mindcandy pennies from the overgenerous lunatic

helping out

For the last 4 days, excluding today, I have been helping out with Rinpoche's booth. it has been one of the most wonderful experiences in my life so far. It gave me an oppotunity to be a dharma speaker, something that I really wanted to do when young. I helped to clear doubts and misconceptions. I ended up being tired every evening when I reach home, as well as tired every morning when I reached the fair, but when I was into it, I felt more energized than before. It just really felt like a family rather than a bunch of strangers. Yep, I worked in one of these things before.

One thing tho, I realized I did scare away lots of customers. But the sweetest thing is no one minded. I also realized how poorly equipped I am to deal with people around me. I didint seem to be able to carry out instructions the way I am told and was pretty stubborn. I saw Rinpoche on MSN on the lappie that was hooked to a webcam on the booth so that Rinpoche could see what we were doing that was it. It was like catnip. I couldnt pull my eyes away from the lappie. and sometimes, fingers too. Then, Rinpoche got confused who was who because everyone else sent him a message or two and so everyone was banned from the lappie. Me being me, I still tried to type in a few words. And Joe was pretty stern after that. I felt really bad after that, too. But 10 minutes later, he smiled at me when I was doing a good job.

Of course, Rinpoche cares about me, like he cares for everyone else...and that is actually more than enough to give me motivation. It was a sincere kind of push and there was so much warmth and love. I never felt so good or motivated. he told me to push myself and share my dharma knowledge with everyone (tho honestly, I dont have THAT much, but I do try my best to get more and more until I am able to help others) and that was thru MSN. I am very sure he knows I am very afraid of talking to people I do not know but I really do trust in Rinpoche and I did it. It was the most I ever pushed myself to talk to people. Seriously, I have never been that "aggresive" except to my really close friends. And even that is really rare. No one had care for me at that level before...when sharon asked me to read the messages in MSN, I felt that the icy cold emotional-mental void in me was getting filled with warm nectar which flowed from Rinpoche, which then powers up my entire being. It really did make me feel brand new as if life really flowed through this dead corpse of mine. I feel warm inside...and the KH people were being super kind. It really made me feel that I really belonged here, not having some weird barrier in between. Even in incovar I felt out of place despite the atmosphere.

Many other speakers that I met in Incovar camp came for a visit and some knew me and was pretty shocked to find me at Rinpoche's booth. I gave them a very logical explaination on what the deities actually were and I do hope it clears many of the misconceptions they have at vajrayana. Bro Tan Ho Soon seemed to have high hopes on me back in the camp, but he was quite shocked. Oh, you'll see. because, all along, what I needed was simply a very compassionate and skillful teacher that can tame me and my unstable mind in order to achieve my full potential. And Bro. Tan, I cant find such a teacher in any tradition other than Vajrayana. Initially I felt scared that these people might look down on me, because then I can no longer learn from their centers, but then, my spiritual development is more important than these kind of politics.

I feel that talking to people I dont know normal now, rather than the past where I was actually kinda paranoid over the people I am talking with. It feels odd talking to people and I felt fake...but this time since what I was talking about was actually dharma, and it came out from my heart. It felt so nice, so right.

false realizations

Sometimes, people think that they have achieved something when they have not. This is very common in practicing buddhism. Truth to be told, whenever you feel that way it means you have not progressed. Whenever you look at the flaws of others and pick on them or see them as a big deal, it is a clear sign of regression. True achievements in practice comes when one is always humble and truly thinks that one is never learned enough and always seeks knowledge and information from others, not out of pride but humility. This is, of course, from trusted sources. It is possible to learn from bad examples all the same, but it is only possible with a highly trained mind.

A lot of people think they're greater than everyone else when they manage to keep the precepts well, and start telling people they have reached a certain stage and look down on those who dont. What does that reflect? It reflects a great attachment to one's own practice and attainments. You can keep the precepts as well as you want but if it does not transform your mind but makes it more pretentious, what is the point? Precepts should be taken with the intention of cultivating the habit of not harming, instead of using it as a yardstick for practice. The first few diciples of the Buddha did not need any precepts because they had a pure heart, only the later ones did because of social implications, and also it is to help diciples with problems defining on what can be done and what cannot be done. Sila, or moral dicipline is only a small part of the practice. If you do not bring it to the next level and getting stuck on it by getting unhealthily obsessed and attached to it, what attainments have you gained? Even more amazingly, you manage to turn something so holy into something that harms yourself, others and your practice. You harm others when being too attached to morality, assume the right to judge and discriminate others, putting them into suffering. You harm yourself by getting too preoccupied with morality and missing the big point of changing and diciplining the mind, turning you into some kind of zealot. You harm your practice simply by not being able to progress and discriminating everyone else around you.

It is very easy to test one's practice. It is easy to put another person's mind into duress to check their reactions and mental inhibitions that person has. The intention to do this is to check if the person is what they claim. If they do not claim anything either conciously or unconciously, then there is no need to check. If they claim to be high in practice either conciously or unconciously, it is time to check. I will not go into the details of checking the practice of others as it is not nessarily good. The point is, it is very easy to check the level of practice of someone, so making claims and blowing your own horn is simply just a show and dosent affect anything at all. Never make claims, obvious or subtle about your attainments. This can only lead to pride.

Going one step higher, how do you diffrentiate between an enlightened master and a normal one? The enlightened one will do exactly what you need to break you off from your narrow mind, and exactly what you need to enhance your own practice. The normal one will just take care of what he or she can do on the surface, but nothing deeper than that. But both are still good and perfect as they have pure intentions. From here, spiritual friends are also very important. The duty of a spiritual friend is to guide and persuade one to practicing the dharma. Without a good and proper spiritual friend, one's practice cannot progress as well. Therefore, it is very important to find a suitable spiritual friend who is kind enough to be on your mentality. In the tibetan tradition, a spiritual friend must be well learned, and the title geshe refers to such. This is the reason why we need to check the practice of one's spiritual friend because it could mean the decline or increase of our practice. Do you think buddhism is only to be practiced when you are in some sort of mental or emotional trouble? Do you think buddhism is to be only practiced when you have problems with your life? Unfortunately, many people nowadays think that they should only practice buddhism when they are in a good mood. They completely forget about buddhism when they are having a good time, or when things are good. They dont see a need too. There is no such thing as too busy to practice buddhism. If you can spend 10 minutes listening to songs, play computer or video games and surfing the net, there is no reason why you cannot do dedication prayers or simple metta meditation, or listening to a dharma talk or reading a dharma book during this time. If you cannot do so, you are only creating the causes for more difficulties in the future. You are going to create the causes for being lazy in whatever you do and not do a perfect job, miss oppotunities in life and go to a downward spiral. This is very logical, because if you call yourself a buddhist and see the buddha's teaching as helpful, yet refuse to partake it due to blatant lack of effort, what does that tell you about how you see your life? You will lack effort to partake many things, and fail in many jobs and miss many oppotunities. Everyone has to start somewhere, so why not start with something that can make you a better person?

One may ask, why is practice so important? Practice makes you a better person. If you're a human, the best way to use your life isi to practice the root teachings of any religion. Human instinct isnt good enough to make this world a better place. Looking at things at face value does not make the world a better place. It does not make you a better person. Even if you dont want to be a better person, look at the people around you. If you are not a better person, they will suffer immensly. Do you want to torture your loved ones just because you refuse to "follow the croud?" the new croud is the one that does not want to improve themselves, so if you dont want to be better, go follow them.

For those of you who really take the teachings to heart and practice the 8 noble paths, please remember to focus and emphasise on right understanding and right thought. With that comes right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. Why? it's very simple. What is the heart of your actions, speech and thought? from what do they arise? They arise from right understanding and right thought. Without these two, how can one's speech and actions be right completely? maybe right on the surface value for the sake of covering insecurity and show, but not deep inside. The 8 noble path is profound if one truly practices it, else it becomes just another weapon for destroying yourself and others with arrogance and pride.

Blazing Splendour

This is the first post in the spiritual category which will document my spiritual journey. Posts made here will not appear in public because I do not want to offend my non-buddhist friends and look like a fanatical evangelist. After all, this is a public blog. Its not exactly that appropriate for me to talk about the buddha in the main page. So this category will be hidden and will remain that way until someone clicks it and views it. That way, buddhists can view my spiritual ramblings and the nonbuddhists ones who are not intrested need not cringe.

It's been 4 months since I have met my guru, Tsem Tulku Rinpoche and started my first baby steps to true, intense practice. Intense practice here means, changing my heart, my mind and my character to be a better person. Intense practice here means facing my weaknesses and pain, and NOT get affected by it. Intense practice means changing my preception of things and breaking my narrow mind. It's no fun and games. There is no dependency or blind faith. It's all about hard work. It's a lot of mental pain and anguish because the mind will always refuse to change, or even acknowledge its own weaknesses. Meeting a guru is meeting someone that will show you just that, and teach you how to change it. The mind will scream no no no no I'm not like that I dont want it but you have to force it to change.

The sacriest part is that the teacher knows you. The teacher knows your heart, he knows your mind. You cant hide anything. And for him to help you, you have to show everything anyway. It may sound stupid that you have to show people what they already know about you, but the real reason is because if you cannot be sincere to someone, how can you be sincere to yourself? it is all very simple. A person who lies to his friends lies to himself, tricks himself into believing that something bad is actually something good and how can such a person live life or see reality? How can someone like that practice the dharma? It is all very simple and clear. Guru devotion is a very fundemental and basic practice and it is definetely not blind faith unlike what most people would like to believe. Guru devotion is commitment. It is holding on to what is important despite the odds, not giving up or practicing buddhism only when it is convinient for you. That is why varjayana is fast, but it is also the hardest.

So, this path I have embarked, and this path I will never forsake even at the cost of my own life. I shall stick on until I attain enlightment and when I do, I shall help everyone else acheive the same.