Come what may - Go what may

At the end of the day, I am trying to do some meditation before I sleep. I read that it is good to clear the mind of the debris collected (read earlier post on "How I aim to be a rubbish bin") throughout the day - to make for for a peaceful mind and a peaceful sleep.

So there I was sitting before bed on Sunday night. It had been an eventful weekend and my mind was still buzzing when I tried to sit. The weather was weird too. It was warm but gusts of sea wind will suddenly blow unsteadily but strongly. An unsettling condition! Anyway, I closed my eyes and tried to unwind the mind. I had resolved to observe my breath and do nothing else for a while. The winds inside and outside my mind continued to heave and give. I persisted. When I breathed in, I noted I was breathing in, when I breathed out, I noted I was breathing out. The noise of the winds disturbed still. It was hard to notice the breaths -- they were being drowned out! I tried not to get excited and bring the mind back to noticing the breaths. . . in, out, in, out, in, out. . . a strange thing happened then. The in-out-in-out became come-go-come-go. I felt my whole body give a tremor. . . and release. . . I felt awash with calm and I stayed there for as long as I liked.

I wonder why: when I breathed in "come", and when I breathed out "go" Why should this allow me to settle into a meditative state? I remembered the feeling. I felt a release. Perhaps when I thought "Come" I am inviting change to come in without resistence, without fear, and when I thought "Go", I am allowing things to pass, without resistence, without fear. In the process, there is a tremendous sense of relief. Grasping and being free are opposites states of mind. When I allow the breath to come, I am no longer forcing the air in. It is only an invitation! When I allow the breath to go, I am no longer pushing the air out. I just let it happen by itself. I take away the intervention of the mind into the breathing. The mind becomes just an observer. This is meditation already.

Try it next time you sit.

What you can get out of depression. . . real happiness

Depression offers us a great opportunity for personal growth. Without depression, I would not have ended up with Om Improvement, with an amazing year of learning and teaching. I am not advocating that you lot go all out and get depressed right now! I am saying that the next time you feel down in the dumps, it could be the work of an internal mechanism within you to try and get you to wake up and assess your life. . . and set off a process of making yourself live in a better way forever.

Eknath Easwaran:

“For the most part, however, we are too absorbed in personal pursuits to heed these internal cues. As a result we are always at odds with our true Self. This is the cause of all the insecurity in our hearts. Somewhere deep down we know the person we want to be, but we are so conditioned to look for satisfaction outside ourselves that we ignore this Self, who is waiting so patiently to be found.”

“Discovering this Self is the greatest achievement possible. It brings with it everything else we have been looking for – peace of mind, joy, security, fulfilment. Once we make this discovery, we are no longer separate individuals. Our life becomes a lasting, positive force which does not end when we shed the body at death.”

I am moved when a student’s friend told me that she’s trying hard to get her mom out of a state of depression. Believe me, everyone, there is no job more urgent, more important to do, no love greater than to do that. Depression is serious condition. But it is not an incurable condition. It is the job of all of us to help our loved ones out of their depression because it is something that affects us all. It is very hard to come out of it yourself. I only rebounded because I had the support of a bunch of untiring friends and mentors. Through their fierce love (yes! They were very persistent in their love) I managed to come to terms with life again.

Can we all make a vow to help all we know who are depressed TODAY?!
Do not wait.

What is depression?

I found Easwaran’s writing very helpful here. I am much indebted to his work. ( I hope I don’t get sued. . . but I am sure his inheritors understand that I am trying to help others through his extraordinary writing!) He said: “Depression is simply dwelling on oneself – one’s problems, one’s failures, one’s inadequacies – and if you can distract the ego from this favourite pastime, you will find that you are no longer depressed.”

Yes, that’s it simply put. Then why is it so hard to come out of the state? Why is it that we find ourselves falling in and out of depression in cycles? I feel it is because we do not understand how our own mind works and no one taught us the skills for managing our minds, our thoughts. So let's learn:

Easwaran elaborates on a common problem:

“We are constantly conditioned to seek excitement; we are brainwashed to believe that we are not getting anything out of life unless we are excited. Yet it is one of the laws of nature that what goes up must come down, so we should not be surprised that depression has now reached epidemic proportions”.

“When we let ourselves get carried away by elation, we are opening the door for depression to visit us soon after. Whether we are elated or depressed, the mind is spinning out of our control, and the only difference is whether it is spinning over what is pleasant or what is unpleasant."

Easwaran proposes the following ways to get out of depression:

[1] “Do not spend time trying to analyse your depression to see how it came about.” This feeds the process of depression. In yoga, we see depression as a case of a speeded up mind. The thoughts are zipping through your mind very fast “why? Why? Why?!!!! Why me?!!!! Etc.” The yoga teachings tell us that to cure depression, we need to slow down the mind by stilling the thoughts. Not adding more thoughts. Besides, even if we know the causes of our depression, so what? If someone shot you with a poison arrow, do you wait until you have enquired as to who is the shooter before you try to treat the wound? You’ll be dead by then!

[2] Repeating our mantram. Whether this is “I will survive” or “Hail Mary…” or “Om mani padme hum”. This helps, guys. There’s nothing voodoo about it. It is a psychological effect. The repetition takes our mind off the escalating negative thoughts and replaces them with a positive message. This is good when you are not even in depression but perhaps just mildly sad, it brings the mind to a restful state. I call it the “mental screensaver”. Imagine giving the computer that is your mind something to do in between periods of heavy processing work. ;-)

[3] “Throw ourselves into work or activities that turn our attention outward and keep us from thinking about ourselves.” So if depression is endless dwelling on ourselves, the way out of this is, logically, not dwelling on ourselves but dwelling on others. Easwaran says the harder and more challenging the work the better. Also, it is best to find something that is done in the company of others and something that benefits others. In my case, this is to teach yoga and to do volunteer work. In the process, your mind is given something to focus on besides itself. I feel my problems transform and found a deeper purpose to existence. Whenever you live only for yourself, you are doomed – only in the service of others are you really serving your Self best. This is also why it is SO important to constantly draw out somebody who is depressed. He/she needs to re-engage in the world of others – which brings an end to their depression (dwelling on self). In a supportive environment, like a church or temple, volunteer work is especially therapeutic as there is a lot of goodwill and feeling of serving a higher purpose. If your loved one goes to these places, encourage them to contribute there. There are also many causes that need help: animals, children, environment, aged sick, etc. They are also endless sources of love and appreciation to those who help there.

[4] “Always act as if you are not depressed.” I can imagine that this upsets our “modern sensibilities”. It took a while for me to appreciate this. I gave it some tries and I must say it works on a very sublime level. I can put this in another way, anytime you are not paying attention, your mind falls into habit and you start the chain of thoughts condemning your actions and life, etc. If you can catch yourself at the onset of this thought process and act as if you are not depressed, you can avoid the fall into that bottomless pit. After a while, you find that you are really not depressed anymore and no longer pretending. Why is this so? That’s because you have FORGOTTEN YOURSELF. Remember that it is only when we dwell on ourselves that we are depressed. When you forget yourself, you also forget to be depressed!

What all these techniques show us is that we need to be constantly aware of what’s happening in our minds. Once the mind gets cloudy, our attention gets lazy, we become victims of our own uncontrolled thoughts and our emotions get pulled every which way. W become worn out and lost. But if we are constantly mindful of what our minds are up to, nothing can shake us, we can be *gasp* -- constantly happy -- not the excited, fleeting kind of happy but the calm, peaceful, lasting kind. How to be constantly aware? We need some techniques so that we can practice this skill. Yoga is a good technique.

Moral of the story? PRACTISE YOGA.

Enlightening talks for loan

By the way, I've got some excellent CDs sets for loan. The talks by Ajahn Brahm that I've quoted earlier for example is from one of the CDs. There are 4 sets and they are: How to Meditate by Ajahn Brahm, Living Without Fear also by Ajahn Brahm, Mindfulness and Modern Living (I think I got the title right...) by Ven Mahinda and The Way to Ultimate Healing by Ven Sangye Khadro.

First come, first served.

When can you practise yoga?

I heard this story recently from Ajahn Brahm (angmo guy who ordained as a monk in Thailand): there was a monastery in Thailand and they were renovating their premises. However, the abbot will have all renovation work stop at the hour of meditation and the monks will proceed with their sitting meditation amidst the rubble. Some visitor came and asked the abbot when will the work be finished, he said then that it is already finished. The visitor looked at the mess and the debris, then said in disbelief to the abbot: “How can you say that it is finished? There is junk everywhere and there is no roof!” The abbot then said: “What’s done is finished.”

When will you have time to do yoga? When you finally finish that project that has been hanging over your head for months at work? When you finally finish that email you were trying to send out since the morning? When you finally have a feeling that you have achieved something out of your workday? Then you will never do yoga. Nor will you have time for any other activity that might daily bring you joy and peace.

Come the hour when you have to leave your work place for yoga class, you got to tell yourself, what’s done is finished. Come, and practise, amidst your life’s renovation works and find some peace within the rubble of the work-in-progress that we call our daily living. As Ajahn Brahm says: “The only way to find peace is in the middle of imperfection.” We need to let go of work that is in progress for a while so that we can take a break, find some peaceful centre AND THEN RETURN to our work. This is the principle of Aparigraha in yoga: non-grasping. Holding on to things and being free are two mutually exclusive states. So learning how to let go is learning how to be able to live in a free way. Only then can we do our life’s work with ease – without burnout and fatigue, with enthusiasm and vigour. Then only can we truly practice yoga.

Announcements

[1] Class today --Saturday 26 June, 2004 -- has been cancelled. Sorry for inconvenience guys.

[2] From next week onwards, I am happy to announce that Thursdays at 7-8.30pm, my senior, Victor Chng (see story on yoga retreat below for bio) will be taking yoga class. He will be charging $18 for drop-ins and $160 for package of 10 classes. (There is no 20 class package for his class) -- if you have finished your class packages, you can consider joining his class if Thursdays are better for you. If you still have classes to go AND want to change to Thursday's Victor's class, please let me know. I'll work out with him on the arrangements.

[3] Some of you have requested to have more 8:30pm classes. I will start these only if there is a good response. So far the options are 8:30pm on either Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. Please let me know by next week.

Thank you!

How I ended up in a zen monastery or How I aim to be a rubbish bin or How to help others effectively

Sometimes you have a question lingering in the shadows of you mind for a long while and it is such a great joy when, in listening to a wise man speak, suddenly you comprehend the answer. Ahhh.

Yesterday I was listening to a wise monk, Ajahn Brahm’s talk on meditation and he was explaining his master, Ajahn Chah’s analogy on how to be an effective counsellor or teacher. He said that our job as a good listener is to be a rubbish bin for our students. They throw out all their frustrations or woes in their words and we are the passive containers for all of this. This is how people can feel better after they talk about their problems. Their problems may not be resolved but their state of mind has changed. . . so how they cope with life after that changed.

I knew this. And I gladly collected rubbish for a while when I started teaching. There came a time when the trash accumulated to such an extent that I felt I was bursting! It became unbearable! This happened some time back: In a state of heightened awareness from my meditation and yoga practice, I saw the sea of swelling suffering that is our world. Felt dead seasick. My student’s suffering became my own and I saw the same in all the people I met outside of class as well. Fortunately, I still went to yoga practice at my master’s. It was there, within the pranayama practice that I burst. I felt overwhelmed. Fortunately too, a former student of mind and a good friend was there with me and she offered to drive me home. Halfway through, I suddenly wanted to go to a peaceful place of refuge. I remembered that there was a zen monastery near where we were and we went there. My friend asked one of the monks to talk to me.

So the poor man became my rubbish bin. I still remember the essence of what he said and some of the statements he made. (It was a very short meeting). Amongst these, he said that he too sometimes feel that there aren’t that many people he felt he had truly helped. Whew! Immense sense of relief! He said that even the most powerful of helpers, the bodhisattvas, have limits to what they can do: [1] they can’t help those they do not have the chance to meet, [2] they can’t help people to change the fruits of their own actions (their karma), [3] they can’t help those who do not want to be helped. I guess the moral of the story is that who we can truly help is not always within our control since we are each free individuals. We just try our best and hope for the best. Isn’t it then a finer miracle that we do receive help, like in this case for me, when we most need it, despite all this!

I felt a little relieved after hearing what he said. Of course I felt relieved more because I have unburdened my rubbish into this kind man. I wondered how this man lived, day after day, listening to us, heaping more trash into his small frame. This is where Ajahn Chah’s analogy has a second part: he said that while we are rubbish bins, we should aim to be bins with a hole in the bottom! Hahahaa. . . I remember that the monk could not talk to me for too long because he had to go to the supermarket to buy the monastery's groceries. He had to empty out what he just heard from me and continue on with his daily errands. So, yes, we receive the rubbish of humanity, but we need to LET THEM GO.

Under new mangement

Woke up this morning with a feeling of restlessness. When you have pared down your lifestyle, there is more scope for restlessness and boredom to set in. Before long you will be thinking, perhaps you have made some wrong choice earlier on the road and perhaps you could be better off doing something else or being somewhere else altogether. Then you examine all the choices you’ve made in your life and begin rewriting the entire myth of you. My friends! This is the beginning of depression. I had been many times down this road so I’m familiar with it.

No matter what decision you had made earlier, or what is going to happen, without your foreseeing in the future, there is something which is preciously yours – YOU ARE HERE NOW. Whether you are happy or not, depends ENTIRELY on how your mind is managed right now. If there is zero management, you are forever in highs and lows, alternating between excitement and depression -- this is the natural state of the mind -- nothing to get upset about really. If there is some management, you are happy when you remember to manage. If there is good management, you are happy always, no matter the external circumstances.

Started out by talking about myself. Let’s get back to this. Woke up feeling restless. Aha! The mind is under bad management. Oops. Was saved by the needs of others. The mind is back to being under some form of management. Fortunately, as I began to read my emails and answer them this morning, I am submerged into people’s needs and I saw that my restlessness is only the same animal as the restlessness of all people. As I emerged from helping others, I did not feel restless anymore. This is the way the mind operates, it is restless. Then GIVE it something to rest on. Preferably, give it something that involves helping another – something that takes your mind away from dwelling on you. This is the basis of happiness of the enduring sort. This is the basis of good mental health.

Being selfless is not about being a saint. It is being sane.

Errors

Love has no errors,
for all errors are the want of love.





-- William Law (1686-1761) English spiritual writer and mystic

Present Tense

Why do I invite you to hold the yoga asanas for a certain duration? What is the "correct" amount of time to hold a pose? Why do we do hold some poses for longer than others?

Many of you have asked these questions after yoga class. There are some ways to answer these questions and I've heard them answered well by different teachers. Then there are teachers who choose not to answer these at all, telling you to simply follow their instructions and hold for as long as they say so. There are good reasons for all of these responses.

The fact of the matter is that as you practise yoga, you will get a sense on how long to hold the poses – then all you have to do is to “listen” to your body. In the meantime, the question you really should be asking is not "how long to hold?" but "why am I holding?" Yes, we hold the pose for a while once we arrive in the pose to "reap" the maximum health benefits of the pose, whether it's to allow the muscles to stretch or to develop a good sense of balance, etc. But the purpose of holding can be found in the instruction given by our teachers to "hold the pose but not hold your breath", to focus on our breathing and stay aware of the changes of the body while holding the pose still and in silence, usually with eyes shut, in steadiness and comfort. While this may be a easy thing to do in Child's Pose/Balasana, it could be a tall order when in Camel's Pose/Ustrasana (backbend in kneeling position).

Yet, as you practise, you will come to approach all poses in the same way, they each allow us an opportunity to be present to the present: whether you are in comfort, in discomfort, in relaxation, in tension, in peace, in agitation. We are completely enveloped into the fullness of our present experience – without resistance, without the mind escaping into fantasy or indolence.

Human beings are hardwired to choose pleasure over pain ten times out of ten. When faced with an unpleasant experience, we tend to want to run away from it or to visualise a situation when we are free from the experience. When faced with a pleasant experience, we tend to invest more and more of our energies to pursuing that pleasure or we are afraid of the pleasure coming to an end. This creates problems in our lives. We are in a way compromising ourselves by living in our minds (in an illusory past or future) rather than living in the present situation we are in. We are forever uncomfortable in the present and we find ourselves in a strange paradoxical existence that is extremely limiting and unsatisfactory. This is where the yoga practice comes in. In holding each pose, whether pleasant or unpleasant and learning to surrender the mind and body into the present experience, we develop a quality of equanimity. No longer tense with the present, we can reside fully, mind and body, in the present – a good thing too because the present is the only reality we exist in.

Hence we hold each yoga pose to the extent that we can be present and undistractedly so. In this way we learn the difficult but powerful skill of equanimity: having an even mind, clearly seeing the face of the present, in the face of all of life’s ups and downs.

Yoga Retreat by Victor Chng

Some of you have asked about yoga retreats. Well, now my senior is organising a yoga retreat at Bintan. You can pick up application forms from me and sign up via OmIm.

Yoga Retreat
Advancing with the practice
23 July to 25 July 2004

One of the key question as we proceed in our yoga practice is “How to advance in our yoga practice”. In this retreat, you will experience yoga as an integration of the body, mind and spirit, with the introduction of inversion on yoga asana, pranayama, meditation and the use of sound in yoga practice. Victor will lead you to understand the concept of advancing your practice and what you need to do to design a program for yourself to advance. He believes that the guru is in all of you and you just need to pay attention and tune into the inner space and find the centre of your being.

Highlights:
· Introduction of shoulder balance, handstand, headstand and full backbends
· Various techniques on hip-opening
· Pranayama & Sound Yoga
· Introduction to Meditation & Visualisation

Program:
23 July (FRI)
4pm to 7pm Yoga on Back & Hip-opening

24 July (SAT)
7.00am to 10am Yoga on Inversions
5pm to 7pm Pranayama & Sound

25 July (SUN)
6.30am to 8am Meditation & Visualisation

Retreat Packages
1. S$395 nett per pax (Twin-Sharing)
· 3Ds & 2Nites
· Mayang Sari garden-view chalet
· Include breakfast and two-way land transfers
· Yoga with Victor (9.5 Hours for 3 days)
· A choice of 60min traditional or relaxing massage
· DOES NOT INCLUDE FERRY TRANSFER, Lunch & Dinner

2. S$ 505 nett per pax (Single Occupancy)
· 3Ds & 2Nites
· Mayang Sari garden-view chalet
· Include breakfast and two-way land transfers
· Yoga with Victor (9.5 Hours for 3 days)
· A choice of 60min traditional or relaxing massage
DOES NOT INCLUDE FERRY TRANSFER, Lunch & Dinner

http://www.nirwanagardens.com/

Instuctor profile: Victor is a yoga avid who founded Yoga Culture in Singapoe. He completed his yoga teacher's training with Vivekananda Khendra (Bangalore) in Singapore. He teaches at his own capacity and constantly conduct workshops for his students. He has been practicing yoga for 4 years and has gone to various part of India and Nepal for his meditation and yoga practice. He has also gone to Mysore to learn from the founder of
Ashtanga Yoga, Sri Pattabhi Jois and his grandson Sharath.

Meditation Appreciation Course

Below is exerpted from an email to one of my students regarding the Meditation Appreciation Course that I attended last year. Highly recommended. This secular course is offered Awareness Place at Bras Basah Complex. For details, please follow the link below.
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Good that you are signing up for the meditation course. Good that you are getting your friend in too. I am very sure you will find the experience interesting. The course is short though -- don't expect that you become an accomplished meditator at the end of it! But it gives a good intro to meditation without boring you or getting into too much heavy stuff. Still, it is easy and quick to give meditation instruction but hard to TEACH and LEARN meditation. The only sure thing is that regular practice has its definite rewards. The happiest thing for me in the course is simply to be in the same room with a bunch of people who are REAL. So much of our day to day interaction, even with our old friends is crippled by cliches, routine and dissatisfaction stemming from our individual unhappiness -- there is also a level of pretense in our interaction with people we just meet. So the meditation room is a welcome retreat - people are there to try to understand themselves better without illusions, without pretension. Some of the participants have been for the course before and are simply there to "revise" and practice together with others. So your practice will benefit from the experienced meditators in your midst. Ask lots of questions. Richard, the instructor, has heard them all so he gives good answers.

Learning to meditate is actually learning about yourself -- how you are composed at random by the processes of your mind. You learn to master your mind, let go of random mind and be whatever you want to be without fear or hesitation -- the goal of all yoga.

Happiness requires conscious effort, yes. But constant awareness is also just a habit. Nothing more cheem. The mind can be trained to be happy, as a matter of habit. Meditation is a good tool for this as it makes you very keenly aware of the nature of your mind.

Course info: http://kmspks.org/practice/med_appreciate.htm

Clutter and skins

Monday is my day off. So I spent half of yesterday clearing out my writing desk. "Writing desk" is a misnomer. I have not done writing at that desk since. . .

Anyway, I was amazed at the amount of stuff that I could let go off. The trash bag filled up quickly and I was progressively filled with a sense of relief. How we can accumulate so much junk is not as important as how we could bear with so much junk for so long without getting around to doing some spring cleaning. Everyday, I wake up and see the desk. Every night I come home and see the desk. Plop, another piece of aged bill. Plop, another book for future reference. Plop, plop, plop -- "I'll clear the desk this weekend. . ."

There were forgotten letters that made me sad, forgotten birthday cards from friends from afar that made me happy. Let go of them all. It was tough work. It felt exceeding good. When I finished, I sat down at my desk (the chair was also over-laden with stuff before) for the first time in a long while. I can finally write at the desk - a new space to think new thoughts! A corresponding corner of my mind also cleared up too as I reassessed what I really needed to live today. I had allowed that corner to clutter up with un-needed things, taking up space which could have gone to new and useful thoughts.

I read, in passing, a section in a book on clearing the clutter in our homes and lives which said that according to feng shui ideas, accumulating paper or books in your home/room, prevents your adoption of new ideas. This means that you will be unable to shed aspects of your personality that is no longer useful to you as you grow. I also read in Eknath Easwaran's writing, I think, about snakes shedding their skin: in order for the snake to grow, it has to shed its skin -- a process that takes a lot of effort on the snake's part. However, if it does not shed, the old skin will suffocate it.

This is what it means to grow. In order to grow, we need all the time, to spend the effort to shed the old skins of our past minds. In so doing, we remain fresh and open to life in the present. Non-grasping means the same thing as being free.

“Change rooms in your mind for a day”

Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.

Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.

Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day. . .



Ahhhhh. There’s nothing like Sufi poetry. The above excerpt from the poem, All the Hemispheres, by Hafiz, a Persian poet in the 14th century (amazing!), is like a close description of what I went through in the past 2 days. As some of you know, I was attending the 3rd Global Conference on Buddhism. Your immediate question would be “Are you a Buddhist?” No, I’m a person interested in the intricate science of living happily. (Are there people who are not?!) So I would not miss an opportunity to meet and listen to a group of speakers who have made it their lives’ work to be scientists and teachers of happiness.

Some of you have asked me if I plan to go anywhere for vacation. The past 2 days have been a better vacation than any vacation I’ve been on. When I returned from a holiday still feeling sad and depressed, a wise friend once told me that I needed not a vacation from work or from Singapore, I needed a vacation from being me. When I listened to what these wise, humourous, earthy speakers have to say about issues like terrorism, compassion, gender inequality, rituals, daily living, dying, etc, the roof of my everyday mind lifted and I felt indeed removed from the usual me. I felt the fresh waves of wisdom urge me onwards to the other shore of liberation and the rising tide of excitement and love wash away any tiredness and doubt.

Sometimes I feel inadequate to teach. What do I know? Yet, following the wise advice of my yoga teachers in obedience, I started teaching and realised that there is a deeper learning to be got by sharing with others: it helps us to practise what we preach. We are in a way, forced to realise the teachings we have learnt. What do I know? All I needed to know really is to practise what I know.

There were many issues discussed in the conference. (I would be happy to share the info if you guys are interested to find out more. Ask me in OmIm. I’ll also have some books and CDs of lectures from the conference placed in OmIm. Also look at the noticeboard for a list of post-conference talks by some of the speakers.) I feel though the strongest message of the conference is the importance of PRACTICE. Someone asked during the Q & A session, how come after so many conferences on Buddhism we are still not enlightened. (Everybody laughed but, I think, quietly panicked.) This is because we may know what is the way to happiness but we do not PRACTISE our knowledge. We can sit around and argue all day about what Buddha said or what Jesus did or what the Prophet Mohammad advised but this is all pointless without practice. Practice is hard. Practice is necessary RIGHT NOW. Even one simple advice of being patient is very hard to actualise in all the dimensions of our interaction with others. Yet, as I learnt from my recent experiences in volunteering, TRYING to practice patience is itself something that makes you very happy. There is a joy in realising that you are living in a way that you choose and in a way that you know benefits others. The other problem with practice is that no one else can do it for you. I can teach you but only you can practise: yoga, meditation, patience, compassion, etc.

Ah well – Why not try something different. "Change rooms in your mind for a day" and forget about your own problems through realising what you’ve learnt and “Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness/And giving” on us all. All that you already know is enough.

This Saturday's (12 June) class cancelled

Please note that this Saturday's (12 June, 6pm) yoga class is cancelled as I will be away at a conference for the weekend. Sorry for the disruption. I wanted to rush back to conduct the class but I may be delayed because of the conference programme -- think it's better to hold off the class so that you will not be kept waiting.

Saturday's folks, you are free to come to attend classes on the other days in the coming week. Classes on Saturdays resume as normal from next Saturday 19 June.

Please be informed that OmIm will be closed for the weekend 12-13 June. If you die-die must buy something, you can come on 13 June Sunday, from 11am-12.30pm. My friend Bee Jin has kindly agreed to come back and help to manage the studio during this time. Be nice to her! [Thanks again Bee Jin!]

Pay Attention!

I cannot believe just how much attention it takes to be and remain happy.

Don't think that with yoga, Om Improvement and my current lifestyle, I am free from feeling down once in a while. I'm still in samsara afterall! The difference is now, I REALISE when I'm feeling down and I KNOW the process to get out of the rut AND I try and PRACTISE the process to do just that.

Living is such work!

Once you let your eyes defocus and mind get woolly, you lose awareness and POW! you begin to think that maybe you could be happier doing this or happier with that -- and FALL into the deepening pit of navel-gazing called depression.

Joy in each day is does not come and knock on your door begging admission please. You need to tend to it. Seek it out in all that you do and everything that you meet. This takes effort! Constantly. But this does not mean it's unpleasant. It just means that the moment you let your mind wander in laziness or neglect, your mind also wanders from all potentialities of happiness that can be experienced in the present moment. It is a game of perennial hide-and-seek.

So pay attention, joy at hand is waiting for you to discover it.

With unfailing kindness

"With unfailing kindness," says Charlotte Joko Beck,
"your life always presents what you need to learn."


I wonder what you are doing, thinking right now, each day. There is not much I can do for you from where I am. Perhaps with each hope, each thought and real love, some sense of goodness is activated and becomes a wave of positive energy sweeping through the world to reach you with some good turn of luck, or some strange happy chance, or some unexplained smile that rises spontaneously from nowhere to surprise you and subtly shift the day into something more bearable, something more pleasurable, so that without a reason, unwished for, you become bright, removed from the greyness of undistinguished instants, you find with a flicker of the mind, some unmistakable sense of peace that is your own world.

Namaste.

Reading happiness

I love to read. A skilled author has the ability to take you in completely into his story so that you are removed, temporarily, from your self, your own little world: your troubles, your pain, your anger, your desires, your worries, your passions, your personality all drop away like no more than leaves from a tree while the shedding tree remains unperturbed.

It is in reading that I realised this experientially: to be happy means to be totally absorbed in what we are doing. This expanded into an experiment to find the same kind of happiness in all tasks, by being completely consumed by the task. It could be cleaning the toilet, mopping the floor, sorting the trash. It could be having lunch with friends, having dinner alone, not eating. It could be sitting quietly in meditation, talking extensively, animatedly, to answer all my students’ questions after yoga class, writing this blog.

Am I in a campaign of self-denial? Yes! It is when we dwell on ourselves that we wind up in depression, essentially a situation where you are assaulted by a battery of uncontrolled thoughts on all that is unfulfilled in you. It is when we dwell on others (other people’s welfare and other tasks) that we free ourselves from excessive and pointless self-centricity. . . and be MORE than just our selves. Take it from me. Before I started to make progress in yoga, I was visited by bouts of dark depression. Alternately, when I was inspired, I could work with boundless energy creating art, writing, even motivating others to be inspired and to create.

These days, instead, a quiet steady well of happiness is slowly swelling up from the depths within me. I find fewer and fewer tasks that cannot be an exercise of happiness. This differs so much from the excitement of a vacation to come in to future or the recollection of a pleasant memory in the past: while these bring us short but super bursts of happiness, they also plunge us deep into disappointment when they are past. This kind of happiness is not real and these episodes sap your energy and zest for life. I grew tired of the roller coaster ride of excitements and depressions. There is a better way: As long as you do not lose your awareness of how you are doing what you are doing, you are happy. You dwell in joy for longer than the duration of a good long book, unruffled by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes, regardless of any illusory past or future. I guess this is what it means to be free.

If

If the lights don't go out
you cannot see

how brilliant the stars are.

Tree-maker

In today's Straits Times there is an article on a guy who makes miniature trees for a living. The trees' foliage are made out of sponge coloured green and tree trucks are made out of joss sticks. Each tree sells for $16-$60. He mainly makes these species specific trees for architects to be used in their 3D models of buildings. He also sells to individuals who walk into his shop at Sunshine Plaza at Bencoolen St.

"What the....?"

That's the reaction most people would probably have to the idea. Probably his parents or friends would inevitably go "You think money grows on trees ah?!" Heck, of course it's a risk. Living our dreams is a perilous journey. Yet the alternative is unthinkable. To be dragged around through life from one meaningless chore to another, only to die. Take the danger any day or be dead, although living in safety, now.

Life's like this. You live. You die. In between, you've got a choice to make. You can either live your life or have your life live you. Many times, in my former life in the corporate world and in the world of the arts, I found myself operating on auto-pilot mode: drag myself out of bed, go to work, think about what I could be doing instead of work, meetings, meetings, meetings, leave work late, go shopping, pay my bills, eat, movies, movies, movies, sleep late, drag myself out of bed, etc. On hindsight, in comparison to the happiness, peace and motivation I find myself in now, it still shakes me that anyone can live in that manner. I had so much unhappiness and ignorance! I had make a choice to let go. Not just let go of safety and comfort of a "proper job" but also to let go of the unhappiness and routine that I was attached to. To let go and freefall into life which is, by nature, full of risk and advanture.

There is something powerful about being a tree-maker. I was moved when I read the article. He is a maker of his own destiny. I am reminded of a beautiful book by Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees. The main character is another who chose to live in his own way. When he was a boy he climbed up a tree when he had a dispute with the family. Somehow he decided that rather than to conform he would live his own life in his own way. An amazing life follows with him living until he died up in trees. He invented contraptions to improve his life up there and even became a hero of sorts to the people. This was set in the Age of Discovery in Europe. It dawned on people that only when they learn to take their destinies into their own hands that they can truly appreciate the amazing beauty of life in creation.

How to wake up at 4am on a public holiday: I did it!

As promised, here are some tips on how to wake up at 4am to do volunteer work on a public holiday. Actually they are tips on how to do just about anything you set your heart on!:

[1] Eat light. Eat right. Eat slowly. Just had a light sandwich meal before bed. I mean when I left OmIm it was 11pm. There's nothing like indigestion to spoil your slumber party.

[2] Be patient. Just because you are in a hurry does not mean the whole world owes you one. As I waited for the cashier at Seven Eleven, everything that can go wrong went wrong. The cash machine went out of paper. The top flew off the machine as the cashier tried to sort out the machine. A part fell off and went missing when the cashier tried to stuff the new paper into the machine. The other staff was new and had just closed off accounts on the other machine. There was an impatient young lady behind me in the queue budging forwards and trying to get the price for a bottle of chilli sauce and to pay for it while all this is happening. So many potential triggers to have me fly off the handle. However, although I wanted to be out of there and into bed as soon as possible, I knew I had to remain calm. Focus on breathing. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. There is no need to dissipate precious energy being angry -- need that for the next day's work. I can also help the poor chap who was struggling with the machine to stay present by not having to deal with angry impatient customers and trying to sort out the machine as best as he can. He apologised for keeping me waiting when the machines were sorted out (they turned on the other machine again) but I said "it's ok. These things happen." Shit happens. Whether you are angry or not, you still gotta deal with the dirty job. ;-)

[3] Avoid the TV like a plague. Even a passing glimpse at the set can end up setting you back 5-10 minuntes -- and you realise that you've only been watching the commercials! My brother was watching TV when I came home. I made the mistake of trying to see what he was watching and ended up sitting there for longer that I really wanted to. What I really wanted is to get as much sleep as soon as I could! These tv guys are pros. They really know how to capture your attention and hold it. So beware! These machines are time zappers. If you treasure your life, avoid it as far as you can!!!

[4] DO YOGA. Helps me to drop right into sleep every single night. Ahhhh.

[5] Once you make a decision, never look back. I noticed throughout the whole attempt that at the back of my mind, a thought keeps tentatively poking out to try and mess around. "Why did I ever volunteer? 4am!? I could be sleeping soundly at home!" I just have to say back to it: "Hello, Miss Selfish Ego, sorry but we've heard your argument before. Unfortunately, your whining is not gonna change a thing. You see we have already made a decision to help others and while you may not like it, it will be a good thing to do and our Great Soul will very much appreciate it." ;-D Make a decision based on your conscience and never let your selfish desires disuade you...anytime after. Never make the same decision twice -- there is no time to waste in life doing this! I would rather be sleeping than having some pointless fantasy about how I can have more sleep if I faked some excuse about not being able to go volunteer at 6am. Realise that this is gonna be a constant process. As Miss Selfish Ego is very childish and sneaky and persuasive, so being very aware that this is happening helps. We need all our patience and determination to keep Miss Selfish Ego in check. The positive way to look at this is to see it as a challenge to hold your decision out. Thwart the ego! It felt good holding on to a decision you know is well made. This gave me positive waves of energy to prop me up standing for 4 hours manning the recycle bins in the early morning. This is how we save the earth afterall -- a little by little.

[6] Mediate...and be aware. After I finished my shift at 11am and had lunch, I went up to the mediation rooms at the monastery to meditate. There were about 4 other people there and we were all doing our own mediation. I recognised one of them as a volunteer on my shift but they were all strangers to me. The strange and beautiful thing about meditation is that it is easier to meditate when you are with others who are meditating. No one was giving instructions. No one moved. When I entered, I just went on one of the many neatly arranged cushions and just joined in. It was like entering a calm pool after having gone through the waterfall. I felt enveloped into the pool of quiet and concentration created by the other meditators. Although you can hear the announcements and festivities outside, we were very still. I watched the signs: that sense of almost falling asleep. . .then stilling yourself awake. . . and then you are in. I stayed there for what seems a long time. When I opened my eyes, it was only 20 minutes. I felt all the tiredness and sleepiness drop away. Funny, it was during the meditation talk later that I really nodded asleep. That's because I realised that I had gone for the same talk by this speaker before. My concentration wavered and the whole body failed. I saved my speaker and fellow participants from any distraction by deciding to leave then.

How to wake up at 4am on a public holiday

Wow. A worthy title. I hope that by this time tomorrow, I would have the answers to share with you. If not, tomorrow's blog would be "How not to wake up at 4am on a public holiday"!! hahaahaa.

Why on earth am I waking up at 4am? I'm helping to save the earth. No kidding. I've volunteered to be part of an environmental awareness initiative at the Phor Kark See Monastery on Vesak Day: we're trying to educate the public on recycling, using cloth shopping bags instead of plastic bags, etc. My shift is from 6am-11am. (There are events going on through the night from tonight onwards.) So that means I got to get up by 4am. I'm looking forward to it. The odds are stacked against me. I've got three classes to teach today. The 2nd evening class ends at 10pm. By the time I've answered my students questions and packed up, it would be 11pm. Dinner/supper. Midnight or 1am sleep. wake up at 4am. It would be a great challenge. But I plan to attend the talks and workshops at the Monastery during the day on Vesak day so I chose to volunteer for the earliest possible slot. Hope I don't fall asleep during mediation class. If I do, I hope I don't snore too loudly and jeopardise someone else's samadhi.

Still the sun rises everyday for me. Why not I rise earlier on one day for mother earth? ;-)

If you are interested in the events, you can read:
http://kmspks.org/events/vesak/index.htm

Tips: There is a chap doing a talk on yoga at 3pm on Vesak Day. Another gentleman, Richard Chia, is conducting meditation class -- I took a meditation course by him before and he was very good. Talks are free. See you there.