Anicca Dukkha Anatta

Anicca, Dukkha, Anatta.
Impermanence, Unsatisfactoriness, Insubstantiality.

Not necessarily in that order!!

A friendly monk

Bhante Kovida

Today a friendly monk emailed me. As I have a big ego I was delighted! Bhante Kovida first emailed me a few months ago following his conversation with Rev Dhammika in Singapore. I don't really know Bhante Kovida, but his unassuming messages put me at ease. From his biodata, he is into yoga and chi gong as well. I also practise yoga and chi gong. So you see!!

Looking forward to meet the Reverend when he comes to Penang again. Here is something about Bhante Kovida. You can read the full text from his website HERE:

[ Bhante Kovida grew up on the tropical island of Jamaica, West Indies, of Chinese descent. He immigrated to Canada, studied for a science degree, then traveled overland from Europe to India and Nepal (via Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) during 1974-1975, where he began the study of Indian history and culture, Hatha Yoga and meditation, classical Indian music, and Buddhism. This journey was to be the most significant event in his life as it fulfilled a deep childhood yearning for travel and adventure, and spiritual understanding.

Bhante Kovida left Sri Lanka towards the end of 1993 and began traveling and sharing the Dharma in the Toronto area with occasional visits to Hamilton, Ottawa, Halifax and Vancouver. He has also visited inmates at Warkworth Correctional Center near Campbelford, Ontario, AIDS patients at the Casey House hospice in Toronto for a period.

Every two years or so, Bhante Kovida returns to Southeast Asia to visit friends and teach the Dharma, as well as Hatha Yoga and Chi Gong exercises at several Buddhist Associations and Dharma centers in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong. ]

I have included Bhante's website in my blogroll "My Favourite Buddhist Sites". Please take a look if you are interested. You can read his two books there as well.

Mind your mind

http://www.flickr.com/photos/carowallis1/303633288/

Question:(unedited)
hello Justin. I do not really have a question for you this time around (sorry), but I wanted to share a quick story with you. i learned a good lesson in mindfulness yesterday at work:
I was sitting at the ambulance station at night (my partner was sleeping) and I was reading the "Dhammapada". I stopped to rest my eyes and started thinking how good I was feeling at that moment. How I was living a good life, free from a lot of ego-desires, how I was lucky to be healthy, and how I was actually understanding and applying the words of the Dhammapada. I sat there lost in my thoughts of how good things were and then took a sip of my tea without paying attention...I spilled hot tea all over my white work shirt. Lets just say I was suddenly "in the moment" for sure!

My comment:
Nice of you to come back and share experiences. The more we share the more we learn.

Your experience points out 2 characteristics of mindfulness. One is that it is possible to maintain mindfulness through constant practice. The other is that it is very difficult to sustain mindfulness continuously. At any moment our mindfulness is lost, which is most common. The lesson to learn is that we are still very imperfect. So strive on.

Please keep in touch. I would be very disappointed if you don't come back, ever!

Smile from justinchoo :-)

Vegetarianism: A Common Topic

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mundoo/377341807/

Question:(unedited)
I have been told that it does not matter if you eat meat or not. I personally do not. The reason they stated was that no matter what you eat some sort of being was harmed in the harvest. This seems wrong to me because isn't karma based on intention? The intention to harm another is there when you eat animals but not vegtables. Another reaason that they gave was that here are many products made from animals that we need to use such as soap, which in some cases is made from animal fat; but isn't one of the main buddhist ideas is that if you can't help at least do no harm? Any way I guess the question is: is it o.k. or not to eat meat, and why?

My comment:
Thank you for asking me.

I shall come straight to the point. It is OK to eat meat. It is not wholesome to kill life intentionally.

The dietician will tell you that you are what you eat. The fashion designer will tell you that you are what you wear. The Buddha told us that we are what we think, speak, and act. You see the difference?

The world is surrounded by good and bad things. It is the very nature of this world to be such. That was why the Buddha led us to SEE the real nature of this world. Once we realize this truth, we will gradually come to terms with this contradiction, the dichotomy of good and bad. The Buddha referred this as "Dukkha". It is always this Dukkha that we have to live and contend with. If you watch the National Geographic or Discovery Channel programmes, you will see this Dukkha overpowering our lives. Every moment, when a life lives, another life has to be sacrificed. This is great Dukkha. But we are blind to this fact. We ignorantly think that we can live without others dying for us. I shall not go further giving examples to convince you of this truth. The real exercise to realize this truth is to free our mind of all our preconceived ideas, and to open our minds, and then to think and observe rationally whether we can really survive without any being dying for us. No amount of reasoning or argument will convince you of this fact unless you step back, relax your mind, let your intellectual faculties take a rest, and watch National Geographic or Discovery Channel! This is not a joke.

Coming back to a more down to earth explanation. The idea of not eating meat is to avoid KILLING. When we eat meat we are eating DEAD meat. Of course there is some justification to say that we are encouraging others to kill when we eat meat. If anyone feels that way, then there is no commandment from the Buddha that you must eat meat. By all means eat only vegetables. One thing for sure, you will be very healthy. It is actually very wholesome to be a vegan. As for me, I try my best to consume less meat.

Another controversial subject is eating fish instead of red meat. It is debatable and many will disagree with me on this point, maybe even condemning me. But you decide. Go to the beach and wait for the fishing boats to return. You see the dead fishes. Then go to the abattoir and see how they slaughter animals and the cries of the animals! Are the two scenario the same?

As I said before, the best is to be a vegan. No doubt about this.

Now we come to the analysis of what constitute "Killing"? A person will be fully responsible for the killing if the following 5 conditions are fulfilled:
1 There is a living being.
2 His knowledge that the living being is alive.
3 His intention to kill
4 His act of killing.
5 The being is dead as a result of his act.

So you see, eating dead meat is not killing!

Smile from justinchoo :-)

Any halo on his head?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/krish4u/426497125/

Question:(unedited)
Hello, How would one know that they were in the presence of a enlightened /awakened person? Is there an energy or feeling one senses around this person and if so,can you sense this from the person's photo as well?


My comment:

Thank you for asking me.

Unless the person has actually encountered an enlightened person, I don't think he can provide you with an honest answer. As for me I have not the good fortune to have met an "enlightened person". I am not sure whether you can find an enlightened person in this day and age; although many would want us to believe so. I can always cook up something to answer your question with fantastic exaggerations and fantasies, but I would like to give you an honest answer. I really don't know.

As for your second question, I would think that if one is fortunate enough to have met such an enlightened person, one would definitely be overwhelmed by his powerful aura and energy. As for the photo, I don't think so. This brings us to a true incident ( which may be many of such stories). There was this monk whom many thought to be enlightened. They claimed that when his photo was taken they could see halo around his head. Incidentally, I also did take his pictures but there was no halo. Of course I did not succumb to this claim. By the way this monk was quite a handsome young man and a bit charismatic too. He is now disrobed for disgraceful conduct. The moral of the story is that one must know the Buddha's teachings in the proper perspective, and not succumb to theatrical fantasies.

The message of the Buddha is to seek truth, reduce our defilements, and live in peace with oneself and the world.

Why?: Comments By Famous Intellectuals

Karma (in Sanskrit),(Kamma in Pali): The comment below is from a Buddhist book:
KAMMA: THE LAW OF MORAL CAUSATION
http://www.vipassana.com/resources/nutshell_kamma_causation.php

We are faced with a totally ill-balanced world. We perceive the inequalities and manifold destinies of men and the numerous grades of beings that exist in the universe. We see one born into a condition of affluence, endowed with fine mental, moral and physical qualities and another into a condition of abject poverty and wretchedness. Here is a man virtuous and holy but, contrary to his expectation, ill-luck is ever ready to greet him. The wicked world runs counter to his ambitions and desires. He is poor and miserable in spite of his honest dealings and piety. There is another vicious and foolish, but accounted to be fortune's darling. He is rewarded with all forms of favours, despite his shortcomings and evil modes of life.

Why, it may be questioned, should one be an inferior and another a superior? Why should one be wrested from the hands of a fond mother when he has scarcely seen a few summers, and another should perish in the flower of manhood, or at the ripe age of eighty or hundred? Why should one be sick and infirm, and another strong and healthy? Why should one be handsome, and another ugly and hideous, repulsive to all? Why should one be brought up in the lap of luxury, and another in absolute poverty, steeped in misery? Why should one be born a millionaire and another a pauper? Why should one be a mental prodigy, and another an idiot? Why should one be born with saintly characteristics, and another with criminal tendencies? Why should some be linguists, artists, mathematicians or musicians from the very cradle? Why should some be blessed and others cursed from their birth?

These are some problems that perplex the minds of all thinking men. How are we to account for all this unevenness of the world, this inequality of mankind? Is it due to the work of blind chance or accident? There is nothing in this world that happens by blind chance or accident. To say that anything happens by chance, is no more true than that this book has come here of itself. Strictly speaking, nothing happens to man that he does not deserve for some reason or other.

Could this be the fiat of an irresponsible Creator? Huxley writes: "If we are to assume that anybody has designedly set this wonderful universe going, it is perfectly clear to me that he is no more entirely benevolent and just in any intelligible sense of the words, than that he is malevolent and unjust.'

According to Einstein: "If this being (God) is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought and every human feeling and aspiration is also his work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an Almighty Being? "In giving out punishments and rewards, he would to a certain extent be passing judgement on himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to him?"

"According to the theological principles man is created arbitrarily and without his desire and at the moment of his creation is either blessed or damned eternally. Hence, man is either good or evil, fortunate or unfortunate, noble or depraved, from the first step in the process of his physical creation to the moment of his last breath, regardless of his individual desires, hopes, ambitions, struggles or devoted prayers. Such is theological fatalism:' (Spencer Lewis)

As Charles Bradlaugh says: "The existence of evil is a terrible stumbling block to the theist. Pain, misery, crime, poverty confront the advocate of eternal goodness and challenge with unanswerable potency his declaration of Deity as all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful."

In the words of Schopenhauer: "Whoever regards himself as having become out of nothing must also think that he will again become nothing; for an eternity has passed before he was, and then a second eternity had begun, through which he will never cease to be, is a monstrous thought. "If birth is the absolute beginning, then death must be his absolute end; and the assumption that man is made out of nothing leads necessarily to the assumption that death is his absolute end."

Lord Russell states: "The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain. He is, therefore responsible for all of it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequence of those sins when He decided to create man."

In Despair, a poem of his old age, Lord Tennyson thus boldly attacks God who, as recorded in Isaiah, says, "I make peace and create evil." (Isaiah, xiv.7) "What! I should call on that infinite love that has served us so well? Infinite cruelty, rather, that made everlasting hell, Made us, foreknew us, foredoomed us, and does what he will with his own. Better our dead brute mother who never has heard us groan."

According to Buddhism, this variation is due not only to heredity, environment, nature and nurture", but also to our own kamma, or in other words, to the result of our own inherited past actions and our present deeds. We ourselves are responsible for our own deeds, happiness and misery. We build our own hells. We create our own heavens. We are the architects of our own fate.

In short, we ourselves are our own kamma. Thus, from a Buddhist standpoint, our present mental, intellectual, moral and temperamental differences are mainly due to our own actions and tendencies, both past and present. Kamma, literally, means action;(mainly volitional actions).
Kamma constitutes both good and evil. Good begets good. Evil begets evil. Like attracts like. This is the law of Kamma. As some Westerners prefer to say: Kamma is "action-influence". We reap what we have sown. What we sow we reap somewhere (in due course).

In one sense we are the result of what we were; we will be the result of what we are. In another sense, we are not totally the result of what we were; we will not absolutely be the result of what we are. For instance, a criminal today may be a saint tomorrow. Buddhism attributes this variation to kamma, but it does not assert that everything is due to kamma.

Getting rid of hurt

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wenflickr/276595491/

Question:(unedited)
hello Justin I am back again. Recently a friend of mine did some things that hurt me very much. I won't go into details but lets just say that she did some very deceitful and manipulative things to hurt me. Now I have used my buddhist wisdom to understand that she is foolish for trying to gain happiness by hurting others, and I do not want revenge, I simply explained to her how I feel, wished her well and told her we will not be friends any longer. The problem is that my meditation practice is now suffering. During meditation my mind aches with hurt, I am not angry and I have tried a "loving-kindness" type of meditation but still my mind races with hurt. What can I do during my practice to help this? I know deep down inside that this situation will pass, but right now it hurts. Thank you Justin for your advice and I hope you are happy and healthy.


My comment:
Yes, you are back again...9th time!

Remember I told you about the straight jacket simile? The more you struggle, the tighter its grip. You must not dwell in the thought. You have to just "NOTE" the thought, period. When it comes again just note and do not pass any comment for or against. Do not hold court and do not be the righteous judge. Otherwise, you will fall into the trap set up by your egoistic mind trying to justify this and condemning that. By the time you realize that you are wondering, you would have come full circle!

Waiting for your good news of teaching your mind a lesson!

Remember you cannot turn back the clock, or manipulate time. But you can take control of the point in time, by just "noting" without judgment. After awhile it will become "nothing". But it will come again, then you "note" again. It is a big "battle". This is Dhamma.

Smile from justinchoo :-) Waiting for your tenth visit!