Look Within, Thou Art the Buddha...

This too shall pass...

When one door of happiness closes, another opens;
but often we look so long at the closed door
that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.

Helen Keller (1880-1968)

What begins...must end...?

I have lived a friendless life almost all my adult life.

It may appear to be an exaggeration, but it's the absolute truth. When best friends in school expanded (and replaced) their network of friends as they entered the working world, I found myself standing alone, held back by my loner-tendencies, looking back at where they left me trying very hard to find the open door that wasn't there.

During reflective moments, I would try remembering friends I had from my first year at school till my last. Hoh Yuen Peng - the tanned chinese girl who sat next to me in my Standard 1 class - the one who understood the tears that were forming in my eyes as I stared with fear at my exam paper, not understanding the meaning of a word which was the key to finding the answer the question asked - and who compassionately whispered the meaning and made me pass the exam with marks higher than hers and everyone else in that class. Ivy Chang who would hold me by my collar and bully me into queuing up, and who later grew up to become an absolutely lovely friend. The list goes on...Beh Mooi Mooi aka Beh Mooi kuasa dua (kuasa dua being the malay version for "power of two"), Kattai Saras (kattai being shortie in tamizh), Chin See Chin whose name we conveniently mispronounced as Chin Chee Sin (Chee Sin means mad in Cantonese). These were not my best friends - but somehow each time I think of friends from my primary school days, they unfailingly precede the rest. I cannot explain why...

And so, coming back to the subject of being friendless - yeah, I was one of those rare breed of people who could confidently say that they had absolutely no friends.

I spent the last 19 years of my life trying to convince myself of the possibility that colleagues could transform into friends if only I allowed them to. But they never really did. Except one - but she too later dissappeared into the uncertainties of my rather volatile career pattern. As I hopped from one organisation to another, I made many discoveries about the art of friendship - but none through direct experience.

What I did learn from direct experience was that I had absolutely no friends to turn to during my trying moments - much as I rummaged through the list of contact numbers I had written in my diary.

But one friend did eventually enter my life 4 years ago, and made me stop to think and correct myself each time I spontaneously found myself saying "I am friendless".

And for no obvious reason, or perhaps for reasons I could never fully comprehend, he lived in my heart, and my phone's contact list, as the friend I could turn to (sometimes...though not at all times...but hey, beggars can't be choosers now, can they? :) ).

We would have the worst of arguments, the best of conversations, and I was always allowed my share of tear-jerkers (complete with sobbing sessions that were completely devoid of vocabulary) which would almost always be followed with sound, "no-nonsense" words of advice uttered in the most gentle way.

Above all, he made me laugh like a child, and had never, not even once, displayed his anger despite the many times I gave him reasons to.

Like true best friends - we talked about everything and anything and remained connected with each other through the years, despite my unpredictable temper and his infuriating tendencies.

And today, that friendship came to an end, and I am, yet once again, friendless.

I can no longer look forward to my tear-jerkers being given importance, or expect to have my 1 am text message replied to.

Still, life goes on...

Afterall, isn't that what life really is - a journey that teaches you (among the many other lessons) that nothing really is permanent in life :) - what more a friend...

Of course, Khalil Gibran's poems would be perfect to end this post with. But since I have throughly exhausted the man's works (especially the ones on relationships) :) in my previous posts, and since I don't want to be "accused" of shoving Gibran into friends' minds :), I have opted for the lovely little piece below.

An Excerpt from THE VELVETEEN RABBIT

For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his rigging in technical terms. The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn't know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles. Even Timothy, the jointed wooden lion, who was made by the disabled soldiers, and should have had broader views, put on airs and pretended he was connected with Government. Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse.

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears - Part II

The "teacher" appeared to my eyes this morning, as I was driving my sister to work :)

What a sight to behold my "teacher" was. Mermerised I was - and so engrossed was I that I almost hit the car in front of mine that had stopped because of the traffic congestion further up the road :) I use the same road almost every day, and I could have sworn this pond was always as bare as I could ever imagine bareness to be. How did the water lilies appear out of nowhere? How could that be possible? That was when the lesson for the day flashed across my mind - NEVER LOSE SIGHT OF THE MOMENT - as in every moment of our lives - just like the one during which the car before me came to a halt.

I dropped my sister off at her office, rushed back home, grabbed my camera and returned to the spot for these...:)

They were scattered all over the pond - spreading their wisdom onto the still waters - making the combination almost meditative-like

A closer insight into their subtle yet ever-present divinity

Calmly settled in-between

Meditating twosome?

Realisation of the inner self?

The Genius of Calvin

For all the fellow Calvin enthusiasts out there :) A delight to the senses, he is - as always.

On Views, Beliefs & Experiences

I cannot speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself - when I say that the beliefs, views and perceptions that I today call my own, are but build-ups slowly formed by the many experiences that had hit the shores of my mind, heart, body and soul from the day I opened my eyes in this world till this moment.

A case in point would be the belief I hold today of how I looked like as a newborn. With no photographs taken of me in my infancy to provide visual proof, the vague picture that I have in my mind today is the manipulation of the pliant images that my parents, sister and brothers helped create by way of transfer from their minds, via their words, to my mind's eye. And so, what I believe today to be how I looked is really my view of how I "could" have looked.

When I was about 7 or 8, I believed that my father's arm was the warmest, softest "pillow" that I had ever slept on. And that the smell I exhaled from my his body as I lay on his arms on the bare cement floor of my childhood home, was the loveliest smell in the world. When I reached puberty years later and was reminded by my mother that I was not to have too much physical contact with men, I believed that my father was "a man now", and no longer the bearer of the lovable pillow that I ran to and rested on the moment I saw him lie down to catch a quick nap.

When I finished school in my teens, I believed that the word career revolved around 3 words alone - doctor, lawyer, professor - the latter contributed by the praises I heard from my sister of her immediate boss who was a professor in the university she worked at.

...and so on and so forth.

Belief after belief - mostly based on others' beliefs.
Much lost as a result, and yet, not without its' fair share of gains.
Beliefs which were later disbelieved, and disbeliefs that were later believed.

How do I sum all that up to arrive at what I believe to be true today?
For that matter, what is true and what is not? And what is right and what is not?

Even now at this age, whenever I hear something new and inspiring, I wonder if that's the new way to go about in life. And months later, I would read a profound book and begin questioning if that is not what I really needed to get me to where I intend to head.

I am not sure about others - but I readily allow myself to be constantly influenced by new ideas. I welcome almost every new theory of life as a possibility that will get me a little closer to my dreams. I even write them down in my little notebook hoping that I'd someday be able to digest it fully and use them somehow.

Would you say that doing all the above makes me the least original person you have come across?

What is life, really, but a recycled version of the past. And what are we without each other's influences?
Isn't that what makes us human - the fact that we have the intelligence to learn from the past, recycle that which we have learned, and reproduce it in a presentable, acceptable form?

All said and done, isn't it true that our experiences are what shape our views and perceptions? And what if they were good or bad experiences - does all that matter? Shouldn't the real questions be - how openly we experience our experiences, and how effectively we reflect on them afterwards, or as we grow older?

No experience is really all that bad (as bad as it makes us feel), and some good always comes out of all that we go through. This is purely a personal view - one that I live by, and one that resulted out of the reflections of my past.

It was because the "pillow" was taken away from me at the age of 11 that I found the strength to steadily love my father despite the "distance", despite the physical presence - it taught me that there was no need for any "display of affection" to "feel" one's real affection.

...could that be the lesson (on "attachment with a tinge of detachment") that my mother probably wanted to teach me...?

Any views from out there to "influence" me otherwise..? :)

A little diversion will be good at this stage, I figured :) Find out what Khalil Gibran had to say about relationships, and why a little detachment is always good in life :)

I don't remember seeing my mother read Khalil Gibran when I was a kid. :) Intuition, perhaps?

MARRIAGE (The Prophet) - Khalil Gibran

Then Almitra spoke again and said, "And what of Marriage, master?"

And he answered saying:

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.

Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together, yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.



CHILDREN (The Prophet) - Khalil Gibran

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children."

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Meditative Shots of Nature

The first time I saw this photograph, I was totally spellbound by its' intensity. Can you see the energy it emanates? I did. And for a split second, I could have sworn I saw the lily blooming in all its' splendour right before my eyes.

The friend who took this photograph aptly named it the Gayatri of Lily. How delightfully insightful, I thought. Could any other word have described the divinity of the lily any better? I think not.

A photography buff he is - this friend of mine, and his blog is filled with amazing pictures (almost all of which he took himself). And trust me, if you're anything like me (the kind who loves photography and beauty in its various forms, I mean), you'd find yourself wishing that some day...yeah, some fine day...you too could take photographs like these.

Here's another gem I "pinched" from his blog (permission to be obtained after this post is published :) ).

Need I say more about this man's creative genius? :)

Road to Self-Discovery

I started this blog for the purpose of "discovering myself". No, no - not that kind of "discovering" that makes one become more aware of one's hidden skills - and realise eventually that "hey, this could very well become my new career path".

I did not need a blog to tell me that I could write (if the ability to write was the skill I wanted to discover). I had always known that I could. (Please don't get me wrong - there is not a tinge of arrogance in me when i say this). What I wanted this blog to offer me was an outlet to record my thoughts in a not-so-careless manner, which I had lately become so used to, much to my frustration.

I reckoned...knowing full well that my postings could stand a remote chance of being read by another (of course, me being me, I had taken all the neccesary measures to ensure the remoteness of this possibility :) ) would provide the positive pressure required to be watchful of how i wrote, and that I indeed wrote!

That...and the hope that this blog would get me totally "addicted".

Yeap, I said it allright. I needed to come to a stage where I actually believed that I could not go on if I did not write. For, that's how important writing is in my life.

If only I believed it as much as I know it to be true...

When writing is the very reason for my existence, and I shrug it off with my laziness, could there be any greater sin than that, I wonder?

Writing has always been a meditative experience for me. Whenever I write from my heart, I enter this subsconscious state where the one writing using my hands is no longer me. Words would make a foray into my unbridled mind, dropping itself like a missile - an almost guided target. And how sharp their "landing" always are. Upon re-reading, I would marvel at how perfectly the many "blanks" in my sentences were filled with words I had never before used in my life - words I did not even know the meaning to - till then - when they snugly fitted themselves with my other thoughts.

Who "holds" my hand and "writes" for me...I wonder.

(But then again, need i know the answer to that question, I wonder...yet again).

Khalil Gibran wrote this following piece on God in the The Madman.

In the ancient days, when the first quiver of speech came to my lips, I ascended the holy mountain and spoke unto God, saying, "Master, I am thy slave. Thy hidden will is my law and I shall obey thee for ever more..

"But God made no answer, and like a mighty tempest passed away.

And after a thousand years I ascended the holy mountain and again spoke unto God, saying, "Creator, I am thy creation. Out of clay hast thou fashioned me and to thee I owe mine all."

And God made no answer, but like a thousand swift wings passed away.

And after a thousand years I climbed the holy mountain and spoke unto God again, saying, "Father, I am thy son. In pity and love thou hast given me birth, and through love and worship I shall inherit thy kingdom."

And God made no answer, and like the mist that veils the distant hills he passed away.

And after a thousand years I climbed the sacred mountain and again spoke unto God, saying, "My God, my aim and my fulfilment; I am thy yesterday and thou art my tomorrow. I am thy root in the earth and thou art my flower in the sky, and together we grow before the face of the sun."

Then God leaned over me, and in my ears whispered words of sweetness, and even as the sea that enfoldeth a brook that runneth down to her, he enfolded me.

And when I descended to the valleys and the plains, God was there also.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear

I have always been in awe of Kahlil Gibran's writings - since the time I was introduced to his works when I was in my teens. I chanced upon the piece I posted earlier while searching on what famous wise ones had to say about lotuses. Though I had read The Prophet before, I can't say I remember everything the book entailed. And so, it took me by surprise when I read SELF KNOWLEDGE, and almost immediately realised how aptly it answered the many questions that had been hovering in my mind for some time now.

Is it true then that "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear"?

...it seems so, doesn't it?

SELF KNOWLEDGE (The Prophet) - Kahlil Gibran

And a man said,

Speak to us of Self-Knowledge.

And he answered saying:

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.

But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.

You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.

You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.

And it is well you should.

The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;

And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.

But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;

And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.

For self is a sea boundless and measureless.

Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."

Say not, "I have found the path of the soul."
Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."

For the soul walks upon all paths.

The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.

The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.