True Living

Death isn't sad.

The sad thing is: Most people don't live at all.

-Socrates-

Announcement

Please take note that the talk on

Newton's Third Law

has been canceled due to

unforeseen circumstances.

Have a nice week! :)

Why Judging Others Make Ourselves Unhappy

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~Henry David Thoreau

A friend of mine likes to joke that dying will be a relief because it will put an end to the “heavy burden of judging” as she calls it. She envisions herself lying in a hospital bed and, moments before death, noticing the ceiling and thinking, “What a hideous green.”

Here’s a modest proposal: Vow that for the rest of the day, you won’t judge your friends and you won’t judge any strangers you happen to see. This would include a friend who’s a non-stop talker; it would include a friend who’s always complaining about his life. It would include the strangers you pass on the street or see in a waiting room.

I call it a modest proposal because I’m not even addressing the issue of self-judgment, let alone BP or Gaddafi. No. I’m just asking you not to judge friends or strangers.

It’s entirely possible you won’t make it past a few minutes without judging someone!

So, why not just “judge away?”

To answer that, let me start by drawing a distinction between judgment and discernment. Discernment means perceiving the way things are, period.

Judgment is what we add to discernment when we make a comparison (implicit or explicit) between how things or people are and how we think they ought to be. So, in judgment, there’s an element of dissatisfaction with the way things are and a desire to have things be the way we want them to be.

Take that talkative friend. To think or speak in a neutral, purely descriptive tone, “She can talk non-stop for 15 minutes,” is an example of discernment—assuming the assessment is accurate, we’re just describing the way things are.

On the other hand, to think or speak in a negative tone, “She can talk non-stop for 15 minutes,” is an example of judgment because that negative tone reveals our dissatisfaction with how she is and our desire for her to be different.

The same analysis applies to the complaining friend. If we say, “He complained about this life the entire evening,” depending on our tone, it could be a neutral observation (discernment) or it could reflect our dissatisfaction with him and our desire for him to be different (a judgment).

Now think about strangers. If you’re like me, there’s almost always a subtle judgment waiting in the wings. “She could stand to lose some weight.” “Doesn’t he know how to pick a tie that goes with a shirt?”

So, again, why not just “judge away”? Recall that in judgment, there’s an element of dissatisfaction with the way things are and a desire to have things (in my examples: people) be the way we want them to be.

So, judgment is just a recipe for suffering: start with our dissatisfaction over how a person happens to be and mix in our desire for them to be otherwise. To make that suffering nice and rich, be sure the desire clings tightly to the dissatisfaction!

It doesn’t mean we have to hang out with someone who talks more than we’d like or who does nothing but complains about his life. But we can make the choice about whether to be with them without judging them. When we do, it feels good; it has that peaceful quality of letting go of clinging to the way we want people to be.

As for those strangers, maybe the woman I saw has a medical condition that results in weight gain, or maybe she eats to deal with uncomfortable feelings. Perhaps the man was wearing the only tie he owns. Judging them did nothing to ease their suffering, and it certainly didn’t ease mine.

Now try this experiment. Think about a couple of friends who annoy you in some way. Can you let them be the way they are without desiring them to be otherwise? Sticking with my two examples, can you open your heart to her talkativeness or to his constant complaining?

Walt Whitman said, “I contain multitudes.” I like to think of the world as containing multitudes. I do this by consciously thinking: “This world is big enough for both the talkative and the untalkative; for both the complainers and the non-complainers.”

Judging is such a well-ingrained response that I hardly notice when I’m doing it, so I know I have a lifetime of conditioning to overcome. But it’s worth it because when I don’t judge, I feel the benefits in both my mind and my body: I feel as light as a feather.

I truly hope I can shed that heavy burden of judging before that moment in the hospital bed when I’m starring at the green ceiling!

Written by: Tony Bernhard

Tiny Buddha

On Samadhi

Q: How did we lose our peace?

A: We never lost peace; it has always been there. We were just too preoccupied with our emotions and were not aware of our peaceful state. This peaceful state is nothing extraordinary. But one has to be very careful here. As long as we think this stillness is extraordinary, we cling to it. This clinging is so subtle and refined that it is difficult to recognize in oneself. One does not realize that one is still on a very refined ego trip. So long as that is the case, even when one experiences stillness through samadhi (stability of mind), there is no chance for panna (wisdom) to arise.

Q: Don't you need samadhi to achieve panna (wisdom)?

A: Sure - but let's be clear. There are two kinds of samadhi. In addition to jhanic samadhi, there is also what is called khanika samadhi. It is only momentary in nature but it is penetrating enought to realize Truth. Khanika samadhi can occur even without strenous meditative efforts, given the right circumstances and mental state. Even in jhanic samadhi, realization of Truth or anatta (non-self) is only momentary. After that, one is back to ordinary consciousness. The unfolding of insight wisdom with khanika samadhi occurs with few or none of the mystic experiences or sensations of bliss that are usually encountered in jhanic samadhi; thus, the person has no chance to cling to blissful sensations. Before they know it, they are back to ordinary consciousness.

- Dr. Thynn Thynn (Living Meditation, Living Insight)

7 Healthy Ways to Deal with Incessant Worrying

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Evelyn Lim

“I vow to let go of all worries and anxiety in order to be light and free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

When you think about the future, are you filled with hope or worry? If you are like most people, it’s probably anxiety. You have largely been experiencing worry. Your mind feels unsettled.

Worry arises because you realize that you cannot predict what is going to happen tomorrow and know that you cannot have full control over how events turn out. You are uncomfortable with not having absolute certainty.

Incessant worrying happens when you find it hard to let go. You fret over the same details repeatedly. A fertile imagination causes you to play out mental scenarios of doom, failure, and fatal consequences over and over again.

Well, I used to worry incessantly over the smallest of things. Before learning meditation, I did not know how to relax. Worry was my psychological mantra.

When my children were born, my anxiety levels went into over-drive. Were they eating enough? Were they having a happy time with their friends? Were they faring well in school?

I soon realized that I was not the only one. In talking with one of my girlfriends, I realized she was excessively worrying over her children, too. I noticed how tense she was. She was not fun to be with.

Eventually I knew that I needed to reclaim my sanity. Not doing so would mean continued misery. I realized that it was only when I could lose my back load of worries could I be light and free.

Once I made a commitment, I started looking into the true nature of my emotions. Even though I continue to have my worries, I am now better able to cope with them. I no longer obsess over every detail either.

Here is what I discovered.

The mind likes to anchor itself to the known, which creates anxiety. Worry is a symptom of the deeper-rooted fear you experience when you have to tread into the unknown.

You prefer things to be predictable. You fear that any unexpected turn in events would throw your meticulous planning into disarray. The more energy you give to your fears, the more anxious you become.

In reality, all forms of worry represent an underlying lack of trust. You are unable to trust in the goodness of life. Even though things could turn out in a number of ways, you have a tendency to believe that things are going to turn out negative rather than positive.

Worry displaces. You become ungrounded. With your mind constantly in the future, it is difficult to be present. You lose the capacity to experience life in the here and now. With worry, you deny yourself the opportunity of living your moments in freedom.

Worrying causes you to leak energy. You feel low. You are more apt to complain about things and compare yourself with others, and you’re less likely to be rational. Excessive worrying can cause you to stifle your dreams.

Your relationships with others get affected, too. No one likes being near a prophet of doom and gloom.

It is important to recognize that uncertainty is a natural part of life. You cannot know with absolute certainty what is going to happen next. When you release your attachment to control, it’s easier to breathe.

Some people deal with anxiety by drinking, overeating, and turning to other bad habits. However, none of these are real solutions for worrying. The best approach is to learn how to deal with your anxiety in healthy ways.

1. Work it off.

Although exercise may not actually solve the issues that are causing you to feel anxious, engaging yourself in activity takes your mind off things. You become clearer after taking a break.

2. Address your fears.

Instead of suppressing your anxiety, it is important to face your fears head on. Ask yourself what is truly causing your anxiety. You may even find that your worries are mostly FalseEvidence Appearing Real.

3. Meditate.

Meditation helps your mind with needed breaks from all that clutter. The practice also helps you with greater focus. You find yourself experiencing increased clarity and less likely to worry over unnecessary things.

4. Stay hydrated.

Did you know that dehydration has been linked to depression? Just about every person has heard that it is important to drink enough water, but most people do not realize that their mental health actually improves when they are hydrated.

5. Change your perspective.

Energy flows where you focus your attention. Understand that you can choose to focus on positive rather than negative thoughts. In fact, as you become more positive, you’ll be better able to create more positive outcomes.

6. Relax.

It’s hard not to feel bombarded living in modern times. You probably spend your days in a constant state of flux. Your heart beats a lot faster as a result. So set aside time to relax. You’ll find that your feelings of anxiety subside.

7. Seek help.

You may find yourself feeling worse and worse if you are unable to stop yourself from incessant worrying. It may be a good idea to seek counseling or to talk to someone who can help. Anxiety is very common. There is nothing to feel ashamed about when you approach for help.

The best way find relief from constant worrying is to learn to let go. Worrying does not bring you any closer to solving problems. In fact, it only makes it more difficult to find clarity.

Make a commitment to reducing your anxiety levels today. It starts with a simple choice.

Tiny Buddha

Mindfulness Meditation 22.9.2011

With Right View, comes Right Intentions.
What you intend, you become.
Lets learn to watch Intentions.

Dhamma Talk

Movie Sharing

Friday Gathering

Not All Happiness is Created Equal

How many of you have said, looking at the current state of your life, “I wish I could get back to how happy I was 10/20/30 years ago?” Maybe you long for the good old days of your marriage, before things went south. Maybe you long for the days when you actually enjoyed your job, before you became jaded. But I think the truth is that you really DON’T wish to return to those days, because there is a deeper happiness in store for you around the corner. Let me explain.

Once upon a time, I was a bouncy, exuberant college student. I had a group of friends I enjoyed, a major I was great at, and plunged myself head-first in communities such as Society for Women Engineers. I skipped around the globe studying abroad in France, volunteering in Thailand and interning in Colorado and Tennessee. I did all of this with the sort of wide-eyed bliss of someone trying out his or her wings for the first time. It was easy to be happy because everything was going so well. Can you relate?

Then I went on to graduate school and I entered Phase 2. The bouncy stopped. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a bioengineer, but had no idea what my life’s passion was. I wasn’t sure who I wanted to be friends with, who I wanted to marry or what I wanted to get involved in. I felt stuck, unsure, indecisive and lost. It was hard for me to be happy because of all the turmoil I felt.

I thought back to my gleeful days in college and wished I were back there. After all, I was so happy. What went wrong? What would it take to bring back the bouncy?

Then I realized that I actually wouldn’t want to bring back that form of happiness. My happiness in college was due to circumstance. Consider how it is easy to eat well when you are hanging out at organic vegan summer camp, but then you go home and out comes the box of brownies. It was easy for me to be happy in college because I was somewhat naive about who I really was and everything was working out so well, but that wasn’t lasting happiness. My happiness was circumstantial because when I went to grad school and circumstances changed, I was no longer happy. That is not the sort of happiness you want to hang your hat on.

Enter Phase 3: cultivated happiness. Cultivated happiness comes from having learned how to build your own happiness, regardless of what is going on around you. It comes from knowing yourself and taking on the challenges that you are passionate about and being proud of the path you are on, no matter what bumps it may have. Cultivated happiness is lasting happiness and is a skill you can bring to any situation. For me, cultivated happiness came when I realized that I, and I alone, was in charge of making sure I had a good time each day and that I really did have the power to enjoy my life no matter what.

Dr. Samantha Sutton
The Daily Love

Mindfulness Meditation 15.9.2011

Let's go beyond just knowing what's happening around us.
Let's go much more deeper.

To observe,

The mental states,
The feelings,
The observer itself.

This week we'll be touching on Intentions.

So let's meet, if Wisdom and Understanding is what you're after :)


For more info please contact:
Engelbert Teh (016-4232970)
Stella Tan Pei Zin (016-2617757)

Heart of a Buddha

Natural laws are impartial.

Only those who are virtuous

are in harmony with nature.

J. Krishnamurti on Meditation

Meditation
by J. Krishnamurti








Meditation is not following any system; it is not constant repetition and imitation. Meditation is not concentration. It is one of the favourite gambits of some teachers of meditation to insist on their pupils learning concentration - that is, fixing the mind on one thought and driving out all other thoughts. This is a most stupid, ugly thing, which any schoolboy can do because he is forced to.

It means that all the time you are having a battle between the insistence that you must concentrate on the one hand and your mind on the other which wanders away to all sorts of other things, whereas you should be attentive to every movement of the mind wherever it wanders. When your mind wanders off it means you are interested in something else.

Meditation demands an astonishingly alert mind; meditation is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased. Meditation is not control of thought, for when thought is controlled it breeds conflict in the mind, but when you understand the structure and origin of thought, which we have already been into, then thought will not interfere. That very understanding of the structure of thinking is its own discipline which is meditation.

Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence. Silence put together by thought is stagnation, is dead, but the silence that comes when thought has understood its own beginning, the nature of itself, understood how all thought is never free but always old - this silence is meditation in which the meditator is entirely absent, for the mind has emptied itself of the past.

If you have read this book for a whole hour attentively, that is meditation. If you have merely taken away a few words and gathered a few ideas to think about later, then it is no longer meditation. Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system and that is not attention.

Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy - if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation.

So meditation can take place when you are sitting in a bus or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, or listening to the singing of birds or looking at the face of your wife or child. In the understanding of meditation there is love, and love is not the product of systems, of habits, of following a method.

Love cannot be cultivated by thought. Love can perhaps come into being when there is complete silence, a silence in which the mediator is entirely absent; and the mind can be silent only when it understands its own movement as thought and feeling. To understand this movement of thought and feeling there can be no condemnation in observing it. To observe in such a way is the discipline, and that kind of discipline is fluid, free, not the discipline of conformity.

Activities in September

Here is a list of the activities in September. The Buddhist Society has a lot of fun and meaningful activities organised just for you. =)

Dhamma talks: Listen to our experienced Dhamma speaker and learn how to deal better with challenges in everyday life following the teachings of the Buddha.

Dates: 5th and 29th of September

Movie sharings: Watch a movie and learn to watch out for meanings behind the movie. Not everything we see is what it really is. Step back, and learn to see situations as it truly is, not what we assume and perceive them to be. Most importantly, enjoy an entertaining FREE movie with your friends.

Date: 21st of September

Meditations: Learn the art of meditation. Learn to be cool and calm when facing problems. Learn how to deal with stress. Most importantly, learn to understand yourself better. An opportunity not to be missed. Meditation will bring you a lot of invaluable benefits.

Dates: 15th and 22nd of September

Semester gathering and Friday gatherings: Build up friendships and have some fun with your friends. The semester gathering will be held in conjunction with the Mid Autumn Festival. Do come and join us!!!

Date of Semester gathering: 12th September

Dates of Friday gatherings: 9th and 23rd of September

Recruitment Drive: Sign up and be a member of the Buddhist Society. You will never regret this as you will meet great friends and at the same time LEARN while joining our meaningful activities. =)

Date of recruitment drive: 22nd of September

Blood Donation Drive Photography Competition

Picture taken by first prize winner Woo Chien Ling.

Congratulations to the winners of the Photography Competition held during the recent Blood Donation Drive!!!!

First Prize : Woo Chien Ling (259 votes)

Second Prize: Kuok Huey Wen (238 votes)

Third Prize: Tung Kin Fai (213 votes)

Hopefully, you all have enjoyed this opportunity to capture the beauty in the act of giving and sharing. Please do join us for our other events which are as meaningful and as full of rewards.

=)

7 Everyday Ways to Uplift Your Mood

7 Everyday Ways to Uplift Your Mood
By JOE WILNER


Every day we run into hassles and stressors that can start to build up and bring us down. Maybe you don’t have enough time, you have too many responsibilities, or you’re worried about some upcoming obligation.

Whatever hassles you’re experiencing it’s important to learn to deal with them, though at the same time, it’s also important to fill our day with positive and uplifting experiences.

Uplifting experiences help us build positive emotions and become more resilient when times get rough. Having the good with the bad is crucial in order to cope with the stress of everyday life.

These don’t have to be anything extreme or out of the ordinary. Positive uplifting experiences are all around us.

Here are some simple everyday experiences that can help give you an emotional boost.

Relating well with family and friends – Whether its friends or family, having healthy and positive relationships is very valuable to our emotional health. When we have shared connections with friends and family each day we will find more amusement, joy and affection in our life.

Feeling healthy – We may not have perfect health or always get the amount of exercise we desire, but as long as we do things here and there to help us be healthy it offers us a chance to feel good about ourselves. Setting healthy goals is a wonderful way to start feeling content with your health.

Getting enough sleep – You may feel like you have so much to do you have to stay up late and wake up early – though this is ultimately counterproductive. When we don’t get enough sleep it drains our energy, lessens our creative juices, and steals our emotional well-being. To increase your energy level and have a more cheerful attitude get ample sleep.

Eating out at restaurants – Sometimes eating out isn’t the most economical thing to do, but it certainly offers a chance to have a fun and enjoyable experience. It can save us time from cooking and lets us just relax. Many restaurants also offer a warm and stirring environment that can boost our mood.

Completing a task – The feeling that comes with doing a job well done and accomplishing our goals is paramount to increasing self-esteem and confidence. When we trust and believe in ourselves we will be more likely to set and achieve successful goals. When we are able to manage time and meet our responsibilities life is immensely easier to handle.

Visiting, phoning, or writing someone – Is there someone you haven’t talked with in a while that you want to connect with? It’s never been easier to reach out to old friends and acquaintances we want to connect with. With social media we can contact someone and make plans to unite and visit. We can share how we feel and offer kindness.

Staying home and relaxing – Simply staying home, relaxing, and putting your feet up may be just what you need to remain positive and in high spirits. Making sure to unwind and enjoy our down time can be a wonderful solution to stress and turmoil.

These are just a few ideas that we can focus on in order to provide us with more opportunities for positivity.

How many of these are part of your life? What could you add to your daily routine to help improve your mood and decrease stress?

Source: http://blogs.psychcentral.com/positive-psychology/2011/07/7-everyday-ways-to-uplift-your-mood/