the ART of reBIRTH

I t felt like yesterday when i spend more than 3 weeks serving others; meeting Maurice for the first time as he entered the servers' rest area all drenched  and shaking his hands as i bid farewell to him when i rode back 300+km back to Singapore. Adapting to the vicissitudes in Life with Equanimity and constantly reminding myself of the EGO is Anicca. Sitting like a statue for an hour or attaining any of the jhanas are all impermanent...it's what happens when we open our eyes react to things happening around us.

We live in an era of Perceived Obsolescence and Planned Obsolescence; i sometimes wonder why....We cannot share batteries and picture cards any more just because my friend uses a different camera brand; is this our notion of advancement of technology? where it's cheaper to buy a new one instead of repairing it. New models come into the market not annually now but almost every season!

If we follow Charles Darwin theory of Evolution....we are practically 'guest' on this planet... We are merely 200,000 years old since we walked upright...Earth is like 4 billion years old. ie in terms of %,  4 billion years being 100% of the time, we have only been on this planet 0.05%.... Yet, i sometimes ponder, despite the apparent 'redundancy' of our existence in terms of the biosphere of this planet.....Why are we Here? if scientist were to find another planet tomorrow and all the 6.7 billions of us were to move there, I'm pretty sure not many plants and animals will "miss" us..... I Wonder Why?

there's this little 'exercise' i sometimes get people to do i ask them 3 questions about their own body. qns 1 : how many days can our body survive w/o food? qns 2 : how many days can we survive w/o water? qns 3 : how many mins can we survive w/o breathing? ... the usual answers are 7 days, 3days and 3mins respectively.... notice, the answers get smaller and smaller, yet the funny thing is from the moment we are awake to the moment we sleep...all we think about is FOOD, got to be reminded to drink enough water. and hardly ever aware we are breathing! :)  

  c all it 'born again', name it 'enlightened'; i finally made the decision to ride 330km to kuantan to forgo sleep, observe noble silence, entertainment and food. We were required to surrender our handphones, vehicle keys and wallet before the course started. No i did not embark on a torture trip but not only did i not feel sleep deprived despite waking up at 4am almost daily (except for the first few days), do "nothing" everyday except walk and sit and have only 2 'proper' meals a day. This is not the first time I've embark on such endeavours but first time i strictly observe the noble silence, sit for such extended period of time towards the later half of the course and had vegetarian meals the 10 days. My awareness and energy levels have never been so high; the levels of concentration is simply breathtaking; so much so, time passes by so fast and before i knew it, the hour is up, the 10 days has gone. I've taken the 1st step, the challen...

we might have almost abolish slavery and human civilization has somewhat progressed... Income disparity and equity seems to have improved since the Middle Ages. But the stats below shows we have much more to work towards; esp so when there are 6.7 billion of us now on earth and there will be 8-10 billion in 2050. (there was only 1 billion people in 1800)   Figures taken from the movie HOME YouTube link

I've always been amazing by the list of chemicals found in a shampoo bottle, but didnt realise companies are allowed to use words like 'herbal' and 'natural' in their product when it's all mainly synthetic chemicals! And why dun we ever ask ourselves what's inside a bottle of expensive fragrances (we never get to see this 'secret' list) Click Here to watch the clip