capturing Insights

A very close friend of mine had once told me his mind was especially sharp and active during his daily toilet sitting. He asked me in a bit of smiling and embarrassing look if I had similar experience. I said, "oh! yes. Absolutely."

Then he said that almost every time when he used toilet he would expect insight emerge, and he felt sort of being enlightened about the subject his mind was processing. However, before he had got a moment to review it or to pin iota down on a more secured place in the memory for future reference, it faded away rapidly, and once it disappeared, it seemed to resemble trying to capture an eel you certainly will lose in the game,  the eel will escape easily from your catch. And this happened without exception every time. So he placed a pencil and paper nearby the toilet seat within the reach of his hand to jot down the idea insight as soon as it surfaced.

Though I had experience about idea formation or sudden insight emerge during the toilet time, I didn't get handy fixture near the toilet seat and within the reach of my hand is one reason, I found similar effect occurred during my dawn meditation too. I use a timer function available in my iPhone which plays a few notes of soft music to signal me the end of the one hour session. When an insight turns up from nowhere and my mind responded with a "ah ha!', then I wake up from my meditation, pick up the iPhone, turn to note app and jot down some points of my caught insight a moment ago. Even so, about half of those had played in my mind would have faded, but it Is better than nothing. A few of the problems I had in the daytime were solved by the insights captured this way.

While I am writing this post, my mind is searching for an example to share with blog readers.

A friend of our family knew from my wife that although I am retired, I am interested in repairing household appliances such as coffee maker, kettle, DVD player, radio/cassette, rice cooker, etc. She told my wife that she got a so called easy oven which she only used for 2 years, and recently it would not work. She asked if I'd like to have a try. I told her that it was my hobby and was not a business I did to make a living so it was free unless I was sure the problem was caused by a particular parts, then I would only expect to be repaid the amount spent on that parts and the device was fixed successfully. She agreed with the term of my service.

I checked the plug with my voltage meter. There was no short. I plug the machine to the power point, and pressed the power button. The control panel displayed some numbers, the buzzer beeped less than one second, and at the same time, the motor that drove the fan roar to work, but within a fraction of a send, it shut down. So this is the symptom. I opened the bottom cover of the machine. carefully inspected the main circuit board.  All I could see were a very clean circuit compartment. The components on the circuit board looked in good condition. Not only that there was not any smoke mark to be found, the surface of the entire chamber was dustless and could not see a trace of greasy dirt came from the food fat in the long term daily usage of it. I could not make a conclusion about what had caused the problem.

I assembled it back up, telling myself I could not help with this one. How can I know which electronic part was the culprit? It could be a faulty capacitor, it could be a transistor which would not retain a constant flow of current to maintain the circuit close. What stopped me from making a trial was because the circuit was applied on both sides with a protective coating to prevent the harsh condition from harming the parts. The coating layer disabled me to make any test with my multi-meter, so it is not repairable by my reasoning.

In my dawn meditation the next day, Though I meant to still the thoughts as deeply as possible, it naturally strayed away. Frame after frame of them displaying like a slide show on my mind screen. Suddenly there was one relating to the Easy Oven I had explored on the day before. The picture surfaced, and my thought vaguely lead me to a component which will behave like the problem of the oven. That triggered a "ah! ha!" in me, and I opened my eyes in the mid of meditation, noted "check the relay". in the Reminder tab of the iPhone menu.

As soon as I completed my meditation, I reopened the circuit compartment, and located the relay before long. I took the model code of that relay, and googled it. The search result lead me to Alibaba which gave me an identically same relay available offered by quite a few suppliers, and its price was affordable to me. So I placed order, made payment, and the parcel arrived in two wee
ks time.

Soon I replaced the old one with the new parts. When I energized the machine, "Bingo!" the motor roared, and remained on, and very soon I sensed the heat coming out of the element..

This is one of the examples I have experienced being benefited from an insight captured.

--to be continued

In remembrance of a fellow Buddhist

A fellow Buddhist, Guan shixiong, had concluded his journey on this planet at 8pm on 22/11/2913 at his late 40's of age. (Guan shixiong is on the first one from left of the row in black robe in their walking chant practice)

The night prior to his death, I was made possible to go to Takapuna Hospice where he was referred to take a rest after his final assessment in the headquarter Auckland Hospital. Doctors believed his liver cancer had totally destroyed him and there was no possibility at all to get his health back.

Two other fellow Buddhists escorted me to come to the charitable Hospice located by a small creek flowing into the serene Lake Pupuke nearby. It was a calm and crystal evening with comfortable breeze. Stars twinkling in the night sky. These added some atmosphere of condolence to the courtyard and the building within the fence. Indeed, Hospice has offered its loving kindness and comfort to many many souls over the years since its establishment.

My Parkinson's Disease trembling involuntarily came up despite the medicine which I had just taken before leaving for this visit should be at its peak of effect. Over the 8 year since I was diagnosed of this disease, I have realized that mood fluctuation plays a big part on the symptoms. Whenever I experience nervousness, exciting, anxiety and etc I suffer extra mobility problems.

Having entered Guan shixiong's room, my eyesight immediately drawn to him. There lain on the bed was him, no longer the handsome and righteous look I had been familiar with. The cancerous cells had mercilessly eaten away his flesh, making him totally emaciated and deformed. I could not recognize him if I came in to search for him by myself.

I walked toward him, and before I arrived his bedside, he already reached his left hand to hold mine. Both of us made no voice as the conventional exchange of messages was not necessary now. He knew we all wished him to be able to concentrate his thought in awaiting Amituofo's presence and follow Him decisively to the Pure Land of Western Blissful World. No emotional messages should be allowed among Buddhists of Pure Land tradition especially under the situation like that night.

They pulled a chair for me to sit by the bed. I closed my eyes and naturally began to join other fellow Buddhists in chanting Amitofuo to assist Guan to focus his thought on this supreme mantra that master Chin Kong has patiently assured us the power of it. We chanted for some time till nurses came in to attend Guan's medical needs.

We left there without saying goodbye to him. It is a commonly followed realization among Buddhists that death is the final renounce of our most treasured object  Even this most cherished item will have to return to its original form of the four elements: earth, water, heat and air, what else can we hold onto permanently? So the visitors of a dying patient resting in his own home or in the hospital know they don't show emotional expression by means of speech, letter, facial looks in order not to stir up and trigger the patient's mind and thus distract him from focusing his thoughts on the teachings and let go the broken body decisively.

His funeral was scheduled to be held at the auditorium of the grave yard of North Shore region. I accepted the offer of a lift from Zhuang shijie and her husband to attend Guan's funeral. From the eulogy presented by his son, who is studying his master degree of Optometry in Melbourne, his former career was for first time being unveiled, a Pediatrician in Canton before he immigrated to New Zealand in 1995. What a humble man. He never said anything about his doctor identity in the past to anyone.

Guan has finished his life journey. May his soul resolutely followed Amituofo's guidance without any hesitation and hindrance from his Karma.

Learning electronic

Attempt to understand Tai Ji

My first encounter of this graph could be dated back to my childhood, probably at the age of 4 or 5. It was seen on the back of the costume robe of a Taoist priest known as "Saigon Mingnga" meaning "Master Ming of the Daoist" in the town where I was born and raised up, Saigon Mingnga was well known in the town. Whichever family having issues unsolvable for examples having family member  suffering from acute shock, prolonged sickness, or any disease with symptoms diagnosed  Schizophrenia, were recommended to call on Saigon Mingnga for consultation.

He was probably about sixtyish when I saw him first time. He had a pair of very thick eyelids. You could hardly see his eyeballs when he inspected you carefully. His voice was coarse and low. I wondered how his clients could hear what he talked about but they just seriously nodded to express their agreement of his comment or diagnosis.

Saigon Mingnga would normally went with the assist seeker to their home to have a look of the patient in concern and had a brief looking around the whole house and gave his assessment according to his findings. 9 out of 10 cases were related to unhappy ancestors, or the patient had some kind of misconduct that offended certain deity or ghost. He then put on his  Daoist robe and hap; burned a couple of sticks of incense; picked up his dome bell with his left hand and a wood sword in his right hand; blew his cow-horn and shook his dome bell a couple of times during the rit session. This made him look more authoritative.

Was his Daoist rit effective on my case? Well, may be a yes, because I survived from that sickness otherwise I will not be here recalling this reminiscence of past. Or it might be a bunch of nonsense cose most likely I would recover eventually without Saigon Mingnga's ritual service. Anyway, it doesn't matter whether it is effective or a bunch of nonsense, that icon representing Daoism is the focus of this post.

I like to refer to it as Tai Ji Tu meaning "the icon of Tai Ji"

What is it meaning?  Who created it? What was he thinking the moment he drew it up? There are tons of web posts and forums explain and interpret in detail about this logo.

After about 59 years of time since my first encounter of it embroidered on Saigon Mingnga's rit robe, I have more or less of insights about the philosophy this icon contains.

I believe the evolution of everything is constantly moving to its next new milestone by way of setting a conclusion that is able to define it perfectly. Before the perfection of the attempt to work out a definition for the subject is reached, the evolution with regard to that branch of human being's culture will not be accepted by the majority of this planet, and the process of trial and error in the attempt to work out a perfect definition that can explain everything and anything flawlessly will be going on and on till the ultimate one emerges. And I think this Tai Ji Tu (TJT) is the end product of this evolutionary process.

I imagine the TJT creator was contemplating the constant up and down natures of everything he had experienced in his life. One day he seemed to be suddenly enlightened and he raised up his head and said, "ah-ha! got it. Nothing in the universe will remain unchanged within any given period of time. And as the thing is striving toward a direction there must be another force striving to pull it to the opposite direction." So he drew a sketch that well depicted his conclusion of everything on the ground where he sat, and that sketch is the very origin of TJT we see today. Don't you think the icon looks like revealing the truth of this theory?

Tai Ji was mentioned about in one of Chinese ancient classics, I Jing. The oldest manuscript is said to have been found during the Warring States Period which was from 475 to 221 BC*. This ancient publication explains how the universe forms. Its core theory in the process of exploring and reconciling of all about the universe was based on Yin and Yang, positive and negative which matches the messages contained in TJT.

In the Western part of the earth, archaeologist found a Yin Yang motif on an enameled bronze plaque from  Celtic art of late 5 BC**. South Korea uses TJT  in the design of their national flag. All these facts point to one thing that TJT passes the massive test of history and stands out a truth of human civilization.

Notes * and ** are referenced from Wikipedia.

My Kiwi Neighbours

How unbelievable that I immigrated to New Zealand in early 1992, a small country with just 800k of population in its biggest city - Auckland where my family live. Since then, I have shifted twice, so we are now living in the current log wood house for the past 9 years.

Therefore I have known quite some Kiwi neighbours. There is a saying that all Chinese are very familiar with - "遠親不如近鄰“ meaning a relative living afar is not as helpful as a neighbour nearby. Indeed, a neighbor whom you have good relation with is very important, particularly to an immigration family.

Influenced by the traditional culture with regard to the art of getting along with neighbors, I devoted a great deal of my effort in building harmonious relationship with our Kiwi neighbors from the day one when we just moved into our first residence.

The latest known neighbors are Bruce and his wife on the section in front of ours; Nivelle and his wife are on the opposite to us across the road; Peter and his wife are on our right side; Frank and his wife Ginny are neighboring to us over our back yard border. All of these 4 Kiwi neighbors have been retired, each of them offered their caring minds,  friendly solid help to us.  I am writing this blog post to express my gratitude to them. Now, let me write the most impressive kindness they have done to me from the most recent episode.

Local weather forecast predicts that it will become raining from this evening. So I decided to mow the lawn before the garden becomes soggy again from the rain. 

When I have done both of the front and back yards, I pushed my mower up the slope of the drive way to cut the small stripe of land along the driveway side of Bruce's property. I started up the engine and began to cut. May be my unstable walk gait due to my Parkinson's Disease attracted Peter's attention, when I was halfway through the completion, I noticed someone walking toward me  from the driveway. I turned around and saw a very friendly smiley face of Peter. The mower was roaring loud. Peter used hand gesture to tell me that he wanted to help me to mow the grass.  I put my mouth as close to his right ear as possible to tell him, "I can manage to do this myself without problem, after all, I need some exercise otherwise I will become totally inactive soon. Thank your kind offer." I thumbed up my left hand to him trying to make him understand I appreciate his good will. He initiated the sincere offer, and that touched my heart.

There is a narrow stripe of grass land in-between the right side of Bruce's fence and the driveway. Though so small that piece of grass land is, it can turn into an eyesore if you leave it without regular grass cutting. So I used to be doing it everytime when I mowed the lawn. I think it was about 3 years ago when my disease made me emaciated to a degree that  Bruce astoned to ask me why I had become so skinny when we came across each other in the garden over the fence one day. Since then I noticed that he always did his mowing on Fridays, while I liked to do it on Saturdays, and he also cut that stipe of grass land each time. 

To my impression, Neville is a literate as I was told by a family friend that Neville  was teaching voluntarily in his English class held in a community centre. Once Neville  asked me if he could come to my place to read 15 minutes of news from newspaper for me everyday because he thought the tremor of my hands made me impossible to hold newspaper steadily for reading. I politely declined his offer, instead I asked if he would like to mark my blog post before I published it on the web. He said yes. 

The article I wrote was titled "having read The Shack". I prepared a two column page of Google Docs, and I wrote on the left column, and he moderated on the right column. He is undoubtedly a prominent writer as I found his skill of using the simplest word and sentence to modify my original to become so enjoyable an article to read that I envied him very much. I realized marking a student's essay was far more difficult and time-consuming than writing their own, and I supposed he must have a hard time on marking my essay, so I stopped asking him to do more for me. 

As to Frank, when he applied weed killer onto his garden, he voluntarily walked to my back yard to spray on the long messy grass along the ridges where the mower can not reach. Normally I will have to use my line trimmer to trim these difficult corners, however the line trimmer is not able to be started up successfully. Frank and his wife saw my struggle with the trimming equipment, and I believe that was why he started to do the weed control of my back yard for free.

These are my neighbors I have made friends with over the past 8 to 9 years. Now Bruce and his wife had just sold their house in April. One day when I saw him maintaining their family car in his back yard. Knowing he was leaving here soon, I walked toward him to say some farewell words. He said to me, "I have scheduled to say good bye to you at your door step when I hand this house over to the new owner."

On the day early in May, a sunny weekend, his wife knocked on our door, I opened and saw Bruce and his wife stood on the door steps. "We come to say goodbye to you." and both of us shook hands, carefully exhorting each other to take good care of our selves. And I wished them enjoying their new retirement life in Hamilton, the town they were from when they were young.

Some thoughts on consumerism and minimalism

One day about 3 years ago, a friend of mine came to see me. He loved the type of music that were popular during his teenage and young adult period. Wherever he goes by himself, he is seen his ears plugged a pair of earphones, listening to hundreds of his music being played from his Sony Walkman. I asked him what would he feel if he stopped listening them? Would not he feel too bored listening to those same music again and again? He replied in a firm tone, "nobody can stop my hobby of listening music whenever I can. That is my only favorite thing."

So when I paid a visit to his place one day for the first time, I was heavily impressed by the music echoing lightly at every corner of his home. The music being played were familiar to me too as I was only 4 years younger than him. They were peaceful, beautiful and hypnotistic, having the power to draw your soul into the time and space of 50's to 70's. In the living lounge alone, I could already found 2 mini stereos and one bigger set with bigger speakers apart from the television sitting in the middle. In a corner of the lounge I saw two CD/Cassette organiser storages full of music media.

I thought these should be all the devices he got. "Nope. there is a TV and another mini stereo system in my bedroom." he proudly replied.

Besides all these working ones I could see in his home, one day he brought a portable three in one device (radio/laser CD/cassette) to me for repair because he knew my hobby was to open up any broken device to find out what was wrong and how to fix it.

That radio/cassette was still working but you would find it noisy and annoying when you turned the knobs to select the desired station or to adjust the volume of the sound the noise would just ruin your eagerness toward the broadcasting or playing of music. I diagnosed it having a bad potentiometer on both volume control and tuner. But I was not enthusiastic in offering him a positive advice of replacing those two components, as I knew he was already over equipped with various stereos, big or mini.

Together we have  common topics to chat about, the music and the hardware in need of a repairing. Actually, this two types of person are representing two opposite groups in the economy world. My friend is at the side of consumerism while I will be put in the side of minimalism.

As far as I understand about consumerism, it encourages buying,spending, consuming, and it will use every chance to stimulate the atmosphere of buying, buying and buying. A typical example is Valentine. Flower shops, restaurant, put lots and lots of advertisement to educate the targeted group of consumers what is the coolest way to surprise your honey? What is the most romantic program that will make your sweet heart happy whole night. When Valentine is over, some earned heaps of money, and a great number of the roses presenters find their bank accounts had turned red over the night.

I happened to pick up a news from Radio Live this morning. They were talking about the average cost of a wedding. The journalist said it was AUD54,000 in Australia. I believe this is not false. You see, diamond ring, costume hire, venue hire, photographer's hourly rate, honeymoon overseas travelling, every item they can think of is a must. But the young couples are willing to pay for these spendings even though after this romantic ceremony and the activities that follow many of them will see their account balance red.

However, you may not be able to make all the young do the other way round, the minimalism way, as this is very likely to turn the over all economy of a region or a nation into recession. What is the best example of the life style representing minimalism? Monks, Saits, moralists are.

As far as I have learned from books, Buddhist monks observe the rule of possessing their personal belongings of just a bowl and 3 clothes. They travel on foot, sleeping under the tree or cave, beg for food from local household by offering their prayer or mantra chanting that draw bless on this doner. There is a great number of this category of people. To its counterpart, the consumerism type persons, this group of people are really pitiful. But it is said that Bhutan, a small country neighboring Nepal and Tibet, is the number one country in the world that has the majority of its population that can be put in the side of minimalism life style feeling they are happy.

Nowadays, people measure the degree of a country's civilization by its GDP mainly. But the high GDP also reflect high crime rate, far greater number of unhappy and depressing citizens.

My mother used to quote a Taiwanese saying whenever she was engaged in conversations with debatical topics like Consumerism vs Minimalism. When she got to withdraw from the debate she always left with this quote: some loves to eat savoury while some loves sweet. To me personally, I am more biased to the minimalism side, and what is your standing point on the scale?

Pen and Paper

The IT technology evolves at an extremely fast pace in the past 20 years. In retrospect of the days before 20 years ago, we had manual or electrical typewriter; we had fax machine; we used pen and paper a lot. We used pen and paper so much, in writing letter, issuing an invoice, doing school works, taking notes in the classroom or what your boss wanted you to do. Pen and paper were important everyday items. We would feel we were not fully equipped for the day when we left home for school or for going to work without bringing some forms of pen and paper.

Nowadays we saw a dramatic change of the devices in the offices. Typewriter has disappeared; fax machine is still seen in some offices but are generally covered by a thick layer of dust with plug still in the power point; paper and pen are seldom found on the desks.

Pen and paper were so essential in everyday living that paper was one of the top 3 inventions in the progress of human being's civilization.  When researchers were ranking the nations with regard to their civilization advancement, paper consumption per ca-pita was the index used to determine the place of this nation in the international ranking. Paper has been an important resource to the society of human being, and was particularly important two decades ago. Pen is not mentioned much, but it is naturally a part of paper, because paper is precious and useful only when pen is doing its work on the paper.

Recently, a friend of ours gave all of her major items of household wares to her friends and we were one of the families being given the high grade desk, chairs, beds, and cabinet. The items that stirred up my thoughts in the miscellaneous bags were the paper products such as A4 notebooks, diary books, note pad, portfolio with notepad in it and envelops. She knew we would not need them, yet she must have difficulty throwing them into the rubbish bin too, she put them in a shopping bag and let the truck driver deliver them together with other big items to our place. I am sure I will be very unlikely to have opportunities to use those paper and pens, but I could not make up my mind and throw them away either, so they are neatly stacked up and kept in a corner of the cabinet  awaiting a chance to be consumed.

I had a habit of writing one or two entries of diary in Google Docs for a few years now. An idea came up my mind when I was tidying my desk and unexpectedly opened that bag of hard-to-get-rid pen and paper. Why I don't try to use this lot of books to be my diary?

So this photo shows one of the page of my diary of the conventional version. I find it nostalgic and a warm touch when I review the records of previous days.
--the end--

Unemployment epdemic

In a conversational occasion of an afternoon tea at my friend's place last week, the unemployment issue was one of the topics we discussed on.  We talked about why this social problem could be knocking down almost every one of the governments so severely around the world?

A news media recently reported that the US young people's unemployment is all time high in the history. They described the current major social problem as "unemployment epidemic". That means US is not the only one suffering from high unemployment problem, the rest of the world are in the same situation.


A few months ago, the news reported that less people are using pen and paper in letter writing  nowadays, Post shops everywhere experienced a sharply falling volume of mails to be delivered; postmen had far less mails to deliver than before. In 2011, the US Postal Service was going to closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers. Obviously, IT industries have made the postal service taking actions in their restructuring process.

I was in the printing industry, installing web offset printing machines for newspapers in Taiwan prior to my immigration to New Zealand 20 years ago. We serviced the printing systems for most of the major newspapers then. Now, not as many people are buying a copy of papers from the newsstand to read as before. People reads news from internet, or from their mobile smart phones. So there are only 4 newspapers survived now since the internet technology was launched comparing to the days before 1998 when the count of all of the important newspapers was about 10.

The huge company restructuring, or to be more straight forward, making employees redundant, associates my thoughts to the major invention in 1769, steam engine. Steam engine was invented by English engineer, James Watt. His invention could replace a huge team of workers working on the same volume of workload and never complained being tired. According to the history, the next year of his invention, 1770, Industrial Revolution ignited and the whole Europe experienced an unprecedented change. Workers were laid-off, the rich were getting richer, and the poor had no place to work for making a living. It took the nature to adjust to assimilate to the new order of human beings' civilization for about 100 years, when everyone wanted a job got a job, to see the society calming down.

Now, in the year 1995, we saw the IT industry has almost matured to a degree that it was able to start a chain reaction causing almost every sect of the various industries to leap in an even bigger pace than the one occurred 200 odd years ago. Every government is headache with all the changes its brainy ministers had never seen, not to say they were not sure how to harness this monster effectively. Therefore, ministers hit by the tough problems stepped down one after another. The changes are hard to be brought down to the earth. The internet is creating all sorts of problems more efficiently than the human brain.

I remember when I brought my family to live in New Zealand in 1992, I often went to library with my children whenever they had school project assigned by the teacher to do, and were in need of information. Every child was permitted to borrow 20 books to take home for reading, digesting, extracting the information in order to complete the school assignment. A few years letter, my children gradually stop going to library to carry those heavy books home for study, they sit in front of the computer and punch a few keys and all the information they needed were on the screen. So I envisage that librarians must have sensed the upcoming redundancy. 

In another tea meeting with some friends, we talked about the unrest in many parts of the world. Everyone of us presented their views of the unemployment epidemic. I said that this monster will be growing even bigger and more powerful, yet human brain will be shrinking because the super fast evolution of IT technology.

To my perception of the unemployment problem, IT's fast evolution was the factor to blame,  I call it the modern day revolution. Indeed, it has advanced too fast and too huge a scale that wherever an incident occurs, the rest of the regions global wide will react instantly.

What will this revolution be developing into? Nobody knows, but we can guess what it will  turn to-- a monster, and an angel at the same time. Yes, it will take our jobs away and at the same time, it raise the productivity growth and provide more low cost commodities for us to enjoy. We end up getting more time to relax, but we will not feel as happy as the days when the IT was just two letters.

Enlightenment seeker

I have not any enlightenment experience, but I believe there is such thing called enlightenment many other beings have.  There were many historical figures who experienced it; found it was marvelous and so could not wait to spread their discovery to share with others once they achieved it.

It is said that when you attain enlightenment, you will feel you are the universe, and universe is in you, but you don't have the sense of "I, My, Me, You and He or She". You will know anything and all the things; know things in the past and in the future as the sense of past and future are not existing at all when you are in this state. These experiences are beyond the capability of our language, so they can not be explained, and that's why Buddha used so many of these words "unexplainable", "unimaginable" in his lectures, and he urged his disciples to experience it by attaining the highest level of enlightenment them selves.

I suppose when we have attained this goal in our spiritual cultivation, our appearance will radiate a peaceful, serene, blissful field, or halo, and attract people seeking for this wonderful energy. This is why Buddha's servants originally despised him when they saw their master dropped off the then commonly acknowledged ascetic practice by accepting the offering of a bowl of goat milk, but were astonished upon seeing their master that they prostrated Buddha and became Buddha's first cohort of disciples. These servants must have been totally converted by what they saw and felt upon Buddha's presence. So what made this difference before and after Buddha's achievement in a full enlightenment is obvious. The Buddhism scriptures recorded many stories about how contemporary masters of other beliefs of that era were originally taking hostile measures toward Buddha, dismissed their own ensembles and came with their followers to worship him and became his disciples.

Even though you will only know how you feel when you are enlightened, but want to share what you have learned and experienced on the journey of enlightenment seeking, You still need to use our language, similes to depict such a mysterious skill.

In 2009, I chanced to follow a link which lead me to a TED video presented by Dr. Jill Taylor. She told the audience how she had experienced a stroke due to a haemorrhage erupted in her left brain. She is a neurologist herself, and the scale of her haemorrhage was not too fatal and not too minor that that incident caused her left brain to shut down and turned on intermittently, and thus allowed her to feel the difference when it was down, and when it was on. She said she was aesthetic, however, she felt the blissfulness; she felt she was totally melt down and mixed in the universe and also felt universe was in her when her brain was only functioning on the right side. The feeling was so wonderful that she felt she wanted to be in that state of Nirvana.

During the time of my daily sitting meditation, my thoughts must have become sharper than usual time because I have experienced many times that I got solution or better idea for the issues I concern or for the project at my hands from the meditation session. But the utmost importance of my meditation practice is to achieve a much higher level of stilling the data processing and enter a state of extreme blissfulness. Recently I suspect this possibility of achieving the goal because perhaps the nature of the freely associating to things in the ego is  not possible to intervene at our will just like our heart beats can not be regulated freely at our will. With this thought I should have been discouraged to do meditation practice, however, the motivation is still quite high. How come? There are real examples that many of them out there can achieve the goal, so there should not be any reason that anyone of us can not.

My quest of enlightenment

I have learned this word "Enlightenment" since my early 20's of age. From that point of my time line, I encountered this word innumerable times in books, master's speech, Buddhism commentaries. At my current stage of life being 61 years old, through the rapidly advancing technology, I have more handy ways to search for various ideas about what is enlightenment? What they experience in the enlightened state? What motivates spiritual practitioners to preach the methods or skills of attaining the objective of enlightenment?

The more I ponder on this great word, the more questions arise from my mind. If I believe there is such thing as "Enlightenment", one day I shall achieve the goal, because I really believe it is just like any skill in our worldly realm that we definitely can master it as long as we invest enough time and effort through a method that suits us, and practice diligently.

What is enlightenment? Ancient masters commented that people pursuing enlightenment can only achieve it to know it fully by themselves but not just listen to what the experienced master has to say. It is impossible to describe about it using our language and logic.

As far as I have learned from searching on the internet, language and logic process are the functions of our left hemisphere of brain. This side of brain process signals from our sensory organs linearly. It indexes the data and give each of them a sequential code, compares every object against another relating one and lays conclusion, takes action in responding to the analysis. The right hemisphere works the opposite to its counterpart, It handles data in parallel, it grabs everything in through our sensory organs without judgement or restriction. All are let in without discrimination. When this two hemispheres work together as they are supposed to be, the subject behaves normally to other beings in the same status of setting. Otherwise, they could behave weirdly to the viewpoints of the majority of beings’.

There was a TED video presented by Dr. Jill Taylor. Dr. Taylor is a Neurology scientist. One morning in 2007, she experienced a hemorrhage errupted in her left brain. Before she lost consciousness, she got the chance to feel what it was like when her left brain functions were shut down leaving the right brain work by itself. She said she experienced a total silence, total blissfulness, total mix in the universe, and she felt indescribable peacefulness. She said that must be what other enlightened people referred to “Nivana”. And when her left brain regained some functions, she was pulled back to reality. She knew she was having a stroke, she got to call for help, she was panicking, she made decision of what she should do next before the left side was shut down again.

Dr. Taylor’s video helped me to realize that we should be able to learn the skill of shutting down the left brain without having to get a hemorrhage to do the trick. Once you have successfully entered that “Nivana” once, the next will follow at your will. Just like learning how to ride a bike, once you master it, you will have bike riding skill throughout the rest of your life. So I believe, there must be a percentage of the total population of the world are born having this skill.

Masters who are enlightened all claimed that all of us, the sentient beings, have the potential to become enlightened. but because our true minds are covered up by all sorts of desire letting our wandering minds roaming restlessly. “Life is like bitter sea” is agreed by a large group of people. Through our lifetime, we might experience part or all of the eight sufferings-- birth, aging, sick, death, parting with the beloved, having to be together with whom you hate, unable to acquire what you desire, torture from wild organic needs. So that must be the reason the enlightened masters are motivated to share the methods of achieving the skill in order to help us to enjoy peace and all the good things.

Before  Shidartha became the Buddha, he sought for teachers in the Ascetic Practice Forest who had the most efficient method to teach him the skill. There were people practiced meditation in difficult posture; fasting such as single meal daily; remaining in outside year round; mimicking cow walking; standing up side down. etc. I suppose, asceticism might work to a degree of enlightenment though not fully. Because the wandering mind is completely attracted to the physical discomfort, and when the practitioner perseveres and surpasses a certain level, the wander mind subdues to the true self thus the practitioner achieves some enlightenment if not full.

Though Shidhartha learned some of them and was proved by his teacher of excellent achievement, but he felt he had not fully enlightened yet. So he moved on to practice his own “middle path” meaning not to the extreme of either self torturing or self indulgent.

Prior to Shidhartha’s enlightenment, he was so weak, hungry and terribly emaciated that when he decided to shift his meditation to be middle path, he thought he should have a good bath of his body, and if possible looked for something to eat. It was said he had pushed his physical endurance to the edge, he was so thin that his hands could reach his back bone when he put his hands over his stomach and press.down. He fainted out after he finished his bath in the river and walked to the shore. A girl herding a flock of sheeps passed by where he lied and thought he must be too hungry and fed him a bowl of milk. The nutrient of the milk nourished Shidhartha, he wanted to carry on his quest for enlightenment so he sat on a rock under the Bohdi tree and swore that he would not leave there until he achieve full enlightenment.

I believe, at this point of Shidhartha’s journey of cultivation, his left brain had been made too exhausted by all of the discomfort from his previous severe ascetic practice. The milk he was offered refreshed his physical strength. Now he resumed his meditation, all the factors of attaining an sudden enlightenment were just met. He opened his eyes watched a bright star in the sky, and unexpectedly he knew he was enlightened at that moment.

To conclude my post on the adventure of Enlightenment pursuit, I would like to define Enlightenment. It is a skill achievable if the method, resolution, length of time are applied. As to the method to select is concerned, there are many different ones, but everyone of them is following the common principle-- focus your mind at a single point constantly. For examples the chanting of “Amitofo” by followers of Pure Land tradition; “Nan mio ho len ge kio” by Japan Lotus Society; full prostration practice by Tibet Buddhists; swindling sutra cylinder by Tibet Buddhists; are all designed to suit any one who is naturally connected to a peculiar method.

Spot's last day

Tessie placed a bunch of flower in
front of Spot's shelter on the deck.
(photo Oct. 1, 2012)

 It is five o'clock early in the morning, September 30, 2012. I'm writing this blog post to commemorate Spot, our family pet. Before I started writing and was sorting my thoughts, a cat was crying outside on the driveway, sounded to me as if the cat was asking me "where has Spot gone?"

"Spot is gone at 3:30 this morning." Chenny sadly told me when I woke up to toilet at about 4:30 this morning. He continued, "the vet has called me not long ago." On hearing this news, I felt a loss of something that had attached to me day and night for the past 13 years since our adoption of Spot. Although Spot had not been a very obedient dog, there were bits and pieces about him won our hearts. There are two blog posts (post links: 1   2   ) I have written previously talking about the loveliness of his personality.


I would never believe that yesterday will be the last day of Spot's life because every thing was occurring as usual on this day. When I came down to the garage in the morning, he was greeting me by waving his tail as usual. After I had opened his pan door, he rushed out of his pan and ran back and forth urging me to be quick to get out of the garage to the garden for the morning walk. Out in the garden, he sniffed here and there, nibbled some grass; had his wee and poo done and then came back in the garage as usual. Then I put a handful of his dog biscuit in the bowl in front of him, and as usual, he raised his head and stared at me for a few seconds with a facial expression of gratefulness, as if saying "thank you Dad", before he started eating as usual.

Spot on neighborhood watch duty
on the deck (photo Sep. 17, 2011)

Having had all of these usual routines done, I took him off the garage at around eight o'clock and set him free on the deck. That is where he carries out his daily watch for the neighborhood.

Everything was running well as usual. The only thing that was unusual in the last two or three months since his surgery in May this year to remove three tumors in his abdomen, was that he slept more during his daytime duty. And we also noticed that he had tremor now and then, and yesterday he trembled a lot; and for the first time he didn't bark around two o'clock to ask for lunch. I told Jean about his recent unusual behavior and Jean said "he is old, he is very old."

When it was about four o'clock in the afternoon, that was the time he finished his daytime duty usually, but yesterday he didn't argue by lightly barking at me to take him in, instead, he was still sleeping in his little hut on the check.

This was unusual too. I woke him up, and he stood up very slowly. And when he walked into the livingroom, he immediately sat down and then lied down on the floor. And this really worried me. I asked Jean to come over to have a look, and she said "probably he is going to die." We had thought about this quite often since spot had the surgery in May this year. "Take him down to his pan and play the Amituofo chanting to help him pass away peacefully", Jean said.

Photo taken on Sep 29, 2012. after
I held him down to his bed. He
curled up straight away to sleep
upon landing on the mat. That was
about 11 hours prior to his death.

Spot was very weak, so weak that he could not walk down to the garage himself as he usually does so I held him down and put him in his sleeping mat, and played the Amituofo chanting.

Chenny came home at around nine o'clock. He noticed that Spot was very very sick because he saw Spot vomited twice and pooed right beside his sleeping mat. I came down to the garage and realized that Spot was not just sick but terribly sick, so sick that he couldn't even stand up. Chenny asked if we should take him to the vet immediately. But it was Saturday.

Tessie transported Spot home after
his surgery done on  May 10, 2012

Chenny must have been accompanying spot all the time since his returning home that at around 11:30pm he woke me up from sleep and told me "Spot vomited on his sleeping mat and pooed. he looked at me as if asking me to help him. Dad we must go to see the vet immediately, Spot is in pain."

I agreed with what Chenny suggested. When I came down to the garage, Spot looked at me as if saying "dad I'm very uncomfortable." His eyes were full of helplessness. I said to Chenny "okay, let's go." Chenny already located the nearest vet available for emergency clinic. I grabbed a piece of cloth to wrap up spot with my hands and legs shaking seriously.

Photo taken on Aug 19, 2012

The vet is called Sean. He quickly and carefully made a thorough check and set up a bottle injection. He explained to Chenny that the medicine he used was to help to relieve Spot's pain and enable him to sleep through the night. But because spot was so sick that he would believe the night might be his last night in the world. The vet held spot to a chamber to rest and there we left for home feeling a bit better but could not forget what the vet said that tonight might be Spot's last night in the world.

Back to home, I checked my mobile and there were three messages all sent from Tessie. She said that Lily has informed her of what happened to Spot, and she asked me to call her anytime if we needed her to come home to help.

Photo taken on Sep 17, 2011

When Chenny told me that Spot had passed away at 3:30 this morning, I felt an undescribable loss in my mind. Then I thought if I should call Tessie immediately to inform her of Spot's death, but then I thought now that Spot had died why to ruin her sleep?

Here are links to some photos of Spot's. We wish Spot well in the other realm of the universe and Amituofo has guided him to His extremely blissful world.

Diamond ring

Son,

In a shallow meditation I had yesterday morning, a topic I like to discuss with you emerged and my concentration was ruined so I set my thought free to roam all over this one, Diamond Ring.

I remember that you recently told mom after you finished dinner and was leaving for your room to practice your guitar, that you probably will propose to your girlfriend during the upcoming school holiday trip to Melbourne. But you had not got the diamond ring ready yet for the proposal.

I did not know that diamond ring is a must-have when a pair of boyfriend and girlfriend in relationship has come to the stage of planning a wedding, then, the first thing the boy has to buy is a diamond ring. As if among the many stages of the young people’s journey toward marriage nowadays, there is one stage that can be referred to as “diamond ring stage”.

Diamond is known as being unbeatable, undestroyable, most bright, most sparkling and etc, all in all, it symbolizes every positiveness of one's marriage. Everyone is longing for a harmonious relationship, an eternal loyalty, and may be out of their subconsciousness, they think their marriage can be assured to achieve all of these quality a diamond ring has.

However, that is just a symbol, just a stage where young people of your generation all believe it can bring happiness and harmony to them throughout their marriage life, or it is simply a fashion to them and everyone simply doesn’t want to be left out. Less people are calm enough to realize that all that is indeed a blessing or a guarantee to retaining their affectionate marriage life is not from the external diamond ring but the internal virtues both of them cultivate and observe constantly.

From the movies depicting the marriage life of a couple, usually see their very affectionate wedding photo magnificently framed and hung over the most outstanding position of the living room. And one day, they begin to fight on trivial problems, and it goes on and on, often and more often, and then finally one of them erupts anger and throw the glass of wine they are holding in hand onto the photo, drag it down from the wall, and shatter it. Interestingly, this kind of scenarios are seen in the movies or TV dramas a lot, and I believe there must be a lot happening in real life. It reflects a fact, the external decorative jewelry or magnificent wedding photos are not reliable, are not the guarantee of a happy long lasting marriage. They are just items wasted; items to make the expectation seem to be very absurd.

Of course, there are examples that they follow all of these fashions of large framed wedding photo, expensive diamond ring, and are in a profound marriage throughout their lives. But those items are not necessarily to have to be pursued, are they?

Suppose you treasure my opinions about your plan of buying a diamond ring for your beloved, the following is my idea that I take it as being significant, sacred and meaningful:

• Donate the money you originally planned to spend on diamond or huge framed wedding photo to a charity such as World Vision or Red Cross. They know how to help the people in need on behalf of you.
• Follow the most basic etiquette of engagement customs only. A no frill gold ring, an outdoor ceremony party with tea, lots of photos out of your iPhone camera.
• Observe constantly and consistently the virtues you have been taught.

Forget the diamond ring. Be liberated from ironic belief.

Father's Day 2012

Today is Father's Day in New Zealand, probably in most of the Western countries, the first Sunday of September. Tessie contacted me a few days before by texting message asking how would I like my day be celebrated? Would I like to have a lunch in the restaurant?

It seems to have been a fixed customary to our family that when there is something worthwhile to celebrate, the one who proposed will organize for the whole family to have a lunch together in a nearby restaurant, and of course pays for the bill too. But this customary has been changing gradually in the past two years when I am the main character to be offered a free lunch celebrating either my birthday or Father's Day, I opted having the celebration at home with the meal purchased from a nearby takeaway. So when Tessie asked me what would I like to choose, I said to her "thank you very much, just bring a couple of dishes from the takeaways near you."

Because she will be available on Saturday, and Chenny will have his music classes on Sunday, so we decided to change it to Saturday.

Since the date and time were decided last week, I have been looking forward to its arrival. After all, having the whole family together for a meal is such a precious occasion.

The lunch was a very pleasant one. Everyone enjoyed the food from takeaway restaurant, everyone laughed. Tessie told us that she went to watch 10 movies during the film festival, and the two of them impressed her the most were "the last ocean" and "the climate change". Tessie has been a happy and talkative girl since she was very small. So she talked a lot about the two movies. I know she is very enthusiastic about the environmental issues. Chenny talked about his plan to organize a performance concert for his student, and Lily gave him her ideas and suggestions about how should the concert be presented.

When the celebration was coming to an end, I asked Jean for that pack of sticky rice she bought the other day from T-mark, and moved to the kitchen to demonstrate how to cook sticky rice in only one pot for Tessie. The demonstration was a success, and I packed the whole lot of the stir fried sticky rice in a recycled lunchbox for her to take home.

And this concludes my Father's Day celebration of 2012.

Reading books

In the waiting room of the Labtest Browns Bay waiting for my name to be called up to collect some blood sample for my health checkup, I saw a mother with her son, a toddler waiting, too. Each of them held a book in their hands reading quietly. The toddler seems to be very sociable that he stared at me with a trace of smile on his face. I smiled back. Having sensed my friendliness, he wobbled toward me pointing at a picture in his book to show me, seemed like trying to tell me what it was. I was amazed by his being very interested in books and his sociability. His mother smiled and looked at him. I asked the mother "your baby is very fond of reading, how have you trained him to be a book lover?" She said "I read books for him before he goes to the bed." "Ah! that's why." I extolled.

I'm not a good reader and that is why I admire people who enjoys reading. This reminds me of the summer vocation of my first year of senior high high school. one of the homeworks assigned to us for the summer vocation was reading a book titled "dream in the red mansion" and writing a short conversation about what you have learned from reading that book. I remembered that Chinese classical fiction we were asked to read was more than 400 pages. The story was about a heavily pampered only son of that family and his cousin, Lin Dai-yu. It is one of the most favorite books among Chinese reads. I tried to read them all, but because I was not so interested in reading that I had only finished about one third of that book. When that summer vocation was coming to an end, we were supposed to return to school to get ourselves prepared for the resumption of school before the official start of the new semister. I asked some of my classmates about how well had they done the assignment of reading that classical fiction, and a couple of them excitedly told me they loved it, and not just the that, they read two or even three times of it. At that moment, I admired them very much and felt ashamed for my reading capability.

There is another type of reader who cannot live without something to read. Once I was engaged in a chat with a group of my colleagues talking on the subject of reading. One of my colleagues said that her husband was a strong reader. Her husband has to have something to read. When he is not busy with anything then he is always in search of something to read. If the community newspaper is the only thing he can get at that time, he reads it without skipping any single word. And he does even read every one of the advertisements in the classified pages. it will be very cool for me to be like him.

I admired book lovers. I know there are lots of profound book readers. They are able to be completely absorbed in the reading for hours or even a non-stop whole day. Some of them can finish reading of a heavy book in a few minutes with perfect comprehension. My web search for the fastest reader tells me the Howard Berg is the fastest reader in the Guinness Book of World Records. His reading speed is 25000 words per minute. Comparing to mine, the number of words he can finish in a minute will take me two days at least. How can he do that, and why can't I?

People who love reading are usually quiet, calm and confident. Their school performances are unexceptionally outstanding. A family friend came to visit us with their two daughters of year 4 and 6 in the primary school. Both of them disappeared soon after greetings. I found them sitting on the floor side by side with my old Reader's Digest in each of their hands reading by the book shelf, totally absorbed in the books. When I switched our conversation to the topic about their children's strong reading capacity, I was told both of the two girls were of the top students in the school.

Unable to cut it through, yet sorting makes it more tangled

15/07/2012 Sunday

“What does life mean to me?”. I learn; I work; I take my responsibility, and etc. Are these what life is all about?

When Jean is out shopping and Chenny is out teaching, and Spot is sleeping next to my feet on the floor. When my surrounding is so quiet, my thought begins to wander, and it always lands on the topic such as “what does life mean to me?”

My logical part of the brain immediately searches in the archive for the most matching answer, but before long, it says to me that it has run out all the ideas and it gets no answer for me. At this moment, sometimes I recalled the Script in the Diamond Sutra which throughout its content states all the paradox of every aspect the Buddha tried to make his disciple understand.

“All of the phenomena are illusory and are real at the same time.” If I use this kind of statement as a template and put my question into it, then it sounds like this -- “life is elusive and is real.” Then, what Buddha tried to explain to me might be: “hey! Kuei, whether your life is elusive or real, don’t be too serious about and should be serious about, just live your every day as it is and no more other meanings and no less than any other meaning.”

It sounds very insane, but what else do you think is not? Perhaps this is the path toward enlightenment; and is not the path toward anywhere.

I got to be hurry

01/07/2012 Sunday
Yesterday could be the coldest winter day in Auckland. When I started my early morning meditation, I felt very cold, so cold that I put my gloves on, grabbed a duvet to cover my lap to keep warm so as to get the meditation going.

I have indulged myself in learning or exploring new areas of skill, for example, growing vegetable, repairing household appliances, typing with a dictation software, learning advanced Excel formulas and etc., in the past three or four years. Last month, I have turned more attention to the cultivation of spirituality realizing that nothing that I have acquired will be brought along to the grave. With this understanding, I have taken my daily spiritual exercise more seriously.

Why do I think I have to be more serious on the path of spiritual cultivation? Because I believe in reincarnation. The theory of reincarnation states that all beings on the planet are subjected to be permanently trapped in the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. And we have no control about where will we be reborn after our death. It is impossible that all of us will be reborn into the royal family to enjoy a good life, and even if we were, we will die again and be reborn to somewhere we are fear of -- to Africa that is constantly in short of food; to realm of animal that is born to be slaughtered by the butcher for food. Knowing that all of the beings are suffering from all sorts of fear, ancient sages taught us ways of liberation, assuring that there are hope and methods to set us free eventually.

If I can live up to 72 years long like my father, hey guys, I got only 10 damn years to live. And therefore this is my realization of the imminence and seriousness of doing my spiritual exercise.

The Queen's 85th Birthday

04/06/2012 Monday

This weekend is a long one because of the Queens birthday. While New Zealand is celebrating the Queens birthday this week, Australia is not yet until next week, how strange it is?

I pondered on the mystery of life a lot recently. And the destined fortune that the Queen Elizabeth has been the topic of our conversation. We agree that her destined fortune is unsurpassable in the world. In the history, there were innumerable military coups overthrowing the kings or queens recorded, and this never had happened to her. As to her marriage, she married a tall and handsome husband, and I believe throughout her marriage over the 60 years, the husband had never had a harsh words to her, let alone any violent assault happened to most of the couple in the world (I, too, have never said any harsh word to my wife). Longevity is around her family and so she is believed to be having a healthy and long life. And during her sovereignty, she had had a most glorious position in the global political stage that the United Kingdom was once referred to "the Empire on which the sun never sets"

Buddhists believe that everything happens with a reason. So why the Queen has such a good destined fortune and not me or you? Why some people are born in a rich country while a lot more others are born in poor ones?

In both Eastern and Western worlds, "you reap what you sow", is commonly accepted. "You harvest melon because you planted melon, harvest bean if you planted bean". With this concept in mind, we can conclude that the Queen Elizabeth must have done a great lot of good deeds in her previous life and soul she is rewarded with such a divine quality of life.

123 Henry and Helen overseas study

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.