The Chariot of Success

Last week's article was a little bit sombre, as I reflected on death and the difficulties of family life. Today, I'm back in my favourite mall, Nu Empire, Subang Jaya, to write about something more upbeat, since everywhere I go, I'm surrounded by the gaiety of the upcoming Chinese New Year celebrations. 

I've written many blog articles about the Chinese people and the significance of the CNY celebrations. Here's what I wrote in an article 10 years ago: 

"The ethos of the Chinese is growth and expansion. Gloom is anathema to the spirit of Chinese New Year. To move forward with a healthy sense of confidence and optimism is how one should lead one's life. Attaining prosperity and material success in this world is the happiness one seeks as a Chinese."

In another article entitled "The Chinese In Me", I wrote 19 years ago, I reflected on my attitude, as a Chinese, towards the pursuit of material success. Rereading that, I realised how little I have changed since then. Material success to me is still a 'bonus', which, if it comes my way, I will receive with gratitude. But I do not treat worldly pursuits with disdain; if anything, they are actually good opportunities for us to practice non-attachment.

'Success', if the word can be used at all, is always pursued on two fronts: material and spiritual. On the material front, you aim to accumulate as much wealth as possible; on the spiritual side, you attempt to minimise your attachment to these worldly gains.  You constantly subject yourself to the following stress test: if you lose everything that you have gained tomorrow, will you still be alright? 

One might ask: What's wrong with embracing and enjoying all the material delights of the world?  Well, there's nothing wrong with enjoying all the earthly pleasures that come our way, as long as they do not make us vulnerable. How so? Just think of how often we get addicted and dependent on the luxuries of life. Having enjoyed the convenience of a car, you cannot live without one anymore. Having slept with air-conditioning your entire life, you now twist and turn in your bed, whenever there's no electricity.

By all means, enjoy all the fruits of your success. But enjoy them with gratitude. What it means is that you appreciate the fact that they are all temporary in nature. Everything could be gone in a flash. Economic collapse, wars and other natural disasters could rob you of everything. 

How resilient are you in the face of financial ruin? Are you able to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and start all over again? Building resilience is an important part of success. Wealth can be a fragile house of cards if it does not stand on firm spiritual foundations. 

The coming Chinese Lunar New Year is the year of the horse. In the Upanishads, the metaphor of the horse and the charioteer is often used to explain how the senses, represented by the horses, bound to the chariot (body), can only be controlled through the intellect (charioteer) and the mind (reins), which then ensures the safety of the Self or Soul (the passenger). 

Let's all welcome the Year of the Horse, mindful of the fact that the pursuit of our senses will always have to be skillfully tempered by the mind and the intellect. Godspeed!

Reflections on Relations

In just a day, my aunt's condition took a turn for the worse and I found myself back in Johor Bahru to attend her funeral. All that is now over and I'm taking an early bus home after this. 

I had returned on my last trip via the ETS but I couldn't get a ticket this time. Weekend trains, I found out, are usually fully booked. However travelling on executive buses is not a bad alternative for there are single seats that are also quite comfortable, and some with very good on-board WiFi connection too. For this trip, I had taken a bus from TBS (Terminal Bersepadu Selatan) in Taman Tasik Selatan. The southward journey was a breeze; the 5 hours just flew by, with me catching up on podcasts, interspersed with short but much needed naps. 

These trips to JB have been educational for me. I met and talked to many people along the way, catching many glimpses into individuals from different walks of life. I had so many interesting conversations with Grab drivers, about their lives and families, which I should write down perhaps as material for future articles. 

My aunt's passing also made me reflect on the relationship between family members and relatives. As someone who has chosen to be permanently single, I've often wondered if I had simply reneged on my responsibility to perpetuate the family line. But I've also seen among my relations, how difficult marriages can be.

It was Tolstoy who famously wrote this first line in Anna Karenina: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way". It suggests that, the cause of unhappiness in families, is often due to specific and individual issues. My own observations suggest that unhappiness will inevitably arise in any family usually  due to personality differences. You can never resolve these differences fully; families that thrive have simply found sensible workarounds. 

All of us are unique creatures, each with a unique set of genes and personal experiences. Immediately our 'boundary conditions' are different. And these initial starting points determine the kind of behavior--good or bad--that gets expressed.  From what I see, people are mostly determined by their genes. It is difficult to overcome natural genetic tendencies. 

Families are often unhappy simply because everyone thinks and behaves differently. What is of priority to one member is taken lightly by another; living habits often differ and as a result, resentment builds up slowly over time, initially below the surface, but  soon manifest as hatred and arguments.

We tend to see other people's flaws but is completely blind when it comes to our own. Furthermore each family has a power structure, which inevitably give rise to feelings of jealousy and bitterness between members. If there are sick and elderly members in the family, there could be disagreements over who is supposed to or has not done enough to care for them.

Ram Dass famously said, "If you think you are enlightened, spend the weekend with your parents". When we are dealing with our family members,  our deepest flaws are often exposed. To recoil in anger is the instinctive response. 

My aunt died of multiple old age issues in her eighties alone in a hospital. She was a divorcee with two estranged sons--cousins whom I never had a chance to get to know, who could no longer be contacted. My aunt was lucky to have my elderly uncle who had patiently cared for her, sending her to an old folks' home when she needed daily assistance and had finally completed his familial obligation, arranging for a simple Christian funeral to send her off from this life.

Death makes us reflect on the meaning of our own lives. Ultimately, the things that matter are the relationships you have, with your parents, siblings, relatives and friends. A lifetime is finite. My aunt had lived and died and the only remnants of her existence are dry ashes and bones in an urn. It was brotherly love that had given her this last bit of dignity and her memory lives on, at least in this blog article of mine, now consigned to posterity.