August appeared to be a very interesting part of my life. I managed to get myself one month of vacation in Toronto anda as I was about to overcome my jetlag there, my cancer friend's sister called up and announced that he passed away. On the day I left Toronto, Rev. Dhamananda, the chief monk of Brickfields Temple in Malaysia, passed away. Perhaps this series of events is what I have been taught all this while - transient are all wordly matters!!?? Anyway, gained some, lost some but life must go on.
I dedicate this blog to Hee Boon, my coursemate, friend, truth seeker and listener of my crazy ideas. May he be well and happy!
Hee Boon was stricken by cancer a year back and as usual, he was a positive persopn and looked at things in a tue 'ehipassiko' spirit i.e. come and see (undersand) There is no dogma but only facts and logic to support all beliefs. He blogged his views and experience and I learnt a lot from it. In fact, the blogging idea for me was inspired by him.
Below is what I have learnt from him which I would like to share with all readers : Make meaning.
Events happen. We can debate that it is happening for a reason, or some prefer to view it as a random process. Whichever the case, that is always partially or totally beyond our control because there are so many factors affecting those events.
HOWEVER, there is one area that is within our control all the time which is how we make meaning out of this event. In other words, our intepretation of that event. Our house could be burglarred. We can inteprete in many ways : stupid country, stupid lock or stupid luck. But we can also think of it as 'well, I just realized my security system is not good enough which I need to improve. And perhaps I should buy insurance to cover for burglary too'. The intepretations with 'a lot of stupid' will usually result in us not doing anything but feeling angry with almost everything. The latter meaning on the other hand, spur us into action. Forget about the past and how to improve.
Hence, for every single event, we can choose to make the meaning we want out of it. No wonder someone told me that 'he chooses happiness'!
An anology to making meaning is how we frame a picture. Try get a picture especially one with many elements in it. Cut a hole in a piece of paper and run this 'frame' through the pictures. You will notice that as we browse, we see a pix within a pix. The picture is just like an event that has happened. Our mind will never capture the whole picture (because it is changing all the time) but when we make meaning, we are capturing the part that we want it to represent the pix. Voila! you have made meaning.
For Hee Boon's berievement, I interprete it as:
'Anything can happen. Treasure what we have now'
'Life is more than work. We must continue to upgrade our understanding on life'
'Use Hee Boon's blogs as examples when talking about learning life'.
For those interested, you can check 'fhbadventure.blogspot.com'.
