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All human beings have love in their hearts…
They disguise it in many ways.

And the longer they disguise it…
The easier it is to become truly lost.

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What does the Mind aim to see in this self-automated Galaxy?

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It watches body & mind…
carrying on its usual functions…
and witnessing the usual phenomena;

It follows every action like a good detective at work.
And like clockwork… it ticks forward happily…
at every task it’s been trained to perform.
It even works while the body’s sleeping.
It watches the dreams.
It moves by itself…
It misses no beat.
Or so it thought.
It is satisfied.
Until…

“That was a gooood meditation…”
“Things were clear and definitive!“
“I am  H a p p y  !“

There!
It sees the Natural Phenomenon…

Now it can finally answer the question “Who am I?“

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Pix from www.chenghiang.wordpress.com

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(Yawn) Yhwaaaoooww…
(Sigh) What can I say about Boredom?

That:

• It is an emotion of void – and like all phenomena, it cannot remain in one state too long…
• It needs closure.
• Both Satisfaction & Dissatisfaction alternating rapidly.
• Unable to be forced (happens automatically).
• Boredom thrusts us forward… into the next moment, next thoughts and next actions just like any other feelings… however,
• Boredom strikes stealthier than anything ever encountered.

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Boredom… Crawls like a worm… and Strikes like a hungry Megalodon.

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Believe it… or not.  I never imagined an itty-bitty tiny emotion like Boredom to be able to hit like a hammer.  Unlike anger, fear or pain which are much easier agents to spot.  Two years ago, when I was watching “confusion”, I found that a wisdom mind, one which was not trained to recognise confusion would contemplate a lot in a short space of time.  Obviously it became easily confused with the vast number of questions, ideas and choices it had.  Naturally, soon after it began rolling like a soccer ball… throwing itself forward at amazing laps.  A question such as “So how do ‘I’ stop thinking?” would lead to anything but the actual stopping.

Confusion was difficult to spot… especially if the ego “I” does not wish to be associated with the states of confused.
Boredom is a different story.

A trained mind watches without trying, stumbling into nor interfering with bodily actions, thoughts & feelings.  Each phenomenon is recognised and realised as they are.  For example: When the mind decides to perform an auto-concentration, we call it “Samma Samadhi” or right meditation because it recognises that it is meditating by itself… not “I am meditating”.  The difference lies in wisdom.  Later when the mind decides to exit and return to jumping again, we also see that phenomenon as nature.  “The kid doesn’t wanna play with his Nintendo Wii anymore, ‘cos now he wanna rock n’ roll! “  Stillness is impermanent… right?  Yes… BUT did I miss a little something back there?

Thoughts & feelings usually throw us forward, but not for an regular Joe meditator,  the Jhanna maybe too blissful to leave but it does not last; the contemplation might be sherning towards something enlightening, but that too has a limit; or perhaps the silence itself was just the good rest the mind needed, but silence and rest also suffer should they stay the same state too long.  No… most exit mechanisms are not these regular functions of the mind.  It is far deeper than that.  For me… it’s Boredom.

My meditation is done monkey style, the monkey suit is allowed to walk, talk, sit, look, eat, scratch, move, think & feel while the Monkey Operating System (MonkeyVista) catalogs the movements, occasionally MonkeyVista would slip and crash on the dinner plate of a hungry launching Megalodon.

There!  Boredom ate the monkey.

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So should one investigates into the illusiveness of Boredom…
One shall witness a great engine of this impermanent Universe indeed.

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No red suits, no reindeers, no white beards,
no fears and of course… no need to wait till next Christmas.
Modern-day Santas are here, this time delivering toys
to the kiddies is up north of Thailand.

A gentleman named Thana Yasopa, winner of 2008 Human Rights Awards
called the temple’s answering machine and said “Venerable sir,
I heard that your temple was good at delivering toys to children,
so I was wondering if you could help my village.
The toys we have here are so old and ruined. So I…”

Santa MickyRai picked up the phone:
“How many kids does your village have?”
“About 30, sir”
“I’ll call the Toyman and see what he’d say,
chances are he’ll give you enough toys for 60 children”
“Thanks Santa!”

The Toyman was a disciple of an Arahant Bhikkhuni who used to reside here
at my temple.  Much merits and happiness to him…

Nine boxes of toys = Free
Hiring a delivery truck = Free
Truck driver = Free
Cost of fuel = 305 Baht
Cost of express parcel delivery = 450 Baht
Looks of Happiness on the children’s faces = Still Priceless.

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Ever been bothered by the urges to control breaths during meditation?
I know I have.

On and off, my meditation had been disrupted by the lack of complete letting-go.  Sometimes when I meditated, there were automatic urges to control the breathing.  It felt similar to a passenger being smacked back into the driver seat of the car that already & naturally can drive itself.  You see, I preferred long in-breaths and short out-breaths with additional drag of blissful pauses… a luxury package that only professional drivers can provide.  So in short… the car wasn’t doing a good enough job with its air intake and its exotic scenery driving routines.  That’s right.

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I used to blame the “Control Freak” in me, and for years I tried to correct the problem without success.
Until one fine day last winter.

Did you notice the above mentioned term “automatic urges to control”?  Yes… That was what it saw.  This monkey enjoyed it!… and not me.  IT prefers long in-breaths and short out-breaths with additional drag of blissful pauses.  IT controlled.

Funny thing about mindfulness is that once the monkey realises his own habit, he stops.  Not to mention that he was caught in the act.  Similar to a stone-aged cave man holding a 100watt light bulb in his hands.  To him this light bulb is God and dropping it was out of the question, until he realises how hot it actually is.  Defilement behaves exactly this way until it is busted.  Like Batman was fun until I saw how it was made, the disorganised pigsty back-lot where they shot the police chase scene, the digital batman jumping out of the sky train, etc…  It was no longer fun for me the instant I realised I was conned.

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So how is Mr. Monkey now you ask… well he’s fine and happy.  Still having a go at controlling breaths from time to time, but he also knows that it is his nature and habit to do so and more importantly that he had been discovered.  No longer a con.

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When I was 11… my father returned home one day from work, a little depressed and quiet.

“What’s wrong daddy?” I asked.

My father was a cancer doctor at Siriraj Hospital in Thailand.  Worked his whole life, 17 hours a day, 7 days a week.  With 4 jobs daily at hand; Frozen Section (analyzing live cancer cells) early morning, running Emergency Wards shortly after, Private lab looking at more of them cancer cells in the afternoon, and running a Home Clinic in the evening.  Yes!  My house was a clinic.  Luckily mother was a nurse and she assisted him every evening at home.

“Son…” he said.  “My friends and I… we did something terrible and cruel.”

“What did you do?”  I asked.

“A cancer experiment on live animals”.  He replied.

“…..” I nodded.

“We built 2 cages, both cubical shaped, around 2 metres on all sides” he said while mimicking his hands to illustrate the sizes of the cubed cages.  “I then put 2 monkeys, one into each cage”.

“And…?”  I asked curiously.

“Both cages were electrified.”  He said while looking straight at me.  “Every three minutes, a shock will come.”

“Huh?!  Does the shock kill the monkeys?”

“No.”  He shook his head. “But it really hurt them.”

“And then?”  I was glued to the story.

“Well, we fitted one cage with an anti-shock switch.  The monkey had to stand, reach up and press the switch at the right moment to avoid the shock”.

“A-ha…”  I nodded.  “You trained the monkey to do that?”

“Yeah… he learned it quickly once he knew it could stop the pain.”

“And the other monkey dad?”  I asked.

“No switch for him.  He received the shock full-on every time.”

I heard sadness in my father’s voice which was rare to me. “Oh man… poor guy”

“The point of experiment was STRESS RELATED CANCER, and we wanted to see which animal would die from it first.  Some lab technicians made bets on it like it was a game of dice.”

“Which monkey did they bet on?”  I was curious myself.

“Well, most of them went for the monkey without the switch”.  He said.  “What about you son… what do you think?”

“My guess?… the same as them.  Am I right dad?”

My father shook his head.  “No.  True that the pain was relentless, shook him up a little at first and it terribly disrupted his living.  But it was non-judgmental, it striked every 3 minutes without any prejudice.  No matter what he was doing; eating, toileting, sleeping, scratching or whatever…  it didn’t care. Good thing was he got used to it, and since he didn’t have any means of stopping it, he learned to accept it.”  My father gestured the hand posture of Kuan Yin Bodhisattva with a compassionate smile on his face.

I did not understand the concepts of letting go nor acceptance, let alone who Kuan Yin was (I was 11!)

“The guy with the switch on the other hand couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat and couldn’t take a poop without looking at the switch.  Sure he was a prisoner in a cage, but that switch became a much more suffering mental prison for him.  There were times when his miscalculated the timing of the shock and got zapped, he would have a major fit.  Screamed and jumped, threw his food and water bowls around and destroyed his little tree branch.”  Father fussed and flapped his hands up and down with his eyes crossed and tongue sticking out to imitate the stressed monkey.

“Hahahahaha…” I laughed innocently.

“His eyes were red, emotionally unstable, erratic behaviors and he was completely stressed out.  He died in three months son.”  Father looked at me seriously again.

“…. aha”  I nodded unconsciously and blankly.

“We did an autopsy on him, and found that cancer originated from his tummy, spreading out quickly until it swallowed his intestines, liver, kidneys and eventually his lungs.”

“Wow…”

“His internals were rock solid son.”  Said my father.

“I see… so what happened to the other monkey dad?”

“We took a scan of him and found no cancer or any other diseases.”

“He’s still alive?”  I asked lively.

“Yes.  His name is Khun Was-sa-nha (Mr. Spiritually-lucky).”  Said my father. “Would you like to go visit him?”

“Yeah!”

“Good… I’ll take you to see him on Sunday.”

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When things are looking UP… life is great.
The whole world smiles.

But what goes UP must always come DOWN…
Such is called the “Downside” to life.
No surprises there.

Harmonically, what is DOWN cannot stay DOWN…
It must proceed back UP… and we of course call this the “Bright Side”.

Unfortunately Bright Side is Downside’s best pal.
And believe it or not, they’re exactly the same.

So which side should one favour?
Bright side?  Downside? or both sides?
Hard decision I know.

Fortunately, outside these sets of squares,
There is another Side to life…
The NO SIDE.

Now this might sound a little naughty and noncomplying to Universal rules,
But NO SIDE exists.
It is always there, available whenever we want it.
The first question we gotta ask ourselves is
“What the hell are these good, bad, up, down, right, wrong, bright side downside worldly bull****?!!!”
Yep!  You’ve got it!

Good karma is heavenly bright side and Bad karma is the downside of hell.
But what about No Karma?
Middle path is a tough one.
No more good and evil.
No more right and wrong.
No more crave for heaven nor fear of hell.
No more being conned by ideas.
No longer coming back to the thought, memory & feeling casino.

No more birth.
No more death.
No more faith.
No more fear of Doomsday threats.
No more panicking on December 12, 2012.
No more deaths by the billions before each human evolution.

No more Sides.

No more fun.
No more games.
No more sex.
No more friends.
No more internet.
No more news.
No more happiness.
No more boredom.
None… nothing at all.

Do we still want the middle path?

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20,000 scientists seated in an outdoor stadium, awaiting for an old & bald-headed man in robes who arrived via a helicopter to give his speech.

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“Monk!” One man said, after putting up his hand and stading up. “What is this rebirth stuff you people talk about?  I mean I like your philosophy and all, but I just don’t share that ridiculous view.”

Several laughters and cheers arose from the crowd as the question was pushed to the bald man on the stage.

“My dear sir, what is the first law of science?” The monk asked.

“That errr… energy cannot be created nor destroyed.”  The man replied.

“There!”  The monk said smiling and pointed at the man.

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“Respected venerable sir.” A woman put up her hand this time. “Why does your religion view life as suffering?  Like the previous gentleman who asked the question, I also cherrish your philosophy and teachings, but suffering doesn’t agree with me.”

“Thank you for your question.”  The monk replied politely.  “What is the second law of science?”  He asked back gently.

“Energy cannot remain in one state too long.”  A shout of answer came from the crowd.

“There!”  The monk said again smiling.

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“Hello Mr. Monk.” A young boy stood up. “My mommy, she wanted to know what is Karma?”

“Hey there little guy…”  Smiling, the monk looked at the boy and once again replied to the question with a question.  “What can you see when you close your eyes?”

“Nothing.”  The boy replied with his eyes closed.

“Good!  So who can tell me the third law of science?”

“Action => Reaction?”  The boy replied.

“Very good!”  Smiling monk bowed to his audiences with joy, before again saying “There!”

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“Walk like Egyptians… ”
or NOT.

How did the Egyptian Empire come to its end?
Like all empires, domains and kingdoms that came and went or about to go… history teaches us that nothing lasts forever, just like any orgy parties.

So what killed it?
Give up?
Okay… here I go
“Overwhelming Rituals & Ceremonies…” are what really crushed it.
Here’s why…

I live in Thailand now… and although it is a Buddhist country, I see plenty of faith & belief with very little Buddhist ideas put into real practice.
Fear of Nature is hoisted to atop of all things.
They make huge offerings to monks in return for strength, protection, good livelihood, heath, wealth, and eternal life. When monks give talks, they chatter over the voices of the microphones. They never ask any questions, even when given opportunity, just believe it blindly and things will be fine… sound familiar? But when water blessing ceremony is given by the monks, they all pack into the tiny little rooms to catch a drop of blessed holy water.

This is very similar to “Oh my GOD… I’m scared of cancer!”
Where “GOD” stands for birth, old-age, sickness, death, fires, storms, tsunamis, lightning, thunder, flood, meteor striking planets, heaven, hell, happiness, love, fear, hatred, anxiety, depression, etc… both beautiful wonders & natural disasters alike.
So how unreligious & how unscientific would it be to say “I embrace GOD, but I’m afraid to die”?
Exactly you said it.

That’s Thailand.
And so was Egypt.

Fearing that the GODs (nature) would be angry in every occurrence of flood, lightning, thunder, fires, storms, etc… and that life would become difficult, they became more and more ritualistic and fearful of natural occurrences. Performing religious rituals as soon as they wake. Forget toothbrushing, that doesn’t extend you damn life. Forget taking a shite or washing the face, they’re all waste of time. Hell no… happiness first and suffering later.

Unfortunately misunderstanding nature, Universe or GOD if you might, will undoubtedly lead to suffering.

Some says God created demons… he didn’t. Universe is balanced. So balanced that it runs perfectly in harmonious mathematical precision. Such is called causality or Karma. The very operating system platform of any Universe. So just try creating GOOD… and see what happens. Conjure up heaven for example and… hell follows automatically.

Misunderstanding Nature, Universe (or GOD) will make you wanna be soooo good… you’d be soooo damn evil at the same time. Like Mayan, Incan, Rome & America. Isn’t it great?  All good things derail and go sideways.  Those who stay in the middle get front row seats to watch it all burn.

PM.

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Hi everyone!
Just a story I want to share with youall!

One lady I met back in Aus…
She arrived at the temple all torn and broken.
Sat by the garden crying and wouldn’t talk to anyone.
We invited her to stay in the ladies’ dorm and offered her lunch but she wouldn’t accept any.
Later on she just vanished.
We had a feeling she’d committed suicide.

However, a year later she returned!
This time all joy and happy!
Completely changed.

I asked her what had happened and she told me about her job.
She’d gotten a job at a nursing home.
Watching people dying.

Crying in their death beds with their teary relatives by their sides, all waiting for the will to be finalised.
“Crying like pigs” she said.

Some lived their lives hating their parents and never got a chance to make it right.
Some hated their brothers and never offered their apologies because of their prides.
Some had relatives by their sides but all they could offer was more sadness.
Some relatives only cared about the inheritance.
They all died lonely and in longing.
A truly suffering end unprepared for.

So she decided to live simple.
Rented a tiny room under an old Italian man’s house.
An underground room blasted by the noise of the TV above.
To meditate on the images of lonely deaths she saw during the days.
And that was how she pulled through.

My Abbot wanted to chuck her out quickly when he first saw her (1 year back when she was a wreck)
But when he met her the 2nd time he couldn’t recognise her.
I had to tell him who she was and how she made it.

Even he was impressed.
Just thought I’d share this story with you.
Hoping you meet the walks of life and death guiding you to happiness.

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