Your Mentors In Life

We all need mentors to guide us through the often challenging journey of life. Mentors come in the form of your parents, teachers, authors, religious leaders and even friends. If you were born with wise parents then you are one of the luckier one. And if you couldn’t find role models in your parents or teachers then you could read books written by authors that you admire and respect.

For me I always listen to downloaded lectures by Ajahn Brahm whenever I face challenges in my life. In fact I’m listening to it right now on “Dealing with Emotions” as this is the part that I find most difficult to manage most of the time. Our emotions can run wild sometimes and trigger uneasiness, insecurity and even fear within us.

When you have mentors you won’t feel lost as you know that you will always have guidance whenever you face any adversity that is thrown upon you. That is one of the reasons why religious people are often more calm, peaceful and able to handle their problems easily. This is because they know that they have something to fall back upon whenever they feel that life is giving up on them.

By having mentors, we don’t put all the loads onto our shoulders alone as we can share some of the load emotionally with our mentors. It is as if they are guiding us through the murky waters of life. That way we feel more confident to solve problems ourselves.

It is important to have role models in life. If you can’t find it from among the people around you, then at least you should try to find them from books.

Don’t let your ship of life to sail without a captain.

Never Underestimate The Small Details Of Life

If you have lived long enough you would notice that things around us happen progressively. Whether it is your health, wealth or relationship problems, they don’t just happen out of the blue. There are always signs there and it is important for us to pay more attention to those signs when they first appear.

In fact it happened to me very recently when I suffered from terrible sore throat. I got sore throat all the time but usually I recovered after visiting the doctor and taking antibiotics. This time around I delayed seeing the doctor due to my busy schedule and I only paid him a visit on the fourth day. By that time the pain in my throat, ears and head were so extreme that I couldn’t actually work normally. The doctor then prescribed a ten day course of antibiotics for me due to the seriousness of my condition (the longest prescription I had before was only 5 days). 

However, it was just too late that now the virus has grown so strong and it started to spread to other parts of my body. I felt tightness across my chest one evening and quickly called the ambulance to my house. They then sent me to the hospital immediately. Doctor diagnosed that my tonsillitis (the bacteria that infected my tonsils) has actually spread to my heart! My heart’s muscle was actually inflamed and that was the cause of my chest pain. I ended up spending 2 nights in the Coronary Care Unit for close monitoring and diagnosis. I was eventually discharged after 3 nights at the hospital.

This incident shows me that trivial condition such as sore throat could actually leads to life threatening situation if we do not tackle the root of the problems soon enough. The same applies to all the other aspects of our life that we must constantly keep an eye on them and making sure that they are in healthy territory.

Never ever underestimate the small details of your life. Bushfire often started off from just a tiny spark.

Don't Be Swayed By Others

The availability of social media has created many instant ‘experts’ in all sorts of fields. Suddenly everyone think that they could just post any of their ideas online and are so proud of themselves as if they are the experts on the subject that they are talking about. 

A lot have expressed their views on politics complaining this and that; giving ‘advice’ as to what the government should do. There was once I came across such people on social media that I immediately told him off that since he has so much ideas about politics, he should join a political party and make his voice heard instead of shout about it on social media. I always have the view that if you can’t do it, then just shut up and let others take care of it. If you could do it, then stop talking and start taking action because talk is cheap.

Most people dine out nowadays and like to share what they eat on social media. It is fine to share good things around so that others could enjoy them too. However, some think that they are culinary critics and start criticizing everything they eat. They think that by giving verdict to what they eat, people would think that they are experts in culinary and respect their views. It is fine if they are invited to give comments to the menu. But if the restaurant owner does not ask for comments, then it is unethical that subjective views are spread around without giving the accused a chance to defend himself. In fact it is a cowardice behavior to talk behind people’s back. 

If you just started a food business, you would soon discovered that a lot of people come to give you feedbacks and advice on how you should run your business. They may say things like you should certain ingredients more or you should have more items in your menu and so on. It is so easy to give comments when you are not actually doing it. Just be humble and listen to them but you don’t have to follow exactly what they told you. You have to think what is right for your business and no one else knows it better than yourself.

Stick to your principles and do what is right for you and your customers. You can’t satisfy the world but you would know it when you do certain things the right way.

Rebooting Your Mind

All our mobile phones today have a lot of apps in them. Most of these apps are automatically opened whenever we connect our phones to wifi internet. When this happens, you will noticed that suddenly you have lots of notifications from all different apps informing you about current news or simply asking your permission for updates. Suddenly your phone has all these tasks that need to be completed and its performance slows down dramatically. Sometimes it may even hanged if it ran out of memory.

Our mind is a bit like our phones. Sometimes we find that a lot of thoughts appear out of a sudden in our mind as if we have switched on our minds' wifi reception and we are receiving all these information from all directions. There are both positive and negative thoughts appear at the same time. During times like these, we find ourselves powerless and seemingly unable to get anything done. It is as if the end of the world and we can't do anything about it. So how can we overcome this problem? Before we try to solve the problem of our minds, let's see how we troubleshoot the slow performance of our mobile phones first.

When your phones are overloaded with tasks to complete, there are basically three simple steps you can take. First open up the task manager and end all those apps that you don't need it at the moment. Then you can try clear your phones' RAM memory. If the above two steps fail, you can always reboot your phones. You will find that when all these unnecessary apps are closed, your phones perform faster and much more efficient.

We can do the same to our minds. Instead of keep all these worries in our heads, focus on those that we could do something about it right now. Don't worry too much about the future because it is uncertain. Only concentrate on the things that we have control right now. Start taking action instead of remaining in your mental worrying state. Once you start doing something, you would have much clearer vision of the overall picture and it doesn't appear to be so gloomy and doom after all. After one task is completed, we simply forget about it and move on to the next task just like how we end the apps in our phones. Soon, more and more tasks will be completed and our minds are now not so crowded with thoughts. 

If after taking some actions you still find yourself worry sick and remain in a negative state, then you should 'reboot' your mind by retreating to meditation. Choose a quiet place where you won't be disturbed for at least half an hour and start meditating. Think of nothing as your main goal is to seek peace in your mind. To say that you are seeking peace is less accurate because you should be free from doing anything at all and looking for peace is an exercise in itself. So just let things be for the next half an hour and simply enjoy the peace and quietness that you would experience. After that half an hour, you will find your mind completely refresh as if it has been massaged by invisible hands.

So next time when you try to improve the performance of your phone, don't forget about your mind.

We Are The Source Of Our Stress

Road rage is a common scene in cities throughout the world. Even in first world country like Australia, you would expect that commuters are more educated and behave in a more civilized way but the contrary happens to be true.

I stopped my car at an intersection waiting for the opportunity to turn left. I saw to my right the oncoming traffic just got there green light and I know that I would have enough time to make the left turn because the oncoming car was still at least 50 feet away. As soon as I made that left turn, the first oncoming car suddenly accelerated his car to make it looked like he almost hit me and made a drastic right turn to overtake me. I could then see from his rear mirror that he was shouting and cursing in his car as to why I made the left turn. He continued his restless driving for as long as I could see him. With all his urgency, he still needed to stop at several traffic lights and he wasn't moving any faster as he wished to. To me, he was creating unnecessary stress for himself over a trivial incident. He could have just let me made my left turn as he was still far away from any major collision. Instead he just wanted to show that no one should intercept his way while he was moving. 

In this fast paced society of ours, people always try to get ahead of everybody else in whatever they do. There is never a sense of community where you look out and care for each other. Everyone is looking solely after themselves. There is no love and compassion in our modern world. You see all the people go about their daily lives without paying attention to what is happening around them. And the convenience and luxury of mobile phones worsen the situation. People are now having a relationship with their iPhone than with real people.

Knowing that stress comes from within ourselves, we should cultivate the habit of watching closely our emotions and keeping them in check constantly. Most illnesses comes from negative emotions that are accumulated within our body. The prerequisite of a healthy body is a healthy mind. 

We can't stop negative emotions from creeping into our mind every now and then. But we can just let them pass without indulging ourselves in them. Whenever a negative thought appear in your mind, look at it as if you are watching birds flying across the big blue sky. Watching them passing by your vision and disappearing out of sight. Gradually you will be able have a much better control of those negative thoughts and experience peace in your mind. 

Once you have mastered the control of your negative emotions, you can start to feed your mind with healthier and positive thoughts. But you must never reject those negative thoughts in the first place because they are part of you. Just accepting that they are there without passing any judgement and you would feel more comfortable with all the bad things that you experience in life.

Don't blame others for your stress because nobody has control over your mind and body other than yourself.    

Keep Life Simple

Most believe that technology has made our lives more convenient and enjoyable. Imagine an evening without electricity or trying to contact your love ones without a phone. Especially with regards to communication, now we can instantly talk or send messages to our friends all over the world via the internet without having to pay a hefty sum for it. These conveniences were not possible just 20 years ago and that shows us how advance technology has progressed.

But are we much happier with all these luxurious conveniences? The answer is sadly NO. Nowadays I see people are having closer relationships with their mobile phones than their human partners. In public transports, cafes and even office, they can't seem to pull their eyes off their mobile screens. If there is a message coming through when they are talking to you, then they would excuse themselves and attend to those messages. The very technology that was designed to create a global village has in fact separate us apart and making the fundamental physical relationship less intimate.

And what about Facebook? Just take a look at your Facebook's newsfeed now and see what you get. They are all junk information and most of them are untrue. But we love checking our Facebook all the time just to see what other people's are posting. Or constantly checking minute by minute how many likes we have generated so far with the photos that we just posted.

All these extra activities are taking up too much of our time and they are eating into our lives. I remember when I was very sick earlier this year, I completely detach myself from any social media because there were just too much negativity from them. Technology didn't help me stay connected but disturbed the serenity of my life instead. '

I found it much more peaceful just to hold onto a book and read it. I got so much fulfillment and productivity out of it. Every time when I read, I feel that I'm learning and growing. That I'm not wasting the time that is given to me. You should know by now that our existence here is impermanent and there is an expiry date to it. It is indeed crucial for us to cherish every moment that we still have and do something meaningful for us and others. 

You don't have to climb the Everest or build the tallest building in the world to prove to others that your life is meaningful. Meaningful life comes from all the little things along the way. You can definitely feel it when you have done something meaningful. 

I hired two contractors to pave my driveway yesterday. I have a little chat with them and found out that they are also from the same country. They are just been here for two months and have never stop working 7 days a week. Furthermore, they are only paid $110 per day by their boss instead of the standard hourly rate that is common in Australia. I thought that was terrible, their boss must be really taking advantage of them. Most new migrants are often taken advantage of by the locals. I know that because I have also experienced it personally when I first came here. Most people thought Australia is a compassionate and friendly country but the reality is unfortunately quite the opposite. You would only feel their compassion and friendliness if you have money.  

So I feel very bad for these two guys and I offered to cook them a nice hot noodle soup. And when I brought the two bowls of noodle soup to them, I simply felt so good. I was happy to send loving kindness to two complete strangers. I felt I have done something meaningful that afternoon.

If we consistently perform these simple act of kindness to everyone we meet, then our lives will be much more fulfilled and we are a happier person. Simplify our lives, get rid of all the junk information that are being fed to us on a daily basis. Watch less news because you don't learn much from them other than knowing about other people's mishaps.

Be An Observer

All of us will never stop facing challenges in our lives. Whether it is our relationship, financial or career, there are always the ups and downs. You will slowly notice (if you haven't already) that all the problems we face in lives are created by people. There maybe someone complaining behind your back, your spouse maybe blaming you for all the hazard in your relationship without giving any credit to the things that you have done right. The list is endless.

If we take it personally and ruminating that it is unfair that you were thought of in a bad way by other people, then we magnify the problem that we already have and our emotion goes straight downhill. Instead we should look at the situation as if it is a stage and we are just an observer watching a show behind the curtain or in the audience seat. Everyone that is involve in the argument are there on stage. We even see ourselves on that stage in the argument. To be an observer means that you detach yourself and see the whole situation from the outside. Using a third person point of view, you are just another person in that show. That way, you don't take things too personally and instead have a better control of your emotion, you are simply enjoying the show.

This exercise can even help those who are suffering from panic attacks. When someone is having a panic attack, they are experiencing shortness of breath and thoughts of them dying constantly come into their mind. When the mind starts to feed negative inputs and warnings that there could be a fatal consequences, their conditions spiraling downwards and they are frozen in fear. That is what happen when you put yourself in the epicenter of the situation that a minor discomfort in your body could be reinterpreted by the mind as something life threatening. 

The observer exercise is a good technique that can help people who are suffering from panic attacks to gradually come out of their fear and take back the control of their lives. When the next panic attack happens, instead of thinking that they are going to die, be an observer and see that there is just someone having a discomfort in his breathing. See that person (which is yourself) slowing down his breath and starts to relax his body. His body gradually rises up, his breathing slowly returning to normal and the panic attack is eventually gone.

When you see yourself from the observer's point of view, there won't be thought of dying because you are not involve. You just see someone anxious and trying to catch his breath (everyone's breathing will go faster when they are anxious so it is absolutely normal). Usually panic attack just lasts for a few minutes and it is gone. It is important to know that it is never permanent. 

If you could survive panic attacks, then all the other problems that you face in life such as being scolded by your boss or spouse seems trivial and unimportant. You are not here to please everyone because your health is the most important thing of your life.  

How To Cope With Unemployment

I've noticed for a while that everyday when I read the newspaper or watch the news on TV, it is always about negative information such as natural disaster, crime, celebrities' embarrassing incidents and so on. However, there is one that I think is the most demotivating is about unemployment.

Even when things are good and construction is going on all over the place, we are told that the boom time is going to end soon; companies are downsizing; staff are being made redundant; more people are going to call the street home. We are seldom told that while people are being retrenched, there are thousands more being hired at the same time. This painted a very negative picture of the overall workplace and people are worried; some may eventually develop depression out of it.

If you can't hear good news from the media, then you have to change your own interpretation of the situation you are in. Let's say that you are just being told by your boss that you have been made redundant due to economic downturn. Are you going to get depressed for weeks and complain about how bad and unfair you have been treated; why these things always happen to you; why you are retrenched and not the other person sitting next to you? It is pointless to focus on what has already happened. It is better to start thinking about what can you do with the situation that you are in. You could start sending resume to other companies and aggressively looking for work or you could even start your own business; ie. creating job for yourself!

It may be blessing in disguise that you are being made redundant. Maybe you are destined to be your own boss; to be a leader. When you work for other people, you have to work around their schedules and plans. Think of it this way, only people who don't have plan decide to work for people. There is some truth to that because if you can't plan your own life, other people will plan it for you, ie. your boss. They will decide what you have to do from 9 to 5. They are pulling all the strings and you are the puppet. You have no control of your life when you work for people. On the contrary, running your own business means you are in charge 100% of your life and destiny. You decide when to work and how much you want to earn each year. It is indeed a liberating and wonderful thing to know that you in fact can make your own future.

Buddhists believe that life is like a dream. Everything we experience is temporary. You being unemployed is also temporary, soon you will find a new job or be your own boss. All the negative thinking and worries in your mind are not permanent. Only now is real, now is the only time you can use to turn your fate around and pave the way for better future.

So if you are unemployed today, accept it and see it as an opportunity for you to do something more meaningful and fulfilling.

Birds Can Help You Meditate

Some might think that meditation is so simple, you just sit there closing your eyes and do nothing. If it is so easy, then we won't have so many stressful people around, don't we? 

Much to the contrary, meditation is indeed very challenging especially to beginners. I remember that when I first tried to meditate, I couldn't achieve any peace of mind throughout the duration at all. My mind would kept wandering off and focus all the plans, problems and worries I had at the time. I found myself even more stressful after the meditation. Fortunately through persistence practice and a lot of patience, I'm glad that I'm now able to meditate for an hour without any problem. 

It is like when you first try to ride a bicycle, you kept falling but you stood up and try again. Eventually you can now ride a bicycle without having to worry about whether you should put your leg on the peddle first or balancing yourself by steering the handle and so on. The same goes for meditation, you need to continuously practice it to do it better and better by gradually letting go of everything that is troubling your mind. Remember that you are gaining back your personal space 100% back to yourself when you meditate. Ideally no one should disturb you during the process so that you could fully be absorbed into the moment.

If you still can't get into deep meditation, then there is still one more technique you can use which I just discovered this morning. I woke up at 6.30am and meditated on my bed. I got into the meditative state quite fast today probably because of the quiet environment in the morning. Then I noticed that the birds outside my apartment were chirping. It was probably their version of morning rush hour going to work. However, their chirping frenzies produced such beautiful sounds to my ear that I found myself completely surrounded by this fresh and harmonious melody. In fact they are still doing it now while I am writing this post although in lesser amount as most of them must have taken off somewhere hunting for breakfast. It was indeed music to my ears. I didn't think of anything at that time when I meditated, I just totally focus on those beautiful sounds and enjoy the moment. 

Thank you birds for making my meditation went so smoothly today!

It's Friday!

All of us are excited about Friday. It means we have survive one more week and weekends are just around the corner for us to spend time with our family or simply doing what you love most. Hopefully it also means that you have had a productive week that you could be proud of.

Here in Australia, everybody is more relax even in the workplace and sometimes towards the end of the day, we would gather around together with our boss drinking wine or beer and just simply unwind for the week. Another reason I'm particularly excited about Friday is that I get to attend the public talk given by Ajahn Brahm in the evening. It starts with half an hour guided meditation and follow by his talks on various topics of life. Unfortunately it is the rains season right now and he has gone for the Rains Retreat in his monastery until October.

Anyway, Friday is a good day for us to reflect upon what we have achieved throughout the week. Is there something that we have learnt or do we feel that we have grow intellectually and emotionally? If something bad happened this week, instead of complaining about why it happened to you, why not think about what you could learn from the experience.

No man is an island and we are all surrounded by other people in our workplaces and lives. You would be a very lucky person indeed if you are surrounded by positive people. But we don't usually have the choice especially when it comes to working for people. You will be assigned by your boss or superior to work on certain project with other people. It is great if that person has the positive spirit to work as a team. But it is always not the case, isn't it? It is always someone who doesn't want to do the work but simply manipulating others to complete the tasks and she would then end up getting all the credit. So what should you do when you have someone like that in your team? Should you complain it to your boss? No, it will never work and your boss would think that you are behaving unprofessionally by taking things to personal. The only thing you could do is to focus on the project at hand and do not let your manipulative partner sways you from your attention. She would even push all her tasks for you to finish it. That's wonderful! Now you have the chance to learn more things by doing all these extra works. You will gradually find yourself growing professionally and soon you will become more valuable to your boss because of your increased capability. It is good to go the extra mile and overachieve what you promised to do. I hear you screaming now: "What about my lazy partner who didn't do anything and end up sharing my credit?" Ajahn Brahm has spoken about this on many occasions that we should not seek revenge. He said Karma will eventually sort it out. You see by pushing all the work to you, she end up learning nothing. And if she continues to do that over a long period of time, she will soon realize that she have nothing else to do in the office and that will make her redundant. There is a big possibility that she maybe sacked by the boss. So always have the bigger picture in your mind and not be too calculative about who should do what because your boss will eventually find out.

Like what Ajahn Brahm said, be kind to every situation that you are in. By being kind, you are generating positive energies from you that might eventually influence other people around you. Look for positive things around you when you go to work today. You may bump into someone you don't know on the street, simply smile or greet them, they would usually greet back. When you make them feel good, they then go on to treat other people better and these other people then producing further positive energies around them. This is what I call positivity goes viral.

Be kind to everyone and beings. If you can't do it everyday, at least just do it on a Friday and see what it makes you feel. Weekend is coming, so cheer up and enjoy life!

Clearing Out Your Mind

I once read from a book that there are an average of 50,000 thoughts produced in our brain every day! 50,000 thoughts, no joke indeed! The thoughts may arise when we see or hear something and communicate with others. In fact, whatever we sense could produce a certain thought. Some thoughts are beneficial to us such as ideas to achieve certain things but unfortunately majority of the 50,000 thoughts are useless and even negative.

We may think about a project that we are going to do later today or tomorrow. And when we think about it, sometimes we get worries, stress and confusion. At the same time we miss out on what is happening around us right now. This is simply because we can't predict the future, no one ever could. The best way to remove the worries we have on certain things is to go ahead and do it. For example, you may be thinking about building a timber gate from scratch. You then think about how to join the timber pieces together and so on. You won't erect a gate by just thinking about it. And when you think without doing anything, tension is created deep in your mind because you haven't achieve anything that you are 'thinking' of doing yet. You are giving pressure to yourself. It is fine to sketch out a drawing of the gate to see how many piece of wood you need and their individual lengths required. You then put it aside if you have no intention to do it today. You only think about it again when you are about to commence on the project, that is when you go out to purchase the material, bring them to site and start working hard on it.

There are basically 2 ways to keep the mind fit and in healthy shape. First of all is through meditation so that the mind can rest. Secondly is to clear our mental clog regularly so that there is no negative deposits from the past still clinging on to our minds. Our mind is like everything else, it needs constant maintenance. Without continuously taking care of it, our  mind will get tired and produce all sorts of negative emotions within us which in turn affect our behaviour towards others.

We can't solve all the problems in life by just thinking about them, we have to gets our hand dirty to actually do it. When you start doing it, you would find that most of the worries you have previously would be solved by themselves and your mind becomes clearer and clearer. Remember that Rome was not built in a single day. We must acknowledge that everything takes time. Don't put emphasis to much on the end result as the process is equally important. Enjoy every single moment of the journey towards your destination. 

Mindfulness

Have you ever done something you enjoy so much that you are completely absorbed into the activity and lost track of time? Before you know it you could have spent the whole day doing that activity and even skipped your lunch. This is what happen when you focus on the 'now' and practice the Buddhist approach of mindfulness.

Mindfulness is in fact a very simple thing to do and yet most of us fail to practice it because of our unsettling mind which always deviate to negative thoughts and trivial daily concerns. To practice mindfulness, we just need to be aware of the present moment without judging any of our actions. 

I was paving my house crossover last weekend and learned a few valuable lessons along the way. The task looked daunting initially because it is quite a substantial area to be paved. I had to level the ground with rake, shoveled away excess earth and created a gentle slope at the same time. It is a challenging site as the land slopes in two directions. After finished the preliminary earthworks in about 2 hours, then only I could start lay the first pave. And laying the first few paves was like taking eternity. It was slow and I had a large area to fill. Anyway, I continued to focus on hammering down every single pave with my rubber mallet and this action somehow managed to put me into a Zen like situation that before long I found myself totally absorbed into the activity. I hammered down each pave with a peaceful mind. I did not think about anything and certainly did not allow any worries to trouble me. You see when you are totally preoccupied with a task, negative thoughts are unable to invade your mind. It was indeed a wonderful experience and I managed to get much more than expected done that day.

If we ever want success in any area of our lives, it is important that we must do everything wholeheartedly. Focus on productivity, outcome, positivity and stay away from negative thinking pattern or worries. There may be some people around us who wish to see us fail for their own benefits. For example, your colleague does not want to see you excel in your career because that may diminish her role in the office. People do all sorts of things to protect themselves and for their own interests. This is so true especially in the workplace. Very seldom you would find genuine people who are willing to help you without thinking of getting anything back in return. Knowing that these people do exist and we can't do anything about it, why don't we just make peace with it and put 100% of our energy onto the task at hand. That way, we can enjoy our work without being interrupted by hostile acts towards us. And since we are so focus in whatever that is being assigned to us, our work will turn out to be so good that it speaks for itself in negating any criticism that may have arisen.    

Why I started This Blog

I have said that I hope that what I share in this blog may help whoever read it but it actually also help me at the same time. That is because by writing down my experiences in life helps me to have a clearer view of the bigger picture. We all have worries in our life, some trivial while some are more serious than others. If we just keep all these in our head, we could potentially be crazy one day considering the amount of matters that we have to take care of these days.

Also by writing down my experiences with Buddhism helps me to know the religion better. Religion is a lifelong faith as it is always not easy to follow the right path. We have witnessed in our world today that so many so called religious fanatics carried out terrorism that harms innocent lives in the name of their religion. These people have deviated from the true teaching of their religion and they are delusional, they don't know what they are doing. I believe all religions are originally good, it is the small amount of people that ruined its reputation.

At the end of the day, what we want to achieve through religion is to have peace of mind. Once we have peace of mind, we are able to treat ourselves and others better. If everyone of us have peace of mind, the world is going to be a much peaceful place indeed.

Meditation Is Good For You

We rush to work each morning, sitting in the office for 8 hours with a quick lunch in between, we then rush again to catch the public transport in peak hours going home. By the time we finish dinner and washing the dishes, we have hardly any energy left in our bodies. 

During winter season like now in Australia, we have the tendencies of going straight to bed after dinner. We thought that we are getting rest by sleeping early but the next morning when we wake up we feel even more tired and sometimes headache as well. Does this ever happen to you before?

That is because even though in our sleep our mind actually does not get it's deserved rest as we may still have worries from our workplace, relationships and financial matters etc. If we bring with us worries to our beds, our minds actually cannot rest at all. 

This is exactly why meditation is so helpful today in helping people cope with stress in their life. The ultimate objective of meditation is to keep your mind still. Ajahn Brahm has said that if you want to strengthen your body, you exercise it and if you want to make your mind stronger, keep in still. It is really the opposite that you do with the mind as compare to the body. I used to think that thinking will make me wiser and strengthen my mind but it is not the case because we tend to have lots of unskillful thinking pattern most of the time. These unskillful and sometimes unhealthy thoughts do not make our mind stronger, they give us worries instead. Most of us focus on negative thoughts and prolong thinking pattern like this will lead us into depression. It is in fact a very dangerous thing to do.

During meditation, your aim is to calm down your mind. Sitting in an upright position, you adjust your body to a comfortable position for you. Closing your eyes will cut off all the distraction around you and you will be able to enter into meditative state more easily. Use the Buddhist approach of mindfulness to notice any discomfort in your body. If there is any pain in the body, acknowledge it instead of trying to ignore it. Acknowledge the pain and just let it be without ever trying to fight it. That is because the more you fight it the worse it is going to get. 

Once your body is comfortable, you may want to focus on your breathing. Simply notice it as the air enter into your body through your nose as well as the air coming out of your body. Imagine breathing like the wave in the ocean. Ajahn Brahm teaches us to think about breathing in peace (or any other positive thing such as happiness) and exhaling out letting go (or stress, worries etc). Concentrate on this for at least 15 minutes and you will enter into a deeper state of meditation. 30 minutes meditation is a good start for beginners as it is not too long and enough to relax the tension in the mind. It is indeed a very relaxing experience and there was once I felt the tingling sensation in my brain as if it has been massaged for 30 minutes. 

We have to practice it everyday if we want to reap the maximum benefit out of it. Just like your body, we don't get fit by just going to the gym once a week for an hour, you have to at least work out 3 times a week and 2 hours each time in the gym to see any apparent result. So meditate regularly and may we all enjoy a life free of worries and good health.

Backstabbing At Workplace

Backstabbing is a common practice in the workplace regardless of the office's sizes. You just need one troublemaker to start office politicking. I've worked in many companies big and small to be used to this kind of behaviour. But still as a normal human being, I'm sure we all won't feel good about it if it ever happen to us.

It was one typical Friday morning which I was very excited about as it is the end of the week and weekend is just around the corner. My mood was good and I was full of energy. Then the company's associate asked me to retrieve an email from the inbox of my colleague who was on leave. Her Outlook inbox was so messy as she didn't categorize her emails into separate folders. So I have to search through laboriously for that one email which I didn't know who the sender was and what he might have written in the subject heading. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. But this wasn't the problem to me as I'm a relatively patient guy. 

It was when I accidentally found out the emails that she sent to other two colleagues complaining about me behind my back that gave me the shock. Our office is a very quiet place as the boss doesn't like any background noise and therefore every single sound is usually audible. She was complaining about me chewing gum in the office that caused her to lose concentration. Her complaints were apparently so serious that my boss decided to switch my place to another location. This was just the tip of the iceberg, I could traced back as far as January this year on what she complained about me. Nobody ever said anything to me on this matter, I couldn't read mind and how am I supposed to know I'm making people uncomfortable?

So it could be as trivial thing as chewing gum that would cost you a bad reputation in the workplace if so happen that someone doesn't like you. So what can I do about it? Am I going to clarify this matter to my boss? No - because I'm not suppose to know this and no one has said anything to me on this. So what can I actually do? Nothing much really. When someone doesn't like you, they will try to pick up every little thing that you do wrong and amplify it to the management and there is nothing you could do to stop them because this is their nature. 

Before I embrace Buddhism, I would have ruminated about how to get back at her and make sure that justice is done at the end of the day. Instead I just accepted it that these things happens and people like her do exist around us. I can't deny that it sure upset me but I managed to make peace with it eventually. Yes, it may cost me my job eventually if she keep on backstabbing me without me aware of it. However, if I focus on this thinking, I will just worsen the situation. I should instead focus on the positive knowing that now I'm equipped with this knowledge of such thing is happening behind my back. So I should be more careful next time when I chew gum in the office; I should concentrate more on my work; I should take this as a wake up call that someone is watching me; I should take this as an opportunity to improve on my work and prove otherwise. 

Patience is a very important quality to have in our lives no matter what we do. The ride will be bumpy all the time but if we are patient enough and genuinely honest in what we are doing, we will see the sun rises in the horizon. The sun always rises after a long dark and cold night. The sun never gives up on us so what should we give up ourselves?  

Buddhism Saves My Life

I was a typical Malaysian Chinese raised up in the tradition of Taoist and Buddhist culture. I have always thought that older people blindly follow tradition without questioning. Practice such as burning paper offerings in the form of clothes, shoes, cars, mobile phones and iPad (lately) never appeal to me. I always thought them to be superstitious and doesn't make sense. I mean if you burn an iPad for the dead, don't you also have to burn the charger for them?

I have never consider myself to be religious simply because I couldn't comprehend its relevancy at the time. It was not until I suffered from a life threatening illness that I begin to comprehend the importance of having faith in our life. I still don't believe in superstition. Instead I've found a religion that finally makes sense to me - it is Buddhism.

I was a completely healthy man that exercised regularly. I worked out in gym for the most part of my 30s and I still carried dumbbell on a regularly up until last year. I didn't have any major sickness except for the common cold that is quite usual in the tropics. Then suddenly on the year that I turned 40, I suffered from panic attack out of the blue. Doctor in Raffles Hospital has diagnosed me as having cumulative stress in life and gave me medication which were more like tranquilizer to calm me down because I would get stressed out for no obvious reason. Then my relatives would bring me to see a Taoist medium who diagnosed me in his own way as having being cursed by someone who apparently wanted me to suffer.

Both the modern and traditional diagnosis gave me their own kind of remedy - doctor would give me medication while the Taoist master gave 'holy water' which has been chanted upon. I must admit that both did help me initially but just for a short while. 

Every now and then I would get agitated and my mind started 'roaming' freely. And when there were too much thinking I might get panic attack which would then required me to take medication given by the doctor. I said to myself that this couldn't go on like this forever, I need help. I asked the local GP to refer me to a psychiatrist. 

I know that I wasn't crazy but I had no choice at that time as I still need to go to work everyday and my condition was affecting my performance at the office. So went to see the psychiatrist but the receptionist treated me as if I am a crazy person. The psychiatrist gave me anti-depressant which not only didn't help but worsen my condition.

It was then that my previous employer in Malaysia sent me messages through Whatsapp and told me that there is this monk called Ajahn Brahm whose retreat is in Perth. I have migrated to Perth at that time and started to look up for this person. Many of his talks have been uploaded onto Youtube, I downloaded a few and started listening to them. My mood was calming down as I listen to the talk and I could sense that it has the healing effect on me. I researched further and found out that he is giving talks every Friday evening at a monastery north of Perth. I went there one Friday without hesitation.

It was already 7.30pm when I got to the place and there were just so many people packed inside the main hall. I found a spot to sit on and observed my surroundings. There is a big golden statue of Buddha sitting in front of me. Although there were many people in the hall, the atmosphere was quiet and peaceful. Then came in Ajahn Brahm and he conducted a 30 minutes guided meditation. This was the very first time I ever attended a guided meditation session. I followed his verbal instructions with my eyes closed. It was difficult to settle my mind initially but I was able to do that quite smoothly after about 10 minutes. I felt peace, compassion and Buddha's love for the first time in my life. I felt like crying not because of sadness but to shed tears of joy. The feeling that the world is indeed a wonderful place and our own problems are so trivial compare to the compassion of the Buddha.

Buddhism taught me that we are in charge of our life. Most of our sufferings come from our mind. And if we could keep the mind still through meditation, then we could live a relatively happy life.

I haven't recovered 100% from my anxiety disorder but I am progressing well. Now, if I ever get upset on something I would just meditate for 30 minutes and it is the best medication one can ever have. I am happy that I found Buddhism before it was too late for me. In fact I'm so grateful that I started this blog today to record my experiences with the religion. I hope that others could find it useful to help them with their lives.