20 January 2016

My 3 lessons of gratitude today:

• I'm grateful to how interconnected the world is. Looking at beehoon made me think of the chain-effects that brought this beehoon right in front of me, and I realize that it has passed through so many people. I look at my laptop and I see the parts sprayed out from all over the globe, its steel originating from under the earth. I look at my body now and I realize that I am food. My atoms came from stardust. We're all stardust. It's kind of amazing when you just sit there and suddenly realizing that we're all like vibrating balls with different electrostatic charges. Yet we never ever touch each other, because the atoms repel each other. I am grateful because we don't ever touch in the physical - but we certainly do touch each other in our hearts and minds.
• I am grateful to my state having ups and downs. It is because I can feel drained that I feel energetic - it is because there is dark that light comes. It is because there is coldness that heat warms. It is because there is taking that giving complements. The world of dualities is a pretty amazing place to observe, as long as we don't get entangled up in it. I'm so grateful to how the leaves bend a little to let its dew slide off, I'm grateful to how the wind varies in intensities, I'm grateful to how the earth spins in just a consistent speed that we never ever feel it and the oceans never empty out.
• I'm grateful to the stories I've read in this pdf e-book compiling speakers from a "Buddhism and medicine" 2013 conference. It also highlighted a parallel between modern psychology and buddhism, which I always thought was far-apart and treated as a "third-tier" approach when all the other approaches failed. It's quite amazing to see how they have spread the approach to school kids, war victims, and so on. It lightens my heart so much to know how these teachings have helped alleviate the suffering of so many.

A new section today, contemplating on Death:

• If I were to die the next second, what would I regret and take along with me? I feel that I am still attached to certain things in the world. I want to become a person who is able to express his love, generosity and compassion in the best possible way. I want to be able to be more present, because I feel that I still have a few floating thoughts that take me away from the moment-to-moment awareness. I feel no attachment to my physical body because of my previous Chod practice, so my attachments do not lie in the physical plane. Instead, my fetters are mental - the "I" - the 7th ego-consciousness.
• If I were to get a serious disease as a result of karma, how would I respond? Would I give up my dream? What would I do? I would recede into stillness and cease all grasping. I would focus all my intention into a life catered to alleviate the suffering of all beings.
• If I were to become 80 years old, wrinkled and with a lack of youth energy, how would I respond? I would continue to do whatever I can - but to lead a lifestyle by example as Hui Xian the bodhisattva did. Examples and demonstrations are the most powerful ways to persuade people, because it allows people to emulate and follow.