By Yang Miang

Since young, I have always thought that being happy is one of the most important things in life. Whenever I wrote birthday wishes for family members and friends, I like to wish them 笑口常开 (directly translated as having a “happy face”all the time) . 

As I grow up, I realised that being happy is a common goal that many people have, but I don’t see a lot of people who are truly happy around. Most people, just like me, have some sort of unhappiness in certain aspects of their lives. 

At about the same time, I became interested in having a religion. This might be due to my six years in schools that are religiously affiliated. However, I did not immediately link happiness and religion then. 

After I got married and have kids, I put a lot of energy into managing and growing my marriage and family. Concurrently, I was very driven in my career and I worked pretty hard. Even though each aspect of my life gave me joy from time to time, they also presented different types of problem that I have to solve constantly. So they do not bring me a true sense of happiness.

In 2007, my career brought my family and me to Australia. With less relations around us and a more forgiving pace of life, we had had more time to explore religions in more detail. I got in touch with Jen Chen Buddhism and realised that Buddhism is essentially an age-old pathway to true happiness. To me, Buddhism is not about the superficial “happy face” (笑口常开) type of happiness that I sought when I was a teenager, nor a religious or obedient approach to happiness that I learned in school. 

As I learn more about Buddhism, I realised that the type of “happiness” that it refers to has nothing to do with emotions or feelings that our mind generates. It is actually going back to our inner self that does not think and feel. At the same time, this inner self does not reject thinking or feeling, it simply does not get attached to thinking or feeling. Once we are with this inner self, which is our Buddha Nature, we are totally natural, at ease and peaceful like a tree that sways when the wind blows and still when there is no wind. 

There is actually no need for any pursuit of happiness. This innate source of peace and blissis actually within us all the time! All we need to do is to stop all pursuit and we will be at ease. This does not mean we stay in a cave and isolate ourselves from the world, nor meditate all the time and starve ourselves to death. We should continue to live life in accordance to our roles, and do our best in whatever we do. 

The key is to constantly look inwards and be at ease internally no matter what we are doing. What we do externally is not as critical as what is happening internally. Once we stop the pursuit of happiness internally and externally, we become satisfied and peaceful. 

How ironic… I had been searching for happiness all my life, little did I realise that I have it in me all these while.

By Yongkok

From time to time, I often find myself asking what is next after death? Being brought up in a traditional Chinese family, it is ingrained in us that if we perform good deeds, our karma will elevate us to heaven. On the contrary, if we are involved in atrocities, we will be weighed down to hell – the abyss of eternal suffering. However, is heaven and hell really that far-fetched that we will only experience it only upon death?

In fact, if we start to reflect internally, we live our lives cruising through heaven and enduring hell every day. Every arising thought is a remnant of our past. If left unobserved, these thoughts have the potential of evolving into action or speech based on our likes and dislikes. Especially if these words or actions are uttered or performed during a moment of impulse, it often results in regret and guilt. This emotional state of unease is in fact, or at least what I think it is, a taste of what hell will feel like. On the other hand, one may gleam with pride and satisfaction after being praised by our bosses for a job well done in front of our colleagues. For that moment, one may seem to be in heaven. 

I have come to realise that whatever is presented before us is an aggregation of conditions and it is non-permanent in nature. We begin our life with nothing and leave with nothing. In between, it is a roller coaster ride of heavenly peaks and tormenting troughs. If we are not aware of our thoughts and continuing to dwell on them without realising it, we are amplifying the highs and lows during this ride of life. Thus, strive for neither heaven nor hell. Be at ease as heaven and hell is all but an illusion generated by conditions.

By 慧珠

On 12 Oct 2017, I brought my 2 grandchildren to attend an outdoor activity organised by our Buddhist Centre’s Children Class facilitators. It was an outing to a vegetable and fruit garden at Ulu Pandan. The garden was conveniently situated next to an activity area where the facilitators intended for lessons to be carried out at. 

The facilitators came early in the morning to wipe the tables, sweep the floor and clean the toilet at the activity centre to ensure a clean and hygenic environment for everyone. One of them even prepared her home-grown organic sugarcane with lemongrass drink that she wanted to share with everyone!

When the children and their parents arrived, the facilitators led the children in a simple singing activity and exercise routine to warm up. After that, they brought everyone to the garden and introduced the various plants in it to us. It was a very fruitful and enjoyable experience that we enjoyed immensely. 

The following is what we learnt at the vegetable garden:

1.       A banana plant can only grow a bunch of bananas in its lifetime. After harvesting the fruit, the plant is chopped down as the mother plant will die after producing a bunch of bananas. However, around the base of the roots of the banana plant are many baby banana plants that will grow into banana plants eventually. 
2.       How to grow vegetables:
3.       First, loosen the soil and create a little hole in it to place the seedling. After that, tamp the soil down to ensure that the roots make direct contact with the soil. If there are leaves on the seedling, we have to trim the leaves out or they will rot in the soil which will affect the growth of the vegetable plant.
4.       Be very careful not to hurt the earthworms when digging holes in the soil. Gardeners have to be maintain awareness so as not to hurt other living creatures in the process of planting.
5.       Besides providing the plant with adequate sunlight, fertiliser and water, it is very important to remove the weeds growing around the plant as the weeds will fight with the plant for sunlight, water and nutrients.  When thinking about weeding in relation to the Dharma, I feel that weeding is similar to the mental anguish we carry in our hearts. If we do not let go of the mental anguish and negative thoughts, they will suffocate the innate brightness we all have and prevent it from shining through.
6.       We also learnt how to make compost from soy beans, fruit peel and vegetable scraps. After having buried them in the soil for 3 months, they will break down into fertiliser. This is 100% organic fertiliser with no chemicals. I feel that this way of fertilising is cheap and environmentally friendly. Furthermore, it is a meaningful way of doing our bit for the environment by recycling waste that could had eventually ended up in a landfill.   

When we returned to the activity centre, the children played a game of treasure hunt which they thoroughly enjoyed. One of the facilitators gave out some activity sheets related to gardening for the children to complete and to apply their knowledge of what they had learnt in the garden. 

The children read an article on Buddhism and gardening. The following is a summary of the article.

1.       The author described how his step-father used to say he was stupid and useless from a very young age till he was 13 years old. As a result his self-esteemed suffered. Because he had little confidence and his self-esteem very low, he grew up to be a selfish, ignorant and arrogant person. He would steal, beat up other people and make fun of people who were suffering. When his mother or grandmother tried to teach him, he would pretend to listen when in reality, he did not accept their care and advice. As a result of all the bad seeds he was planting in the garden of his mind, it became full of weeds.
2.       After many years, he felt that he had completely lost control and unable to free himself from the kind of person he had become. All the years of cultivating bad seeds had turned him into an angry, selfish and ignorant person.
3.       He came to the feel shame and unhappiness at the pain he had caused to other people and tried to remove the weeds (bad habits) and started to plant good seeds that will reap hope, compassion and love. The author also tried to encourage others who were like him, lost in the darkness of the bad habits they had cultivated and taught how to remove the weeds so that they can change their lives for the better.
4.       The author also learnt that only constant reflection and weeding would lead to a peaceful and clear mind. He taught children the law of causality: if you plant a bad seed, you will reap bitter fruit and if you plant a good seed, the fruit you reap will be sweet and healthy. The role of reflection is to allow oneself to see the weeds in their mind and remove their accordingly. Only then will peace and brightness prevail.

After reading and reflecting on this article with the children, the  facilitators served a delicious vegetarian lunch which everyone thoroughly enjoyed. 

Conclusion

I feel that this learning trip was a meaningful and fruitful one. The children not only learnt about how to garden in a mindful and compassionate manner, they also related the experience to the Dharma and the law of causality of reaping what you sow. 

The Children Class facilitators put in a lot of effort to look after and teach the children every Saturday. They will do their best to look for suitable teaching material like videos, stories, art work and games to teach the children good values and cultivate the seeds of Dharma. Besides that, they also prepare snacks for the children to eat during break time to ensure that the children do not go hungry. Their quiet and unselfish dedication is indeed, inspiring. My four-year-old grandchild enjoys attending the Children Dharma class and I am very grateful to the facilitators who sometimes play and teach him on a 1 to 1 basis because he is much younger than the rest of the children. I want to take this chance to express my gratitude to all the facilitators in the children class. Be with Buddha!

By 智扬

On the bus or MRT trains, we see almost everyone constantly glued to their mobile devices, myself included. We have grown into a habit of checking our handphones either just before we sleep or when we awaken.

Upon reflecting on why we easily become addicted to social media, I realized that part of its appeal lies in the fact that it allows us to feed our greed and curiosity of information, our inner’kaypohness’ (Singlish for being a busybody). We want to know what our friends and family are doing or are busy with. We feel a need to compare with our peers; are we doing better or worse off than them? We want to be in the know of the most happening event or the latest trend to follow. Most times, what we are surfing for is actually not the information that we really need. It’s unlike watching the news where the news editor decides what news to report in terms of severity and priority. In social media, we choose what we want to read according to our interest at that moment. It often takes only a split-second decision to click on the next link when we get bored with what we are currently reading about or watching on social media.

I came across this phrase in a local news article about the use of social media; “… we ignore what we dislike and we will share what we like and feel strongly for”. This struck a chord to what I had been thinking recently about the pervasiveness of social media in almost every aspect of our lives. Hence I believe that the popularity of social media is pushing us towards extremism.

The Internet has brought us closer with immediate news and information sharing. Though fast improving technological advances have brought us many tremendous positives and benefits, we are seeing that it is also causing us to develop more varying and differing viewpoints. Social media sharing has allowed anyone with an internet connection a platform to voice out their own views and opinions to the public. This can be as harmless as diehard supporting rival football teams halfway around the world to dangerous views that advocate extremism with regard to racial, religions, politics and nationalism.

A recent news headlines was that of the spreading of false news or information. While I am not an expert to comment on the measures and policies the authorities are planning to implement to deal with this, I am constantly reminding myself and those around me that we need to be more mindful of what we type and comment online or even just that one simple click to share someone’s link or comment.

We should strive to be mindful and constantly check and  remind ourselves to be very careful with what we write or post on social media as there could be terrible consequences as a result of a thoughtless word or post. We also have to be aware and know clearly if we consciously browsing social media for a clear purpose or if we are doing it as part of our routine, which is a clear sign of addiction.