I love you. Liberation

Suffering.

Whether you care to admit it or not. There is suffering.

https://unsplash.com/photos/PT-gOmCUlCY

The Universal symbol of Christianity is a torture instrument upon which Jesus suffered. 

The Cross is a reminder that there is suffering in this world.

All of us have our crosses to bear in this life. 

Gautama the Buddha became the awakened one by uncovering the first of his four noble truth- There is suffering. A simple and irrefutable truth that took him a lot of suffering to arrive at.

These two gentlemen went through great pain and suffering to both arrive to deliver this truth.

For each of us living this life, it is evident that it comes with pain and suffering and no one escapes this;

 “We are born astride the grave.” ~Samuel Beckett. 

"We are all dying the minute we are born. Goes fast. Don't waste it". (This dialogue quoting Beckett came from an episode of Ozarks I was watching one night.)

The way out of suffering is to let go grasping of desires. 

Desire

Desires are what make this life. 

We all have desires.

We can have desires. 

We can enjoy desires if we get them. 

We can live with desires. 

Desires arise and subside. 

Desires are impermanent but endless.

So do not be attached to desires. 

Because attachment to desire is the cause of suffering. 

"All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing". This is wise (perfect) understanding, *according to Buddha's eightfold path.

That is all we need to know to have perfect understanding. 

When we know this we transcend suffering and achieve true liberation. 

This is what Easter, Buddhism and this post is all about. 

Transcendence to liberation. The end of suffering. 

HAPPY EASTER Everyone.

I love you. Folk Tales- The Emperor's New Clothes.

 The emperor Has No Clothes. 

When you fail to learn, whether from history or what is evidently happening in your country. Then you have lost the plot. 

Especially if your plot is to hang on to the crown you clearly grabbed when the pendulum swung in your direction. 

Unless you’ve been quarantined in your bathroom suffering from unstoppable diarrhoea, you have clearly demonstrated your stripe. I was about to compare your stripe to that of the hyena, but I wouldn’t want to insult the latter. 

You are no different from the deposed chairman who quipped about two trains kissing when hundreds were injured in a train mishap recently. Both of you are cut from the same cloth.

You joked about raising your blue flag, when the black and white flags hoisted by the people were cries of desperation and despair. 

You strut the public domain thinking we admire your prowess at power grabbing and court intrigue. Knowingly or unknowingly, you have just disrobed yourself for all to see. 

What an ugly sight it was to be forced upon. The truth in this case is truly ugly.

You and your kind. No matter how you adorn yourselves we can see through you. 

We now cannot un-see what we saw. And we shall never want to see, ever again in a person leading our nation.

This is one Farewell we can’t wait to bid you. 

You have just promoted a minister, during whose watch, saw new record high numbers of cases and deaths. 

Now we know why our nation is losing in this Covid war. You and your kind have no interest and no clue about what is happening in the real world. You are lost in another world. Totally lost. 

Instead of commending the rakyat for starting positive initiatives like the white flag movement to care for and feed each other, you told us to not believe in them. 

This was clear when you failed to show any shred of sympathy or understanding of the people’s pain during your public address yesterday. 

The people were looking for some comforting words from their leader. You instead rubbed the hopelessness of the situation in their faces by making quips like raising blue flag instead of black or white flags and full kitchens. And that the T20s are also suffering. Insensitive? Or simply incapable of any form of compassion or feeling or you just simply don't care?

Yesterday- July 15, has to go down as one of the saddest day in history for Malaysians, not only because there are people starving or dying, the people living are devoid of hope when hope and leadership are most needed now.

Before bed, as I trawl the thick and fertile plains of social media channels, I find countless, and endless laments, essays, videos, blogs, vlogs, twits, tik-tocs, pleas, cries and rants on the state of our nation and our leaders and I find myself joining them in chorus. "The emperor has no clothes" and maybe then they will slowly listen and do something.

Good night and good luck Malaysia.

I love you. The Invitation #4

 The Sorrow.

This chapter begins with;

"EVERY LIFE HAS PAIN AND SORROW in it. It is part of being human.

"...All the while, deep inside, I know what I have always known: that the knowledge will never be enough.

 

This is the secret we keep from ourselves. And the moment it is revealed, we become aware of a need for something else: for the wisdom to live with what we do not know, what we cannot control, what is painful -  and still choose life. Wisdom is often born in the shadows, frequently more visible in the darkness than the light.

 

...We must move into darker places if we are to find the wisdom we so desperately need. We rarely go there willingly, though every life contain its own cycles of grief and celebration. To meet wisdom in these dark places we must be willing and able to hold all of what life gives us, to exclude nothing of ourselves or the world, to tell ourselves the truth. Wisdom will stretch us far beyond where we thought we could or wanted to go. She will show us what we cannot change or control, reveal what is hard to know about ourselves and the world, and tear at the illusions of what we think we know, until we are surrounded by the vastness of the mystery. And all the while, wisdom asks us to choose life. She does not want us to just continue, to hang on, to survive. She asks us to experience life actively, fully, every day - to show up for all of it. 

*At this point, a reprise of a phrase of the poem is in order...

       It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.

          I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, 

                 if you have been opened by life's betrayals 

          or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. 

                    I want to know if you can sit with pain, 

           mine or your own,

                    without moving to hide it

           or fade it

                    or fix it.

 

~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer "