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.

Walking Each Other Home

It's that time of the year again--the eve of a new one. I left the office early today to do some banking in USJ. Then I decided to linger at the Starbucks nearby to finish off some work. After that, I went for an early vegetarian dinner and set off home.

Now I'm back in the sanctuary of my room to reflect on a year that just passed. It felt like I had worked the entire year without taking a break--which, in essence is quite true. I certainly did not take a holiday and I did not have any boondoggle trips out of the country. As a matter of fact, I did not travel out of the country at all for the entire year.

Overseas travel has become such a commonplace affair these days; everyone talks about their foreign holidays, as if it is another trip to the neighbourhood store. The usual destinations are of course Korea, Thailand and China. Since I did not travel anywhere, let me recall what has been significant to me for the past the year.

These days, I do not yearn for new experiences anymore. What I seek to achieve is to internalize good practices that I've been meaning to put in place. Perhaps the most significant thing for me is to reestablish a blogging habit--at least once a week. This I've been pretty successful in maintaining. Monday is both my vegetarian and blogging day now.

For the past years, I've also treated my work as a kind of 'workout'. It is like going for a walk everyday. Work is simply exercise for the mind. It keeps me mentally sharp. Work need not be such a turn-off if we know how to portion it and not to place too much importance to its outcome. You give your best to each task and move on to the one. The important thing is to continue learning and sharpening one's saw.

On the audiobook front, I think I sat through more hours of lectures than the average undergraduate. 2018 has been a year of history for me--I wanted to give myself a firm foundation on European history. The good thing about knowing history well is that it helps you to put so many other things into perspective. Everything you read suddenly becomes so much clearer.

I've also been meditating on a daily basis. I consider meditation an act of mental hygiene. As physical exercise is to the fitness of the human body, so is the practice meditation to the mind. Work, exercise and meditation are the triple medication I take regularly to maintain my physical and mental health.

As for my relationship with others, I do not aim for grandiose gestures. I only help people I'm close to and within my small sphere of influence. And over the years, these relationships have been both educational and rewarding. It is heartening to see people grow and change for the better.

For the country, 2018 has been a momentous year. A lot of people has expressed disappointment over the performance of the new government. But I beg to differ: I think we have over-achieved. Being an observer of the politics in this country ever since my school days, I know the solution to many of our problems cannot come overnight. Good things take time. But we humans are not known for our patience and perhaps understandably so, for our lifetimes are short.

And with the passing of each year, we become more conscious of our own mortality. Life is fragile. The impact we make in this world, for most of us, is hardly significant. But every one of us is significant in our own ways, in our small spheres of influence: a father, a mother, a friend or simply a helping hand.

Everywhere on social media, you see people's desperate need for attention and acceptance. We are all doing the best we can in the only ways we know. Everyone's path is different and each of us has, outward appearances notwithstanding, our secrets hangups and neuroses.

My wish for the coming year is that we see each other as fellow human beings who are all seeking to understand ourselves better. Let us all be kind to each other, for as Ram Dass so eloquently put it: We are all walking each other home. Happy New Year.

Lunar Rhythms of the Cosmic Fugue

I was drinking last night with some old friends at a pub in Damansara Jaya. We've always had an affection for that area because we all used to work there. I also lived there a many years as a student and when I was working in KL. The newly rebuilt Atria Mall is a grand remake of the previous one which used to house a Parkson Supermarket and some small boutique stalls.

As we all grow older we see things in a different perspective. Once we were all young, ambitious and eager for adventure. Now we've all mellowed and are appreciative of a peaceful and stable life. We tend to have less illusions.

Today is Chinese New Year's eve. The usual barrage of fireworks and firecrackers is starting to fill the night air. I can see gratitude in the faces of my old friends last night--mostly for being reasonably healthy and still able to catch up with old friends on festive occasions. We talk about some of our less fortunate acquaintances who had succumbed to cancer, stroke, heart attack or accidents. We all wake up in the morning with a great sense of gratitude.

The more philosophical among us would come to see that life is transient. We are but momentary wavelets rising and falling on the surface of a restless ocean of which the universe is. The universe comes alive through us, to experience itself--like awakening from a dream--only to fall back into the void of sleep before rising again in another form. Each life is a momentary flowering of consciousness. A spark of the divine fire.

On Chinese New Year, we cherish the ties of friendship and kinship and at least once a year, we renew these bonds and reaffirm each other of our faith keeping the divine spark within ourselves alive. Our flames get rekindled slightly, recharged by the warmth of each other's glow.

And that's how we carry on: dwindling fires, needing that occasional boost of air to reignite ourselves. It is the cycle of time that makes us realize life's faith and futility. A new generation would rise up and dares to dream bigger than us. They too shall soar and reach for their visionary peaks. Some shall grasp them momentarily and bask in their splendour. It is the birthright of every generation to conquer, as is the deathright of every waning soul to philosophize.

And on the cusp of another lunar new year, we wish each other well for our journey ahead: some waxing and some waning, like the interminable moon, like the eternal dance of existence itself, each but a single tenuous strand of notes within that larger tapestry of the cosmic fugue.

Supernova of the Soul

During the day, drowned in the incessant flow of sensory input we tend to forget ourselves, blocking the inner light of our soul which shines through the intellectual lens of the mind. But in the wee hours of the morning, like now, the mind is especially clear. Thoughts spring up from the depths of the mind unimpeded, untainted in the glory of their inherent wisdom.

I've been awakened early by a stubborn mosquito which had been buzzing around my head, rudely dragging me out of my peaceful slumber. Unable to sleep again, and being a bit too early for me to start the day, I had wandered back to my grossly neglected blog. And in the sacred silence of early dawn, thoughts began the flow.

How remarkable is this creative wellspring that lives within us! How unceasingly resourceful it is! I've always believed that if we are capable of allowing our minds to be quiet, creative thoughts will naturally arise. It is the inherent tendency of nature to be creative and we are but its instruments of expression.

As plants grow from the their nourishing soil, bearing their beautiful bounty of fruits and flowers, so does the human mind taps into the silent womb of creativity, bringing forth all the possibilities of life. To live is to be a true and authentic vessel of this creative force. It is this vital force, this sacred flame that drives us and make us who we are.

How true we are to the commands of this inner voice depends on our willingness to listen. The world draws us out into its many distractions; we end up having our energies dissipated, serving the many false gods of the material world.

Even the simple act of procreation is but nature's gross form of creativity. Form materializes, form dissolves. And this eternal dance of the universe continues with its myriad expressions. Nature cannot help herself but to create and in the process destroys existing forms so that newer ones emerge.

Every atom in our body are forged in the cauldron of stars. Stars explode and die, spilling its rich ingredients into the interstellar space for suns and planets and ultimately biological life to emerge.

We are all stars awaiting our supernovae. What kind of creative ingredients do we cook within our soul so that our inevitable extinction become the source greater possibilities? We just need to listen. And in that listening, we hear the stirrings of a supernova.

A Decade Ago

What a pleasure it is to have finally found the time and space to post this blog entry! How swiftly time passes--without me realizing it, this blog is already 10 years old!  What has happened in my life this past decade? This is probably a good opportunity for me to do some reflection.

I started this blog when blogging was just becoming the latest craze on the Internet. In 2003, the American invasion of Iraq had just begun; everyone in cyberspace was debating about the justness of the war. Everyone was "warblogging".

In Malaysia then, Jeff Ooi and Oon Yeoh were the first serious socio-political bloggers. Jeff Ooi was against the war and Oon Yeoh was on the side of the Americans. Both their blogs had a huge following.

Inspired by the these bloggers, I too started writing, and my first blog entry was posted on the 19th of March 2003. It consisted of only two cryptic lines:

Writing this from my office in Jakarta.
Love the city. Love the isolation.

I was warming up :-)  And yes, I was living in Jakarta then--perhaps the happiest period in my life.  Unlike now, I had time on my hands. Time, which I thought could be put to good use by blogging.

Initially, my blog entries, like everyone else's, were mainly comments on currrent events. Ocassionally, I would be inspired to post some philosophical musings like this entry that was posted on April 16, 2003: A Meditation on Time.  Entries like this were later to become my specialty, mainly because I found that I could write on such topics with reasonable ease. And the writing process itself was curiously therapeutic to me.

Of course, I had a lot to write about my life in Indonesia then: my observations about Indonesian life, especially the delights of Jakarta. I was and still is extremely fond of Indonesia and Indonesians. I found that I could blend in very easily with the locals and I was thoroughly entralled by the history and culture of the country. There was so much to discover and learn. There was so much to savour. Everyday was an adventure. I wrote so many entries like this, this and this, attempting to understand my love for the city and the country. It was a love affair that lingered until today.

I blogged from the office and on weekends, at the cybercafe. I was staying long-term at budget hotel then. Those were the days when Internet access in hotels was still considered a  bit of a luxury and Wi-Fi technology was just being introduced to the market. Internet access was difficult and slow. But for some reason, that was the time I was blogging most prolifically.

My years in Jakarta were like an exile for me. It was an exile from the corporate world of Singapore and Malaysia, from the ceasely barrage of e-mails and con-calls--the lifeblood of multinationals. I wanted some time to reflect, some peace and quiet to look back on my life.  And after that period of exile, I decided to return to Malaysia, to start a different chapter in my life. This new chapter spanned a decade but that is another story for another blog post.

Returning to the Oasis

To write again in this blog is like going home again after a long absence. I can't believe this is my first entry for 2012! Where have I been all these time?

I started blogging, I believe, in 2003, which makes this blog almost ten years old. I was enjoying my time in Jakarta then: I remember blogging from an Internet cafe in Sarinah, disciplining myself to an hour of blogging everyday (They charged 5000 rupiah an hour).

Those were certainly great times. Life in Jakarta was filled with discovery and possibilities. I wrote, I read, I explored and I made a lot of friends. I was freer than a bird.

And how I'd read: I had a book with me all the time and any spot that would allow me to sit quietly and undisturbed would be turned into a reading nook: on trains chugging my way across the Parahyangan mountains, in rustic Sundanese restaurants drowned in their hypnotic strains of gamelan music, at street corners after hearty meals of bubur ayam, serenaded by the ever-present buskers (pengamins), in my happy hotel room--half-watching BBC News on TV--after another satisfying day of wandering all over Jakarta.

Not only did I blog, I also wrote longhand in my journal: one page a day for 2 years, maintaining a habit I had started when I was working in Singapore. I had a maxim then: If something is not written down, it did not happen. One writes to live. Only through writing, life's events are thoroughly absorbed and assimilated into one's soul.

I have been doing a different type of writing these past years in KL: programming. Writing computer code is in many ways, a simpler task than writing prose. The vocabulary of programming is much smaller: everything is precise, deterministic and logical.

Prose writing, in comparison is a struggle--there's always that dreaded blank page, with the ever-blinking cursor mocking you from the computer screen, and there you'd sit alone searching, waiting for that elusive word or turn of phrase that would capture in perfection that thought you have in mind.

After years of wandering in the desert of computer code, now, or at least tonight, I stumble onto my old familiar oasis of a blog--the sweetness of its waters feels like balm on my soul.

Careless Thoughts

Why do I suddenly feel like blogging today? It has been months since my last entry.

Blogging used to my way of relaxing after a hard day's work. It allows me to organize my thoughts and let my fingers do the talking.

Maybe it's because the HP Netbook I'm using now is the perfect tool for blogging. The keyboard is excellent; the size of the screen just right to accomodate one blog entry. It feels so natural to start blogging whenever I open up this Netbook.

Work occupies most of my waking hours. My sleeping hours these days have also been drastically reduced. More work and less sleep is no good for me. I'm feeling very exhausted.

I listen to audiobooks more than I read these days. I go to bed with my iPod. I listen while driving. I am actually more attached to my iPod than to my cellular phone. Which is why it is logical for me to upgrade my iPod to an iPhone. Two devices finally merged into one. But I'll have to wait for the price to be more reasonable first. No hurry.

I am not a gadget freak. I outgrew that years ago, while I was working in Singapore. My room then was cluttered with devices and gadgets and I decided then that enough was enough. These days I try to keep my life simple. My secret goal is to live without a car one day. That will be a great achievement.

A carefree, car-less life. I think it is quite achievable.

My Path

Evgeny Onegin: Can't you see where this leads? A declaration, a kiss, a wedding, family, obligation, boredom, adultery.

- from the 1999 movie Onegin, directed by Martha Fiennes

I'm single and intend to remain so for the foreseable future. Some may think that I'm a bit cynical in my attitude towards love and marriage. Some even say, I'm selfish.

Let others think what they like. I've always believed that we all have an obbligation to find our own path towards Truth and Understanding. For some, it is the path of marriage (and possibly divorce). That is the course that they have to attend to graduate from the School of Life. For some, it is the path of monkhood.

I'm neither a householder nor a monk. I'm just a fellow explorer, trying to learn and understand as much as I can about life and our place in the larger scheme of things. That to me, is the whole purpose of existence. The rest are just coursework and exercises that you choose, based on their suitability to your temperament and nature, to help you progress towards this goal.

The path of marriage is a good path. Because it has a challenging mix of pain and pleasure. And there are useful lessons to be learnt from both types of experiences. At the end of the journey, your soul advances.

To become a monk is to become a spiritual athlete. You are a professional. You live in a controlled lab environment where special experiments and trainings are performed to slowly perfect the mind and soul.

I'm not a worldly person. The everyday cares of marriage and family bores me. I'm also not fond of organized religions. Hence I'm not eager to become a spiritual athlete in any of the traditional orders.

I've chosen a path, which is kind of like a kind of spiritual humanism. I'm a student of all the spiritual traditions in the world. I believe in tackling issues the rational and scientific way, with a liberal application of Occam's Razor.

Nothing delights me more than understanding. I seek to understand. Understanding gives me a high. Life is but a quest for greater understanding. To read and to converse with people is to seek understanding. The more I understand, the more compassion and love I feel for the world around me.

I enjoy life because the pleasures that are crave for are easily attainable. I don't need a lot of money to enjoy life. Books, art, knowledge and Nature itself--these are my playthings and objects of my lust.

A lifetime is finite. The challenge is to make every moment and every experience in life count. Every moment and every word that I type brings me insight and clarity.

And I shall end this blog entry, with the satisfaction of knowing that I'm a better person than who I was when typed the first line:

"I'm single and I intend to remain so for the foreseable future..."