Don't lose the connection

These few months had been filled with distractions, elements of greed, hatred, delusion. It's been quite a while since I ever got back in touch with chantings and meditation. It has been a while since I got in touch with Buddhism, except the occasional reflections on daily occurrences.

These few months have changed me, in small margins but yes, there are changes. Changes which I am not proud of, changes which I am sure it will help me shut off the stupidity of this world, fools who will continue to be fools without realizing their ego has overshadowed their wisdom. But in one small corner of my mind, I know that I am part of all these BS.

My mind is not clear.

Earlier this evening, I sat down on the sofa and turned the TV on, grumbling to myself how unhealthy this is to be sitting down all day (you can't travel much by walking in Penang, and frisbee training was canceled today), feeling more miserable than I was supposed to. The aged TV had problems, which took around 5 minutes to function properly with display and sound.

During that few minutes of silence, I picked up this book called Samana, a biography on the late Maha Ajahn Boowa, written by Maha Ajahn himself.

I had only managed to read about how he ended up being in the Maha Sangha, his experience with his teacher, the late Ajahn Mun, and his vows and determination in his spiritual practice. Then the TV became alive and my attention drifted off.

But I wasn't fully paying attention to the TV.

I was reminded that the Dhamma is still out there, that the path of peace and tranquility is real. It is like a line cutting across a clouded field of dark, gloomy mass, a path which cuts across our defilements, a weapon so unique to defeat the Mara in us.

For that few minutes, I felt a surge of peace and tranquility, and it was the greatest I felt throughout the entire day.

In my mind I thought, how lucky we are to be able to listen to a doctrine so divine.

Start cultivating, do not lose the connection with the Buddha-Dhamma, as it is an opportunity so rare.

The untrained mind is weak and easily swayed, let the Dhamma be our guide.

Samana - Luangta Maha Boowa

A series of unfortunate events

For the past two days I've been feeling a very subtle stage of "ohmness".

Yesterday, after much trouble and effort to make arrangements, I got pangsehed by a friend. Instead of feeling angry, which would have been very typical of me, I didn't. So I wasn't feeling about it, what was I feeling? I think I felt disappointed.

I wonder if this is a better change for feeling all impulsive and angry , because disappointment is also a negative emotion. Perhaps a more subtle emotion, but it was still spurred by expectations for something(someone) to happen(do something).

Today, my presentation slide crashed on me. It took us a lot of time to (almost) complete the presentation material, and it crashed. In a usual case I'd feel a lot of despair, unhappiness and anger-- towards the rest of the world, towards the computer that died on me, towards myself who did not save another copy of my file, towards anyone who decides to talk to me at that point in time.

Today I didn't. I calmly called a support center, and decided to get to work fast so that we could redo the slides.

I really don't know if it will just be a two-day ohmness, but I do feel at ease for the fact that I see things in a more calm and analytical manner.

It makes the whole problem-solving process much more efficient. In today's case, positivity helps to move the team on. We wouldn't move on if we all start feeling angry, dejected, whatever.

More importantly, I didn't feel tortured by my emotions. Perhaps i feel tortured by the unfortunate events, but certainly not by my own emotions.

oh my Buddha!

I have an image in my mind a bromantic comedy peppered with Buddhist philosophies, Oh My Buddha! And that's about it.

Birthday Parties

A woman's age is a sensitive topic, a secret. But no hiding here in SBM.

Yuanyi's With Moustache Comes Responsibility 21:

Rich in certain areas.

Amanda Low's 17 in Cosy Function Room:

Hao Jie Mei.

and Justin Lee's 15th Baptism of Fire

The Dylanator...

served with an icing.

and Happy Birthday to the rest of March and April babies!

CAMP LIONS

is coming again:

CAMP LIONS is an annual Buddhist youth leadership camp organized by youth leaders from various Buddhist organizations across the three traditions in Singapore.

The 4-days-3-nights camp serves as a platform for youth leaders to come together to share ideas and learn from one another, and to build strong spiritual friendships, irrespective of the Buddhist groups we come from and the traditions we adhere to. In turn, we hope to build a strong, faithful and united Buddhist community in Singapore.

We name the camp LIONS because the animal not only symbolizes our country, Singapore, but also the most regal Lord Buddha. LIONS is also an abbreviation of our tagline: Leading and Inspiring Youth Buddhists in Singapore. Our slogan, Not Startled, Like A Lion, At Sounds, is a phrase from the Khaggavisana Sutta, and is a reminder to Buddhist youth leaders to be fearless and steadfast in their cultivation and service to the Buddhist community.

The Science of Prejudice & How to Overcome it

In Savatthi there was a scavenger named Sunita. He was a road-sweeper and barely earned enough to feed himself. Sunita slept on the roadside, for he did not have a house to go to. He saw other people enjoying themselves but he could not mix with them because these people called him an outcast. Whenever a higher caste person went on the road Sunita had to run and hide so his shadow did not fall on them. If he was not quick enough he would be scolded and beaten. Poor Sunita lived a miserable life.

One day, as he was sweeping a dirty, dusty road, Sunita saw the Buddha with thousands of followers coming towards him. His heart was filled with joy and fear and finding no place to hide he just stood, joining his palms in respect. The Buddha stopped and spoke to poor Sunita in a sweet, gentle voice saying, "My dear friend, would you like to leave this work and follow me?"

Nobody had ever spoken to Sunita like this before. His heart was filled with joy and his eyes with tears. "O, most venerable Sir, I have always received orders but never a kind word. If you accept a dirty and miserable scavenger like me I will follow you."

So the Buddha ordained Sunita and took him along with the other monks. From that day forth no one knew what Sunita's caste was, and nobody treated him with disgust and cruelty. Everybody, even kings, ministers and commanders, respected him.

Prejudice as a Pitfall of the Human Brain

Many of us believe that we can be completely impersonal and unbiased in our judgments. However, despite this belief, social experiments have found that prejudice and biasness can actually happen at such a subconscious level—and is due to shortcuts that our brains use.

The social experiment included this: People played a fast-moving shooting game in which they were supposed to shoot the person holding a gun (who is moving extremely quickly). While the participants of this experiment were told that this is a task to test their reaction and visual-spatial abilities, what researchers were actually looking for was social prejudice. The characters in the games were either black or white and either holding a gun or not. Results showed that people tend to incorrectly shoot a Black without a gun compared to a White. Even if they did not consciously process the person as black/white because it was too fast for them to judge, they actually shot the blacks more!

Going with the Flow

Now moving on, I would like to point out that a lot of times, we are biased towards another individual because we have heard about the person. “Oh, I have heard that she is so….” Or “My friends told me that she flirts….” , etc. Have we actually interacted with the person? No!

When we Put Our Brains at Unease..

We typically believe that we are moral, ethical, nice, sweet, caring. But a lot of times, because we are under the pressure of our peers to treat a person coldly, we become mean to this person that we have heard about.

What happens when we treat this person, say, Jan, in a mean manner? Note that while we believe we are nice, we acted the opposite! This puts us at discomfort—because our actions threaten our belief that we are nice, which in turn threatens our self-esteem. So what does our very smart brain do? We will actually subconsciously convince ourselves that Jan IS mean and un-nice. Hence it is perfectly fine that we are mean to Jan, since she deserves it. Thus we are still wonderful human beings.

What does this imply? Once we conform to social pressure of being mean to someone else, we convince ourselves that the person deserves this mean treatment, so we continue to be mean to the person!

This is exactly what happened with racial prejudice!

I TOLD YOU IT’S TRUE!

Another factor that fuels on our biasness towards others is this mechanism called the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Imagine that you heard that Jan is unfriendly, arrogant, stubborn, cold, demeaning.
When you meet Jan, you will tend to be less friendly with her than with other people you meet.
Because you are unfriendly to her, naturally she becomes less friendly towards you.
And you go: IT’S TRUE! SHE IS REALLY UNFRIENDLY, ARROGANT, STUBBORN, COLD, DEMEANING!

Does All These Mean There Isn’t an End to Prejudice?

Of course not! Remember when we do something that is opposite to our beliefs, we feel uncomfortable?

One way to solve our biasness is to Jan NICELY. We believe that Jan is bad, yet we have treated her nicely! This makes our brain scream: What on Earth are you doing?! You know that Jan does not deserve being treated so nicely!

SO, our very smart brain will find a solution: It will convince us that Jan is nice and deserves to be treated nicely as well! You know how people always say that to start feeling about something we have to act like something? Here it is! To start liking Jan, you have to act like you like Jan!

(If you want someone to like you, ask the person to help you. In the case that he/she does, he will convince him/herself that he likes you!)

So how do we prevent the self-fulfilling prophecy from making a biased impression of the person? Catch ourselves in this state of mind: Oh my goodness I don’t want to interact with her.. and be nice to the person!

Did the Buddha Have to Use These Methods to Treat All with Equality?

I believe not.

For one, the Buddha understood the impermanent nature of all things.People act in a way or another because of various conditions that made the action possible. For example, Jan may be unfriendly because her parents brought her up to be straight-forward and blatantly honest. When people meet her for the first time, they are cold towards her and hence she acts in a reciprocal manner. If people who meet her for the first time are friendly to her, she might just react positively to the person. Can you see how, when one condition is removed, the situation has taken a turn? (Recall: countering the self-fulfilling prophecy )

Secondly, the Buddha practiced great compassion and loving-kindness on all sentient beings. To act in a nice manner to break from the vicious cycle of social prejudice and self-fulfilling prophecy, we have to act with compassion and loving kindness. Only then will the person sense that you are being sincere and react positively to you.

Lastly, mindfulness has to be the first step for us to practice non-biasness. We have to be aware that we are biased, before we reflect on the impermanence of the action/trait of the person. Only then will we be able to convince ourselves to act with Metta and Compassion.

Social experimenting fun!

• This week i'll be trying out a social experiment with you guys, which WILL link back to Buddhism! But anyway, it's an experiment so I need many people for the results to be accurate!

  
  

  SO DO COME FOR SHARING AT TWO PEE EM THIS SATURDAY!
  
  I'll be touching on how you are being deceived and cheated by your oh-so-glorious brain all the time without knowing!
  
  Cheers,
  Mabel
  the social experimenter of the week

Sports Day!

Watch this space for more photos.

What's true and what's not?

I read this article in the Straits Times, and reading it, reflecting back on myself today, hm. Bad bad girl. Would love to have scanned it for you guys, but my scanner's too puny to do that.

I've a lot of guilty things to confess, but i'll do it another day. I promise I will!

What's True and What's Not by Gary Hayden
The Straits Times, 31 March 2011


I love myths, legends and parables. Recently, I came across a wonderful old tale which originated in India and has become part of the Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sufi religious traditions.

Here is how it goes:
Many years ago, there lived six blind men. One day, they heard that an elephant had wandered into their village.
As none of them had any idea what an elephant was, they decided to investigate.

One of them touched the beast's leg and declared: "Hey, an elephant is like a pillar!"

Another touched its ear and said: "No, it is like an enormous hand-fan."

The next man felt the animal's torso and insisted: "You're both wrong. An elephant is like a wall."

The others also examined the elephant and each formed a different opinion.

"An elephant is like a spear, " said the fourth man, running his hands over a tusk.

"Nonsence! It's like a huge snake," said the fifth man, feeling the trunk.

"You're all crazy! An elephant is like a rope, " exclaimed the sixth man, who had grasped the tail.

The argument grew heated. Luckily, before they came to blows, a wise man appeared along.
He explained that each of them had felt a different part of the beast and each had spoken the truth from his own perspective.

The parable has many interpretations.

The Hindu sage Ramakrishna Paramahamsa used it to warn against religious dogmatism, declaring: "In the same way, he who has seen the Lord in a particular way limits the lord to that alone and thinks that He is nothing else."

The Buddha compared the blind men in the story to those preachers and scholars who, blinded by their ignorance and arrogance, will only ever see one side of a thing.

I like both of these interpretations.

But, to me, the parable speaks most strongly about everyday concerns. In particular, the tendency we all have, in any situation, to think that we are right and everyone else is wrong.

I am right, You are wrong.
I remember, in the early days of my marriage, being often surprised and sometimes irritated by my wife's inability to see when she was in the wrong.

Even when-- it had seemed to me-- she was clearing in wrong.

It is difficult, after all this time, to remember details.

But say, for example, she had become angry with me for watching TV when i had promised to clean the kitchen.

I patiently explained to her that I had worked very hard all week; that i was feeling exhausted; and that I really needed to relax.

Yet still, against all justice and reason, she persisted in being annoyed.

At the time, I felt sure that truth was on my side; that any impartial referee would judge the matter in my favour; that I was right and she was wrong.

It wook me years to learn that there is no simple truth in such matters; that human interactions are complex and multifaceted; and that my view of things, however right it may seem, will always be limited and incomplete.

Maybe-ism
All this brings to me yet another interpretation of the parable of the blind men and the elephant.

This one comes from Jainism, an ancient religious tradition from India.

Vardhamma, a Jain philosopher, taught that all viewpoints are partial.
Whatever world view we adopt, we ought to bear this in mind and should therefore precede our statements with a "Maybe".

That is, we should start our sentences with:
"Maybe this is the way it is..."

This idea is known as syadvada, which is very important in Jainism.

It is used to illustrate the concept of syadvada and to teach that there may be some truth to what someone else says, even if we cannot see it ourselves.

Ultimate Purpose of Life - Give

He has found the ultimate purpose of Life. What's Yours?