Relativity

Hot and cold cannot coexist
They are relativity
Every moment is a comparison and judgment
~ Spiritual Master

Is what we see the truth?

Have we ever questioned ourselves if what we see is really the truth or are they illusion of our mind?

Think about the sun, does the sun really rise and set everyday? We thought we see the sunrise when the sun brightened up the sky in the morning and we thought we see the sunset when the sun disappeared behind the horizon. The fact is that the sun is always there regardless of time and day. But our mind can distort these simple truths and we start to live in our illusion.

Our world is filled with illusion and we love it this way. This is our comfort zone. If we travel out of earth to space, we can see clearly that sunrise and sunset does not exist. There is no gravity and thus things do not fall from high to low latitude. There is no left and right, no center and back, only vast emptiness.

There is no table but pieces of wood assembled together. There is no house but pieces of bricks and cement assembled together.

What illusion do we see today?

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." ~ Albert Einstein

Me, My, Mine

Recently, I came across a young child who was diagnosed with leukemia (a cancer of the bone marrow in which abnormal types and amounts of cells are made). The medical team tries to find a matching bone marrow to conduct a bone marrow transplant and finally found one matching bone marrow donor.

When contacted, the donor is more than happy to save a life and his wife is supportive of his decision to donate his own bone marrow. He went through a series of health check and tests. The final consultation with the doctor was quite positive.

In asia culture, it is considered filial to seek parent’s blessing and approval before donating any part of the body. When doing so, he encountered huge disapproval from his parents. Reason being the patient is unrelated and is not necessary to take the risk and cause harm to own health.

It is so sad but I think to certain extent, we are all selfish in certain ways, especially when it comes to things that we deem to belong to us. My son, my bag, my computer. It is ok for someone’s PC to crash but not mine. It is ok for someone to suffer but not me and my family. We just don’t feel the same pain we will feel if these things or events happen to others versus “me”.

It is because of our selfish thoughts that we tend to forget that we are all interdependent in this world. The bread that we eat came about from the effort of many other people. From the people who sell them, to the people who bake them, to the people who sell the flour, eggs, even to the people who plant wheat and rear chicken. How many people that we do not known of are involved in the process?

We cannot live alone in this world, we are interdependent of each other. Only when we discard our selfishness and learn to be grateful to each other, this world will be a better world.

PS: To find out more about donating bone marrow to save lives, please visit

http://www.marrow.org/

http://www.bmdp.org/

A Peep at the Monster

I always have problem with my anger. It always seeps up onto me undetected, took control over me and turns me into a monster. It’s just uncontrollable. So many times, I tell myself not to say those harsh words, throw things around… my god! I’m acting like a complete freaking spoiled child! Totally disgusting, totally uncontrollable. It is so unlike me at times of serene.

I am determined to wipe out this monster in me. I hated it when it took control of me. I even hated myself at times of anger. Overtime however, I discovered that the more I hated it, the more uncontrollable it becomes. Anger can never be able to dissolve anger. I have since learn to accept myself, accept my monster and learn how to deal with him with more understanding.

For the past few times, I took the courage to come face to face with my monster and I ask him who he is. What is anger? Where do you come from? I realized that I have never really known him because I have been rejecting him all along. Whenever he is there, I try to run away from myself, hated myself and refused to look at him. I’m nervous to come face to face with him after such a long time.

But as I begin to see him, I begin to understand him bit by bit. The more I think about a certain event that I dislike, the more powerful he grows. Then he begins to take over me, I am powerless because I already gave him all the power I got. You know at times of anger, we always feel justify to be angry. That’s how we gave him the power and authority to be there.

I think ok, now that I know him, maybe we can live in harmony. Yesterday, however, I saw something that I have never noticed before and I started laughing at myself. There is no monster at all in the first place! My mind is playing a trick on me. This anger that we perceived does not exist anywhere!

It is not a monster, nothing solid, nothing permanent. We think of something that we don’t like and we start to feel uncomfortable in our body, we start to breathe more heavily and this uncomfortable body feeling we call it ‘anger’. The monster we perceived is just in our mind.

Well, I think my monster will still visits me now and then but I think I will not identify with him anymore like in the past.