Ching's Best

Fame, Power and all that jazz

admin — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 02:24:10 +0000

It is very easy to be attracted to fame, power, wealth, and all things that seem to bring one above others, and to spend one’s time chasing after them. When one is good-looking, attractive or has some talent like singing or athleticism, one tries to pursue the ephemeral goals with vigor and one-mindedness to the exclusion of other goals.

Ultimately, one finds that gravity is a stronger force than any kind of propulsion being used to bring one to heights imaginable. Beauty fades, strength and agility fail, fame becomes meaningless after a while, wealth cannot transcend death. What else is there?

Stephen Hawking and God

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:30:05 +0000

I’ve always had an issue with Stephen Hawking and his theories of the universe. Not that he is wrong in a big way but that he is unable to comprehend the underlying reason for the universe being what it is. The problem could be because he is looking too much at the leaves that I have a feeling he is missing the forest. He has published a new book which I believe is going to be very profound but will shed no more light than what has been published before.

CBC News reports:

Hawking says “it is not necessary to invoke God to … get the universe going.”

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/09/02/stephen-hawking-creation-universe.html?ref=rss#socialcomments-submit#ixzz0yNze9rh7

Morphin’

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 01:43:35 +0000

Everything morphs. Everyone changes. Snakes shed their skin regularly, proud fighting cocks lose their tail feathers like clockwork. Hermit crabs, king crabs, regular crabs, fowls, reptiles and other creatures moult as they grow. Could death be a kind of moulting for the soul as it sheds old bodies and take on new ones? I wonder. The thought that I might be starting a new experience like dying struck me and I believed it to be a very strong, immediate likelihood. Well, my imagination was quite simple, prosaic even, limited, boring and I never thought another sort of change might be in store for me.

Can the mind morph? I guess so. Even Power Rangers morph.

“Alice doesn’t live here anymore”

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:39:56 +0000

What does a chrysalis or cocoon say to one who asks for the occupant of the empty shell? Probably, ” Alice has gone to parts unknown”.

Where do thoughts go when they become irrelevant? I used to have thoughts that bugged me from time to time, much like the seasons and cycles that make life easy to take. Ultimately, they outlive their usefulness and must be discarded, a thing which is not easy to do. Like ghosts, my thoughts haunt me even when there is no more reason for them to linger.

I am airing my mind and setting free those thoughts which no longer serve a purpose.

The little monkey

admin — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 01:43:08 +0000

So, it’s still there, the little monkey. Lurking, keeping a low profile, popping up unexpectedly. I don’t exactly catch it at once when it comes but, if it stays long enough and makes me feel uncomfortable, I know it’s the monkey. There are many thoughts that come and invade my mind and a great number of them are instigated by the monkey. I could even say that the vast majority of them springs from the monkey inside me. Well, I have my flashlight and I can turn it on these thoughts and discover them for what they are, smoke from the fire stoked by the tricky little monkey which is my ego.

It actually is fun, catching the money and turning on the light of consciousness on it. Generally, thoughts of anger, sadness, grandeur, regret, pain, pleasure, desire, etc., are the hallmarks of the ego. Seeing them for what they are seems to make them go away. I wonder what will be left of me when all these thoughts go? There has to be something there which can shine forth to replace these lousy little thoughts that clutter my mind. Something great, perhaps.

Life

admin — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 05:15:42 +0000

Last night on the Discovery Channel, I watched accounts of gel containing organic cells falling from the skies as well as rain with blood-like cells falling in Kerala, India. It might seem so outlandish to me decades ago but now, I am not so sure. We have been taught to think of spirit and matter as separate things but there seems to be no reason for the dichotomy except lack of insight and knowledge. I am no longer so sure about the things I learned in school.

Working on a farm for a while, I came in contact with natural farming methods that relied heavily on microorganisms to promote growth and health rather than on chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, etc. This experience has made me change my mind about corporate methods of farming which ensures the sale of chemicals but not the harvest. Commercial methods repeat the refrain, “kill the bugs” when what we should be doing is to promote life.

Time

admin — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 04:40:43 +0000

I find that I spend a good deal of my time on thoughts that repeat. I have the same concerns, things that matter or bother me are the same things that did their mischief in my mind years before. Fears, desires, wishes, all of these have been with me in one form or another.

I should get out of this rut and change my thoughts big time. Reinvention is the word for me. Or makeover. Or change. Or re-programming.

Grappling with the ego

admin — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 05:02:03 +0000

The ego is so intimately entwined with us that it is very difficult to grasp it as something which could be inimical to us. Yet, how often we have heard or read that “your greatest enemy is yourself” or put in another way, “I have seen the enemy and it is, us” or, “the devil made me do it”. How do we identify the ego and how do we identify what else is there?

I have a little trick which has proven quite nifty. I look at my thoughts and actions a lot. So with my feelings. These activities have almost become automatic. When I feel bad because of something said or done to me, I consider the feeling to be generated by the ego. Whenever I desire something, it, more often than not, has the ego as the proponent. It’s a little trick which I use to unmask the trickster, which is the ego.

I’d sure like to know what else is there beyond the ego.

Flower

admin — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 02:14:13 +0000

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wondering about man and God writes,

Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies

and killed the flower.

Lofty thoughts about life, love, man, God, nature, progress, etc. merely consider what falls as collateral damage. On a similar vein, death and destruction come as a means of ensuring the preservation of a way of life or establishing the kingdom of God. There is something wrong with the way people think if this is what they can come up with. No doubt everyone thinks he is right. Just blow up the other guy.

Jetsun Milarepa

admin — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 06:24:18 +0000

My favorite Tibetan Tantrik Buddhist yogi is Milarepa, who mastered the dark arts of sorcery to avenge the injustice to him and his mother at the hands of his uncle who usurped their wealth upon the death of his father. Using occult powers, he brought down large hailstones and destroyed his uncle’s house as a party was being held inside, killing everyone who were under the roof. Angry townspeople sought to bring him to justice but he made his escape by destroying their crops with hailstones, deterring them from taking further action against him.

Regretting his sins, he sought tutelage from Marpa, called the Translator who gave him lessons only after subjecting him to physical suffering to cleanse him of his sins. There are many stories of his magical powers which include simultaneous apparitions to a thousand people upon his death.

To know of a man who rose from great sin to the highest attainment of enlightenment is a source of great inspiration to me. He was a man, not the Son of God.