bluecarrot

Decide the actions of importance,
then act on it.

For even Nature tosses her oceans
and uproots her trees.

I am thankful for the reminder:

   I now go away alone, my disciples! You too now go away and be alone! So I will have it.

   Go away from me and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he has deceived you.
   The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
   One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil. And why, then, should you not pluck at my laurels?
   You respect me; but how if one day your respect should tumble? Take care that a falling statue does not strike you dead!

   You say you believe in Zarathustra? But of what importance is Zarathustra? You are my believers: but of what importance are all believers?

   You had not yet sought yourselves when you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account.
   Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you...

- Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

Thank you Adrian, for your timeless beautiful messages. It is a pleasure to be able to walk through your life journey again and rediscover these special memories. :)

Verily, the more one knows, the less he knows. The path of humility is not to say "I don't know"; rather, to know what you know, yet knowing all that you know is just an insignificant portion of all there is to know. For if one looks beyond this dimension, how many more layers are there? And if one sees the interbeing or interconnectedness of all lives, all souls, all beings, seen and unseen... What do we think we know? I don't know everything.

To help, one must be wise to know how to help.
That sometimes by saying "No" is also a form of help,
and help another but also help yourself,
for you are also a precious human life.
Even God says "No," for He understands the big picture.

One may learn the truth by sitting in the middle:

In the middle of good and evil, there is no judgment.
In the middle of high and low, there is no competition.
In the middle of new and old, there is no decay.
In the middle of love and hatred, there is no attachment.
In the middle of pleasure and pain, there is no preference.
In the middle of past and future, there is no time.
In the middle of here and there, there is no space.
In the middle of beginning and end, there is no limit.

In all duality, there is unity.
In the finite, there is the infinite.
In the infinite, there is oneness.

To be or not to be,
that is indeed the question,
for to be one is not to be another,
and to be all is not to be all,
if all is without none.

New soul? Old soul? I suppose it doesn't matter that much. Know that to be an old soul, one must have been a new soul once; for a new soul, one will grow to be old someday too. No arrogance, no jealousy.

I share my thoughts, I don't teach. :)

If one cannot find the strength to love another out of a fear of loss,
then may he at least find the strength to love himself, so that he needs not fear losing himself.

Action begets action,
Action begets reaction;
No action is still an action.

Since karma accumulates
For every action taken,
So may one use wisdom
While taking action.

Since karma accumulates
For every action taken,
It is also wise
Not to take any action.

I had the opportunity to visit the National Cancer Centre today. My uncle was scheduled for a chemotherapy session in the afternoon, yet by strange chance my cousins (his sons) were all overseas at work this week, and my auntie (his wife) had to work, so nobody would be accompanying him there. Seeing how free I was anyway, I thought: Why not? and decided to be his guardian.

This was something I don't get to see everyday. Indeed, walking into the waiting area, I had a brief recollection of the movie My Sister's Keeper before realising that this was not an act. Mainly the people waiting to undergo chemo treatment were seniors; in their midst, I saw perhaps a teenage boy looking bald and pale, accompanied by his small-built mother. I felt something stir in me, a broth of emotions just starting to bubble. If I had to sum up the whole scene in one word, I'd pick the one that Siddhartha awakened to: Suffering.

Yet, that was not just it. While waiting for their turns, some were reading books; some chatting with their accompanying relatives, smiling as they spoke despite being bald; an elderly woman in a wheelchair was happily enjoying her bread, seemingly untroubled by the tube running through her nostrils. What is this? Somewhere in the midst of our conversation, my uncle said: "One must be strong and positive despite having this illness. Things will feel better that way."

Seeing the world from another side certainly adds a new layer or dimension to the life we have come to learn about. As I pondered once again on my purpose here, in that small moment I asked too: Are they blessed with a chance to ask themselves this?

The next city I came to, I saw men furiously at work: they were scrambling to bind wooden poles together, and the task never seemed to end. Curious, I went up to one of them and asked him what he was trying to do, but without even looking at me he gave a disgruntled reply: "Can't you see I'm busy?" I went over to the next person, and got the same response. And the next. Not about to give up, I continued searching for someone who might seem capable of entertaining me.

As I rounded a corner, I was blinded by a sudden pour of light. When my eyes adjusted to the intense brightness, I saw the most amazing thing: A golden throne floating in the sky! And now I could understand what those men were doing, for I saw right beneath the throne, many men were eagerly trying to lean their wooden ladders against the throne in the hope of climbing up to it. Yet, none seemed to have succeeded, for all their ladders were too short to reach the throne. Seemingly unfazed, the men quickly went to their individual corners and continued binding wooden poles together, while another group of them took the available space to test their ladders.

An interesting competition no doubt, I thought to myself. Looking on, I started to notice a group of weary old men lying exhausted by the far end of the city walls. I decided that they might be able to answer my questions, so I headed over.

"How fares the day, Sir?" I bowed down and asked one of them politely.

He slighted his droopy eyes in my direction and mumbled, "Are you Death that has come to claim me?"

I was taken aback. "Do not be mistaken; I am only a passing traveler to your city."

"Oh... And I thought I can finally find eternal peace," he sighed. "All my life, I've worked so hard trying to reach that throne, but nothing came of it. Like all the other men, I was hopeful that I could be the one to succeed - to be the first to reach it. Look at me now. Look at all the others around me. We're old, and tired. We used to be rivals back in the day, competing against each other to get up there. Now we lie weary together, and envy the ones that get to go with Death first."

Indeed, it was a pitiful sight to behold, all these men with their ladders that stretched so high, yet could never reach the throne. It was even more pitiful to observe the young and hopeful ones repeating the same dream, and knowing that soon, they too would end up weary and old, not having reached the golden throne in the sky.

As I was leaving the city, I found myself empathising with them: All their lives, their only purpose was to reach that elusive throne. Perhaps, that was their meaning of life, and who could say if they were right or wrong? What would be mine? I wondered.

I walked on.

Who shall never need to be understood
Yet need not to be misunderstood:
O, what comfort in his madness brings!

God looked inside Himself
and saw the cosmos, and saw all beings
and felt overflowing love for all.

Man looked outside himself
and saw the cosmos, and saw all beings;
Yet Man could never find enough love for all,
for Man has not yet loved himself.

"Life is a continuation of transformation; it's just like gardening. You cannot expect that your garden will only produce flowers - your garden does produce garbage. That is the meaning of life. Those who suffer don't know the art of transformation - that is why they suffer, because of the garbage in them - they don't know how to transform.

"You know how to garden, to practice organic gardening. You know that there are heaps of garbage in your garden. You are not afraid because you know how to transform the garbage back into compost, and you are not afraid at all. While transforming the garbage back into compost, you can be very joyful. Therefore, we are no longer afraid of the garbage in us, the afflictions, the suffering in us. We know how to handle them, to transform them; therefore, crossing to the other shore is a joy. You don't have to suffer even while crossing. You don't think that only when you arrive at the other shore you stop suffering, no. Crossing is already a pleasure."

-Thich Nhat Hanh, All in One; One in All

I look out and I see the world before my eyes;
The world looks inside itself and sees me.

A time of opportunities indeed, as verbal job offers seem to appear without any sense. While I still remain somewhat hesitant about taking up work that pays me, I have been creating other opportunities for myself in my mind. Ideas are appearing like the return of Spring. Moreover, as I started doing the (unpaid) work of tidying my room since Sunday, I can feel the energy flowing smoother along with the shifting and clearing of old attachments. Or perhaps it is only in my mind, as the clutter within is surely growing lesser.

It is strange how things snap right into place with each other: I lay an open cabinet horizontally so that I can arrange more crystals on top of it, and it fits neatly between the wall and the edge of the carpet; a rack which used to carry my CDs (I've put them into the open cabinet since) now finds a perfect new home under the built-in desk - a wiser location for now the room appears less cluttered - on which I have placed the books that used to lie around in an unsightly pile; this sofa bed from Courts which I am eyeing has the same width as the raised platform on which a cumbersome mattress currently occupies, so making the switch will give even more room for sitting and moving freely. The only difficulty is having to work around all the built-in stuff, yet how all these furniture seem to be coming together nicely, I can only attribute to the wonders of synchronicity.

And in the past five days, I have heard, seen and dreamt of Taiwan. What is this connection my gut feel is telling me?