Thursday, September 10, 2009

090909

090909 was a auspicious day, a lot of couples choose to tie their knot on that day. Wish them have a happy marriage and everlasting relationship.

On the other hand, there was an incident happen on that same day that stirred my mind...
I went out with my sister in law to buy foods for our dinner. When we on the way walked to the supermarket, I saw an elderly man walked in a very slow pace with an umbrella and a walking stick. I felt sympathy for him and I wondered did he need some help. I wondered...

After we finished buying the foods, we crossed over the road because we wanted to buy some snack foods for our supper. On the way walked to our car, we saw the elderly man again standing at the road side. It was so dangerous. First thing came across into our mind was- Did he need our help to cross the road? ( It was funny that when we saw a elderly person, the first things come across to over mind always is -- they need help to cross over the road.)

We approached the man and asked him, does he need help to cross over the road. He said he was trying to stop a taxi to send him home but there was no taxi willing to send him home. So, we decided to send him home. I was waiting with him at the roadside while my sister went to take the car.

He told me he had to buy his dinner himself because his son went for dating. The son will come home only by 10pm and mostly will not buy foods for him. By the time, he will be very hungry and ended up didn't eat anything. He said he now 80 years old plus and the son 50 years old plus. He has no energy to "fight" with the son. The wife had passed away and left him with the son. He wished the wife could passed away after Chinese new year, but she left him earlier. Currently no people really take care of him.

I was so sympathize and empathize him. He need someone to be a listener and share his story. Just a short while, he told me a lot of things about his family. I helped him to get into the car and he said usually people scolded him for being slow. He took more effort in walking compare to us. Our one step took him 10-15 steps. So, we can imagine how slow he walk and how long he take to reach a place.

On the way to his house, he continued to tell us about him... until he reached the house.

One day, i will grow old like him... I will be alone... I will have a lot of sickness... I cannot prevent all this happen to me in the future.

There is " The Code of Disciplines for the Layman", name as " Sigalovada sutta" is the Buddha teaching which emphasized social relations among various member of a society. There are 6 quarters; the parents as the East, teachers as the South, wife and husband as the West, friends and associates as the North, servant and employees as the Nadir, ascetics and brahmins as the Zenith. We can learn from the " Sigalovada sutta" how to play our roles as a parents, children, spouses and other. I will list down 3 roles as parents, children and spouses.

Parents and Child ( East)
A) in 5 ways, householder's son, a child should minister to his parents as the East:
  1. being supported i shall support them,
  2. i shall do their duties,
  3. i shall keep the family lineage,
  4. i shall act in such a way as to be worthy if my inheritance,
  5. furthermore, i shall offer alms in honour of my departed relatives.
B) in 5 ways, householder's son, the parents who are thus should ministered to by their children as the East show their compassion:
  1. they dissuade them from evil,
  2. they persuade them to do good,
  3. they teach them an art,
  4. they would give them in marriage to a suitable partners
  5. at the proper time, they would hand over to them their inheritance.
Wife and Husband ( West)
A) in 5 ways, householder's son, should a wife as the West be ministered by a Husband:
  1. by courtesy
  2. by not despising her
  3. by faithfulness
  4. by handing over authority to her
  5. by providing her with ornaments
B) the wife who is thus ministered by her husband as the west shows her compassion to her husband in 5 ways:
  1. she performs her duties in perfect order
  2. she is hospitable to visitors
  3. she is faithful
  4. she protects what he brings
  5. she is industrious and not lazy in discharging her duties
There are a lot to learn to be a parents , children and husband/ wife. If we take good care of our parents, our children will take good care of us. There is a connection and continuation.

Finally, i wish the elderly man has a happy life. May he be well and healthy. Hope there are people have the compassion to help people especially the elderly one. Don't forget that, we will grow old one day, we need families and people to take care of us in the future. So, we must have the initiative to help people in the first place. The connection will start and continuation will follow.


" As a mother protects her only son with her life,

we too can cultivate a boundless love for all beings.

eventually our love will pervade the whole world."



how to save money be motivated by learning the basic

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

"IF..., Then..."

Today, I had a chance to meet my " brother" that we had lost contact for 5 years. The amazing part was i found him by using the " face book".

We hardly contact with each other during this 5 years. Both of us were busy. ( Actually, when i start to recall back the 5 years. I don't think i was very busy. Most of the time i was lazy, day dreaming, doing something else that i hardly can remember.)

A lot of things between us are change. He gain weight and looks " bigger size" than last time. Surprisingly, he can talk more than me compare to him last time. Usually, I was the active part (talkative) and he was the passive one (quiet). Now, i have " beaten" by him. He become more knowledgeable and funny. 5 years at oversea can really "brush" him up.

We are lucky that we still have the chance to meet up after 5 years. Fortunately, we never have any "fight" and "war" last time. If we had big quarrel last time, and we didn't manage to meet up, i will no have chance to say sorry to him and ask for forgiveness. I will always feel "regret".

I still remember i had a " girlfriend" during my secondary school. There was a quarrel happen and we didn't talk since then. I couldn't recall back what had gone through between us. We were very close until we called each other " mother and daughter". We cried and laughed together. However, I lost the memory that " how we started fighting and became worse?". I blamed myself for forgetting her. I angry myself why I didn't appreciate her and didn't ask her for forgiveness. Unfortunately, I can't even find her using "face book". I always regret for being such childish last time. If we managed to settle the problem last time, we will meet up someday for gathering. Now, just left the "memory"...

I realized there is no " if ......, then everything will be different" . If there is "if", something will change but we will not satisfy with the result. Human being always not content with the choice they make. So, if we have done something wrong, we must faster "apologize" to the person. Please don't wait, if not we will end up regretting. Human make mistake is very common and normal. Is nothing to be shame to say " sorry" except you want to be sorry for your remaining life.

There were a mother and son, they always quarrel. Hardly they can sit down and talk. Anything also can ended up as a big fight. One day, they started to fight again because of the son always went out and came home late. The mother scolded him and cursed her son," stupid son! always against me, later you will involve in an accident! Don't come home anymore if you don't listen to me!". She always scolded the bad words to the son but she didn't expect the "curse" became real. The son died in an accident after the quarreled. His motor was hit by a car. She felt so sorry and didn't expected her "curse" will come true. She didn't want her son to die, she scolded him because she too angry. She thought the son will listen to her if she scolded him. But it didn't turn out that way. The son became more rebellious. Ended up the son really never come home. She so regret she had said the bad words, " if she knew the accident will happen, she will not fight with him and scolded him" . But there is no "if" for her.

We always take everything as granted. We never be grateful and appreciate the things we have. A lot of things we need to make a choice. How we know which one is the good choice? Just think after 20 years when you look back in this incident, what you wish you can do at that time. Maybe you will have better idea. Remember that, there is no "if". So, we must always be mindful with our speech, action and thought. And the most important person - is the person with us now.

Be good and nice to the person with you now, treat every gathering as the last time, then you will not fight with them or screw up the friendship. Because we will never know what will happen after " now". Maybe after the gathering, one of us will died because of sickness or accident. We will never know. If did happen, we will not have second chance. There is no "take 2" in life like the movie making.

So, take good care of our parents and family, be nice to all the friend.

Be careful when we talk and behave.

Think more good things about other people.

When we start to do now, we will no regret. Care the person that with us now. Think twice before we say or do anything. Make it as a habit. Then we will no regret.

" in our last moment, we will ask: What have i accomplished? Did i make a difference?
Do not wait till then - Ask NOW."


Thursday, September 3, 2009

Help people? Think about it first.

Helping people is not an easy task. We must consider a lot of factors before we help someone. We must always take this into concern that we should not take things personally when we help people and don't attach to it.

Once I had a friend caught with a illness. He needed someone to prepare lunch and dinner for him. He couldn't take the canteen foods because he needed some plain foods. So, I volunteered myself to help him. Now the issue come, frankly speaking, I seldom cook and I don't know how to cook. ( Here is the problem, I don't have the ability to help out but i offered myself.)

Ended up i needed to ask my friend help to cook for him. Then i became the runner. Ran to get the foods and ran to his place to pass him the food. I was busy running for few days for his lunch and dinner. Luckily he recovered after few day. ( before we help people we still must consider that, do we have the ability and time to help.)

A lot of us will think that we will be a best friend forever. Sorry to say that, the ending is not always is a happy ending.

Something happen, a misunderstanding between us. We turned out to be enemy. There was no chance for us to sit down and talk to settle the misunderstanding. I started to question myself, " Do I still willing to help people even though people tend to forget your kindness?" I realized that all the good deeds we have done, people have the choice to be thankful to us or the other hand, they might blame us and find fault to us because we mess up the things.

The lesson I had learned from the incident was before we help people we must think that do we have the ability and time to help. Help people with open heart. We should help people but don't expect there are something in return. Jesus helped so many people but only one of them said thank you to him. So, help people with pure and sincere heart.

Nowadays, we still must be careful when we want to help people, sometime we will be trap by the bad guy by using our kindness. There was a real story that was lady tried to help the boy that lost his way home. When she brought the child home, she suddenly fainted and unconscious. When she woke up, she was being raped in a empty house. So, we must have extra precaution and be careful before help people. Remember that take care our own safety first so that we won't fall into the prey and become the victim.

It doesn't mean that we should stop helping people but we must think about our safety first and make sure we don't fall into the prey.

There are a lot of ways to help people. Be with the person when the friend is sad and down. Speak kind words to your friends. Smile to everyone when we see anyone passing us. A small little action can create an echo. Do not look down every good deeds you had done, there are a endless effect that we cannot see by eyes.

" Our action affect others,
just like a single drop of water splashing on the ocean:
the resulting ripple sets all the other drops of water in the ocean morning
."

Overcoming difficulties

how to overcome difficulties?in this world weather you are young, old, tall short, rich or poor you will have to go thru difficulties. how does this happen? according to Buddha, we have difficulties because of this 3 element. these elements are:

a. birth, sickness, old age, dying and death. we have to go thru this no matter what we are. we have to be birth to this world. birth brings a lot of pain to our mothers and ourselves. Once we grow up we face with problem like sickness in both physical and mental form. physical sickness is like having flu, fever or some more serious ones like hypertension or diabetes. mental sickness is like when we lost our love ones, work and study stress. we stress up ourselves on almost everything from buying a car to having children to worry about our loves one, worry about the security of our loved ones. when we came to old age there will be a lot of pain, sickness and being left out from the society. finally dying and death. no matter who we are we cannot escape this.

b. The real reason for having all the suffering like what mention above is because we have attachment.we have attachment to both things we like and things we dont like. when we attach to this we will suffer when its separated from us. look at yourself in the mirror. you attach to your work, car, house, status, wife, children, family. you attach to your routine life style. some even attach to thier good feeling of sad, happy or even anger. that is why some people have to go to the movies so that they can satisfy themselves. some people attach to the happy feeling that they will be easily anger when they feel that other feeling started coming in. some people have attachment not to see some one they dont like so when some one whom he/she dont like come in that person will be angry or have ill will and sometimes hatred.

c. because of attachment and that we have attach for so long on this state we dont want to leave them. we come to crave for this attachment. for example, when a person likes an ice cream so much they begun to have dreams on the ice cream and have to have them everyday. the minutes the normal routine of having ice-cream changes, that person suffers.

After looking thru, this 3 elements are inter related and there are ways to overcome this problem. we just have to learn to disiplin ourselves and remind ourselves on this 8 formula of rightfullness:

a. right thoughtfulness
b. right speech
c. right understanding
d. right livelihood
e. right effort
f. right concentration
g. right mindfulness
h. right action

i will explain more in the next blogs. if any of the readers have any question you can write to me or leave a comment on this blog. i appreciate your participation to make ourselves a better person by sharing your points and view.
 
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