Spot revisiting the vet

25/05/2012 Friday

Today, Spot is supposed to go to the vet’s clinic at 11:00am for the surgery stitches to be removed. Trying not to bother my children, who are busy at work, to help with transportation, we had to walk for a distance of 10 minutes to the vet's clinic. Fortunately it was a beautiful sunny day and there were not too many cars on the road at that time.

Spot was very cooperative in the beginning, he stood on the table quietly, and the vet using a sharp blade to cut the stitches and pull it off one by one. Suddenly Spot barked fiercely, apparently the vet accidentally cut into his skin and so Spot cried hurt. He barked a few times fiercely, exposing his teeth and making a furious face, and bit on the lower arm of the vet’s right hand. The vet retreated to the other room to treat his wound leaving the nurse and us in the room. He turned back to ask the nurse to shift Spot down to the floor. A moment later, a more senior nurse walked in with a mouth cover in her hand. She put it on Spot’s mouth and tightened the belts. I had been trembling slightly since I waited in the waiting lounge due to my Parkinson's Disease, now the incident made me tremble really seriously. I could see Spot’s eyes were full of anger and frustration because he was subdued by the nurse’s mouth cover then.

A few minutes later, the vet reappeared in the clinic room to continue his stitch removal. Fortunately Spot was still and quiet for the vet to complete the task. Upon completion, he told me, “the wounds healed very well, and there is no charge for today.” I said to him,”very sorry doctor, are you alright? I hope the bite did not happen.”

Spot seemed to be relieved after we left the clinic. He had totally forgot what had happened some ten minutes ago, and concentrated in his marking on every single tree and pole along the journey home.

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.

Tainan mom has gone to the other shore

This is a photo of Jean's maiden family reunion taken in 2007. Mom in the centre, Qian ge (Qian is our eldest brother), Jean and Zhe mei are to her right hand side; Gan ge, Shi jie and eldest sister-in-law to her left. Apparently, Jian mei was the photographer. Mom was then at the age of 85.

At 11:40 am of 21/01/2012, (6:40 am Hong Kong time), Jean’s youngest sister, Zhe, called us from Hong Kong to notify the death of our Tainan mom who at 4:00 am of Taiwan time, finally repaid her Karma and was able to drop the load of all of the various encounters good or bad to her perception in this world, and left for the other shore which we hope is The World Extreme Blissfulness in the West.

I and my wife refer to her as our “Tainan mom” in distinguish her from “Taipei mom” which was referred to mother of my side because Tainan mom lived in Tainan City and Taipei mom was in Taipei.

Tainan mom was sent to hospital in July 2010 due to a fell and consequently suffered from brain stroke that made her bedridden and had never been able to live without some life support devises and 24 hours medical care since then. During this period of her hospitalization, the modern medical technology had made her alive from the appearance, however, to her children and to mom herself, the regular daily phlem sucking was a horrible experience, as the children saw their beloved mom wailing out of horror.

Mom was the only daughter of a well-off farming family, born in 1922. She had a nature of kindness since she was a small child. Mom’s name was Chen Xin Hu, 陳心壺. Not so tall but with a beautiful face that always radiated compassionate smile. Everyday in the morning, she would carry a big load of vegetable produce from their village to the market and accompanied her grandmother selling those produce. Because of her overly tanned skin, her nickname was "the little black beauty".

When dad was told of his grandpa's intent of matching him with that black beauty, he became uneasy every time when he came home after school and passed through the room where grandpa's literacy class was undergoing. He always bowed his upper body and sort of sneaked into his room. Mum later recalled her impression of dad before their marriage, saying "he looked like a skinny mouse, with glasses sitting across his nose, trying to escape the surveillance of a cat in our classroom."

After dad had finished his study at Fuzhou Industrial Institute, he worked for China Petroleum Company in Fujian office as Chemical engineer. Then, following his parents' will, he married to "the little black beauty" in 1943. Then, in 1945, right after Japan surrendered and returned Taiwan to China’s ruling, dad’s company sent his team to take over the management of its petroleum fuel production, so this young couple unexpectedly took dad's younger brother and their first child, Qian, left their hometown, Fuzhou, came and settled down in Taiwan for the rest of their life.

Mother's compassion can be found in the following few stories.

There was a man wondering about our village every day during early 1960’S. He was schizophrenic patient. People living in the village usually shut their doors and would not answer the knocking when he knocked their door to beg for food. Mom reacted differently. She opened the door when she knew that guy began his door knocking for food, she initiatively waved him from a distance to come over, and let him come in to his bowl of noodle served on the dining table. That had been occuring for quite a long period of time till the security guard stationed at the entrance gate of our village stopped from entering to our village.

We adopted a black dog. It happened on one day in late 1960's when dad finished work in Taiwan Sugar Research Institute, he noticed a black dog always followed him from the bus stop all the way till dad entered home. Mom always offered some leftover food to the dog by the door. One day, mom suddenly decided to keep it as a member of the family, and gave it a name of ‘xiao hey’, meaning little black thing. Xiao hey did not disapoint mom, she behaved nicely, and never had she caused any trouble to us. She walked to bus stop everyday and waited to greet dad upon his arrival and they walked home together. She played with us. From its excellent behavior and smart, we believed she was a pet of a well-off family and was later discarded for some reason. In 1978, she became weaker and weaker and died peacefully.

Mom was very religious. Back in Fuzhou before she married to dad, she chanced to be taught with Pure Land Buddhism which advocates that practitioners believe in chanting the ultimate mantra of “Amituofo” will be born in the Extreme Blissful World”. Her temperament was that she would stick to the teaching wholeheartedly if she believed the new things she learned was relating to love and sincerity.

She later became a vegetarian for religious reasons and due to two incidents happened to the family. One day in 1956 after school time, uncle did not return home from school. Not long after mom sensed the abnormality, someone representing the school came to tell mom that uncle was identified as political activist by government authority and had been charged imprisonment for 10 years. Readers who are familiar with what happened during the 228 uprising will understand why uncle encountered this unfortunate incident. Uncle's teacher was proved a spy embedded in Taiwan to collect information for Chinese Communist, and uncle happened to be an outstanding student of this teacher, and was close to him. People charged with this kind scenario were put in jails in an offshore island called Green Island, and many of them were just disappeared and never been seen anymore.

Mom was overwhelmed by the incident. Though she could not do anything, she knew Buddha would help her. She was on normal diet as the majority of people. But she vowed to Buddha that she would from then on observe vegetarian diet through the rest of her life for the repentance of the ill luck that her brother-in-law was charged and for his expedited release, so she prayed.

Uncle was released when his imprisonment was fulfilled in 1966. Then there was another heartbreaking incident fell on the family.
In 1976, Dasou (refers to eldest brother’s wife) gave birth to their second child, Zhiwei. This poor boy was unfortunately attacked by a flu during the first month after labor, and developed high body temperature that seemed not to subdue. Tainan City Hospital doctor diagnosed him with Meningitis and told dad the baby would be definitely disabled when he grew up unless properly treated by bigger hospital in Taipei. This incident of our family was something inspired mom that life is full of impermanence.

Mom sincerely prayed and prayed day and night to Buddha for the healing of Zhiwei. She was and had become an even more strict vegetarian since the second family misfortune. Zhiwei was miraculously given a place by the Women and Children Hospital in Taipei which had strong demand always so it was a bless, and Dad urgently bought an air ticket and rushed the baby to the hospital. After a long process of treatment, Zhiwei returned home a healthy baby till present.

When mom had become frail from her eighties of age, she lived alternately in her two son’s homes. Gan Ge (our second elder brother) employed a Philipino maid called Marlisa to manage their household chores including the tasks of attending mom. Each time Marlisa finished the kitchen chores, she normally waited till Gan Ge’s family finished and then had her lunch on the table. But when it was Gan Ge’s turn to look after mom at their home, mom always insisted that Maria came to lunch on the table together. More ironical thing mom did there was, each time Marlisa was going to mop the floor, mom would compassionately say to her, “ Marlisa, come to sit here for a rest, Ah ma (meaning grandma, referring to herself) will do the moping for you.”

At age 90, she finished her last bit of journey. Last night, Jian e-mailed us the schedule of each of the customary events prior to the funeral cemeony, and by the way she described that mom’s face looked peaceful and the body was flexible, those appearence indicated the soul had settled in decent realm if it was not the Extreme Blissful World. Jean has got the earliest available flight, and will fly to attend the planned 7 sessions of the 7th Realm Lifting rituals aiming at giving mom’s soul a push to assure that the merit gained from the 7th Realm Lifting Rituals will achieve this goal. Amituofo.

Some thoughts on new year day of 2012

01/01/2012 Sunday.

This is the first day of the new year. What lays ahead is impossible to predict unless you are someone with super natural power. There are quite a lot of people claiming they have this kind of ability, they are called "fortunetellers".

In Taiwan, I believe it is still the same as was 20 years ago when I just left Taiwan, that people of either older or younger, like to consult with the fortunetellers on the new year day about the possible general outcome they will be facing to, or what direction they should be heading to for following one year.

This is a very natural deed people will do when they are under a strong feeling of uncertainty. I did the same thing myself, too. Once, when I was about 29 years old not sure where should I go forward -- giving up the joint venture of our own printing business and resumming as an employee or remaining as I were. The fortuneteller gave me an answer that could be interpreted into either ways, and I chose to be working for others. I believe in the logic which says that everything you did leads you to a certain outcome. But I also believe in fatalism which says that everything happens according to our destination.

So this is new year day of 2012, to me it is just a an ordinary day.

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.

I have silenced my flute

Early in August 2011, while browsing eBay one day, I had this idea of searching for any flute or even its parts because my flute sounded pretty airy which according to my google search was a problem of leaking pads.

I was amazed and surprised that after a few keystrokes in eBay's search box, a very long list of brand-new or used flutes is shown on the monitor of my notebook. Among them are a couple of sellers selling the velt pads at a price unbelievably cheap at about $15 including postage for a set of 16 velts. I immediately ordered one set thinking that with this money spent I would get perfect sound quality from my flute, what a good investment this action would be..

About two weeks later, the new pads arrived, and I was very excited because I anticipated a perfect flow of notes will be coming out of the flute replaced with the new pads. So I hurriedly opened the packaging; counted the number of pads received and then set out to proceed with my flute repading quest.

I have a great passion in DIY, and I am proud of having a magnificent records of fixing a lot of household items with only the most basic set of tools, and sometimes the spare parts I used in the repair are improvised. With all of the memories about my successfully repaired, household appliances, I had not any hesitation in buying a set of pads, because I was deeply immersed in the extraordinary pride from the marvelous historical records I have achieved.

While I was waiting for the arrival of the flute pads, I spend quite a lot of time browsing through the Internet for tips and the information relating to the repads of the leaking flute. With this helpful information, I found it was not difficult to disassemble all the key pads. Before long, the table was full of parts, tools and the old key pads.

After about three hours, all of the old pads were replaced by the new ones, and the parts were reassembled into a flute. By the time I was going to make test of the sound, I was nervous and was excited but never had I thought that the flute was already dead. I was shocked, completely shocked, for as soon as I blew the first mouthful of air into the mouth piece and heard nothing coming out of the flute, that was a shock mixed with some confusion. "How it is possible to be like this?" Except the B key, any other keys were totally gone.

The first thing on the next day I did was searching on the Internet about the experience I had yesterday night. Amazingly found a lot of other DIYers also had this kind of silly acts, some of them ended up sending their flutes to the hands of the professional flute technician for a rescue, costing them a fortune lot of money.

I had no choice but to take the action of repairing it by learning how others did from the website.

Up to the time of writing this post, I had only get notes of B, B-, A, G+, G, F+, F, E, D+, back. I have almost lost all my confidence in getting this damn problem successfully fixed by myself now, but my passion of playing flute is still strong. I'm wondering what my next step should head for as for the moment, my flute can only play very simple tunes with an even worse airy sound quality.

This might be the silliest thing I had ever done in my life.

Father and son

Never had I thought that my son, Chi-an, will become a musician or a guitarist one day. But he is now, and is very busy teaching people of various age groups in schools in the daytime, in the Music Education Centre after the school hours, some other students come to our home to learn from him in his studio. This picture shows the place he sets up as his guitar tuition classroom.

Chi-an's involvement in learning guitar had a dramatic story behind it. When he had just turned to eight years old, an age local schoolboy student are entitled to join in a government-funded weekend music education, I enrolled him on that program. All of the new students of that program started learning music with an easy to play instrument called recorder.

Two terms had passed and I found Chi-an was not as passionate in his daily practice at home as he was when he just joined in the program. I asked him why and he showed a boring gesture, not even looked at me, but said "I'm bored with that". "How come?", "you played quite well, don't you?". "Yes, but I have learned all of the musics of that book." He replied. 

How could that be possible? The first book meant to run for four terms. But I was curious to know if his words was true, so I asked him to play every piece of music for me. And as if he really wanted to get out of that program, he confidently and promptly picked up his recorder and played on and on till the last piece of the book. I was amazed, and I thought that I might have to consult Mrs. Rimer, chief executive officer of the music education program.

During the class break, I asked Mrs. Rimer how should I deal with this problem? Mrs. Rimer was concerned of problem that her student lost their interest in learning music. But Chi-an's cause sounded different to her. She told me that if Chi-an really could play the whole book of music, she would allow him to jump to the upper level straightaway.

So, Chi-an was summoned to present before Mrs. Rimer. He confidently played one after another without much mistakes. Mrs. Rimer could not allow him to play every single one because she was very busy, so after Chi-an had played four or five pieces, Mrs. Rimer turned to the last page of the book, and again Chi-an confidently played it to Mrs. Rimer's satisfaction. "Very good! I will inform the teacher of the second year recorder class about my decision to place Chi-an in her class right now."

That was how Chi-an jumped to a higher level of recorder class and finished the recorder class in one year. 

After that basic recorder learning, each of the music education program students was supposed to select their favorite instrument to carry on their learning according to the program. As most of other Asian parents, I tried to persuade him to learn violin or cello. But he did not like either one of these two instruments, and finally agreed to learn clarinet.

In the year that followed, he learned Clarinet quite confidently and easily. But I could not see any of his passion in the learning of this instrument. Then, before the first year of learning clarinet was to finish, he argued to quit from the music education program. His reason was simple -- he was bored of it.
In order not to let him drop out of the music education, I suggested that he could change to learn some other instrument of his favorite. And this time, he chose cello. The reason was that cello was big, and to him "big" meant cool.

So he was placed in the cello class; was given a cello by the music school and was happily carrying that big object around in the school. There were only two students in his class, Chi-an and another student, a lovely Russian girl of Chi-an's age.

Every Saturday afternoon, I drove the cello, Chi-an and grandma to the school for the one-hour lesson. And to make him happy in the learning of the cello, three of us went to KFC for lunch after the class as a reward. Even I had so many encouragement and reward to motivate his learning, yet. I could not see a sign of his passion over that instrument.

Finally, the one year cello lesson was coming to an end. He told me what really interested him was guitar, electric guitar, the guitar that plays rock and roll. Oh, dear me! His real favorite was exactly what I was fear of.

One day, while I was waiting for his class to finish in the school yard, I came across Mrs. Rimer. She smiled and asked me "how is Chenny?" I think I must have a worrying facial expression at that time, instead of greeting back to Mrs. Rimer properly, I murmured "he played cello quite well, but he told me he was really interested in guitar." Then, Mrs. Reamer replied to me in quite a stern voice "guitar is also music, what's wrong with it?". With Mrs. Rimer's challenging remark, I was sort of suddenly enlightened. My mind was more opened to the instrument that Chi-an really liked.

Not even before Chi-an's cello class was finished, he and I were found in Mainline Music buying a guitar and an amplifier. This time, I really saw his passion of the guitar music.

In the long journey in supporting his pursuit of learning his favorite instrument, I had never thought that one day he would make guitar tuition his career. About eight years from the day he got his first guitar, he was employed by the Music Education Centre as a guitar teacher during his second year in the University on a part-time basis.

As of the time I'm writing this blog about his career, he has been teaching guitar full time just over one whole year. From the stories of his interactivity with the students and his steady growth of popularity reflected from his the enrollment and retention figures, I know he is on the right path of his career.

I'm now really relieved in seeing both my children are being active and passionate on their jobs. All I need to do now is to be their spiritual support and to concentrate more In the Amituofo chanting.