The Women in my life - Continued.

Accompanied my daughter shopping for a pair of sneakers at the First Avenue Mall  today and had a good time with her even though the deal was i can sit and read my Eric Van Lustbader Novel of Jason Bourne series which was created originally by Robert Ludlum while she wanders around looking for her pair of sneakers. Twice she returned to the Star Bucks cafe where i sat and said to find any sneakers but had a few other items bought instead. I told her to take a walk and look for a nice belt instead and to forget the sneakers and eventually came upon a pair of sneakers she liked and bought. I had the opportunity to have a good chat with her in between her search and shared with of a piece of my past that she did not know before, that i was a martial arts student and later an instructor and that at one time i was caught sleeping with my instructor's eldest daughter. it was both sweet and bitter for me but then that was who i was and perhaps still am. My instructor chastised me in front of the rest of the students one evening during practice and all he asked me was what did he ever do to me to deserve this; it was worse than getting slapped in the face. Late both his daughter and me apologized for our infractions.
My daughter was not much surprised by what i told her and that i have been trying to write about the women in my life in my Blog did not register any reaction for or against. I have no regrets whatsoever of what had happened and considered myself very lucky to have got off easy but i was young then and she was the prettiest I have seen during the time and among the rest of the students she chose me even if she was older than me by two years. If i were to look back with a sense of regret for all the episodes in my life that involved women I most probably have jumped the bridge  long time ago and further more it would have been an insult to the women being a partner in my transgressions. I took the risk and enjoyed the forbidden fruits where not many would have dared: where angels would not dare only fools would tread or simply put, no risk, no gain or that if you are scared of getting burned, don't play with fire and i burned my way through my young adult life with glory.Today ironically i can look a t woman and imagine her from the distance as perhaps i am through with getting burned.
My first love of my life lives not too far from where i am and has remained unmarried all these years, she was my childhood companion for over nine years and her foster family stood very violently against our relationship simply because i was not a pure blooded Malay nor was I a rich prize for her, and they yelled this in my face one day over which I walked away swearing that i would marry the first woman who showed any interest in me. I met my first wife soon after and decided to settle at twenty five. I found out that I was a father two months into our relationship and in predominantly Muslim community there was only one solution, get married.and we did. I felt like a man and i was very happy like I have accomplished something in life as i watched my child got large in my wife's belly. We had what everyone called a'Cowboy's wedding' or shotgun wedding with little fanfare and a whole lot of gossips among the relatives and friends of which nothing touched me as i was riding high in the clouds with joy.
I was a rambunctious character with little regard for consequences I might cause in my younger days but i decided to settle down and raise my son and care for my wife as we struggled to make it here in Malaysia. We were faced with all kinds of trials and tribulations in the form the immigration office and the registry department while my wife had fight her own battles at her place of work.So we finally decided to migrate to the United States and i made a vow never to return. Thus began my no holds barred and no looking back journey of my adult life where 21 years of living a hedonistic life took hold of who I was to become.
Today I have lost that rambunctiousness in me as i told my daughter, I am tired of taking on life like a bull in a China shop, I told her my journey now is an inner one, one that hopefully will help to cleanse up my past with some understanding of who I am and what my life in the past was all about. My writing this blog is again simply as a form of catharsis a discernment allowing for my mind to unburden what has been accumulated throughout my existence with the hope that it will enlighten my baggage before i take my final step into the hereafter.

At Savatthi. Then the brahman Jata[1] Bharadvaja went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, exchanged courteous greetings with him. After this exchange of friendly greetings & courtesies, he sat to one side. As he was sitting there he addressed the Blessed One with a verse:

A tangle within, a tangle without, people are entangled in a tangle. Gotama, I ask you this: who can untangle this tangle?

[The Buddha:]

A man established in virtue, discerning, developing discernment & mind, a monk ardent, astute: he can untangle this tangle. Those whose passion, aversion, & ignorance have faded away, arahants, their effluents ended: for them the tangle's untangled. Where name-&-form, along with perception of impingement & form, totally stop without trace: that's where the tangle is cut.

Discernment is the activity of determining the value and quality of a certain subject or event, particularly the activity of going past the mere perception of something and making detailed judgments about that thing. As a virtue, a discerning individual is considered to possess wisdom, and be of good judgement; especially so with regard to subject matter often overlooked by others.