Ah Ber Then!??!!!

Today, for once, I had breakfast! I think my jetlag is improving! I managed to force-feed myself with generous portions of wakefulness till 9-ish pm before collapsing most willingly into bed for a much-desired sleep. I woke at 5-ish am and went to YD for breakfast. Everyone says that you have to try this diner at least once; so after being here for almost 4 years, I felt that it was now or never. The highlight of this diner is FRIED DONUTS. That's right, FRIED DONUTS. And my goodness, it was the most sinful yet most delectable dish I have savored in a while. Imagine a sugar-crusted, sugar-glazed donut cut in two, deep-fried and then smeared with generous dollops of butter. Mmmmmm but oh-so-bad for our arteries (Artery: the study of art). I washed this down with coffee and a bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich. This was truly an american diner at its finest; you always watch hollywood movies about diners and so I finally tried one. The food was tasty, hygiene suspicous, and ambience authentic.

I'll be back there for sure!

However, I suspect eating the food there is more hazardous than smoking.

I was doing some research for a paper I am writing on collectivist cultures like Japan, when I chanced upon this interesting article on the prevalence of suicide in Japan and some possible reasons to explain this phenomeneon:
http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/discussionpapers/2005/Nakanishi.html

It has always struck me how different Japanese movies, dramas, and comics are. There is something eerily poignant about these forms of art, especially the incessant elements of existentialism, desire for connectedness to others, and of course, death. Perhaps in Japan's hurry to embrace the West, it was left in a spiritual and emotional vaccuum, a cultural no-man's land where the guns of meaninglessness are raining bullets all around them. Can this explain Japan's "lost generation", a whole ocean of people who seem to just trudge through life without any deeper purpose? I am no expert on Japan, so I am worried that many of my views on Japan are victims of simplifying stereotypes. However, I think there is a pinhead of truth in all this.

I've been having a horrendous bout of jetlag, which entails falling asleep at 4pm and waking at midnight, staying up the whole night and starting the Groundhog Day-esque cycle over and over again!

In the past, I always returned to school when the term started, so my classes forced me to stay awake and sleep during proper times. However, now that it's still the hols, I have little incentive to adhere to normal hours. Nonetheless, I love this sleep schedule! I love the thought of being the only person awake! I love solitude, but it's hard to achieve; however, being jetlagged and awake when no one else is brings one closer to the goal of true solitude. I'm not anti-social or hermit-like; in fact, I lurveeee people and love to meet new friends and spend time and have long conversations with old ones. However, I still treasure solitude. I see no contradiction in that. I guess I draw energy from my periods of solitutde to allow me to be fully present and attentive when I'm interacting with people. Being with people all the time, while extremely rewarding, does drain me and I need to engage in inner refueling by gliding back into my nest of being-by-myself-ness.

I have a few galaxies of work to finish in the next few days; I am currently working on an essay on the why financial crises spread between countries.

I really look forward to heading back to Singapore and meeting up with everyone!

I'm back from Nepal!
It was a wonderful trip and I feel totally spiritually recharged! I feel that it's strengthened my spiritual resolve and clarified my mind, and I feel that I've grown spiritually. It was an amazing trip and I really miss Nepal! I stayed for part of it in a hotel and part of it in the monastery. The time in the monastery was one of the most spiritually uplifting, invigorating and rejuvinating periods of my life. The feelings of being at peace, with nothing but spiritual contemplation to engage in, is pure bliss and something money can never buy.

My plane there; really pretty!


The nunnery part of the monastery:


Welcoming the reincarnation of the great Buddhist master Geshe Lama Konchog:


In the main temple hall:


Waiting for the religious dances to start:


The reincarnation of Geshe Lama Konchog. Geshe Lama Konchog was widely regarded as having attained Buddhahood.




High lamas:










The masks look fearsome because they symbolize that we need to be forceful in attempting to overcome our negative emotions like selfishness, jealousy, anger, and greed:




On pilgrimage with the Lamas:


The streets of nepal:




Boudhanath Stupa, the holiest object in the whole of nepal and the heart of the Kathmandu valley. The stupa symbolizes the enlightened mind that has attained perfect wisdom and all-encompassing compassion towards all sentient beings:




Pilgrims circumabulating Boudhanath Stupa:




The monastery grounds (I stayed in the monastery for some days) You can see a stupa in the picture. The monastery is called Kopan Monastery. (http://kopanmonastery.com):


The monastery is so peaceful and beautiful!


View from the monastery:


As an aside, embarking on my spiritual quest has been the most rewarding and best choice in my life. I'll never ever regret going down this road. Any ounce of good qualities I have is solely the result of what I've learnt from Buddhism.

There'll be no updates for two weeks!

Mysterious hor?
I shall write a poem in commemoraton of this enigmatic episode!

--Ode to Thee, Mysterious Tree--
Oh radiant durian fruit,
What are thy deepest yearning?
To surge and grow like raging rivers,
Or to lie gently like a slumbering sheep?
No matter what ye think is best,
I know that thou art not a pest.
For durians reign supreme for me,
I think I really have to pee.

"Xiu lum gong fu hou ye!"

The text below is part of an email i wrote to an american friend who asked me to teach her how to meditate. My singaporean friend, kelly, also asked me how to deal with mental anxiety and such, so I'll reproduce the email I wrote here:

--
"There are really a huge variety of Buddhist meditational techniques out there, but all of them can be divided into either Calming Meditation or Analytical Meditation. For Calming meditation, your aim is to calm the mind and focus it; for analytical meditation, your aim is to contemplate some meaningful truths,
such as impermanence or the importance of compassion.

The method which is best to start with is calming meditation. The website that I will give you the link to in a while refers to this form of meditation as "Mindfulness meditation". To do this meditation, first sit in a comfortable position. If you can do the lotus position, that's great; if not, just sit normally on the floor on a cushion. It's best to arrange the cushion such that your butt is raised a bit higher than the rest of your body, because this helps keep your spine straight and lessens the chance of cramping. Either way, adjust the cushion such that you are comfortable. Then, keep your back straight and
your eyes half-closed. Angle the head slightly down.

Then, breathe in, out, and count "One," mentally in your head. Breathe in again and out again, counting "two" along with the out breath. Repeat this until you've counted till 21, then start from zero once again. As you do this, you will notice your mind getting distracted by a whole plethora of thoughts but this is only natural. The trick is to just let go of these thoughts and bring your mind back to your watching your breath. You can do this meditation for about 5 minutes a day. Keep it short. If you try to do it too long, you'll get bored and come to detest it. Keep it short, simple, and sweet, and it will be
very beneficial to your mind and body.

Hope this helps!

You can learn more about meditation from this website:
http://www.wildmind.org/

Dont't hesitate to ask me if you have any questions okay?"

My dear friend L calls me from California today, waking me up from my luxurious slumber. She has an uncanny knack for calling me when I'm sleeping; I swear it happens really often! However, being the loyal friend, I'm more than happy to talk to her. Anyway, she calls me about her favorite hobby: eating! I was really amused that she actually called to ask me to look online for good places to eat in the frisco area, so that I could tell her and she could check them out immediately! Only L would do that! Hahaha! It's amazing but it seems like I have the karma to know girls who love eating!

I used to be a glutton when I was young; from my birth till I was in like, maybe early secondary school or late primary school, eating was my passion, my meaning in life, my destiny. Nothing pleased me more than eating, and eat I did. As I consumed food, food-eating becamea hobby that consumed me. I had a magnificent appetite, which probably was the reason why I looked like a chubby cherub by the time I neared the end of primary school. Upon entering the pastures of secondary school, somehow all my fats melted away. I think it was puberty kicking in in full swing, which for many guys is akin to being a piece of pudgy rubbery plasticine being stretched out. I also did a lot of sports like soccer and basketball, which probably contributed to my fairwell to the bulge. I've never looked back since, except for those times when someone behind me calls out my name and I have to look back. Curious mah.

Another interesting thing was that when L called me today, she told me how she lost her voice yesterday due to her over-consumption of delicious chocolate and wines. This suddenly made me remember that I had just dreamed of losing my voice too! It was weird! I had dreamnt that I was in a play, and one part involved me having to sing something. However, to my horror, my voice was really hoarse and I couldn't sing! And then L calls me and tells me about her lost voice! Rather uncanny and I was quite amused by this.

L also told me that back in secondary school, she thought of me as the best looking...of the smart-looking guys. I wasn't sure if this was flattery or ridicule! :) I have this rather dubious and ambiguous honor of being the most handsome nerd? I guess "smart-looking" isn't synonymous with "nerdy", but it might be a thin line dividing the two. Hahahaa. Nonetheless, I do remember secondary school days, when all of us were constantly posing and preening, trying to look good and attract the attention of the opposite sex. Of course, these mating rituals persist through life, but somehow, they seemed to be at a peak amplitude while in secondary school. Looking back, I really didn't know how to woo a lady back in my early teenage years. Those memories bring me a potent mixture of embarrassment and amusement. I think these days, I'm more more confident in my dating skills, and not too unsuccessful, I might add. Nonetheless, I've never been a player and probably will never succeed in being one if I should so try, simply because I am just too "smart-looking", and don't have this bad-boy charm consistent with the player stereotype. Also, I'm just too lazy to be bothered to try and date so many girls lah; and there's so much more to life than just chasing women. It's kinda sad to see men (and women) who expend so much effort and energy in the quest for romantic love. We enter the world alone, and have to leave it alone; having a partner helps, but it's not the sole meaning in life.

For me, what truly gives me meaning in my life is gardening, cooking, landscaping, and sewing.*

*yeah right!

The nature of friendship is multi-faceted and at times, unfathomable. So many causes and conditions go into the cauldron of our friendships, and much of these factors are beyond our ken or control. What determines if a friendship will grow and flourish? Can we prevent friendships from withering with the strides of time? It's hard to say. At times, the friends you want to hold on to the most just slip out from your grasp; at other times, friendships blossom and solidify so easily and effortlessly, like it was meant to be.


Furthermore, sometimes the best friendships, through no real fault of either friend, just get eroded. You drift apart, and your once-strong friendship becomes but a faint reverberation in the hollow rooms of your mind, a picture traced on water.


At other times, we intentionally choose to end friendships. People change, or we see our friends for who they truly are. Whatever it is, we often decide that it is time to move on. One party may resist the change, but it takes two legs to walk, and the friendship bears little hope for any resurrection.


And then there's the issue of remaining friends with ex-boyfriends or girlfriends. That's a touchy issue. I doubt many couples remain friends. I think it would be very nice to do so, but it can be painfully awkward, since the disolution of many relationships usually brand upon the former partners emotional scars and wounds. These injuries heal, but often a keloid remains, testimony to the citadel of grief that once encased the fragile chalice of one's heart.


It's interesting how, as time passes, we tend to look fondly back upon our old relationships. It doesn't apply to all former relationships, but it can happen. We often remember the happiness we once had, which though nothing but phantasmogoric entities today, were once in the pink of health and the harbringers of our joy.


However, life, like everything else, is always in flux and much of it is beyond our control. We can have earnest wishes to be good friends with someone new or with a former romantic partner, but results seldom match our expectations. Hope does burn eternal in the forest of our emotional hearts, but this hope is not omnipotent, and is no wish-fulfilling jewel. Often, the best we can do is to walk alone through the parks of our past memories, smiling at the tapestry of our past experiences while simlutaneously acknowledging the irony and sadness that are eternal pigments coloring our being.

I just had a midterm exam today. Its content was quite unexpected because it tested specific facts; I'm more used to tests that assess your ability to apply principles to novel situations. I've never really excelled at rote memory-based tests, though I concede that there's definitely a place for memorisation of facts. Luckily I managed to recall a fair bit of stuff in today's test. In one part of the test, they tested us on a particular film clip that was shown in class! Normally no one expects film clips to be worthy of being part of a test, but today was an exception. Heng ah, lucky I could remember some parts so I managed to bullshit my way through.

I had a discussion with my friend today about running in the gym and experiencing the urge to fart. It seems pretty common to feel the compulsion to let loose an airy emission now and then while exercising; maybe exercise, cardio especially, loosens one's digestive canals and makes one's body feel the need to release pressure to maintain homeostasis. It can be quite embarrassing if you need to fart while running on the treadmill or while using the elliptical trainer. I mean, what are you gonna do? I think that what most people do is just fart and pray that it will be a silent emission. The worst kind of fart is the one best described by Shakespere himself. This fart is "full of sound and fury..signifying nothing". However, loud farts are not necessarily the most malicious. Silent killers can be equally deadly. These kinds of farts more than make up for their mutedness with their noxious odors. The other night, I was at the gym near closing time and there was just this other asian girl and me side by side. All of a sudden, I smelt something quite unlike roses and cherries. You have to realize that when one is exercising, one is inhaling harder than usual and in greater need of oxygen. Needless to say, I breathed in a double-helping of gaseous delights and found it most memorable. It's always more awkward when the culprit is obvious. If you're in a group of people, at least you can still pretend that it wasn't you.

Also, there seems to be a stereotype that girls are supposed to be nice-smelling and pleasant at all times. This is obviously a cruel stereotype. Girls also fart; they have to! There's nothing in genetics that says that girls need to be nicer smelling. I think we should remove the stigma attached to girls that fart. Society should not pressure girls to be embarrassed whenever they fart or exhibit less stereotypically feminine behavior.

Stand up for your rights, and fart with all your heart!

"A fart is a canon fired between two ramparts announcing the arrival of Lord Shit".-a Wise Woman

I have a Tibetan language class at 11am, and I had a few days to memorize the whole tibetan alphabet. I think I have most of it down, but I should revise it before I head out for class. I really hope to be able to master at least basic Tibetan reading and writing by the end of this semester. That's one of my new year resolutions: to learn Tibetan.

Gosh now that I'm in my final semester, I seem to have lost a fair bit of drive! Gotta..stay..focused! I don't want to screw up my grades in this last semester, because that would make a difference in the kind of degree I get. I'm really totally toally hoping for a sauma cum laude but I'll be greatly gratified if I get a magna. I kinda wish I worked harder throughout my time in college! Actually one the most common regrets people have is not working harder in school. Must give it my best! I also recently got invited to join the Psychology Honors society; it'll probably look good on my CV, but won't be of much real, tangible, apple-pie benefit unless I remain in the US and do something in the field of psych. But I think join lah!

One of my ang moh friends has recently started acting really unusual. She's always looking lost and saying very strange things. It's really quite frightening because for all the 3 plus years I've known her, she's never been like that. All of my friends who know her are really worried about her too. I'm not sure what her psychological problem is, but I really hope it's not schizophrenia or borderline personality disorder.
I think we all take our mental health too much for granted. Yeah, we all grumble about our moods and stuff, and at times we feel down, but until you really get a serious mental illness like schizophrenia (often called the "king" of mental illnesses), in which you don't know what you see or hear is real, when your perception can no longer be trusted, when you feel like your mind is like a foreign alien entity, that's when you realize how precious sanity is.

I'm now rushing into a very busy period of my life. My midterm exams are rearing their academically demanding heads, and I have my senior project to work on. What's more, I'm running an extremely tiresome psychology study, and I need to seriously start on a final essay for one of the seminars I'm taking. What should I do in such draining circumstances? Let us consider what one of my wise friends would say:
"When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping." -P.L.

During my NS days, it gave me ample oppurunities to reflect on the meaning behind hardship and suffering. It's funny but when I was in those difficult situations, I had to find meaning in what I was doing, and also sought to find ways to deal with the physical deprivation. I would create short slogans or phrases that I would bring to mind whenever the going got tough, phrases like "No matter how shiong, time passes, and you'll get through it," or "You don't always have to like what you're doing, you just have to do it."
In general, I sought to use NS as a practice in developing patience, resilience and discipline, and this attitude helped me approach NS positively and learn from it. Looking back, I can say that I have no regrets doing NS. Without NS, some of the qualities I have today would not be there, and I would be a different person and leading a different life. My NS days were truly a defining moment in my life because of all the things that happened both within and without the NS sphere. NS itself provided time away from school for me to truly reflect on life, what I wanted from it, and how I was going to define myself and the standards I set for myself.

Also, NS exposed me to a whole spectrum of people from all strata of society. The thing about the Singapore academic system is that you tend to always be with students of the same type. Once you're in a good school, you tend to always be with better students. As a result, there's a huge chance that you'll have no interaction with other kinds of students, and you perspective on life gets severely distorted. Going to NS opened up my perspectives on life and I realized there was a whole slice of life out there that I had never even glimpsed before. I met fellow soldiers who were school drop-outs, who were fathers at the age of 14, who were very street-wise, etc.

And yet, after I left NS, although I had matured, I did not fully consider myself an adult. I had still not fully left my teenhood behind. The journey continued. Today, after having gone through so much, I think I am an adult. However, I will continue to learn and grow. The path to wisdom meanders on, and I am determined to walk it till the end.

I just read a psychology paper that provided clear and quite convincing evidence that physical pain and social pain are very similar. First, social pain can be understood as the feeling of distress and discomfort that arises when social situations turn out in ways that are negative to us. For instance, social pain arises when we experience social rejection, or when we lose a loved one.

The study found that physical pain and social pain both involve the same parts of the brain. You can think of this as the same neural components "lighting up" whenever a person feels either physical or social pain. Also, the study found that inducing or reducing one type of pain affects the other kind of pain in the same direction. For instance, an experiment was done in which subjects were made to feel rejected. These subjects, when given a mild pain (i.e. putting their hands on ice), experienced higher pain levels than control subjects. The study also found that people with a genetic disposition towards one of the pain types also had a disposition towards the other pain type.

Taken together, these findings suggest that physical pain and social pain have the same underlying mechanisms and functions. The main function of pain is to alert us and to tell us that something is awry. In this sense, pain can be thought of as an information-converying system. We experience physical pain when something goes wrong with our health and bodies; we experience social pain when our social health is under threat. These both serve to alert us and tell us that "Hey, something's not right!"

It also makes sense then to think of phrases like "broken hurt" or "it hurts when she left me". When we feel social pain, we might also be experiencing pain sensations that physical pain-inducers cause.

No wonder Aristotle said that "Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all
other goods."

How true.

Now it's time to say goodbye to all our friends out there, M, I, C, K, E, Y, M, O, U, S, E!

That line was from some Disney song that I remember from many years ago. I just thought I'd like to brand it upon this blog, for all posterity and for all posteriors.

The weather this week has taken a cunning turn towards more frigid temperatures, and my nasal follicles are having a hard time preventing their metamorphosis into stalactites. Being officially bereft of hair on my skull, I have found it quite essential to go about wearing a cap. I tried covering my head with aluminium foil, but people thought that I was from some kind of cult. I assured them that I was definitely not part of any cult, though I do engage in the occassional pagan ritual.

I spent a leisurely afternoon browsing in the local bookstore. I'm going skiing tomorrow (read: tumbling down the hill) so I perused some ski books in a feeble attempt to gain some protection from the God of Falls on Ski Slopes. I also flipped through some beautiful picture books on Bhutan, Bangkok and an especially nice book that was a pictorial record of pilgrimages that occur throughout the world. There's something about religion and spirituality that has always drawn me to it like my good friend Lynn is drawn towards shopping. I guess I've always felt that the mundane world is too ephemeral and lacking in something truly meaningful to give one some true, enduring, immutable happiness. The interesting thing about discovering spirituality is that it imbues even your mundane aspects of life with great meaning. Spirituality is something that is such a great boon, conveying benefits in both the spiritual and non-spiritual realms. As mentioned earlier, when spirituality permeates your being, everything you do becomes beautiful and meaningful.

When I look at the aluminium foil on my head, I am reminded of the deepest truths of existence.

I shaved my head yesterday! I got a really bad haircut from barber A, and when I got home, I decided it was so bad that I was going to hairdresser B, where I got it all lopped off. I think it's interesting to change one's hairstyle dramatically. One tends to get very attached to one's hair and hairstyle, and it's interesting checking up on how strong our attachment is. We are very used to seeing ourselves in certain ways, and we can get immensely attached to aspects of our self that we see as integral to our identities. Cutting off my hair was a practice in letting go of my solidifed sense of selfhood, and in learning to be less attached to my appearance. Everything changes.

I hear from a friend that in Singapore, it's become rather fashionable for men to shave their heads. I don't mean just NS boys, even business professionals are doing it. I'm not sure if this is a trend that's percolated to Singapore from America or Europe. In America, it's really common, especially for asians, to have shaved heads. My friend said I look a lot more asian with my shaved skull. I look like a rapper, especially when I wear my baseball caps!

I had a get-together with a couple of friends on Friday night at D's place. She has a sweet little studio apartment off campus. Rob impressed us all with his culinary expertise, and it was honestly one of the best meals I've had in the US! We watched "The Fog" after that. I actually saw the original version a year or two ago. The remake was rather different from the original. Although it was a horror flick, we were all joking so much that it seemed more like a comedy!

Have you ever come across people who seem to dislike you from the word go? It's strange how there are persons you meet for the very first time who emanate a sense of aversion towards you. Sometimes it's just our imagination, but at times, the feeling is really quite salient. There are some people who are unfriendly towards most of the people around them, so when we meet such people, it's natural for us to feel like they don't like us. I met these two people recently, and the feeling i get whenever I bump into them is that they are totally uninterested in me. Not only that, I feel a subtle sense of dislike towards me. There could be many reasons behind this, of course. It's just that for most people I meet, I never feel such protrusive negative feelings emanating towards me, so it did catch my attention.

Lin Zhi Ling. Taiwanese model. From http://momloveu.sakura.ne.jp. She's hot. *shiver*

My new favorite song:
http://www.oui-blog.com/yoshigi/archives/009471.html

Click 'play' and enjoy. Btw, that's Zhang Zhen Yue in the video as well. He brought us hits like "Fen Shou Ba".

I love being chinese!

Btw, in the song you hear them say "Lin Zhi Ling"; aka Lim Chiling, the super-chio taiwanese model rumored to be dating Jerry Yen of F4 fame.

A long while back, there was this chio Taiwanese grad student girl who used to eat a lot in my dining hall. I always wanted to say hi to her, but never did so. Now I never ever see her. I think she's graduated. What can I say except:

我愛台妹 台妹愛我 對我來說 林志玲算什麼?!
我愛台妹 台妹愛我 對我來說 侯佩岑算什麼…..

Zhiling is so hot I'm gonna post more pics of her.


From http://jhnews.com.cn

I just watched an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called "Galaxy's Child". In it, one of the characters, Jordi,is excited to finally get to meet a female scientist. Let's call her Dr B. (Okay, I forgot her name!) Anyway, turns out that Jordi is rather infatuated with her because he has studied her scientific ideas and inventions extensively in the past and is most impressed with her expertise. In fact, the spaceship he is on has a hologram facility that is able to recreate a person and get the hologram to act in ways based on probabilistic estimates. These estimates are themselves based on the personality profiles contained in the ship's logs. During one difficult period in which his ship suffered serious sturctural damage, Jordi was at a loss as to what to do. He decided to run the computer holographic simulation of Dr B so as to converse with her and get her opinions and help. Of course, how she reacted was based largely on the A.I. and the computer's assesment of how she might behave in real life. Jordi somehow fell somewhat in love with this computer simulation of Dr B, thinking what a wonderful person she was.

Anyway, the day comes when she comes aboard to study his engine designs. Jordi is stunned to discover that she is nothing like what he expected. If anything, she is the antithesis! He is quite shattered to find out that the object of his infatuation is totally incompatible with him. He is at an emotional quandary when the ship's bartender tells him that perhaps his vision was faulty when he interacted with the hologram of Dr B. Jordi protests, saying his vision was fine. An epiphany suddenly strikes him and he understands what the bartender really means: He saw what he wanted to see of Dr B. He was so enraptured with the fantasy of her being his perfect woman that he molded his interpretation of her such that he created the ideal woman. Alas, this ideal woman was far divorced from the reality of how she really was. The bartender then tells Jordi that one of the greatest mistakes we make is to have unrealistic expectations of others, when what we should have done is simply to see people as they really are.

Seeing people as they really are and accepting them for who they are is really one of the greatest gifts we can give someone. Wanting them to live up to our embellished expectations is only going to bring us disappointment. Not to mention that we are distorting reality.

Don't you hate those times when your mind gets so distracted that all you want to do is procrastinate? Yet instead of alleviating your distraction, the procrastination only serves to make you even less at peace? It's akin to drinking saltwater to assuage one's thirst.

Happy New Year everyone! Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Last night was Chinese New Year's eve, and I went to a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in another city to usher in the new year. The Vietnamese student association organized it, and seeing that I didn't really know anyone in the group, I pulled along my ang moh friend, Josh.

The temple was a fairly long drive, and we had a nice chat with two vietnamese americans who gave us a lift. I somehow had this impression that many of the younger asian americans were born and bred in the US, and assumed that most spoke with perfect american accents and such. It was interesting to learn that the two young vietnamese people who gave us a lift were not born in the USA, hence their english wasn't that perfect. Nonetheless, they were doing brilliantly in school, with one studying to become a doctor and the other on her way to become a researcher in the sciences. I really admired their ability and courage to carve a niche for themselves and excel in a foreign country with a different language and culture.

At the temple, there were tons of Vietnamese people. Everyone was seated and chanting Buddhist prayers and mantras in Vietnamese. It was cool because I could actually pick out what they were chanting because I chant the same prayers in Mandarin, and the vietnamese versions were transliterated from the Mandarin ones. We chanted the Great Compassion Dharani and others. I think people probably thought that I was vietnamese, because they gave me the prayer book, which was wholly in Vietnamese!

When midnight came, the abbot gave a short talk and then everyone stood up and shouted "Happy New Year!". They then surged towards these artificial trees in the temple that had numerous ang paos hung on the branches. People pulled ang paos off and opened them to read their fortunes, which were written on slips of paper inside. Mine was apparantly a good fortune too! My Vietnamese friend looked at it for me (it was all in Vietnamese) and said it was auspicious. Hooray!

I spoke to the abbot to and he spoke to me in perfect mandarin! He was born in Vietnam but had studied in India, Holland, France, and China. Amazing!

We left after a while and almost got into a car accident on the way back when the car in front of us suddenly jam-braked. This was a meaningful lesson, to remind us that we should never take our lives for granted and to use our lives in a truly meaningful manner. If we were to die right now, would we die willingly, knowing that we had lived a good life? I saw this as a perfect start to the new year, for it was a valuable teaching, telling me to live my life fully and to imbue it with spiritual meaning and to have kindness and love to others.

Does anyone know what the chinese custom pertaining to hair cutting and spring cleaning is? When can we cut hair again? When can we sweep again?

Here are the pics. The smokey-ness in some pics is due to the burning incense.




















I explained to Josh the meaning behind offering incense. Incense is fragrant and nice-smelling, and this fragrance represents the fragrance of morality. The Buddhist scriptures teach that the karmic result of being morally upright is to have a body that does not give off body odors. Having B.O. is often a karmic result of having observed poor moral discipline in past lives or the present one. Hence, we offer incense to symbolize and develop the aspiration to always preserve perfect morality and never to do harmful and evil acts.

Incense, because it burns away and disappears, also represents the impermanence of life, reminding us that life is evernascent and that nothing lasts for ever. As such, we must treasure our lives and live it wisely and to the fullest. The burning of the incense also represents burning away our egoistical mind and inflated sense of self. We think we are the most important person in the whole universe, forgetting about all the other beings aside from us. Our egos prevent us from caring for others and having kindness towards them. As such, burining incense also symbolizes our aspiration to conquer our big egos and to learn to care more for other people.




Have a great Year of the Dog!!!