Consciousness

By chance, I was introduced to the Yogacara Buddhism in late 2014. To my understanding after having learned through a series of discussion done via a lot of e-mail exchanges, that branch of Buddhism explains that everything in the universe is consciousness only. I have been reviewing and contemplating this theory everyday since then.

Yesterday I landed at a web page where my attention was drawn to a video titled Primacy of Consciousness. That was the first time I realized consciousness is not just a word meaning the state of the mind being aware of certain thing happening at present and responding to it. It has an even wider area which I have never thought of until I watched this documentary video presented by Peter Russell of Cambridge University. One of the question raised in his speech was "Who am I?" I know this is not just a surface question; is not intended to ask "who you are?" or "What's your name?", but to challenge you to pin down the nature of the thoughts that are going on, and being processed when you are asked "Who am I?" The interesting part is at the ending of the speech when the conclusion is set by saying "I Am" is God, and God is everyone. To me as a Buddhist, this is equivalent to "I Am" is the Self and the Self is in everyone. This becomes more understandable to me.

Having finished listening to the video twice, I revisited my inside and paid closest attention to any part of it with the best imaginary power I could get, and I honestly told myself: here has nothing I can use to define "who am I". Then how about the exterior appearance of my physical body? Isn't it looking unique from anyone else in the world and should be good enough to define me just right? But having realized from my previous learning of Buddhism that I am not the same as I was one moment before, so I agree the exterior look of me can not define me as "Who am I". And the same argument can apply to everything in the universe, and so I have now sensed the deeper meaning of the four sentence verse the Buddha put at the end of the Diamond Sutra as a summary of that sutra:

all of the worldly matters

are like dream, delusion, bubble and shadow

they transform like the dew and thunder

they should be viewed so

The statements in the verse taught about 2500 years ago by the Buddha are proved to be true by scientists today. The Yogacara I am learning now, which was developed 300 years after the Buddha's residence supported the same theory which I have just heard from Mr. Russell's speech-- the universe is empty but only consciousness.

But as time goes by, and I have digested the material I watched from video or read from internet forums further, the process of testing the various theories I learned from here and there moves on to see which one is closer to or completely matching what the Buddha concluded about the truth of the universe as quoted above. I tend to believe Mr. Russell's consciousness theory matches the verse a lot, however, his theory is based on the nature of the eight types of consciousness. The Monas must have the other 5 plus the last one, Alayes, to work together as a system to manifest any phenomena. If my interpretation of this theory is correct, it will not help a practitioner in achieving enlightenment.

--to be continued

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--

Is there such thing as Enlightenment

I have been pondering on this question a lot recently. Every time when this question comes up my mind, the first thing I thought of was what Shiddhatha Gautama said 2500 years ago when he exited from his nonstop seven-day meditation, "it is amazing that the entire living beings possess a whole lot of wisdom and virtues."

As we believe that Buddha set "no lies" one of the five basic precepts, so what he said in his teaching must simply be true. In China, there was a good example recorded in the "the sixth patriarch's altar Sutra" which recorded an anecdote of the sixth patriarch Hui Neng.

Hui Neng (638–713 AD), was a woodsman before he was ealightened. The Sutra said that he once delivered his firewood to a restaurant in town. Having got his job done and on his way leaving from the restaurant, he heard someone reciting the scripts of diamond Sutra. He asked the guy what was he reading, and the guy replied "diamond Sutra". He begged him to read on. Hui Neng was totally engulfed by the script being read, and suddenly attained a great enlightenment when the guy read up to the end of that chapter: "one should not attach his perception of anything to his mind".

As usual as many other pioneers who attained enlightenment before him earnestly reflected their experience by a verse right after they exited that state. Hui Neng's example of enlightenment was recorded in the "Sixth Patriarch Altar Sutra". He summarized his insight of the scripts in the following verse:

" never had I expected that the self is purely clean; never had I expected that the self is beyond birth and demise; never had I expected that the self is completely sustainable; never had I expected that the self is unshakable; never had I expected that the self generates limitless matters" (何期自性本自清净，何期自性本不生灭，何期自性本自具足，何期自性本无动摇，何期自性能生万法")

The two examples I raised on the above are not contemporary and we may feel they are too remote and not so real. So the other day, I googled on this question "who were recognized as enlightened being?", the search listed heaps of entries relevant to this question, and among them were masters teachers and spiritual practitioners. Some of them were very famous worldwide like Ramana Maharshi, Ajahn Chah, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Eckhart Tolle, and so on, whose followers wrote and published their witnesses or their thoughts about the teachers in order to share their experience with the mass multitude.

So I believe there is such thing as Enlightenment. But like most of the learners, I haven't had a chance to experience Enlightenment.

But what is enlightenment all about? How do they feel when they reached that level of state?

I believe it must be a marvelous, wonderful, peaceful, blissful, or perhaps awesome spiritual state that is beyond the capacity of description the worldly language can make us understand.

It is said that when Shidahtah Guatama had achieved his Enlightenment, he realized that it was almost impossible for the sentient beings to achieve the same state, and so he decided to leave the Samsara behind and enter Nivana. However, he might think it was a selfish thought and then had a strong urge to share his discovery and experience about the enlightenment, so he came out of his deep meditation and started his career of 49 years of teaching.

Is there such a thing as enlightenment? I have been skeptical to this question. Because if there is someone in the world who is widely recognized as an enlightened being, how come in the past 30 years since I had the chance to get to know something about Buddhism, have never had the chance to see an real example myself? And I am not the only one who has never witnessed an enlightened being, none of my fellow Buddhists has ever seen one, but the majority of them believe their adored masters are.

Althoug I have been so skeptical about this question, I absolutely believe what Siddhartha Guatama and Hui Neng had said about their experience or insight of enlightenment. I even believe there are a lot more other people somewhere in the world are born to be enlightened beings, and only a very few people have the chance to be learning from them directly.

What enlightenment is all about? Why Buddha, Hui Neng and innumerable other sages of the ancient day spent their whole life time to learn how to achieve that objective with a great amount of effort? My perception of the above questions might not be correct, but it is based on what I have experienced so far. It is because the reality of life is full of contradiction. If we look at worldly matters closely, we will agree that nothing remains the same permanently. However, the logic of our brain is conditioned or is programmed to compare, to judge, to discriminate, to love this and hate that, to insist to do things on a certain way. If everything runs perfectly, then we are happy, but the problem is that it is never guaranteed to go our way, so we are upset, stressed, disappointed when things go other way round. In a nutshell, what makes us suffer is because life sucks, life suffers. This is the cause that drove Shiddahtha to escape from palace to learn from those famous Yogis of his era how to make mind peaceful and happy eternally.

How will we feel when we have achieved certain level of enlightenment? It must be unimaginably marvelous when the mind is tamed and enlightened. That is why Shidahtha Gautama bothered to preach the path which lead to the goal of enlightenment.

In 2009, I was recommended to watch a video clip presented by TED. In the video, Dr. Jill Taylor delivered a speech about her own experience of how it feels being in Nivana. That occurred on her in a morning when she had a brain stroke which despaired her left hemisphere of the brain. Before I quote the relevant content of her speech, I would like to emphasize that Dr. Taylor herself is a neurologist, a brain scientist, and that she was not a believer of any religion prior to her incident, according to what she told Oprah in an interview on TV.

Dr. Jill Taylor could be the one who has used the plainest English to describe the feeling she had in her TED speech in 2008. In that speech she told the audience an incident occurred in a morning of September 1996 when she encountered a massive brain stroke which despaired her left side of the brain. Because she is a neurologist, she knows how the two brain hemispheres work, but to experience how a brain stroke patient feels when part of their brain is getting out of order, that could be the only chance for her. So even though she was in an emergent condition, a thought flashed through her mind -- "how cool it is that how many brain scientists have such a good chance to study the brain inside out."

When her speech came up to the part describing how she felt when her left brain was shuting down and only the right brain did its job. She said,

"Our right human hemisphere is all about this present moment. It's all about "right here, right now." Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information, in the form of energy, streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems and then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like, what this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and what it sounds like. I am an energy-being connected to the energy all around me through the consciousness of my right hemisphere. We are energy-beings connected to one another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And right here, right now, we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a better place. And in this moment we are perfect, we are whole and we are beautiful." ,

"My left hemisphere -- our left hemisphere -- is a very different place. Our left hemisphere thinks linearly and methodically. Our left hemisphere is all about the past and it's all about the future. Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment and start picking out details, details and more details about those details. It then categorizes and organizes all that information, associates it with everything in the past we've ever learned, and projects into the future all of our possibilities. And our left hemisphere thinks in language. It's that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to my external world. It's that little voice that says to me.", she said, "position of my body in space, I felt enormous and expansive, like a genie just liberated from her bottle. And my spirit soared free, like a great whale gliding through the sea of silent euphoria. Nirvana. I found Nirvana. And I remember thinking, there's no way I would ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body.But then I realized, "But I'm still alive! I'm still alive, and I have found Nirvana. And if I have found Nirvana and I'm still alive, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana." And I pictured a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew that they could come to this space at any time. And that they could purposely choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres and find this peace. And then I realized what a tremendous gift this experience could be, what a stroke of insight this could be to how we live our lives. And it motivated me to recover."

From her speech, we'll understand that to be a living being, we got to have a balanced brain on each of the two hemispheres--the right side provides information, raw or processed, stored, and the left side does the comparing, analyzing, concluding, planning and so on. When these two parts are in conflict, then we will be like living in hell, and when they cooperate, we will have less trouble.

Of course we are not hoping to be knocked out by stoke in order to simulate an artificial enlightenment, but Dr. Taylor's speech convinces us there is such thing as enlightenment, and it is attainable by doing the right practice.

Why practice meditation

My first involvement in group meditation took place in Ponsonby Library, Auckland, in a evening of April or May of 1992. The group was lead by Jim Jinmon Langabeer whose teacher was based in the Zen Mountain Manastery, New York, following the Koan tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism. Prior to my first time involvement, I never had attended any sitting meditation. All I knew about meditation was sitting with legs crossed, closing my eyes, stopping my thoughts, and when I sit right and maintain at the right state long enough, I will be able to experience the divine feeling only the one who has achieved that level can appreciate. So that was the objective and there I was, the only Asian, sitting among the group of about 10 European Buddhists.

My objective was not achieved, and so did any other fellow sitters that night, but everyone seemed to be happier because I could see everyone smiled peacefully, acting gently, and some of them claimed the one hour session would keep them at high level of energy through the following week. I had a numb right leg that night I remembered, and it was a physical and mental challenge to my endurance of a spiritually disciplined sitting. But I also smiled; commented that was a supportive group, and I would like to join in the sitting regularly. One thing for sure that the Buddha, the teacher, who attained his Buddhahood through 7 day non-stop deep meditation. If he could, I could, at least, train my mind to be clearer, calmer and happier.

Time goes by rapidly, 19 years have entered into the history since my first sitting, yet I have not become another Buddha. Not even have I become more capable of taming my piece of mind. I realized recently that the goal is enlightenment-- a thorough and complete realization of the supreme truth and fact of the universe. According Buddhism scripture, it took innumerable eons of time to expect a sentient being’s continuous hard practice to achieve Buddhahood. To my extremely worldly way of thinking, that is an unachievable goal, why do it. My belief is it will make us keep on being traped in the non-stop cycles of birth and death from this life to the next and next for sure if we don’t follow the teachings at all; or have hope that one day the consistent practice will reward us with a happier, healthier and wealthier life, though it seems to be in the unreachable future.

In 2009, I was forwarded by a friend a link to a video clip presented by a brain researcher scientist, Dr. Jill Taylor. In the video, Dr. Taylor told the audience a story occurred 15 years ago about what had happened to her during the period of time in one morning when she experienced a major stoke. As she was an expert of human brain, she knew what exactly was happening in her left brain that was causing her feeling the ways she had never experienced before.

She firstly told the audience that a human brain is composed of two separated halves and each one of them functions totally differently -- the left one is like a serial processor of a computer, it processes data in series, meaning it checks and compares the data received just now against the data in the past, gives you result of its analysis, defines everything in detail, pulls you apart from the universe; the right half processes data in parallel-- it takes in massive of massive of data, no past or future but now only. So in that morning when the vessel of her left brain erupted and the function of that part was on and off alternately and deteriorated rapidly but gradually.

Before she managed to move herself to reach the telephone to call for help, she clearly remembered the feeling of the various periods when the left brain was partially on, she felt unbearable noise and anxiety, pushed her to be quick to take action to do this and that; but when the left brain functioning is off, she felt she was mixed in the universe, felt huge peacefulness, compassion. On the way to the hospital, she felt she was in that lovely state she thought she had found Nirvana, and if she could, everyone alive could too. At the end of her speech, she appealed that we could choose to spend more time in the circuitry of our right brain as it will help to project more peacefulness and compassion onto the world.

The part of Dr. Taylor’s speech that most motivated me is her testimony of the mind state when the left half of the brain is in silent mode. If I compare what she experienced during that morning of her stroke with the objective of practicing meditation, they are so matching. Our masters taught us to do meditation for the ultimate goal of achieving the Buddhahood which to my understanding, after I have watched Dr. Taylor’s presentation, means the unimaginable peaceful and compassionate state she experienced herself as a brain researcher.

So it makes sense to me now to practice meditation consistently. I think my neighbor will be curious about why he sees my studio light is on at the dawn time more often now.

The meaning of life

A fellow Buddhist, recently told me that her son spoke to her with illogical statements and showed some symptoms that stunned her very much. I knew straight away that was schizophrenia because I happened to have just watched a video not long ago about this disease. I felt very sorry for this mother because I also knew from her that her son was very obedient and supportive to her. Every week on the payday, her son would be just automatically giving his total earning of that week to the mother, and then only spent whatever amount mother put into his wallet. So I could appreciate how sorrowful and helpless my friend must be. I am so sorry for her.

Two months ago, my ex-colleague called me out of my expectation. From the conversation, I could tell his mood was quite low. After a few exchanges of pleasantry and our personal updates, he inserted this shocking news. "Shirley has just passed away." I could not believe what I had heard. I yelled "what!!! Who has passed away?" He replied, "Shirley, my wife."

Shirley was a kind, friendly, and generous woman. Every time when we were invited to their home, she always took the best food or delicacy from the fridge to treat us, and also tried to pack something up for us to take home when we were leaving. Two months before her demise, I had my last phone chat with her, and I could not believe she had any health problem. "What was the cause of her death?" I asked my ex-colleague. "hepatitis"

I think that is why whenever I recount these two episodes happened on my friends, I always agree with the quote that most of the Buddhists are familiar with-- "life is impermanent." (人生無常).

Probably for this reason, I intended to practice my English writing on the topic of "the meaning of life." As usual, I began this process by asking my wife some questions about this topic the other day. Without any hesitation, she answered: "Life is to get ourselves to be prepared for our soul to transmigrate to the blissful pure land". She answered in a way like she was being quizzed by the master. She is a devoted follower of the Mahayana Buddhism of pure land tradition, so I understood what she meant, but that was not the type of answer that I expected. So I pressed on "put your religion belief aside, and tell me frankly what you feel about the meaning of life." "Then, I think the meaning of life is enjoying what you have contentedly and happily." I reckoned she was giving an honest answer.

Then I asked many other friends of the same question. And I found all of the answers I collected were more or less different from each other.Everyone is an unique individual I also checked for the definition of life on the Web by Google search and found there were innumerable collection of quotes, and finally I landed on the page of Wikipedia about this topic, and I found Wikipedia provides the most thorough information. It gives summarized thoughts of the major religions, ideologies, regions of the globe, academic advocates.

I asked myself the same question, and I found it was not so easy to just give an answer that matches every aspect of my thoughts, my philosophy, my personality and my belief. Having checked throughout the archive in my brain, it came up with one like this -- "life is for us to fulfill what we are destined to accomplish."

To conclude this post, I would like to quote "life is to settle the issues which your Karma casts upon you." (人生酬業)

Indeed we are born to accept either punishment or reward that are recorded accurately in our Karma. And in the process of accepting punishment or reward, all sorts of experiential viewpoint are naturally expressed according to the Karma.

On destined fortune

This link leads to a listing of web pages containing a statement the honorable Minister of Qing Empire, Zeng Guo Fan, once said: "... believe in the destined fortune and not the acquired knowledge...(信運氣﹐不信書)". My understanding of his statement is that he believes that any of our achievement manifests by our destined fortune and not just simply from careful planning and persistent effort. He must have made this conclusion from all of his life experience.

I also agree with some other bloggers' view point of this quote. Some said that Zeng's statement was just a reflection of his characteristic of being humble and modest. while some said that instead of emphasizing his accomplishments were the result of his intelligence and hard working, he attributed all of the abundant fruition to the manifestation of his good luck. However, I personally believe that either of the aforesaid point of view shares only 30% of the truth, There is this thing labeled as Karma which is similar to the notion of fortune moving all the trivial and major incidents of our life around, and that force takes up 70% or even more of the end result.

What triggered my intent of writing on this topic was from a chat with my wife this morning. "Jean, Chi-an (our son), started his first class at 9 am, he is teaching those school boys in the school now," I continued, "how lucky he is to get a good jobuch as this." Jean replied,"yeah, two months ago, we were still worried about his job issue, and suddenly the changes brought up this happy opportunity." she said while doing the laundry. "This reminded me of a remark the honorable scholar and government minister of Qing Dynasty, Zeng Guo Fan, once said '...believe in the destined fortune and not the acquired knowledge...'" I said, "I am going to write a blog about my perception of his famous remark."

May 2 of 2011 marked the day my son started his involvement in the music education in a state run college and another five primary schools and intermediate schools. A few days earlier, he was required to be interviewed by the head of the school's music department and the principal to make sure he was the right one they wanted to recruit to train the four rock bands of the school.

The interview went well and Chi-an was formerly employed by that college. His first class will be on May 5. With this guitar tuition in the state schools plus his other two sectors of practices, his work day hours are reasonably fully booked, and so his income is expected to be sustainable. All that had happened to result in this reality to come true were so unbelievably played one after another, just as dramatic as a playwright containing the various parts of longing , anxious, frustrated, nervous, exciting, disappointing, and all sorts of feelings you name it. Fortunately the desired and expected ending turns out to be a happy one. And now I am, as the father, is noting down the bits and pieces of thoughts with regard to this remarkable episode of Chen family.

My perception of spiritual practice

In the past few years, Internet has become very popular and advanced enormously, e-mail users often send interesting or useful information to share with each other. I noticed that this trend began increasing sharply in 2000, sometimes I receive this kind of forwarding from friends whom I haven't got a chance to meet them in person, and the number of this kind of forwarding can be over 20 or more in one day. Among these articles, over 50% of them are topics relevant to the maintenance of our physical health.

I wonder if there is anyone censoring and ranking the most popular topics being shared on the Web, if there is one, I believe the results will show that most of the Internet users are careful about their health of the physical aspect, as to the mental health part, it is very seldom mentioned.

As far as I can remember, people living in the small town where I was born in Taiwan, "mental health" was rarely heard of before 1960 in spite of the fact that there were insane people wandering on the streets in those days. As humans civilization progress, people began to acknowledge the importance of mental health; began to address the need of both physical and mental health. So we saw and noticed a rapid growth of the mental health service and heard of the terms such as depression, anxiety, anorexia, counsellor, psychologist. and so on.

I personally agree that if people are healthy in both mental and physical aspects, then they are really healthy people. But Buddha, Jesus, and everyone of the awakened or enlightened beings who had once lived on this planet with us, the ordinary beings, told us that we are the ignorant, sinners, wanders, strayed lambs, the unawakened. All these labels point out a fact that to the standard of the awakened sages, we are just like a patient, a sick fellow, a pitiable one, so we are not healthy at all to their viewpoint. And I believe the qualities we lack of are in the spiritual area within us. So the spiritual part of our life has been neglected or is denied of its importance.

To my understanding of Buddha's teaching, the motivation that made him spend 49 years of his life was that he wanted to share the ultimate bliss he achieved and experienced through his practice. Although he had tried his best to explain and describe what we should look for, only a few of his students understood and attained the fruition of their practice. He knew that only through diligent practice can anyone achieve that goal and realize what he had tried to teach, yet he still tried to depict what the final goal was all about, and left innumerable volumes of his teaching in a great deal of diversified methods after his demise.

What is that unspeakable goal he pursued before his enlightenment?

"The self." The self is the ultimate center wrapped by layer and layer of contamination in our mind such as: ignorance, desire, selfish, anger, and etc. Sometimes Buddha refers "the self" to "the other shore" or "the pure land" or "the Western blissful world" or "Nivana".

Although the nature of "the self" is unexplainable and unimaginable using our language, some attempts were still made to describe it. The most popular one is that the nature of the self is emptiness, albeit this one may easily mislead to a mind picture like the vast outer space looking very bleak, lonely, cold and all sort of unwelcoming qualities. I personally like the one presented by the sixth patriarch Huineng upon his enlightenment, he said, "何期自性本自清净，何期自性本不生灭，何期自性本自具足，何期自性本无动摇，何期自性能生万法"( never had I expected that the self is purely clean; never had I expected that the self is beyond birth and demise; never had I expected that the self is completely sustained; never had I expected that the self is unshakable; never had I expected that the self produces limitless beings).

The reason that we should start our spiritual practice as early and diligently as possible is that life reincarnates. After we die, we don't know and we cannot control where will we be born; who will be our parents; and this reincarnation has no end, it just repeats and repeats till one day when we finally awaken and achieve Nivana.

Now, we realize the necessity and importance of doing spiritual practice so as to achieve that wonderful goal Buddha has pointed out for us, how should we start with?

My advice is to look for recommendation from your networking a genuine and non-cult Buddhism learning group, or browsing through the webpages created by Buddhist group, and find one that you prefer the most, and then visit them and join their regular activities. You will gain the basic knowledge about Buddhism from there. And the next step is to study the basic scripts recommended by your group. And lastly and the most important step is to observe what Buddha taught.

What benefit will you attain from your diligent practice? You will feel more peaceful because the layers of contamination wrapping up "the self" are gradually peeled off, and eventually you will be enlightened and permanently stay away from the hopeless reincarnation.

So let us learn and practice the spiritual before it is too late.

My 60th birthday - part 1

I am turning to 60 years old when the calendar comes to the 25th of February. It is approaching soon. I should be excitedly looking forward to it; I must have worked out a plan of travelling with Jean in a cruise tour visiting popular destinations in the world. But I know it will just be another ordinary day filling up with routine activities--morning practice, check e-mails, shift dog to do his watch duty on the deck, reading, medication and meditation etc..

But, it is a 60th birthday, as the majority of the 60 year old fellows do, I should be entitled to do something special and joyful to spoil myself and celebrate it. After all, it only comes once in our life...!@#$%%.... What a good and justified excuse!

In my parents' days, a few particular birthdays of the family members' or their close relations' are just can not be omitted. The 6th birthday, the 16th, the 30th, and the 60th, and even the 80th if you live long enough. On these particular birthdays, to some well off family, a feast will be held, and close family friends and relatives will be invited to attend. As to ordinary families, a rather special food such as glutenous cake made in the shape of turtle and dyed in red symbolizing longevity will be offered to the ancestors and Buddha with a simple worship service held in front of the family shrine altar.

So far I did not skip any of the above mentioned peculiar birthdays of mine except the 60th and the 80th ones because they aren't due yet.

I remember my parents undertook a very costly celebration on my 6th birthday--dedicated to the heavenly deities by offering a whole male pig. I still vividly remember I was awaken from sound sleep by my mother before dawn. It was still dark in a cold but clear morning. The twinkling stars were still in the clear sky. Mother took me to the make-shift altar setup by the road side in front of our home. Before me was the corpse of a poor pig, supposed to be male as tradition required. The pig was displayed on a specially constructed wooden frame; its mouth was pulled open and an orange inserted in its mouth; its eyes shut but looked like smiling, the whole body on the frame with head up and tail end down in a 30 degrees elevation.

Mother held my two palms together with a burning incense held in between my palms. She stooped down, holding my hands together with the incense and said the prayer on behalf of me. As I can remember, the prayer went like this, "ah! the heavenly deities and the most revered heavenly emperor, we are so grateful to your constant protecting over Ah-sium (this was how I was called in Taiwanese dialect) that he has turned 6 years old today. Your continuing protecting and blessing him through the rest of his life is sincerely implored." Then, I think, I went straight back to bed after that ritual.

Then my 16th birthday. 1967 was the year, and I was in my first school term of senior high school. A same service was held; a poor male pig was slaughtered for the sake of my 16th birthday. I ever asked my mother why this kind of costly event had to be held? She said, "we do this to thank the heavenly deities." As I grew older, I understood the reasons: a son is important to a family as he is supposed to carry the linage of this family on; I was the only son survived after my two preceding brothers died in their infanthood, my parents were just too scared of the loss of me and therefore seek for blessing through the folk belief such as this; 16th birthday marks the critically important stage of life in terms of reproductivity, a stage of being able to fulfill the mission soon.

Time flied by. I married at age 26. I remember once before I was turning 30, my mother mentioned about who is supposed to be responsible for the celebration of my 30th birthday. She told me that according the customary, a son-in-law's 30th birthday celebration was at the cost of the wife's maiden home. I cannot remember now whether I had mentioned about the 30th birthday celebration to my wife and she passed the words on to her maiden home, or my father-in-law just knew about the etiquette, anyway, we were asked to travel to my wife's maiden home in Tainan on my birthday one day. I was not aware of the arrangement that my father-in-law had planned prior to our arrival.

After we arrived home, settled and were ready to dinner, my father-in-law summoned everyone to be in the living room, and seated me in the center of the couch and presented a short speech. I could not remember the speech he presented, but it was generally like this: "today is your 30th birthday", he continued "mom and dad wish you healthy, happy and lucky throughout the rest of your life. Offered to you is a bowl of wheat flour noodle with egg and a pan of homemade birthday cake that symbolize long life and everlasting descendants. Here you go."

Then I started my devouring of the whole bowl of the food under the surveillance of the whole family and got my 30th birthday celebration done without having to slaughter a pig.

Now, the 60th birthday is coming toward me. Time flies even faster than I imagine. I am here in New Zealand; have become a Buddhist of the Pure Land path.. What the birthday celebration of this important one will be like? I don't know. But I am definitely sure for one thing, that no pig will be sacrificed for the sake of my 60th birthday. Who will be responsible for this important event? I think it will be my wife, and she will make a bowl of wheat flour noodle with boiled egg for me, and presents a short speech which will be "Amituofo!"

An even more important one that follows the 60th one will be of the 80th birthday which I don't think will be held for me on the planet but in the pure land hopefully.

On happiness

I ponder on this topic very often, especially often when I'm getting older.

I am 59 at the time of writing this article. It is said that Buddha began his exploration on this issue from early part of his teens stage, and resolved to find out the cause of suffering. So compared to Buddha, I am late awakened to this issue. I think most of the creatures are late awakened, or are never awakened to this subject.

Some people disagree that life is full of sufferings. "Life is happy! At least mine is a happy one." they would say. But, "are you really happy all the time? Throughout your life?" if you ask them so. "Well, of course not all the time, never it will be throughout our lives. But why do you have to pay attention to those miserable periods and embrace them all the time? Isn't life short, and we should be happy?" they would so argue, and defend their proposition.

But if life is supposed to be happy, why are there so many unhappy, or even horrible news such as homicide, kidnap, domestic violence, divorce, sickness, aging, mortality, having to deal with people whom you dislike, having to part from the people whom you love dearly, and etc. maybe these are just examples of trifling matters. What about the unhappy things of the far more significant incidents? World war, ethnic groups conflict, political conflict, economical conflict, SARS, swine flu epidemic, and many other examples which you are more knowledgeable to help listing them on here.

We cannot ignore the fact that we do have unhappy period of time in our lives despite that it is also true that we have happy period of time in our lives as well.

I'm only trying to sort out why people are not happy; when will people feel unhappy...this sort of questions. Because if we know the answers, then we should know how to remain happy all the time, throughout our life, and even eternally. I believe many other people in the world agree with my logic -- admit that people are not happy, then go to find the answer, then at last we all can be happy.

I searched on the web; I deciphered the thoughts of the authors through reading; I discuss on it with other people who also pondering on this issue, but I have not found any solution that is effective enough to make one happy instantly when he is unhappy.

As a matter of fact, all my effort in searching for solution of making people happy is an unnecessary waste of time. Because what? That solution was already found by the Buddha some 2500 odds years ago. You can be as happy as a Buddha if you are resolved to practice what the Buddha has taught.

He said the cause of suffering is from "the three poisons", and if one drops off these three poisons completely, he attains the Buddhahood, and he will be really happy eternally, and never suffers. How cool this guarantee is! But how to actually shake them off? It is always a matter of easy to say but hard to do.

What are the three poisons? They are craving, hatred, and ignorance. Indeed if we analyze any evil act, we will find there is always one, or are two or all of the three poisons involved in the incident. All the news we read from newspaper are good examples for finding the traces of these three poisons involved in the cases reported.

I want to raise an example about a homicide case which occurred about three years ago in New Zealand. A martial art master killed his young wife, then he took his daughter, three or four years old at that time, and fled to Melbourne. There he dumped his daughter in the railway station, and escaped to the United States. Let's use this example for tracing the root cause of this family tragedy. Obviously a great deal of hatred was in the husband's mind. Of course there were other factors preceding his killing, and logically those factors were unhappy ones. His evil compulsion that drove him to grab the knife to terminate his wife's life had made many people not just unhappy, but suffering, acute suffering.

If we are convinced that the three poisons are the causes of suffering, then we would like to know how to clear the three poisons from our mind?

The answer from the Buddha was the "three trainings" -- precepts, meditative stabilization and wisdom. These terms sound bleak, heavy and very serious. But that is because they are recorded in the Sutra which of course is meant to be sacred and serious in every way, but their actual meaning in today's language is like this -- obey the rules, Mindful of what you are doing, and finally you are enlightened.

Despite that the teaching has been followed, interpreted, and yet only a very few wise beings are enlightened, or enter the eternally happy state, or have completely transformed to be free of the three poisons. Obviously it is not easy to achieve that goal, so what is the point for those compassionate Saints and sages to be preaching this teaching diligently, perseveringly and wholeheartedly?

My understanding is like this. We know it is good to be happy; we were taught the method to achieve the happy state and sustain it; we all agree that the logic of this teaching is true. Now because we see that only a very few mortal beings mastered this skill in the past two thousand and five hundred years, we think perhaps it is wiser to just indulge ourselves in the wordly pleasures. What will be the outcome if this logic is adopted by every single mortal being on the planet? All gone to the hell realm ultimately, the theory points out.

In contrary, if every single mortal being on this planet has at least awakened by the belief that what they are endeavored to achieve is unlikely to come true in this life, but it is a bit of positive effort in the process of evolution toward the divine realms -- the eternally happy state; the non-birth and non-death realm, so he just wades through the difficulties inch by inch, then one day, either in this life or the life after the next, he will attain that state, definitely.

I think this is the only way and the only hope to obtain a genuine happiness -- even if not in this life, but definitely will be obtained when the notion of time is ignored and only the effort of walking on the right path is being focused on.

This concludes my ages long contemplation about why people are not happy-- we all embrace more or less the "three poisons".