25% is redundant but I think I might need it and actually will never do
• 25% is again something which I think I might need, and yes, I really might need it
• 25% is something which I really need

My target: get rid of the first 25% of redundancy - which is going to be hard - I keep so many things that I don't even know how much things I have - and everytime I look at those things (probably every 2 years or so), they're kind of nostalgic that I just end up reorganizing and repacking them. And I wonder how much time I spent on organizing things that I would never need!

But like my previous post - the seed has to be planted - no matter how small the action, I will make sure I clean up something when I can. And I will make sure I stop accumulating things (ya, I really have to be hard on myself on this - please stop accumulating things!). If I accumulate things which can be read - I'll make sure I read them and not stack them on shelves and cupboards and boxes.

Emm... am actually adding things to the "digital space" now by writing this blog - but writing is something I really love, better than forcing someone to listen to my so called "wannabe witch" story...

ttg

Aspirations

Earlier (a few weeks ago) - I made an aspiration never to let a day pass by without doing something which is beneficial to me and/or to others, no matter how small the deed may be.

Yesterday was Wesak day - went to a Buddhist temple in Peel Road, then spend the rest of the day organizing my personal files (on my laptop).

By night time, went online to search for something to read on Wesak, well, it's Wesak Day.. And I found this site which started off with meditation in preparation for the auspicious day, then it links to peace initiatives - and finally there is this link to the Peace Every Day Initiative website. Wow, I am inspired by the effort to create peace in the world by being peace. And this is to be achieved by one simple effort - 40 minutes of meditation everyday. Hmm, am not sure how much I can commit but I'll make an effort to do this. Other than this, my other Wesak aspirations as below, ya, seems suddenly very humanistic and probably building castle in the air - but the seed has the be planted in the first place right?

1. Join Peace Every Day Initiave - We Create Peace By Being Peace - Meditate every day, even if it is only for a few minutes
2. Set Goodtree as my homepage, since it claims that every search I do using Goodtree will translate into donation to charities.
3. Be a vegetarian - seriously considering this and wondering how to be a disciplined vegetarian. At least I am half way there, I think I can claim myself a "semi-vegetarian" for the moment, per wikipedia's article on vegetarianism.
4. Join another initiative on World Peace from this website: World Peace Experiment - 2 things to be done (1) whenever negative things happen, tell myself "Only Love Prevails" and (2) be cautious of the influence of negative news. In short - minimize negative energy.

ttg