The wandering mind

According to a quote from a verse by an ancient master, "the mind is in constant wandering, once its wandering is ceased the Buddhahood will be revealed". I have never experienced what the Buddhahood is like, however, I have trust in ancient masters, so if this is what they concluded at their time and passed down through all these great number of generations, the verse must be true and that supreme spiritual state mentioned above got to be fantastic, and so I have been seeking for an effective path in a hope that I can attain a great enlightenment and really in full control of myself one day.

I listened to a live telephone interview broadcasted by a radio media in a Sunday morning show. A psychotherapist said in the show that our mind is wired to be wandering constantly, there is no way we can manipulate our brain to stop it from thinking. This saying from an expert makes me feeling defeated as I have been trying to find out the spiritual mechanism that I can set my mind to a certain mode, pause it or even totally cease it from functioning. I would hope this psychotherapist's knowledge of the activity of the brain is not true.

There must be a method with which we can succeed in achieving the goal of awakening, at least there is this Paramita Heart Sutra revealed this case that the Bodhisattva when in deep meditation realized the emptiness nature of everything in the universe. From this recorded text, we are convinced firstly by the script that meditation involved in the quest of the total awakening. Secondly we noticed the other ingredient is the required depth of the meditation. A loose and non-effective one is not helpful in the adventure. So we can conclude that a fruitful enlightenment consists of meditation, of a deep one and of a completely disciplined one.

Is the length of time of the meditation practice important? I take a faith in the "Yes". It must be one long enough for the energetic and wild mind to calm down. Most of the time we are fed up by the boring sit even for just a minute. Most meditation enthusiasts believe 20 minutes is the minimum time required to make us feel the mind is calming down, or less active. But this is still far away from the final objective to be achieved. So more time is added on top of the last, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, one hour or even one and half an hour. The longest one that I sat through was 2 hours, yet, my mind can still be easily distracted.

How do we know if we have achieved a good meditation? The supreme achievement is the enlightened state which we will perceive the emptiness nature of our consciousness function and attain a full control over the mind. It is listening to your command, focusing on the one point of thing only for as long as you want. In saying so, we must understand this is just a way of the depiction of that supreme achievement of the meditation practice in order to get the question answered, as a matter of fact emptiness has been applied over anything and everything that even a brief retrospection of what has happened before the enlightenment is achieved is unnecessary.

I have a progressive urge of mastering the Paramita as I have passed each day because the number of days I will have to achieve this state is in its countdown phase now. I anticipate 2022 is the year I will be disappeared from this planet physically. So I must put more effort into my quest for this life goal before it is too late. Yes, I did a 2 hour meditation for the first time yesterday. I should be more determined on this important life issue.

--the end--

The Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra

This past few days, I experienced a more active wandering state than usual during my dawn meditation resulting an intensive internal self reprimand. Having detected this brain activity, I brought the thought to reciting the script of Heart Sutra. But the wandering mind soon became fed up with it and tried to move to somewhere else. I repeatedly summoned it back. The one hour duration was felt much longer than it was but I always persistently complete the sitting after the one hour session is finished. Today, the mind was behaving mostly the same except that I gave it more liberty to involve in the thinking process of contemplating the content meaning.

Unexpectedly I felt the one hour sitting was shorter than it should be. It is understandable that when we are totally engaged in something, a certain part of our brain responsible for monitoring the timeline must have become less active, and so when we have got out of the focused point, the timeline manager resumes its working standard, and our feeling of the elapse of time returns to normal. This is my personal hypothesis of how our brain works. My goal is to achieve higher level of voluntary concentration.

Let's suppose there are 8 levels (8 is my lucky number) in the meditation skill assessment. The level that Bodhisattva demonstrated as per the description mentioned in Heart Sutra is 8, while my level is 2 according to my definition, "whoever is able to remain in silence and sitting posture for a duration of one hour minimum is classified level 2." Level 1 is not difficult to attain. As long as you can remain in silence and sitting for a few seconds and more but less than one hour, you are counted in there.

It is not important about what level you have achieved but the actual ability you have acquired. In the Heart Sutra, Bodhisattva claimed "form is emptiness, emptiness is form." and also revealed the consequence of attaining the state where he experienced the ceasing of the four functions of thought processor - receiving, processing, acting and archiving of the external stimulus, is bypassing the whole bunch of suffering because of the stubborn attachment to the four functions which our brain is so designed.

The objective Buddha is trying to make us understand is to achieve the level 8 which will enable us to realize the emptiness nature of form. I agree with the saying that only the drinker himself knows how warm or cold is the water he has just drank. Heart Sutra has stated it very clearly what benefits we will get when we have attained the technique as to still the functioning of our brain at will, but it is never easy and there are a great number of practitioners including myself believe perseverance in regular practice will have its fruition one day.

Hopefully one day I can tame the wandering mind to a degree that enables me to experience the state depicted in Heart Sutra.


-the end-

Swishing mouth with oil

"Swishing mouth with oil?" What are you talking about?

I have never heard of swishing mouth with oil. I use tap water of course. It has been my everyday ritual. It is water only that people, wherever they are, use to swish around inside their mouth when they need to.

But since the night when I watched the video my internet circulation provider sent to me via Line messenger, I was introduced to this alternative oral hygienic remedy, oil pulling, firstly adopted by ancient Indian civilization. Semi convinced by the testimonies presented on the health promoting TV show that I had just watched with my wife. We immediately went to do a trial by swishing a table spoonful of the cooking oil from our kitchen thoroughly and vigorously around the areas of our teeth and gum for a duration of about 10 minutes, then spit the compound in the drain. We are pretty sure it will not clog the drainage because we don't use saturated acid fat which is possibly turning to solid state and block the pipe in due course.

Emmm. They are right, I felt fresh in my mouth after the swishing. Completely opposite to my assumption of a greasy or gluey sensation afterward. If their claim in the TV show is reliable, then the other benefits of this therapy should be good to me because I have had gum disease for about 20 years now. As far as I can remember there is not a single day I don't see any trace of blood mixed in the foamy spit when I have done my tooth brushing. And the gum disease is one of the major problems this Indian technique can look after.

Surprisingly, from the second day of my adoption of this daily rit, I noticed the foamy spit after I finished my teeth brushing was dramatically reduced with blood. The day after it still indicated a low level of bleeding. My wife's view is positive too. Her tooth issue is far more serious than mine. She usually feels some of  her teeth are going to trouble her with discomfort, but after she commenced this therapy she claimed not only her gum disease is no longer dyeing her foamy spit to red, the feeling of a toothache hit is zero.

Folks, it should do no harm to any aspect of our health practicing this therapy, If I came out of the test safe with so much benefits, it is worthwhile for you to go ahead without hesitance for the sake of your well-being.

Maya comes to homestay

Maya is a lovely dog of pure border collie breed. She is actually just a bitch at her puppy stage of life. She came to homestay with us last Wednesday. Her master, Kevin was to go with his family for a holiday, and she could not but be hosted by a family Kevin trusts.

When Maya was sent to our place, it was nearly sunset. Jean and I welcomed her and she returned with a very passionate hug, but her hug will be quite intimidating to people who has never handled dog. Though Maya is just 9 month old, she is about 35 kg and her front legs can reach your shoulder when she demonstrates her hug by stand up on her hind legs and abruptly leans her body against you with front legs rubbing all over your chest, and generously threw her tongue rich with saliva licking all over your face if you don't decline.

We owned a dog since his puppy stage till he died in 2012, so we know what a puppy will behave when Maya had done her social custom. She sniffed here and there and began with her exploration in every room and corner of the house where she will be staying for the following 4 days and nights.

Soon her sleeping crate had been set up, her food, treats, bowls, toys, and leash were all checked. It became dark, and Chenny and Lily had to sneak away from her. As if Maya already knew Chenny and Lily would leave her to stay with us, her face and yaping showed anxiety. She stood still with ears up high and eyes widely open scanning the ten directions. She heard the car door slamming sound, that proved to her that Lily and Chenny really dumped her. she rushed to the door yapping a little louder, then she heard the engine started up, she ran to the sliding door leading to the deck. She heard the car moved away, her eyes followed the direction where the noise faded and disappeared. She ran back and forth between the entrance door and the deck. This reminded me how Chenny felt when he was a toddler each time I sent him to his baby sitter on Sunday night. Reality is inevitably cruel.

For the first two days of her stay, Maya didn't eat any of his dog food at all. She didn't drink water; she did not even poo or  pee a little since she came in the late afternoon. What worried me the most was whether if she would sleep well and would not wake up to bark during the midnight because our area is very quiet and I am afraid of offending my neighbors because of a barking dog. Therefore after I had sent her into her sleeping crate, I had been worried about her possible waking up for no reason and barking.

The first day of Maya's stay was over. Maya's sleeping behavior really astonished me. She slept right through the night quietly without any trouble.

The second day, trace of Maya's anxiety and stress was still noticeable. She barked quite a lot. Some of the barks were from her attempt to dominate me and Jean. Most of her barks and hyper activity were due to the new master, new environment. I text messaged Chenny that I was in dire need of help. When Chenny and Lily appeared, Maya eased. She was seen more sitting, lying, pooed and peeed and much more quiet. This indicated Maya had settled down in our place.

I think everything will be going well for me and Jean from the second day as I witnessed the signs of her settling down but I then experienced a new challenge, as she demanded playing her ball, training session, walk and she did not show any tiredness when I and Jean were both exhausted. And when we gestured we quit, she would drop her ball and came to nag at me. If I ignored her nag, she would even bark at me. Then I pretended that I had enough, picked up her ball, shouted "shut up!!" and throw her ball on the floor. She immediately knew I was angry at her. Then she would quickly lied down rubbed her body affectionately against my lower legs, seemed to be telling me "I am sorry, don't be angry with me." She would behave nicely for so long as she sensed I was pleased, then she would pick up her ball and pushed me to resume the throw and retrieve game immediately. Very playful a dog she is. After all she is just 9 months old.

Maya's master phoned to ask for Maya's update every night during his school holiday. I can see the bond between them. Soon, the holiday was over, and Maya seemed to be aware of her master was on his way to pick her up and go home together that I saw she look toward the direction of our drive way more often. Some dog lover said that dog's smell sensor is superb that they can tell something special is going on somewhere as far as 20 km away; or some say dog has intuition of what is going on.

Her most excited moment finally arrived. She began to bark lightly and moved to the entrance and sat nicely. And when Chenny and Kevin, Maya's master, opened the door, she barked a couple of times, stood up on her hind legs and made a  big hug of her unique style, tail waved, front legs on her master's shoulder, licked his face, absolutely welcoming her master's appearance wholeheartedly.

This was what I experienced about the temperament and personality of another puppy of others. Maya's short stay made me recall the memory about our own puppy, Spot, then in 1998.

--the end--

What is life?

What is life? I really don't know. But I have tons of interest in the exploration of this very big question.

I am trying to recall my memory about when did I have this question emerged in my mind for the first time in my life and triggered the thinking process of its consequential search for the answer.

It was about 1963 when I just admitted to the local junior high school at the age of 12. One day in the big sport field of the school, I had these questions arose dimly within me: "who am I?", "why I am here?", and then, suddenly I noticed the symmetrical verses engraved laboriously on the two pillars of the platform, reading on the left was "the purpose of living is to upgrade the living of the entire group of human beings.", and on the right was "the significance of life is to continue the collective life of the universe."

I thought that this quote could be the best summarized interpretation of life because its author was a great man of the country. Now that I found no answer or proper definition for my question, let our former president's one be it. From then on, when I encountered the question of "what is life?", I naturally quoted Chiang's version, because I haven't had my own.

However, "what is life?" is still a question to me although I have lived about 51 more years since my first inquiry of it. I reckon Chiang's interpretation is too ambiguous, and is not a sharp and solid answer to my satisfaction. So I resumed my search on this question.

Firstly I asked myself "how is life started?" Can it be turned off automatically at a desired time? Google helps me a lot on this search. I read as much articles relating to this topic as I can. but I determined to set my own when I get a chance to be enlightened with a good answer.

Life begins at the instant moment when the sperm penetrates the egg to form its first single cell embryo and starts its first cell split successfully. Once this first step of the life is started, a life formation process is activated. Then, in the following 9 months or so, this life form continues its growth following a series of cell splits. Gradually its 6 sensory organs are completed, all of the functional organs such as brain, lung, heart, blood vessel, digestion system that are required to make a healthy individual accomplish in due course one by one. Finally this life comes out of mother's womb and carries on its growing. The life accompanies the individual wherever he goes till one day his life comes to its end when any cause happens to him that results in failing one or more of his functionality, for instance, lung failure, kidney failure, heart stops... etc.

So in the 81 years of average life time of a New Zealander, his life must be supported without any prolonged fatal interruption, for an example, the supply of food, clean water, fresh air, proper dwelling, material for keeping warm, plus one very crucial behavior of constantly seeking for security and escaping from danger, or the fear of loss of his life. Any of these items missing will remove life from this individual. So looking at life in this sense will convince you that life is fragile. How can you guarantee a consistent provision of all of these items will never be lost or cut off?

So far, I am contemplating about life and trying to give it my definition. I reckon life is the status of an independent individual having the ability to run his system for as long as the external conditions are in favor of this individual and his physical body rating and mental setting are above the threshold to remain alive.

What is the purpose of life? This is a very subjective topic, the answer will never be wrong or right, because it is subjected to each individual, and it is common sense that everyone is an unique identity. So we should not expect there is a super answer, however, we can express our thoughts to draw people of similar view points on this question to your circle.

I remember I learned a lyric during my pre-schooling stage of life when I was 5 or 6 years old. Almost all of the children in that era were able to chant that lyric.  It goes like this: "mo lia, mo lia, liam chan ni, chan ni ber guan guan; mo lia vui va wan, va wan vo ho jia; mo lia vui cha kia, cha kia vo ho qing; mo lia zui lang vo lo ying." I set out this lyric in its original phonetic of Taiwan dialect and now let me translate it below:

Mo Lia is a dummy child's name. The lyric is meant to tease Mo Lia for his uselessness in his life. It says that Mo Lia was trying to capture a dragonfly, but dragonfly flied high; so he changed to sell meat ball, but nobody liked his dump meat ball; so he changed to sell wooden clog, but his clogs were not comfortable to the feet; Mo Lia's life was indeed useless." This lyric reflects the common view point of people of that era. To them the purpose of life is judged on the worldly achievement of that individual.

To people in the belief of Buddhism, the purpose of life is to receive the reward or punishment of what you deserve from your deed in previous life. This is a belief of law of cause and effect. Whatever we encounter, pleasant or tough, it is me to praise or to blame. People in this belief are taught to accept whichever you face to with this kind of perception of life.




--to be continued--

The empty nest syndrome

Since the day of 18 July when my youngest child has gone independence, I seem to have lost the motivation of the writing blog. I call this symptom "the empty nest syndrome". What is the symptom like? Loss of life objective; loneliness; feeling of losing something. It is not a pleasant experience.

Both of my two children went independence at their age of 26. In the past 31 years of our marriage life having two children to feed, teach, train, everyday and any moment, must be a big load of household work. Apart from the work of what we do for a living, this household work is a voluntary and no pay job. Though it is indeed tough, we have been accustomed to it, and once the load is discharged after so many years, I am not feeling relieved but am actually confused. No one to lecture when I found some new life issues to teach them; no one to share when we made special food.

Never mind. we are adapting to the new life style, and the empty nest syndrome will certainly be fading away itself.

Empty nest now

It was 4:45am when my body clock woke me up to start the day, 20/7/2014 which marked the first empty nest day of my life journey.

As usual, I started my one hour dawn meditation. The quality of my sitting this morning was not any good. My mind was full of distractions, full of thoughts about my two children, most of them were about Chenny. I knew he was sleeping in his own home right now. The feeling was really strange, This was not the first time he was not sleeping at home. What makes the difference? He is the youngest child of ours, and he has gone independence yesterday, he is sleeping in his own nest and is going to grow his own, and ours has become an empty nest, that is the difference.

--to be continued--

On the Eve of Chenny's going independence

I watched a video clip sometime ago about how the wild world is driven by the urge of going independence. The specie being monitored of this process was hawk. When the chick has grown up to a stage where its wings are supposed to be able to fly, glide, and hunt for themselves, their parents guide them to the opening of their nest and this apparently is a gesture of announcing that their chicks are now going independence. The chick showed some reluctance, and then dives following the last, and there they go one after another. If there is one that appears to be in fear of moving on to the independent stage, the parent hawk pushed it off the nest without showing any leniency. Perhaps as a matter of fact, the mother hawk's heart might be breaking badly having to kick their beloved out of their home, I so think.

This past two months when Chenny and his fiancee began to find a house to buy for setting up their own family, I recalled my memory about that bit of footage of the video. I, just like the parent hawk, was sort of driven the program installed in my brain, always said something to push Chenny move onto his next life stage such as: "it is time to set up your own family."; "you have reached the stage of forming your family." My mind was actually feeling the way round. Feeling how wonderful it would be if there is no such thing as going independence, wouldn't it be happier if a family only grows bigger and not any of the family member will move out of the nest.

The independence will be on the 18th July 2014 which is the date of settlement of the house Chenny and his fiancée jointly bought through auction in June after a intensive house hunting for nearly 3 month under the assistance of Lily's parent. The housing shortage crises in Auckland region has caused the young first home buyers a lot hardship and this is not an exception to Chenny.

On the eve of Chenny and Lily moving forward to their next life stage, I pray that they will look after each other; happily live each day in full; laughter, bliss and harmony fill their nest. And most importantly to pay up the mortgage quickly.

A precious gift from Sydney

In the early part of June this year, I have finally mastered the skill of flute repadding, and successfully revived my flute which I made a mistaken decision and did a stupid DIY repadding of it and completely silenced my flute for nearly three years since 2011. The details of the story about how I silenced it can be accessed by clicking here.

Driven by some factors, I decided to buy another pack of flute pads in May, and had it a go for the last time. Having experienced innumerable times of failure in the precedent years, my skills in adjusting the shims to make the contact air-tightness of the tone hole and the pad must have progressed that I finally get all the 16 notes sound though the sound quality is not very good, it produces sound and I can play flute again. If any of the readers is interested in knowing more about how I revived the function of my flute, please click here.

Every night after I have made the flute sound again, I play it for 15 minutes routinely during the peak time of my medication round and before going to bed. One night when I landed on one page of the sheet music titled "To A Wild Rose", a memory about a chat with my teacher during the lesson time one evening in 2000 on how Asians looked at rose, and my talk on rose before our flute lesson started amused my teacher. This bit of memory urged me to practice this piece. I am still able to play it without much mistake because it is not long, and more importantly, it is a slow beat tune which suits me. So I decided to record it into a video for my teacher.

I only know my teacher's first name, however I know where she and her family were from. As she is a prominent flutist, I am pretty sure Google can find out her where about. It was as I had anticipated, a few strokes on the keyboard, There were a list of snippets relating to the name I was after displayed on the monitor. I sent her an e-mail, and in less than 5 minutes, I got her reply saying how surprised she was when she received mine.

Having not been in touch for 9 years, as her student I knew she must be curious to know if I am still playing flute, if not, why? The stories related to my Yamaha flute I have possessed for nearly 21 years have been posted in my blog site, so I sent her the links. This saved me a lot of time for me to do the story telling.

Teacher was saddened by the story about how I mistakenly DIYed the repadding of my own flute in 2011 resulted a total dis-functioning of my flute. From a video clip of my play on To A Wild Rose I recorded right after I had finally revived my flute 3 years later, she told me that the sound of all the notes under G were still not right although they sounded like they were. In another e-mail she sent to me she mentioned about sending a flute which she had not used for long time. I thought that was the flute she used in the lessons for me during the two year period when I was learning from her. That one looked quite old as its silver plating was almost faded. I thought perhaps she intended to give me one with some faults in it for me to repair. So I replied to her, yes I loved to have that flute if she really wanted to give away.

About a week later, I received a parcel sent from Sydney and I knew immediately it was a flute from my teacher. I could not wait to drop the thing in my hand and hurriedly proceed to unpack it.

As I took the first layer of the packaging off the parcel, the elaborated protecting packaging began to tell me it could not be an unwanted old flute worthwhile to be packed so nicely. But why my teacher sent me something else? When I finally unzipped the case and opened it, a glitteringly silver plated flute was exposed to me, it was a brand new flute. My hand shook. Shook violently. Why did my teacher gave me such a valued gift?

I assembled the flute joints and tested a couple of the low end notes. "oh! my goodness", the sound was solid, compact and crystal to me as a beginner flute player. I had never experienced flute sound of this high quality.

I rushed to my computer and sent my teacher an e-mail to acknowledge the receipt of the parcel and more importantly to tell her how I felt upon unpacking and discovering the very surprising and unexpected gift. I told her that all I had felt was only concluded in "Thank you very much".

Since my receipt of the new flute, I have been practicing flute daily, and recorded some of them for my teacher as a way of telling her "your former student Kuei-sen is saying thank you through playing with this precious gift you have generously presented."

--the end--

Repairing my flute

Since the day in September 2011 when I messed up the functionality of my flute due to an ignorant expectation of attaining a perfect sound quality should I replaced the pads of the entire flute, I was driven by a regret and anxious mood and started my 3 year long repairing journey for my dear Yamaha flute as shown in this picture.

The quest began with a thorough search on the web. There, I read a lot of posts relating to the technique, tool, experience, etc. In addition to learning from others experience in repairing a flute, I developed my insight into the techniques. However, the progression was very slow and frustrating, as when I applied the knowledge and technique I learned from scratch, the lowest note I could make a sound out of it was still the B after I re-padded  the whole lot. The only thing I learned from this phase of my attempt to fix, was only working on one key at a time, and only moved on to the next key after the last one satisfied me with its solid and clear sound.

The progress was standing still for a long time. I gradually lost my patience, and stopped working on it all together. Then the second attempt arose after months of waiting for it to emerge. When I set out to the second round of repairing I only noticed the set of pads was worn out due to the repeated pulling and inserting of the pads out and into the pad cups. So I logged in my eBay account and ordered another set of pads. This time I ordered one of dearer price thinking and hoping the second set would do a magic result for me.

The second set of pads did not bring me any luck. I
only progressed one or two more notes down, And I DIYed a feeler for testing the tightness round the pad circumferential contact with the note hole. I also made an illuminating tool like the picture shows, for detecting the air leaking spots of each re-padded note hole.

With this basic tools, I ran my second round of repairing, it was 2012 and 2013. I reviewed the questions asked and answered in the flutists forums. Whenever I got new idea out of reading the posts on the web, I took my repairing kit and my flute out to go through a round. The best condition I could achieve was down to the G. The rest of the lower notes were giving no sound for me, even those did sound sounded dumb and not solid and compact at all. I realized every one of the pads that sounded was not up to a standard of airtight.

At this stage, I came across a post mentioned about using silicone to solve the air leaking issue. Some of the comments laid to that author said that the silicone idea really worked for them. I adopted that idea, bought a tube of silicone, applied the jelly on the pads and press them to be in contact with the sound hole and secured them with a good tension by tying them with a rubber band. Left it to harden overnight, and removed the rubber band the next day.

Out of my expectation, I could get the sound all the way from high C+ down to low D with a lot more solid sound quality. However, this condition could only remain good for less than 5 minutes. After that time limit, the sound began to worsen and disappearing. I guessed the condensed water on the inner wall of the flute  caused this problem.

This silicone stage lasted for nearly two years and used two packs of pads. Each time I restored a couple of notes, but at the same time I found a couple of other notes lost. It was not the real savior to me. I realized why I was charged $80 for the fix of a leaking problem of my flute on G+ note by an instrument shop on the North Shore 15 years ago. The flute re-padding is a high level technique; it is an art; it requires great deal of patience; it is a sacred task. It is impossible to get the good job done by someone without these qualities of personality.

In early 2014, I bought another pack of pads of the medium price about $6.50 from eBay and set out to re-pad my flute for the final attempt. I had more experience in adjusting the shims to make the contact tightness around the rim of the sound holes by now. I surprisingly saw I had somewhat mastered this re-padding skill, that this time I got every note sounds solid and crispy, though it is my standard and might not be acceptable to a professional technician. But it sounds ok to me. (The video inserted here is how its sound is like after it was revived in May 2014.)

To me, my flute is revived this time. I use of the time when my medication is at its peak to play my flute again, though the slow pieces only, I have given my flute its new life.

Some insight into the verse in Diamond Sutra

At times, I am amazed by the behavior of my brain, or I should say "the human's brain", which generally speaking wanders all the time, wanders on everything and anything. Even the entity of the individual that accommodates it has no control over it. You can not make it stop thinking about a certain thing, it just keeps going on that wandering mode till you get a moment of sudden and temporary awakening. When you want it to focus on a certain matter, it wanders to totally irrelevant ones. I have found this behavior of our brain, heart, or mind as many fellow Buddhists prefer call it, is consistently true as I am getting older. Especially its wandering behavior is the target I aim to attain some skill through my daily dawn meditation practice to tame it down.

The verse found in the ending part of the Diamond Sutra is so renowned not only do Buddhists of whatever tradition they are in, everyone can easily recite it, even people outside of the religion refer to it when certain situation emerges and constantly changing its format as time goes by, the meaning of that verse tinged in their mind convincing them it is exactly right, all the things that are conceivable are meant to change or evolve.

There are quite a lot of interpretations in the internet trying to set a conclusion to define the essence of the Diamond Sutra. My father-in-law was one of the innumerable enthusiasts who duplicated several copies of the Sutra during his last few years by hand writing as a way of mindfulness practice and gave to each of his 4 son-in-laws as a blessing. The image I selected as a theme picture of this post shown above is his calligraphical work. He ever said to me when he had finished his first read of the sutra sometime in 1985, "the main point of the Diamond Sutra is on the importance of remaining detached from everything and anything to attain an eternal happiness".

I was then an illiterate of Buddhism sutras. I found them tasteless, meaningless,
and of no interest to me at all, not only so, many of the statements are of paradoxical, however, my father-in-law's comment about Diamond Sutra had planted a seed of  my studying it later on and eventually writing this post.

I believe the Buddha, throughout his life time on our planet, had been sticking to his vow of awaking us, the sentient beings, with his teaching. Every time when his disciple asked a question, he would patiently explained his teachings thoroughly, and usually concluded the session with a 4 line verse. The one in Diamond Sutra goes like this:

• all of the worldly matters
• are like dream, delusion, bubble and shadow
• they transform like the dew and thunder
• they should be viewed as such 

This famous verse is not difficult to understand in terms of their word meaning. They make sense; are logical from our view as a human being. But we should not forget that the Buddha's view is very much different from ours, he knew the best way to make his disciples understand the most of what he tried to teach by human's language is for them to experience it by themselves. Therefore, the meaning behind the 4 statements must have lost a lot of that was in Buddha's brain when he spoke it. The comparison on the interpretations of the verse between Buddha and his audiences can be understood by a fable wrote by an ancient Chinese philosopher, Zhuang Zi, who lived around the 4th century BC.

A frog lived in a well came across a turtle from the ocean. They had a conversation on the topic of the greatness of their respective living spaces. The frog could not believe there was such great place the turtle lived and did not even understand what the turtle had depicted about the ocean. (for reading the detailed story please click here.)

That means we, just like the frog living in the well, believe we are the most supreme intelligent species on the earth. We are taught so by our worldly education, As we are growing older and turning into elderly stage of life, we have experienced a lot of inexplicable things happening around us at different stages along our life time. These experiences are processed, stored and finally we are able to analyse the experiences and generalize all the stored experiences by a formula. Like the frog lived in the well inevitably developed a strong ego which is unbeatable and stubbornly get in the way of our path toward enlightenment. No wonder we all understand the theory as per the verse says, but most of us found their practice did not bring much progress for them.

The main content of the Diamond sutra is the conversation between Buddha and his student, Subhuti. The answers given by  the Buddha to Subhuti are all of paradoxical. However, Subhuti's response was like that he appreciated what his teacher was telling him. My understanding about this unique answering way is that the teacher was conveying the fact of the nature of anything conceivable, emptiness. Emptiness nature of anything is indescribable; is something we can only feel or experience in our mind. If we really want to get a solid answer based on our language out of it, then it becomes limitlessly vast, bigger than the biggest, smaller then the invisible. It is an idea of whatever, not wrong and not right; non-exist and ubiquitous; noble and nasty, and whatever you term it you can sense its nature is somewhere in between and is somewhere beyond.

Because the Dharma is in the nature of emptiness, so it can be at any point of the realm or it is beyond the limit of the extreme. When things possess this nature of quality, it is in constant transforming as well, and to one who has enlightened there is nothing without the nature of emptiness.

So my insight into the 4 line verse is that I found Buddha brought his conversation with Subhuti to a hault and set out the 4 lines of statement as his conclusion or summary of what he had answered to Subhuti. The verse is not paradoxical. This looks to me that Buddha thought, "sentient beings must have been confused by all the self-contradictory statements of my teachings on Subhuti's questions, now I should give them a more understandable summary about what I have just said". And so the verse goes as mentioned above.

This is my insight into the 4 line verse of Diamond Sutra.



--The End--

Learning Excel formulas

By some factors destined or determined, I started the exploration of the more advanced Excel formulas in order to create a working spreadsheet that will allow my son to record the accounting data of his music tuition business.

It is easy to make a worksheet just for a purpose of keeping the students' prepaid tuition fee and the amount they used after a lesson is delivered. I named this sheet "Lesson log". It consisted of 12 columns of Date, StudentID, StuName, ...AmountPaid, etc. I only realized after I have involved in the creation for one of the most basic accounting book, I naturally began to have new ideas of upgrading the function of my self-made worksheet.

The basic worksheet was aimed to instantly resolve Chenny's dire need for a ledger book. However, three or four weeks later, I noticed the Lesson log should have a column that fetches the balance amount from last record of the same student and calculates further by adding up his new payment and deducting one unit of fee if he had a lesson on that day. This requires a calculation for the Balance field in the worksheet. It sounds simple, but is very challenging to me because I was still new to the formulas configuration. I was virtually illiterate in this skill, so I started my self-taught process through Google on the internet. I believed there must be people asking for help with the formula they want to carry out a certain way of calculation.

My assumption was right, there were heaps of people like me asking all sorts of function the Excel can do, and there were at the meantime people who were knowledgeable on this area and were willing to teach. So I had read quite a lot of replies made to questions. For the Balance to behave like I have described above, I will have to learn functions of Index, If, Large, Row, Match; also learn their syntax and the formula comprises of several functions that will carry out a complicated calculation and bring up a result you expect to obtain.

Below is an example of my attempt to create a formula in the right end of the table. I want the formula to fetch from its current row of the Balance column the data of the same student ID. For instance,

ID	Fee charged	Payment received	Balance
38	0.00	40.00	40.00
114	0.00	20.00	20.00
95	0.00	60.00	60.00
114	0.00	60.00	60.00
38	20.00		20.00
95	20.00	20.00	-40.00
114	0.00	60.00	120.00
88	20.00		60.00
113	20.00		-20.00

I got stuck at this attempt trying to get a formula to proceed the calculation on the Balance column. Because the row number already grew to 400 plus, it is too big a job to calculate manually. Apart from the reality it is too tedious to calculate manually, it is eye soring to search for the immediate last record of the same student. For example I am entering record of student #113 who attended a class today. I want the table to display his balance after this delivered lesson. He did not make payment, and his last record indicate a 0 in balance, so the balance today should be -20.00.

I searched the web intensively. Because of reading a lot of the discussion posts and I am getting more familiar with the most used functions, I felt I had my own ideas for this Balance column.

Having determined to make the formula to do a series of calculation, I used my learned knowledge to write  a few formulas. First of all I defined the names of the columns for easier reference in writing the formula. This can be found in the Data section on the menu bar and select "Define names". $A$2:$D$11 is referred to as SelectAll; $A$2:$A$11 is referred to StuID; $B$2:$B$11 is referred to FeeCharged; $C$2:$C$11 is referred to Payment; and $D$2:$D$11 is referred to Balance.

After innumerable trial and error. I had finally come up with one like this. Although I found other formulas that did the same calculation, but I liked to use this one that came about because of my effort.

=IFERROR(INDEX(SelectAll, MAX(if(StuID=$A2,1)*ROW($D$2:$D$11)),1),"")


--to be continued--

Enlightenment and electronic learning

Probably sometime from year 2010, I developed a hobby of learning the basics of electronic following my previous learning subjects of Buddhism, flute, writing in English. I found these learning subjects interesting and enjoyable and most importantly, they suit my health condition.

There is a popular perception of life. They say life is an ongoing process of learning, learning to make life easier, more pleasure and less or free of suffering. And after I have learned some basics about Buddhism, the utmost happy goal that surpasses any happy category of things you can name of is the mastery of our mind. I believe this is a truth because I have learned from reading, broadcasting, or chats that the very successful leaders in their fields of career publicly spoke about their feeling of lack of happiness. Without doubt, money is not the cause of happiness. But what is?

Apparently, materialism is not the answer. So I searched the psychological side of our identity for the answer. We were taught "helping others is the cause of happiness" during our schooling period. That is right, it indeed makes one happy when you help someone to solve a problem, do a task or share something good with them. But the feeling of being happy won't stay long. So we keep on searching and contemplating on this question, what is the cause of happiness.

Then, I jump to a conclusion, now that happiness or adversity are psychological reflections of our mind, so the search for the answer should be turning from outside to inside.

The question has been with me all the time. I believe the purpose of our lives is nothing but seeking for the suitable practice in order to attain a long lasting or even an eternal happiness. Although our lives when seen from the surface are seeking for different objects, by theory, that seeking for something is believed by the individual seeker to bring them a happy outcome. However, this process of seeking and pursuing is not guaranteed to be successful every time.

In a dawn meditation sometime ago, an idea emerged from the depth of my conciousness. It seemed to be possible to work for me. It is relating to my self-taught electronic basics.

From the past three years involvement of repairing broken household electronic devices free for friends who are willing to let me try. I had gained some knowledge about the nature of the components as well as the circuit board. Some of the cases could not find anything wrong but just no response to the power applied. My curiousity drove me to study how the incoming current moved; how each of the components worked; did some trial and error, gradually I figured out the problematic part, got it replaced by a new one from eBay and got its function back.

This process took long time because of the necessity in experimenting, components searching, waiting for the ordered parts, but this is how I learn and get to know the behaviors of the circuit board. Once in a meditation I had, the thoughts were runing everywhere as it used to be. I felt annoyed, frustrated and also felt shameful because of being unable to master the meditation skill. However, I sit through till the end-time of my one hour session was up.

I was struggling with the restless mind that time, when the annoyance and frustration were escalating higher and higher, and I was almost intending to skip the rest of the session, a new thought stumbled in. my mind screen displayed how I worked in the garage during the dawn time. The few cases I had done and most satisfied were replayed, suddenly that reviewing seemed to be telling me the analogy between the similarity of the circuit board and the biological brain. They are powered by different types of energy, but they are working in the same way. The circuit relys on the movement of each of the components to play their role to get their functions demonstrated. If somewhere in the circuit a chip or a small capcitor goes a bit out of order, the device will show its abnormality. This is absolutely the same as our brain. For an instance, I am a Parkinson's Disease patient. My symptoms such as involuntary tremor, slow momement, stiffness, emacinating and etc are indicating some part of my brain are having problem. This associating thoughts I experienced that day was indeed a kind of  enlightenment to me.

Since my literally enlightenment experience mentioned above, I always embrace a hope of locating a mechanism in my brain with me into the hour long meditation. Folks. I know you are yelling "don't sit with any attachnent, chap", but this reflects my eagerness in attaining a great leap in my quest of a controllable and duplicatable enlightenment experience through meditation practice.

--the end

A beach house experience

A friend of mine owns a beach house in Ngunguru, a small town in Northland region. Ngunguru is neighboring to many beautiful beaches like, Whales Bay, Sandy Bay, Whangaumu Bay, Motapouri Bay. Ngunguru itself is a lovely coastal village nearby the estuary of Ngunguru river, located on North East of Whangarei 20 minutes away by car, facing to Pacific Ocean. The beaches in this area are featured by their soft white sand, breath-taking blue ocean and secluded natural landscape. The tide has been sounding loudly since ancient days, but people striding into them never feel the tidal sound noisy but only feel being embraced by the limitless serenity, peacefulness, and friendliness of locals.

My friend offered us a free one week stay at their bach, named The Beach House, in Ngunguru. She allowed me to invite our children or friends to join in this late summer holiday to experience the relaxing nature of a beach house stay.

We invited our friends, Henry and Helen. As if all the factors were predestinedly right, they said yes without any hesitation. The weather forecast gave an optimally fine weather within the 4 days of our selected period from 24/2 to 27/2. So the two couples of old fellow excitedly planed on the upcoming activity, shopping list was determined, travelling routs were studied, points of interests were researched, indoor activities of a one hour guided meditation and Qi Gong exercise were scheduled, and etc, just like the excitement we always had in our primary school days when the school master announced an out of school walking trip. Helen said: "let's make the theme of this holiday The Journey of Body, Mind, Spirit". "Yeah, cool!", I responded.

The day we had been looking forward to was up, as was originally scheduled in the GPS borrowed from Chenny, we set out on the 173 km of journey at exactly 10:45am heading toward North. The sun was brilliant, the breeze was comfortable, and the traffic was good. It is the last few days of the ending summer. All the conditions promised a perfect bach stay to be experienced.

We had a break at the i-site located on the out skirt of Whangarei city, and by the way had our lunch at a Cafe in the same building which the i-site is in. The car park was almost full. Touring buses, vans, small cars filled up all parking slots. Most of the people here looked like tourists. We were the only few Asians.

Our Captain, Helen, proposed that our sightseeing activity should start right away from there though all our provisions were on board and we were still 20 minutes of driving away. Yet we agreed, and I set the destination to Whangarei city centre in the GPS, so there we went under the audio guide of the GPS.

GPS lead us arrive the city centre where is right located by the yacht harbor. Countless yachts anchored all over the water as far as your eyes can reach. They are waiting for their owners to sail them out into the sea when the next weekend comes. There were quite a few galleries, a proof that many artists were living in this region. We also visited the local museum. The living style of the people here can be reflected from the exhibited objects. Quite a few were knitting wares, sailing gears, homemade fruit jam.

Jean and I love ice cream, so we took rest at a water front Cafe and ordered 4 double cones. They were rich in chocolate flavor. with the bright sun shining in the mid afternoon, the peaceful harbor view, gliding sea gulls, mild breeze, and the combined effect from all of these beautiful holiday ingredients really putting me to dreaming with my eyes staring at the nothingness in the air. The local residents are very friendly. Within the walking around there for just one and half hours, we were offered three times by different smiley passer-by locals to shoot all 4 of us photos so that we don't always miss one out from the pictures. Time to move on to the bach.

Before long, GPS spoke "your destination is on your left". Having got into the house, we naturally explored every corner of it, pulled all curtains open, turned on power, made the beds, put all the food in the fridge. Henry is the most skillful chef among the 4 of us, so he was nominated to be the chief chef for the first meal in the beach house, and I volunteered to prepare the ingredients.

Jean and I were allocated the master's room which faces East and got the vastest sea view than other rooms. We had the healthy dinner which complied with the pre-themed principles of Body, Mind, Spirit. The first dinner in the beach house was simply vegetarian. and the following two dinners were similar. These simple but healthy meals may not be tasty but good to develop contentedness, and keep the 3 Highs, high blood pressure, high blood glucose level, high cholesterol , away from us.

What the activities we scheduled for the second and third day was breakfast, Dynamic Qi Gong, guided meditation, lunch, sight seeing selected points of interest.

The places we had been to were indeed breathtaking. They are naturally beautiful. So beautiful that with my best English language skill I can only use words such as "Wow! look at this...", "awesome", "unbelievable", therefore, I'll let the shared video clips about the bays, beaches and coast line available on the internet to help me with the post-holiday presentation.

As to our indoor activities apart from the Qi Gong exercise and meditation, I personally did a one hour dawn meditation, and waiting for the sunrise view to display its magic of coloring the clouds and sky. Henry knew I discovered the stunning sunrise view on the previous morning, got up early on the next morning with his camera of 32 Gega storage to record the whole process of the sunrise in video.

The house owner is a book lover, she must be interested in spiritual aspects of life that I saw a good collection of books in this category on the book shelf in the lounge. During the residual free times here and there, I stuck myself to The Journey by Brandon Bays about her experience starting from her being diagnosed growing cancerous tumor found in her belly through her journey of reviewing a deeply buried memory since her childhood, and eventually got her tumor softened and shrank to nothing without a surgery removal.

Time is never stopping or slowing down for anyone of us, and it seems to move forward particularly faster when you are having a good time. The three nights spent at The Beach House were over, and I am sitting in front of the computer writing some notes about the first time ever beach house stay experience in my life.



--The end

Visiting a friend in their farm

A good friend owns a 'life style farm' in Takanini which is located on and within the geographic boundary of Auckland in the South. They are a generous, compassionate couple. Every now and then, they would travel all the way from Takanini to Northern Auckland where they had lived for about 10 years before they moved to current one, they always earnestly spared some time for visiting me and also giving me abundant of whatever produce they could pick from their green house.

We were invited to visit them  and had a lunch there yesterday. They are really a couple full of compassion and loyalty to friends.The husband  knew I am no longer driving due to my disease, offered to come to pick me up to go to their farm in the South and send me back to the North afterwards by car. I appreciatively declined and promised him that we will come by bus and train.

We set out on the road at 8:15am yesterday, went through the journey, and got out of the bus which encountered two incidents along the way causing a big delay to its schedule. My friend had waited for our arrival more than one hour at the destination with his car to pick us up. It has been over 8 years since my last visiting them in the farm.

His farm is only 2 acres in size. All of the infra-structures the urbanite suburb residential areas have, his farm has. Though only a very small farm comparing to the average size of the farm land, to me, living in an ordinary house of 600 square meters, his one is really big. My friend loves growing kitchen garden vegetables. He constructed 3 small simple greenhouses, each one accommodates a kind of vege, cucumber, broad bean and lettuce.

At lunch time, Mary picked some of each of their own produce from the greenhouse, added a few other commercially grown mushroom,  capsicum and egg from super market, 4 big plates of healthy stir fried vegetables were served on the table. Each of the dishes was full of the special vege flavor only tasted on organic produces.

The main purpose of this journey to visit David was to accept his enthusiastic offer of the so called "original trigger point pressing therapy" which he believed to be able to cure my Parkinson's Disease. He is so confident with the healing power of the OTPPT is due to his personal experience of having suffered from an acute waist and hip joint pain which unexpectedly fell upon him suddenly in late 2012, and these annoying ailments lingered across a period of six months, costing him a fortune for the various therapies he had sought all over Auckland region. The problem did not go away, so he decided to fly to Taiwan to ask for a surgery since he could not stand the sharp pain any longer. A few days before his departure, my wife told him about a therapy, which was OTPPT, and this unintentional topic raised up at his visiting us prior to his traveling to Taiwan had been planted in his mind like a seed, but this recommendation offering was soon forgotten by both him and us.

One day when his pain came up again to trouble him, he thought of a website link given to him some time ago by his friend but he could not remember who. Anyway, he browsed that website and was overwhelmingly convinced by the the presenter, a middle aged Chinese doctor, and he decided to have it a go. He accepted a few times of massage carried out by Mr. Zhang's volunteers. Impressed by the instant healing effect of the technique and its free treatment simply out of compassion, he made up his mind that he would spread this therapy among his circle for free to benefit whoever wants to try.

After the farm atmospheric lunch, having waited the digestion process to go on without other physical activity, he had me lied with front side down on a clinic bed which has a opening about the size of half of our face for the patient to place his face on that opening for breathing.

The massage started from the 8 points on the back of the skull, all the way down along the two muscles nearby the two side of the spine to the end of the tail vertebra. It is damn hurt on the spot where he applied force. Finally the entire lot of the OTPPT spots were done, and he heat up an electric blanket to 45 Celsius degree go enforce the effect of this treatment for half an hour. It spent one hour of his time and I knew he must be exhausted by then, because I just could not do the same thing more than 10 minutes for others, but he was just smiling and denied that he was of any tired from the one hour effort. What a compassionate man.

It was late afternoon when I finished the heat therapy, and had to leave for bus. David and Mary were very generously stuffing my bag with their garden produce and their home-made loaf of bread.

This post ends at here, this couple's compassion and generosity are endless.