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.

Jean paid a visit to her mother in hospital in Taiwan

Chenny and I got up at 5:45 AM in order to drive to airport during the busy traffic hours of the motorway and arrived there in time to meet with his mother. From my observation, Chenny is nice to his mother although very often he is impatient with her.

Jean's mother, aged 90, had a fall at home and then lost consciousness during the daytime one day in late June of 2010, and was thus rushed to the hospital. On July 5, Chenny and I sent Jean to airport early in the morning to get on board of the earliest flight of Korean airline for Taiwan to pay a visit to her mother in hospital. Time flies by very quickly, Jean's scheduled returning date is up, and here we are going on the way in the raining dark early morning toward Auckland airport to meet her.

The traffic was not as bad as we expected, so by the time of 6:45 AM, we were already sitting in the waiting room of the arrival exit, while well ahead of the 7:30 AM arriving time of the flight. I estimated Jean would not be able to get through the customs and everything within one and a half hour, so we both dozed off in the waiting zone. Suddenly Jean appeared at the exit with a cart loaded with three luggage on it. Chenny briskly stood up and walked forward to greet his mom with an affectionate hug and a sheepish smile. I found these 2 to 3 seconds Chenny's greeting to his mother was very moving and beautiful, and I regretted I was not able to capture that few seconds in the camera.

After having settled everything at home, Jean told me that once her mother was in a very dangerous state, "mother's face showed great pain, nervousness, horror; hands and legs pushing and kicking as if being horrified or annoyed by something, and everyone of the family was expecting the very worst and showed extreme anxiety." she continued, "Suddenly an idea flashed through my mind that I should go to the pure land Buddhist group nearby to make pray for a peaceful pass away for mother and/or do a repentance service on behalf of mother."

So she told her siblings about what she thought and wanted to do for the rest of the day, and she immediately left for that pure land Buddhist center.

At the receptionist's desk, a female Buddhist told her that they were undergoing a 21 day service called "the three-time reminder (三時繫念法會)" which were exactly suitable to her mother's case. So she enrolled on straightaway and took part in the ritual wholeheartedly through the rest of that day.

Having returned to the hospital, she told her siblings what she had done that day, and then they began to notice that their mothers facial expression radiated peacefulness, and the doctor discharged her from the ICU that night, and every one of the family were greatly relieved and unanimously attributed this dramatic change to what Jean had done in the Temple.

Jean has told me many stories about what she experienced, saw, heard in this trip to Taiwan. To get the cheapest airfare, she flew with Korean airline, and thus had to stop by Seoul airport on both ways to change airplane. On her flying to Taiwan, they were supposed to stay overnight in Seoul and change airplane the next morning. That was her first time in life she had to travel on a journey through which she must use her limited English to solve any problem that could possibly arise, so although she still smiled all the time when she was telling me the story, I believe she must be pretty nervous when the aircraft was descending to land and that would be the beginning of using her English in making inquiries relating to accommodation, meals, and etc..

She said that she could feel all the single female passengers who needed to spend one night in Seoul to change airplane in the next morning were anxiously looking for someone of same-sex to join as a group. And soon there came two ladies toward her, one Asian and one European. They friendly and politely asked if Jean was going to change airplane in the next morning? And so three of them naturally became a group, and they went to the transition desk, to the bus stop, to the hotel, to the check-in desk, to the restaurant for dinner, and etc. together. and Jean's innate enthusiasm naturally made her become the leader of the three member group. The Asian lady was heading for Qingdao, and she had no English almost. The old Europeans lady was to fly to London to see her granddaughter. She was living in Tauranga. Jean's limited English turned out to be helpful to the two nervous ladies during the trip.

In the next early morning after Jean's arrival, I found this e-mail in the inbox when I turned on the computer after I finished my morning practice. The message indicates that mom's condition is still improving. Amituofo!

姐夫與真姐您好！

真姐安全抵達，我們也放心了。

今(8/2)早進病房，媽張著眼睛看我，跟媽講話她會點頭；把手套拿掉，跟她作手部運動，幫她作合十動作說"謝謝妳啊！"，之後她說"謝謝妳啊!"媽就自己拱手了。

今天這些進步都讓我與敢非常驚喜，但媽手上的傷口發炎紅腫，倒是令人耽心。皮膚乾癢讓媽常想抓癢，幫媽剪了指甲，擦了E油，情況緩解。

陪伴中，敢早晚都幫媽作腿部伸曲運動各50次，避免僵硬。

下午2：00遷移到安養中心，照顧雖不如醫院周到但也不錯了，敢晚上可以回家好好休息了，他也夠辛苦了。

你們多保重！

阿健

Mind Chatter - Self-talker in the mind

I can not recall the approximate time, now, when did I begin to notice there was a chatter inside me. The chatter I am talking about here is not a hallucinative one which whispers into our ears, but the one that comes out of the ego from our minds. Or may be I should term it the mind self-talker.

For a brief experiment on myself. I stop writing this post at this point. I close my eyes with an intention of still my thought and see what goes on during the following one minute.

Now I recount what have arisen in the mind. First of all the chatter started "Gee, it is chilly today" "it is cloudy" "what am I doing" "a mind chatter experiment" "what is Robbie doing? on the web? He got a good job." "why my mind is so busy?" "what to write in the blog?" "something that I have experienced." "Chenny promised to broaden his guitar teaching a bit, to include classical guitar music".

To my personal view point, the content that flashed through my mind in the one minute experiment is like a mass of entangled thread. It is possible to be guided toward a desired topic, but once there, it freely jumps onto something else, and just a short moment later it is gone to another one. It is like a curious wild monkey being put on a leash, but never settles down at any time.

If we look into our mind closely we will only then realize our mind is constantly talking and chatting all the time till we fall into sleep. Or perhaps even most of the time during sleep, the mind is still restlessly talking itself into the dream. This incessant mind chatting may result in poor productivity, inefficiency, chronicle fatigue, and eventually become a stubborn part of us that we find it annoying but we just tightly embrace it and react to it. And many of us, unfortunate enough, end up having to rely on sleeping pills, to take anti-depressant, or to consult mental health professionals.

Don't scare me! It is not that serious!

But it is true. I have heard of an estimated figure that one-fourth of the world population will experience some form of mental problem in any given year.

May be you will argue that you only think about happy stuff. Your mind chatting topics are all surrounding good and peaceful notions. Then, I congratulate you that you may be put in the lucky three-fourth world population.

However, according to law of impermanence, there is just nothing that will remain the same permanently. At least we all have to go through the major life issues - aging, sickness and death, each of which will throw us into pathetic mind chatting for sure.

I suppose that 2500 years ago when Prince Siddhatha found the way of ceasing the wandering thoughts and achieved Buddhahood, he realized the cause of suffering was this constant mind chatter that sooner or later leads us into thoughts of craving, hatred and ignorance if we don't get them under control. He decided to walk into the world to teach all the beings the technique of genuine awakening.

Recently I came across this passage when I was searching for discussion group on this topic in Chinese web pages: "狂心若歇﹐歇即菩提" which means "Once the wandering thought ceases, the wisdom emerges." (Please forgive me if my translation is off the original meaning too much.) This text is said to be originated from Surangama Sutra, and has made me ponder on how to tame the wandering mind.

So in the past three years since I was introduced to the Pure Land path, I have been at the same time in quest for the possibility of putting this wandering mind, or mind chatter, at ease, hoping to gain at least some happiness if not the complete awakening.

All the techniques had been tried. Sitting Zen, sutra chanting, visualization, walking meditation, mindfulness training, observing precepts, guided meditation and some mundane methods were adopted at different stage of the quest but the anticipated outcome was dim.

Finally came Master Chin Kung's persuasive explanation about why Buddha most recommended the method of chanting Amituofo to followers of this era.

Because the mind chatter has evolved to be far more stubborn and polluted by today's worldly temptation than the one in ancient days. Now that it is almost impossible to cease its constant chatting, we can coax it into chanting Amituofo. When the chanting becomes the whole thing of the chatter, that state is equivalent to enlightenment.

The logic is convincing to me. What about you?

Introducing Mrs. Lee's art works

This Chinese character means Buddha. It was written, or I should say, painted on a framed canvas with color oil paints, by Mrs. Lee, our family friend. It looks like she is doing calligraphy on this character. But, traditionally, Chinese calligraphy is done on absorbent cotton paper with water based black ink, while this work is done on canvas with oil based color paint.

Mrs. Lee calls her painging style "Buddha Calligraphy Oil Painting". The style name implies that all her works are surrounding on this Chinese character "Buddha" exclusively; are in various calligraphy patterns; and are done with oil painting skills.

Mrs. Lee loves oil painting. She loves the richness of its colors. She tried to describe for me about how she was overwhelmed by the antient oil painting works displayed in Louvre Museum when she visited Paris ten or more years ago. "That sudden wonder I had upon viewing those art works was hard for me to describe. Perhaps the seed of my fondness of oil painting was nurtured by those masterpieces at that moment and started its sprouting. I had been pondering on oil painting works after we left Paris."

About five years ago, Mrs. Lee was referred to Master Chin Kung's DVD lectures on Buddhism. Through learning Buddhism together with her husband, her spiritual practice progressed steadily. She learned from Master Chin Kung that by observing precepts so one can attain concentration; by holding concentration so one attains wisdom, the perfect state of enlightenment. During this stage she had the idea of practicing concentration by doing calligraphy.

"I think now that I am a devoted Buddhist, why not begin my practice on the 佛﹐Buddha?" So she did her first calligraphy of 佛﹐Buddha, in the conventional way, by using paint brush, ink stone, ink tray, and absorbent cotton paper.

She gazed at her calligraphy upon its completion for a while, at that moment, the feeling she had buried in her mind after that visit to the Louvre Museum sprang out. The idea of integrating the three areas - spiritual practice, calligraphy and oil painting, emerged. Not long after that wonderful inventive day, she had all the materials need for the so called "Buddha calligraphy oil painting" ready in her studio.

"I usually enter a blissful mind state when I work on this art, no exception," she said, "it has been my method of cultivating concentration, and my way of getting solace whenever I have any worrying thing in my mind."

I noticed that one of the pieces was a 佛 riding on space shuttle, and I asked her what was in her mind when she combined this two mutually contradicting subjects into one picture. She said, "The public has misunderstood Buddhism as being superstitious, while as a matter of fact Buddhism exists everywhere throughout the univers, in our daily living, so I was trying to tell the spectators even the success in launching a space shuttle which is the product of all the top forms of science and engineering is the manifestation of Buddha nature."

As time goes by, her works is cramming up her small studio, so she has another idea. "I had this strong urge of sharing my enjoyment from doing Buddha calligraphy oil painting with others." she said.

Mr. Lee, her husband, is also a very devoted Buddhist. He organized a Buddhism learning group on the North Shore. He helped to give many items of his wife's art work away through the Buddhist group.

Yet, she wants to spread her joy to many more other groups. I asked her what kind of price would she put on her works.

"The materials are affordable to me, my labor and time are the offerings to Buddhism, so I am very happy to give away free," she said, "but if anyone who does feel the blissfulness from the works is willing to share the cost, they can pay whatever amount they like as donation to Amitabha North Shore Association".

Being moved by her devotion to Buddhism and her pursuit of Dharmic bliss, I volunteered to construct a website for her to publicize her ideas and artworks.

So this concludes the story of Mrs. Lee's unique Buddha Calligraphy Oil Painting.

On The Pure Land Path

Many of my friends and my two children know that I will be going to Nianfo, reciting Amituofo, in a Buddhist meeting somewhere in Auckland on Mondays. They know I and my wife are Buddhists; are quite devoted to its activities; and are helping that group with some secretarial tasks.

But they know very little about what activities are held there; why it attracts me to travel all the way by bus to attend every week; what do I pursue on this path? I suppose they have some ideas about Buddhism - it talks about emptiness and various philosophical yet abstract topics; it was founded by a prince of ancient India; and it is mainly welcomed by old fellows. And that are all what they might know about.

So I like to write this post to tell my friends, especially my two children the basics of this tradition.

The following are what I learned. About 2500 or 3000 years ago, a prince of ancient India, by an enormous cause, got a chance to leave the palace and saw things that he could only see in the outside world. He saw a very old man staggering along the street; he saw a sick man lying on the roadside; he saw a corpse surrounded by the mourning family. He was overwhelmed by what he had never seen in the palace. And he saw a spiritual practitioner as well. This encounter triggered his realization of the truth of life, and resulted in his drop out of palace one night to start his quest for solution of complete liberation. (This link will bring you to a 40 minute video which gives detailed description about The Life of The Buddha.)

After 9 years of diligent practice and seek for the truth, he achieved enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree. He found the answer of life and discovered fact of the universe. He was free from the endless cycle of rebirth. He was completely liberated.

I imagine what the Buddha was thinking after his enlightenment. He was thinking that he should share with all beings how he had reached the state of full liberation, what the liberation was like; he should start his teaching. So he walked out of his retreat to begin his preaching that lasted 49 years long till he dropped his physical body and entered Nirvana, the ultimate state of being free from suffering and cycle of rebirth.

His teaching came to China in the middle of 1st century, and was naturally localized and diversified into many different schools to suit individual learners of various nature and capacity. Among them are schools such as Cha'n (or Zen in Japan), Tendai, Pure Land and etc. Despite that there are so many different schools, their main courses are all the same - following the three learning steps: Observance of Precept, Mindful in Concentration and Ultimate Wisdom.

I was brought onto Pure Land path through viewing Venerable Chin Kung's DVD titled "Getting To Know Buddhism". This school teaches us how to go through the above mentioned three steps by reciting "Amituofo". So in the group meditation practice, you can see they walk in round in the chanting hall aiming to tame our wandering mind to achieve mindfulness by focusing our thought on the recitation of Amituofo.

My personal experience from practice Pure Land path tells me mindfulness is the most difficult skill one can learn in his lifetime. Try it yourself. Sit on a chair comfortably, close your eyes, take a few deep breath, and then try to still your thought. How do you feel? Can you hold the stillness for a few seconds? It is challenging, isn't it? A renowned spiritual practitioner had lived in a cave in remote mountain for 12 years doing intensive meditation retreat. Once she was asked by people about how she felt during her retreat. She said to them that she was never bored during that period of time. Obviously she had tasted the heavenly happiness through her diligent practice.

Though it is difficult, it is a lot of fun and enjoyment in cultivating this skill because you will gradually gain the long lasting calmness and bliss if you persevere. And don't forget, our ultimate goal is to achieve Paramita Wisdom, the perfectly awaken state of mind, the state that free us from the endless cycle of rebirth.

Recently I heard from some of my friends that their parents were suffering from various diseases such as Alzheimer, Diabetes, Incontinence etc and had become bed bounded for quite some time. Although their life is long, all are over 90, but the diseases resulting from longevity make them suffer. That's why in the first sermon that Buddha delivered after his enlightenment pointed out that life is Dukkah, or is never satisfactory. To my perspective, Pure Land path is designed to train us to be in control of our worldly life, to get us prepared to migrate to the Pure Land at our will.

Knowing that no one can bring anything along after our life is ended, isn't it the most urgent and important task to be prepared to break the cycle of rebirth in our lifetime?