BF Sunday Service Talk - Will You Cry When I Die?

I attended the Sunday service talk by Dr Wong, for it was on death, a follow-up of the Saturday Youth Service talk on life. The talk was centred on giving appropriate attention to the things that are really important, Dhamma and time (especially with family members). People will cry when we die if we have truly lived well and touched lives.

-          What is important is what we do with our life, not the length of our life or achievements e.g. educational qualifications

-          Therefore we must apply the Dhamma in our life. Discussion and debate is just talk and leads us nowhere if we do not practise

-          E.g. unconditional love, as seen in this really touching ad

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-          A lot of Buddha’s teachings are centred around lay life but are not put into practice e.g. how to manage wealth, earning righteous wealth rather than not earning at all, parents’ duties to children and vice versa

-          The Chinese character for “teach” joins the characters of “old” and “young”, as well as holds a rod (discipline) – true meaning of teaching is respecting and learning from elders who enforce discipline

-          If we knew when exactly we will die, we will live our lives entirely differently and prioritise what is truly important

-          We cannot change many things in life; learning things like forgiveness helps us

-          Today, people have replaced the divine with money and material goods

-          Many words are left unsaid until it is too late e.g. loved one suddenly got into an accident when conflicts were unresolved

-          The time spent with loved ones is precious e.g. elders ask children if they want more rice so that the children spend more time with them at the table

-          We should practise the middle path, working hard but not sacrificing family time

-          Marriages are actually contractual, based on how long we think we will live

-          We need to continually renew our vows, our partners and ourselves are constantly changing i.e. we are different from yesterday today, and 10 years later we are completely different

-          Dhamma has to be applied in life; if we live well, people only need to look our lives to see Dhamma 

BFY Service Talk - Kids! Be Educated or You Will be Stupid

Last week’s talk was by Dr Wong Yin Onn and was centred on education in the Dhamma rather than education in school. It was really engaging as he used many songs and video clips.

-          The 3 Universal Characteristics (impermanence, suffering and non-self) are everywhere and experienced by all of us

o   Impermanence – no state (pleasant/ unpleasant) lasts forever. Chief cause of suffering – our belief that things can last

o   Non-self – no permanent unchanging being can be found i.e. we all fall sick, age etc

-          Existence is endless as we are reborn over and over again

-          The only way out is liberation. A teacher can only show the way

-          Analogy: the pill scene from The Matrix

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-          “That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.” - Morpheus

-          Like Neo, we have to take the blue pill (uncover the truth) rather than the red (live in denial, which is easier) to be liberated

-          Some truths are easier to see (e.g. everyone will die) than others (e.g. non self)

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-          An e.g. of non self as illustrated by this scene in The Matrix. There is no spoon; it is the mind that bends. There needs to be many things i.e. the concept of the spoon, the concept of bending, the eye to see the spoon, the brain to receive and interpret the signals etc

-          Another e.g. Q: Is there a sound if a tree falls in the forest when no one is around?

-          A: There are only (sound) waves. For there to be a sound, there must be a sense object, sound base and sound consciousness i.e. the concept of sound, the tree that falls, sound waves, eardrums and the brain to receive and interpret that sound

-          We are finished if we surrender our intellect to blind faith as it does not allow us to ask why; we should always ask questions

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-          The song “Dust In The Wind” by Sarah Brightman (Originally sung by Kansas, which I personally prefer) reminds us of impermanence

o   When people die and are cremated, their body is reduced to ashes in an hour or so, like dust in the wind

o   Money can only buy a beautiful funeral but not another minute of life

o   We often futilely cling onto what is impermanent

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-          The songs “Colours of the Wind” (Pocahontas) and “Circle of Life” (Elton John) remind us that all beings are interconnected

o   We owe our success due to so many factors and people, and not just our own hard work; if we believe it was just due to our efforts it will inflate the ego

o   In life, never take morethan we give

o   Until we find the path unwinding we will be in the circle of samsara

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-          The song “Imagine” by John Lennon illustrates Buddhist principles

-          Buddha did not teach a religion but taught a noble way of life

-          We can see cause and effect e.g. drank alcohol and then knocked down someone in an accident

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-          Using the Force, Yoda easily frees the X-Wing from the bog. He tells Luke that it is because he did not believe it that he failed, which is similar to walking the path and attaining Nibbana

-          NIbbana is a reality transcendent to the entire world of mundane experience (this is investigated in quantum physics)

-          The Jedi Code “There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. (There is no chaos, there is harmony.) There is no death, there is the Force.” Reminds us of Dhamma

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-          I could not find the scene from “The Tao of Kung Fu” he showed us but found this similar one instead, where we observe that

o   All of us have  capacity for the greatest of good and evil; we have dualistic thinking as joy can’t be felt without an equal capacity to feel despair etc

o   We should give things e.g. feelings a name – labelling is objectifying them; not identifying themselves as ourselves – meditation technique – arising thoughts are due to causes and conditions; only ours if we make them so

o   We often see them, think they are us and act upon them

-          It is the fear of fear itself that makes us fearful i.e. many of our fears are an imagined outcome of the future, have to do with the sense of self and do not actually come true; we have to realise that there is nothing to fear

-          Many things are neither completely black nor white e.g. kamma; hardly anything we do is 100% unconditional 

Faces of BFY - Clara

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"A few days back I was rushing to do an assignment on my laptop when it hanged. I've spent the past few days before that working on it. I panicked as it had yet to be saved. I tried to get it back with the backup function but to no avail and I was feeling really bitter by then. I had this irritant feeling as I had no one and nothing to put the blame on. I believed if anyone was to irritate me at that point, I would have vented my emotions on the person. Fortunately, I got aware of the arising feelings. In Buddhism we always practice to be mindful of ourselves. So I immediately stopped harping on what has already happened and decide to work on my assignment again after calming myself with a short meditation."

- Clara

River Flow Analogy

This was shared by Bro Shun Xiang.

"There's nothing wrong with the way the body grows old and gets sick. It just follows its nature. 

So it's not the body that causes us suffering, but our own wrong thinking. 

When we see the right wrongly, there's bound to be confusion. 

It's like the water of a river. It naturally flows downhill. It never flows uphill. That's its nature. 

If we were to go and stand on the bank of a river, and seeing the water flowing swiftly down its course, foolishly want it to flow back uphill, we would suffer. 

We would suffer because of our wrong view, our thinking "against the stream." 

If we had right view, we would see that the water must flow downhill. 

Until we realize and accept this fact, we will always be agitated and never find peace of mind. 

Our body is like the river that must flow downhill. It passes through youth, old age and finally dies. 

Don't let us go wishing it were otherwise. It's not something we have the power to remedy. 

Don't go against the stream!"

~ Ajahn Chah