Live and Let Love

Thinking back, there have been times in my life when things were so difficult that I did not know how I would get out of the situation. There did not seem to be any way out. 

It was in those difficult times that you get to know yourself. You ask yourself, what is the worst that could happen? Why did it feel so intractable? Was it shame, loss of a loved one, physical danger or financial ruin that made it so difficult?  

You see, everything that I mentioned before is painful simply because of attachment. There's attachment to pride, to someone you love, or to your own physical and financial well-being.  If you let go of them, all pain dissolves away. 

The worst that could happen is that you die. Our attachment to our own existence in this mortal frame is what we are ultimately concerned about. Let's say that you lose everything that you own, your money in the bank and the job that you have now. Everyone you know and love is gone from your life. Would you still have the strength to go on living?

If you say yes, or that you'll have to, for you have no choice, then the rest is simply a willingness to endure pain consciously--the pain of picking up the pieces and starting over again. It takes strength, courage and resilience--qualities that are difficult to summon in times of despair.

Even when you have not encountered such a dire situation before, it's a good thought experiment that one could perform, for it reduces life to its simplest objective: to survive. What does it take for one simply to survive?

There you will come face to face with your karma. You are born because you still have an attachment to life. It's the simplest of attachments: you want to be alive. To survive involves overcoming a lot of everyday obstacles--seeking food, shelter and companionship. It involves a lot of painful work. That is what working out your karma means. 

And if you have the wisdom to take this pain consciously, you do not generate fresh karma. Work and relationships could be difficult things to tackle. If you love someone and think that your possessive love is something very noble, you are simply generating fresh karma with a lot of potential pain.

Love for love's sake. There's pain and pleasure in the act of love. Take them both. There's no future goal when you love someone. It is not to have kids and a beautiful home. That's a by product of love which you could express gratitude for, if they do materialize. The act of love itself is selfless and goalless.

To live is to love. Love is an energy that emanates from your being. Just spread it around like the selfless sunlight that nourishes the flora, like the cool breeze that brings relief during a hot afternoon, like the gentle ocean waves that lap on the shore. 

Think again of that difficult situation that you have. What attachment is it that's holding you back and making things so difficult? Let go and fall back into your natural state of love. Then you'll know that love and life are inseparable.

Pixels of Thoughts

It has been a happy weekend for me because Liverpool FC won the EUFA Champions League Cup again--for the sixth time. That made up for the heartache of just missing out on the Premier League title by 1 point to Manchester City. Also the pain of last year's Champion League's final has finally been healed by this great victory against Tottenham Hotspurs.

I've been supporting Liverpool for ages--since the days when Bob Paisley was the manager. There have been many managers and new players since then; so many ups and downs. By sticking with the team you support through thick and thin, you earn your right to enjoy their victories simply by partaking in the pain of the defeats. Being a football supporter is great training in karma (the subject of my previous week's post).

Every blog post starts with a single thought. Students of the Buddhist text, the Abhidhamma will know that thoughts, at their most fundamental level, are discrete. One thought sparks off another thought and another thought--a Markov Chain of events, propelled by its karmic force.

In our everyday life, we experience physical activities such as walking, sitting and sleeping and also go through a whole gamut of human emotions such as joy, anger, fear, jealousy, love and hate. This is where we operate in our normal mode of existence. Our moral conscience, ethics and education guide us on how we should react, respond and act on these experiences. Religion, at a superficial level provides principles and guidelines on how we should or should not behave at this level of existence.

However these are but experiences at a macroscopic level. The everyday drama that runs in our mental screens, on closer inspection are made up of small pixels, like your TV or computer screen.

A sensory input, say the sight of an expensive watch on the display window of a mall, can trigger an impulse to possess it, which result in you perhaps parting with a huge chunk of your salary to purchase it, which in turn results in pride of its possession, an inflation of your ego, an awareness of your rising social status, a need to possess even more material accessories that fall in line with that status and perhaps leading you to suffer financial difficulties, which trigger you to consider better-paying jobs elsewhere and so on.

Each one of these experiences are actually made up of even smaller pixels. Just think, why should the sensory input of the image of a watch itself would trigger a need to possess it?

This is due to the condition of your mind. The watch is not simply an image of an object. The impingement of its light on your retina, triggers a series of mental stimuli and responses that are automatic, apparently beyond your control. Our consciousness works at a very coarse-grained level. We don't see these individual pixels that make up the total mental picture. That is the main cause of our downfall.

As Victor E. Frankl famously wrote:

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

The ability to see the space between stimulus and response, like seeing images as consisting of pixels on the LCD screen requires a higher resolution in our consciousness. How easily do you get angry? That is a good test of your mind's resolution. Are you able to see the arising of anger within you before you respond?

Increasing the resolution of the mind requires training. That training is called mindfulness. Mindfulness is a skill that can be cultivated. Just as the piano player can through practice increase the flexibility and precision of his fingers to produce the subtle tonal variations, so can we cultivate the ability to see our experiences clearer, at better resolution, so that every pixel of experience is seen as it is. By seeing out thoughts at the pixel level, we choose more wisely. And of course, wise action leads to better outcomes in our lives.

Karmic Lessons

A thought arises in the mind and subsides, like a ripple on the surface of the pond.

Another thought arises. More ripples.

The amplitude of some ripples are so huge that they manifest themselves as action or speech. Mental ripples become physical "ripples", producing consequences in the world outside.

No thought is ever lost. Its energy is merely transformed, stored or transmitted into another medium. The energy of several thoughts could be merged into a larger throught-front, creating a thought-tsunami, capable of sweeping away every obstacle along its way.

An obsessive man channels all his energy into a few focussed stream of thoughts. An obsessive man is often "successful", because all his actions are focussed and channelled towards the object of his desire.

All self-improvement books teach you techniques to be focussed. When you are focussed, you do not waste energy on things that do not contribute towards your goals; everything you do is a "right action" that leads you closer to your destination. Every move you make is either an advancement, or a correction from a deviation.

Anything that you desire in your life comes with a price. Why? Because it requires you to control the world around you. You need to act in specific ways to produce specific effects, specific results, which you yourself define as "desirable". Remember, this is your definition of "desirable", and hence whatever pain or pleasure, goes directly into your account.

Like what people say: you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. An egg does not transform naturally into an omelette like how a pupa morphs into a butterfly. An omelette is an artificial construction, produced by the human desire to satisfy its palate. It requires "force" for it to happen.

The force that you apply on the world to create your vision of an ideal life requires you to expend a lot of energy. It requires you to go against the current sometimes; it requires you to sacrifice time, to kick asses and to take blows. You might not mind doing all this, but that's the price you'll have to pay.

Your so-called ideal life also requires constant maintenance, because everything in the world is subject to decay. What is ideal now never remains ideal indefinitely. Furthermore, what is ideal for you might not be ideal for the people around you--your spouse, your children, your colleagues and friends. Lots and lots of energy is required to maintain it. That's another price you'll have to pay.

Ask yourself, why do you want these things? Where do these desires come from? What deeper part of the soul does it satisfy? Are you going to spend your entire life's energy attaining and maintaining this "ideal" state?

If you have decided that what you desire is worth it, then by all means go ahead. Take the pain and the pleasure that comes with it. Take it on the chin.

What's important is that you know what you are paying for and you yourself consciously take responsibility for your actions. Only then is the loop closed; only then do you learn your karmic lessons.

The Chinese in Me

It's that noisy time of the year again: Chinese Lunar New Year. I don't usually care much about such festivities but this year's celebration is a much welcome break from a hectic year of work. Last year's CNY holidays was a very productive time for me, as I managed to take the opportunity to rush off a lot of outstanding work.

There's no need for me to do the same this year. But of course, out of (bad) habit, I'll still do my usual routine of making sure that every piece of software is running as it should, batch processes are executed on schedule and no extraordinary events are detected--basically making sure that "God's in his Heaven...all's right with the world!".

The good thing about public holidays is that, other people are not working; so I can be sure that I won't be troubled by urgent phonecalls and e-mails. This allows me to do my "real work" in peace.

Everytime such yearly festivals approaches, people lament how fast time flies. Of course, time flies. But time is also our ally. Our purpose in life is to make sure that time does not fly aimlessly. If it seems to fly fast, and as long as it is flying in the right direction, it also means our hardwork is bearing fruits rapidly too!

The CNY celebrations is all about reaffirming good thoughts. There's much that we can learn from the Chinese ethos. It is a culture of positive-mindedness, prudence, hardwork and success. The Chinese are always forward-looking. During CNY, we wish each other great wealth, prosperity and good fortune.

Ah, but you also see the Ugly Chinese: the kiasuism, the greed, the over-eagerness to hit it big ("the Chinese are incorrigible gamblers -- Lee Kuan Yew") and the culture of crass materialism.

When anything--even good values--is pursued to the extreme, you'll see ugliness. That is why most of the victims of Ah Longs (loan sharks) are Chinese. Of course, the loan sharks themselves are also Chinese.

Am I then the typical hardworking Chinese, driven by dreams of social and material success?

How I wish I am!

A person exercising in the gym is not "hardworking". He's sweating and puffing because he wants to shed off extra fat and also to keep himself fit. Being physically fit is a great feeling.

That is what drives me to work hard: The desire to be mentally and spiritually fit. The world is my moral gymnasium (to use Vivekananda's words). That is the true reward of work. The rest is just bonus.

Happy Chinese New Year! Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Sea of Samskaras

Samkaras is a Sanskrit word, usually translated as "past impressions", commonly found in Yoga and Hindu texts. Of course, "past impressions" or samkaras for these spiritual practices include all tendencies and experiences generated from the sum total of one's past lives.

OK, before I dwell deeper into this subject, I'm aware of the fact that some people do not believe in reincarnation and any talk about past lives smells like superstition. Well, it doesn't really matter: we don't have to believe in reincarnation or past lives to discuss about samskaras. Samskaras to me is a natural phenomenon which obeys natural physical laws.

In an earlier blog entry, I mentioned that the same external experience will not be perceived in the same way by different individuals. We interpret sensory input based on past experience (which need not necessarily have to be from a previous life) and the natural tendencies of the mind--which are shaped partly by nature (genetics) and partly by nurture (culture, upbringing, education and life experiences).

Even when a baby is born, he or she, already has certain inherent mental characteristics. A baby has not much experience and education yet, but still each newborn child behaves quite differently from one another. Why is that so? Genes? To an extent, yes.

Even when the foetus is in the amniotic sac, it already senses the world--the heartbeat of the mother, sounds and vibration from the external world. A continuous pattern of action and reaction has already been set off, which does not cease until he or she dies.

Everytime an external stimulus is fed into our minds, we react in a certain specific way. Because our starting conditions--the "boundary conditions"--are different, each one of us has a unique sequence of action and reaction, beginning from the very moment that we came alive in our mother's womb until now. Reactions can come in a passive (thoughts and emotions) or active form (spoken words or actions).

Our samskaras are coded in our hardware (genes), firmware (subconscious mind) and operating system/application (culture and education). How we react to external events continuously shapes and reshapes our samskaras.

Whenever there's no external stimuli, or whenever you attempt to limit the range of external stimuli (like in meditation), you'll be able to perceive your samskaras. Why do certain thoughts seem arise spontaneously? Why do your thoughts have a tendency to veer towards certain directions? If you observe carefully, samskaras are behind your entire personality.

Like it or not, the "background noise" of samskaras is always there. There will always be this tendency in the mind to react in its own peculiar way to every situation in life. And this is due to the influence of samskaras. If that is so, how do we deal with it?

If you have an awareness of your samskaras, then you'll be able to redirect your focus and energy to or away from certain mental impulses. The control of one's breath is the starting point of this ability. The breath is the lever of the mind. That is why most spiritual traditions have some form of breathing exercise or meditation.

Samskaras can be disolved in the light of understanding. The many virtues that religion preaches--love, compassion, forgiveness--have great transmutation powers over one's samskaras. These virtuous actions redistributes energy in the most harmonious way and irons out all kinks. When we act with understanding, love and compassion, the pattern of action and reaction--one's karma--are immediately dissolved. No fresh karma is generated, resulting in the store of samskaras being reduced.

When we have mastered what Buddhists call "Right Action", every action of ours will be like the movement of a fish in water. We swim ever so gracefully and efficiently through life, which is this endless Sea of Samskaras.

The Soul of a Traveller

Tunner (Campbell Scott): We're probably the first tourists they've had since the war.

Kit Moresby (Debra Winger): Tunner, we're not tourists. We're travellers.

Tunner: Oh. What's the difference?

Port Moresby (John Malkovich): A tourist is someone who thinks about going home the moment they arrive, Tunner.

Kit Moresby: Whereas a traveller might not come back at all...

- The Sheltering Sky, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

We are all travellers, because there's no turning back in life. You only pass this way once. Every experience in life, no matter how small, changes you in subtle ways. If you are conscious of each momentary change, then you'll learn to distill the lesson behind every experience, behind every sight and sound.

We all experience life in different ways: Each one of us could be looking at the same painting, but our impressions will be very different. There's no experience that's common to all.

We could all be watching the same soccer match and supporting the same team, but the effect of the experience--be it the ecstasy of victory or the humiliation of defeat--produces different karmic consequences, different lessons, to each one of us.

If you have the mentalilty of a tourist, you'd treat each sight and sound like a photographic snapshot to be permanently stored in the storehouse of your memory, to be recalled and savoured again as and when you choose to.

But if you are a traveller, each experience is like a death and a rebirth. You are no longer a collector of memories; you are a soul in continuous transformation.

Your life at any moment in time is the sum total of all your past experiences. At any moment in time, you are a new person, reborn from the previous moment--the fulfilment of your past karma.

Sometimes, we mistakenly think that we are tourists: we meet a friend, go to a movie, enjoy a good meal and then go back to our regular lives. We will only bother to pause and reflect when we encounter an accident or something unexpected. And we call that a "life-changing" experience.

If we'd care to observe, every experience in life is a life-changing experience simply because we can never go back to the previous moment anymore. You are not the person you were when you first started reading this blog entry. If you have the soul of a traveller, you'll understand what I mean.