Sunday, February 20, 2005

Choosing a lifestyle

Think
For every meal you take, should think it's not easy to get. Do appreciate blessings.

Feel
Being able to live a day in peace, is a blessing.

Optimistics
As you have peace, everywhere is good.

Appreciate blessings
Grab the opportunity to give. The one who gives is a blessed man.

Worldliness
The less thing you have, the less desire you have.

Preach
Are you free? Let's have a cup of tea!

Quiteness
Put away self-centre, then you'll have happy life.

Realisation
Wow! Leafs fall!

Who Am I?

I was asking myself in the previous post: "who am I?" and I was looking for an answer. But what if this question is unanswerable? What if the question doesn't need to exist? What if the "I" in this question is just a creation of our mind trying to give a new form to our ego, to delimitate ourselves from the existence?

A World of Questions and Unknowns

The more I live in this world, the more questions and unknowns I have. One would have thought that it would be the reverse, the more you live, the more you become a wiser person that knows more. But it is not the case. The more you live, the more you understand that you know less and less. What is life? Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is "me"? The list gets bigger and bigger. Are we being sent into this life to look for answers or to create more questions? I can’t just accept everything as it is. I have a mind and a heart and a soul that was given to me. To be used, I guess. Everything should a reason. Life has to have a reason. If it didn't, that it wouldn't make any sense for us to be born to live a life.

We live from dualities

Did you notice that we appreciate a thing or a person only in the moment when we are away from it/him/her? The human being needs to compare in order to decide if something is good or bad. We cannot recognize the good as it is, in its pure form. We need the bad to exist as well in order to compare it, so we can tell the difference. We need pain in order to appreciate a warm and good feeling. We are such strange creatures. We sometimes live in pain, but because we didn't meet the pleasant feeling yet (or we didn't hear there is a better feeling), we manage ourselves to believe it is good enough and we don't want to change. But in the same time, when everything is good and pleasant, we create the thought that maybe something better exists and we become sad and live with the eternal recklessness that we don’t have the best of the best. We seem to not be at ease when everything is smooth and pleasant and calm. While the bad, the dramatic, the cloudy and noisy make us feel better, engaged and confident. I still wonder why...

Monday, February 14, 2005

Simple Life

In my life I follow Albert Einstein's sage advice to "make everything as simple as possible - but no simpler."

Silence

"An ancient pond/
A frog jumps in/
That silence."

In a world full of sounds, I'm looking for the silence. I'd say - because I like its sound.

Chinese Characters

I'm fascinated by Chinese characters. Especially by their composition from different situations and their history and origins. A friend of mine explained a few to me. Really impressive.

The character for "listening attentively" consists of five characters: the character for ear, the character for standing still, the character for ten, the character for eye, and the character for heart or mind. Chinese characters are really picturegrams: they are pictures that have evolved to describe a certain situation. This picturegram for listening attentively means: "When in stillness, one listens with the heart. The ear is worth ten eyes."
The character for sacred, holy, or saint is made up of three characters: the character for ear, the character for hole (which is taken phonetically to mean clear), and the character for standing still. Thus, a saint is one who, in stillness, hears clearly; or, what is holy or sacred is being able to hear clearly, which evolves to being able to hear the word of God or being able to hear the sound of Buddha's voice.

The Music of Listening

http://mysticradio.com/ is my listening music.
But there is a part in me that likes Iron Maiden, a heavy metal band. I simply ignore the words in their songs and I just focus on the melodies. They succeed to move me every time into a contemplating and reflective state.

Sunday, February 13, 2005

I Don't Want Anything

Some people hate me for this. I'm just happy with what I am and what I have and where I am. I don't need or want anything else. If it just happens that life will bring me something new tomorrow, well, it's just the natural way of life. In fact, I always say to myself that I have maybe too much. I like having a simple life so I can really live it and enjoy it. Life it's wonderful and beautiful and complete by itself. I just need to contemplate it. Socrates said once that "those who want the fewest things are nearest to the gods". But they don't understand me.

Water which is too pure has no fish

.... said Ts'ai Ken T'An.

I've been taught to strive for perfection and I've been told to not stop until everything is perfect, but all these "teachers" forgot one essential thing: to explain what perfection really is. Who defines it? By what laws? My perfection can be somebody else's imperfection. I love the fish, I like watching the fish in the water and listen to their unspoken words. But it's just me.

The Grass Grows by Itself

"Sit quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself."

It doesn't matter how much I struggle, life continues to flow its course, without even looking at me. So then, what's the struggle for? It is only this false illusion that makes me believe I can go against the flow and change something. The truth is, the flow is caring me, and "the grass grows by itself"...