Smoking Haze

Feels like my own shadow is constantly having BBQ, the smoke is following me, surrounding me, choking me.
Can't run, can't hide, it's everywhere I go.
Although, it might seems I am living in a fairy realms, somewhere in the cloud; except this one is toxic >.< Arghhhh...

I still don't understand why smokers voluntarily go inside a smoking chamber, aren't they gonna be suffocated in there?
Here, you got what you wished for, a giant smoking chamber.
Now we are all smokers. 

Piglet in my arms

Sometime ago, I went to visit a pig farm. Yes, the pigs are raised for meat.
The farm is (dunno how big) but it is quite clean compare to what I always see on TV.
Basically, I always thought pig are dirty, sleepy, greedy and stupid

From what I see there, they are not dirty
They confined a mother-pig in a pen which has a area for babies (with light bulb as incubator)
Since the babies are very small, the space is quite spacious from them. They never pee and shit on their playground
They always do their dirty job somewhere in corner of the pen, somewhere furthest.
We all assume they are dirty cos we confined them in small area, they are forced to defecate at wherever they stand at; just like a human being locked up in a room unable to move around nor get out, won't you pee and shit in the room too?

Are they sleepy and greedy?
Well, they do have their nap time. Hehehhe...
About greediness, well, when you are locked up with 30 or 40 other people, and there's only a table of limited food. Won't you all hit the table?

And they are smart, I saw one trying to open up his own pen. And they know the way to their own room. They are smart animals.

I witnessed the births of some piglets, they are so fragile, beautiful and cute.
After a 3-months 3-weeks 3-days gestation period, a bunch of tiny piglets arrive in this world
Some will only live for a few weeks before turning into a roasted suckling pig
Some will live a few more months before arriving on your plate
Some will be preserved long after they are gone, in the form of jerky, sausage or bacon
Some will be allowed to reproduce for a couple of years, and still end up on your plate - yet, they are considered as lucky ones.

They don't slaughter them there. The owner sell them alive.
I know it may sounds odd, but the owner does care about the animals there.
The pig have access to clean water, not a puddle, but a systematised & filtered clean water system
The pigs are being showered 4x a day, floored scrubbed every after-meal, and a 24-hours worker to guard the delivering mothers.
I dunno if I should turn vegetarian, kinda feel lucky they dont have any slaughter unit there.

Another Year

Spent my b'day with my most loved ones. This year is celebrated without any pretensions.
Glad to have Nara this year. Love you little man.

Kitty Purse

I made this little purse out of a DIY set I bought from Bear Mama DIY shop in Taiwan. Been keeping it for a year, always thought it's very hard to make.
But last week, the crafty bug bitten me again, and finally I braved myself to give it a try. Not too bad, right?
I wanna give it a try again, without the kit. Now the problem is, not all of the material are available in my humble hometown

Anyway, I put this "before" picture just to prove that I made this, by my hand. Hehhee... Cos I got some comments saying that it wont be possible that I made it. Here is the proof.

Nara's DIY diaper-cover

When I browse for free baby clothing pattern, this one really draws my attention. Seems so simple yet so cute. I whipped up 2 of them from my fabric stash. What do you think of it?

I made slight alteration from the pattern, I dunno if Nara's diaper is much larger or Nara's bum is just big; but it seems he needs more rear space. 

Baby pants - NASA

R: Nara with "a lot of attitude" pose
L: sorry a bit blurry, he soon wanna snatch away my blackberry

Yesterday I dug up for old t-shirt to make some little pants for Nara. Found this old NASA t-shirt, one that his dad wore during his college time. Hahahaha....
I took some of Nara's existing pants as patterns, tracing it on some newpaper as a pattern.

And voila!, 1 t-shirt into 2 pants: 1 long one and 1 short one. How cute is that?
I choose this dark coloured t-shirt as my first trial. Made some mistakes, but the dark coloured fabric just kept everything hidden. Hope you won't notice it :)
The re-purposing old t-shirt project is inspired by this tutorial

I copied the pattern from the existing white pants  (2nd pic)

Why Not?

"Why not?” is not a question. The title above is rather, in fact, an answer to those complaining minds.  There are many things in this world that goes not the way one expects it to be.

Sometimes, they even turn out to be what one dislikes. Facing this unpleasant facts, some people tend to complain. They seem to question why that unfavourable things happened to them.

Nothing happened by chance in this world. What we are experiencing, is the result of what we have done before. So rather than complaining it would better to accept it willingly for it is how the world goes: we are reaping what we've sowed.  No more or less! It’s just so natural!

Even if one despises it or one does not know anything about it at all, the world still runs in that way. It is just like the law of gravity that is applied to all, even to a clueless newborn baby. It also applies even to those who don’t believe it. This is exactly what the Dhamma is all about. The Dhamma is the law in itself which operates without any external or independent ruling agency.  It does not need one to believe. Because the word ‘belief’ relates to something that one has not seen it him/herself and has to be taken voluntarily or involuntarily, thus one wouldn't be sure of it unless proven. Whereas Dhamma is about ‘knowing’, ‘seeing’ and 'experiencing' by yourself. It is about understanding and accepting life as it really is.
Therefore, when one sees oneself, then the word ‘belief’ just disappears.

More than 2600 years ago, the Buddha discovered the Path, the Noble Eightfold Path and out of compassion shared his wisdom with us. He said, the state leading to the arising of the Eightfold Path is the wise reflection, reasoned attention, methodical consideration. These are called Yoniso Manasikara. It is the forerunner of the arising of the Noble Eightfold Path; with it, right view will arise. And with the arising of the right view, right intention arises…and so on. Just as dawn is the forerunner of sunrise; so does yoniso manasikara is the forerunner of the arising of the Noble Eightfold Path.

Yoniso manasikara can be practiced in two steps: (1) develop understanding that everything one experiences is the result of one’s own karma, thus by realising that, (2) one has to keep the mind away from defilement (greed, hatred, delusion).

Once the right view arises,  happiness arises too. Happiness never goes together with wrong view. It’s as if one were to stand and face the west and wait for the sunrise: one will never be succeed to see it.  Unless one knows and accepts the truth that the sun rises in the east, one will always be suffering.  Therefore it is very important to have and develop right view.

With the right mental state and wisdom or understanding that life is merely a repetitive cycle of birth, old age, sickness, suffering comes from dissociated from the loved one or from associating with one hates, not to get what one wants, and death; one would realize there’s really nothing to complain about, or at least one will complain less.
So, now, when someone questions their suffering, “Why me?” one should reply, “Why not?” This will bring them to the wise reflection (yoniso manasikara) as a first step to the Noble Eightfold Path.

Happy Liberation to all of you...

(Ashin Kheminda’s Dhamma talk on Vesakh Day at Prasadha Jinarakhita –this building is built to commemorate Ashin Jinarakkhita who revived Buddhism in Indonesia after being forgotten for more than 500 years  --transcript by Clesia Lay)

Another Vesakh fullmoon

Yesterday a friend was asking me about Vesakh Day in Borobudur this year. I know something messed up there, but I wasn't quite sure what it was all about. He sent an article about the incident. Seems like some Buddhist complaining about reckless and impolite 'photographers-wanna-be' that interfering their religious rituals.  Some were complaining about the long wait for the climax of the event -> releasing lantern into pitch black sky, the problem was it rained quite bad that night. So they have to postpone the lantern thing.

Btw, what climax? What lantern? What bullshit is this?
Even when someone commented, "The climax of Vesakh Day is not lantern thingy, it's the "Vesakh Day Countdown" (Indo: Detik-detik Waisak)" -->still wrong.
The truth is the countdown only existed in Indonesia. Nowhere else in the world, even in Buddhist countries recognise the countdown. The countdown, was to mark the exact second where the moon is the fullest, you can check it with some cool apps from your android phones now (note that the timing is specific to each area, it's not real-time for the whole part of the world). But then it's not a Buddhist thing, it's adopted from our Moslem brothers. In Indonesia, Moslem are so specific about the sun and moon movement especially during the fasting month's schedule and their Ied Day, so specific that they calculated to exact second. Buddhists in Indonesia adopt this culture, and somehow it evolved to be something sacred. How misleading that is!

There are 2 big Buddhist communities in Jakarta. One celebrated Vesakh Day with a glittery mumbo-jumbo ritualsss!, big billboard on main street, parade of government officials, they even managed to break a "Indonesian Record" - a smaller version of World Record; the Record is thing is wildly known to be easily purchased. I dunno why they are throwing the hard-donated-money into something so useless. Don't tell me it's for publication, I don't see why Buddhism needs any publication or advertisement to get new followers.
Another community celebrated Vesakh with a marathon of teaching (apparently they always have classes, they added an additional class for the event). A much simpler event, without any overboard ceremonies. Something I consider closer to the real teaching. Here, if you wanna know what they are having in the classes

Same as in my hometown, 2 contradicting communities. Too many politics. I refused to go to either ones on the day. I don't see my attendance will help in my self-improvement at all. Anyway, my absence has been a trending topic :) not on twitter, on local market it is. Hahahaha

So, Vesakh Day is not about rituals, not about lantern, not about publications, not about breaking a record.
It's about reminding yourself on the true purpose in these repetitive lives, to end all these sufferings, and finally attain Nibanna.

Happy Liberation for all of you.
May all beings be happy :)

Cry of Losses

There was once I need to be in a hospital’s ICU to send a friend there. I heard a bunch of people crying in the next room, there was a young man’s voice, crying in misery “Why you have to go, Dad? How am I going to survive without you. I haven’t even finish my school. Who gonna support and teach me now? I dunno if I could survive without you.”

This month, I witnessed my friends' losses of loved ones. Same case, those left were crying.
A dad that was gone in his sleep, without pain, without struggle – a real Rest In Peace
Another dad was gone after fighting years of illness and treatments, finally Rest In Peace
Both were gone in natural causes, I considered it to be a peaceful ones.

Back to our reaction, CRY
Why do we cry?
I know many people will say, I will miss you, I don’t want you to go… etc

But I think, the real answer is “What gonna happened to me now after you go?”
We are crying for ourselves. We are crying for our hopelessness to preserve our perfect picture. Crying for the uncertainty we are facing after loved one are gone.
The young man's cry in the ICU room was a very honest one. He didn't even polished it up with "I love you, Dad". He cried for himself, for tragedy that he was facing.

I cried when my loved one left me, altho I know he’ll be in better hands; be content and well taken care of on the other side. I cried because it's too late for me. I couldn't see myself ever be a part of his (supposedly) happy life. How selfish that is? I wish he would be on my side. The truth is, my cry was because I really upset about myself, for my cowardness. There were a lot of regrets, Why I never told him my feeling? Why didn’t I try harder? Why didn’t I stay just a little longer? Why I wasn’t there to protect him, wishing I could stop it all.

Took me sometime to let it go.
But I know you’ll be happy there, it's just I wasn't gonna be a part of it.

Incredible India

not much use this time, but one day it will

I haven't blogged for quite sometime now. Many things happened.
This is one of them: I FINALLY VISITED INDIA end of last month
Not for pilgrimage, it's for work so we spent days for factories visits. But we managed to squeeze some fun time in it.
I dunno if the company has treated us very well, or India is really nice; I mean people said India is a very dirty and smelly country, I didn't see much evidences there. The country is so beautiful... and people are nice too.
I have to admit that they've put us into 5-star hotel, but there was 1 night where we stayed at not-so-starry hotel, and it was fine. Maybe I have a lousy standard, anyway.

Taj Mahal, Agra

barefooted in Jaipur. The top right pic: tat's before I was getting soaked

It was a crazy bloody hot day when we visited Jantar Mantar - an outdoor astrological museum of Jaipur, and all of the sudden it started to rain. None were prepared for the heavy pour, and just in minutes the street were flooded. Rather than sacrificing my sandals (which will be hell to dry), and the gushing water seems so clean!!!, I took my chance: walking barefoot on the street of Jaipur! How legendary was that.
Anyway, we actually revisited the site in the afternoon when the sun was back. And I finally realised the street wasn't that clean afterall (there were the holy cows, goats, and dogs' leftovers).
Oh, well... it's done, and I survived.

India, I'll be back!