The God Delusion 2

Yesterday's entry was a somewhat spontaineous reaction towards my own excitement at having experienced a moment of mini-satori or awakening or whatever anyone who have had simmilar experience would call it. This was prompted by the last few pages of the book by Richard Dawkin'The God Dellusion' in which certain train of thoughts and ideas with regard to the subject matter he had discussed triggered my own data banks' collection of information with the regard to religions-belif and faiths. Almost my entire adult life had been spent accepting or danying the existance of a God or Gods and I had little problem of dismissing the later at a very early stage in my life long quest for answers after reading the works of Homer and Greek Mythologies, Zeus and His wives and kids, and those of the Norse Gods, of Odin and His kith and kin. I waded through the Hindu pantheon of Gods and Deities that to me has befuddled the Hindu minds for centuries with myths and lores in the effort to confirm the existance of a God, the elaborate rituals, the sacrifices, the fanatical clinging to dogmas and traditions has caused unforgiving causes of pain and suffering to the myriads of common people through out Indian history and all in the name of Religion! In this respect I agree with Richard indeed there is no such God or Gods. If there was it is a product of a highly evolved sick mind that desired to collectively controll the ignorant minds through religiosity.
I have made it my journey in this life to devote a good amout of my available time towrds the 'right understanding' of the nature of 'God' and Religions having made a simple promise to myself that I would faithfully seek out the answers for myself no matter how or where there are answers to be found for the questions that had been raised in my mind since a child. I grew up a buddhsit while living among the rest of my family and relatives who were Muslims. I was made to attend both the Buddhist saturdays and sunday schools while learning the Koran and attendiong the Friday prayers at the mosque. Religion had meant scorn by peers while i was attending my primary education being accused as a 'Kapiak' (Kafir) because I was exempted from having to attend the Islamic classes and the Friday prayers by my teachers who under the intruction to do by my Uncle, the man who had adopted me. Even as a child i felt I was headed for a big time conflict in my religious and spitirual upbringing and was anticipating when the two major religions that was having a tug -o-war over my soul was going to come into collision. It did come when one of my aunties decided to have me circumcised together with a cousin of mine who is a week older than me.
It was this event that changed my childhood life forever, I hated all that has to with Gods and religions eventhough was still to young and scared to let the world have a peek into how I really felt. The hide and seek i had to play so that the Muslim part of me does not know what the Buddhist part of me was up to. for fear of being treated with redicule and totally ostracised, so I played along with the decissions that the adults in my life back then had come to about my faith and religious understanding. I was taken back by my immediate family, my mother and father, my brothers and sisters who had then moved to Kuala Terengganu. Yes , i was twelve years of age and till this day can never forget the evening my uncle had to break me the news while we were sitting on the esplanande wall at Padang Kota Lama, in Penang. That was the first time i had witnessed my uncle shed his tears from the pain of having to give me up, all in the name of religion!
I held that against God! The Buddhas, the Deities and my teachers and family and friends and whoever else that gave the idea that there was a God, a compassionate being in the form of a Buddha, a Mathatma and so forth, Nnope, I had enough, I had been thrown some crap at my childhood age that some of it had poisoned my mind about faith and belifs, needless to say some of the episodes and events that i faced growing is unmentionable or too painful to share but they were a horror enough for me as i can still remember raising my middle finger at the stars in the middle of the night and saying 'fuck you!". I was worse than an Atheist a some point in my life as I did not only not believe in the existance of a God but I took it steps further and mock God from the depth of my soul. I was young and I was ignorant but I was not stupid!
There is often someone in a person's life who had to be the catalyst for change, th much needed change of attitude or character and mine came in the form of my martial arts instructor, also the Head of the Religious Department in Terengganu back in the sixties. He and his family sort of adopted me and allowed me to come to an understanding of who I was and what i was looking for not only through the learninf of the Malay Art of Self Defence (Silat Seni Gayung), but also through long nights of playing Scrabble games and while at it having deep converstions on matters of life and religion, of politics and women. My master was a very highly well rounded man of knowledge and was both well verse in matters of the material world as well as the spiritual, thinks like and Englishman and teach like a Mahaguru. It was through Pa'Cik Abu Johan's guidance and uncinditional love that I was able to gradually untangle myself from the tightening ropes of hate and dellusions that was poisoning my teenage mind. Through my teacher's acquaintances I was wxposed to great minds of the time such as the Majistrate and the chief of police back then as they loved to play scrabble and were often out ot beat me as my trump card at being able to hang out with these heads of the government department was that I was good at beating them in the Scrabble game! I learned about life and adulthood idirectly from highly educated well respected and feared men when I was a teenager and this included the Late Sultan of Terengganu, HRH Tuanku Sultan Ismail Nasseruddin Shah the grand father to the present King of Malaysia; I was often his Golf caddie replacement and yes we talked when we were walking towards the golf ball and I learned about why there those born to be rulers and those born to be loosers from the Sultan when I was growing up in Terengganu.
There were many individuals that had come to my psycho-emotional rescue and they helped to heal the pain by removing the ignorance and mostly simply by being there and allowing me to pretty much be and become who I am without too much pressure or coercion but with open hearted compassion and acceptance. I began to accept myself better when I finished secondary school as by then I had come to grips with who or where i stood as a young adult, less confused and angry and more in controll of own feelings. It was then that I chose to set upon my journey to discover my stand, my Dharma position, my faith with regard to God and religion. I could have discovered the answers right where I was but the journey as I now have discovered took me aroung the world into many lives and libraries into many mosques and temples, retreats and taverns; I decided to take God by the beard and the devil by the horns... Yes I became known even as the Cheeseburger Buddha at a stage in my life.

'The God Delusion'

After reading the final chapter of the 'God Delusion' by Richard Dawkin I felt like the Shinkansen or bullet train with her emergency brakes being pulled while it was running high speed headed for Sendai from Tokyo. Everything came to a halt, sound sight smell, my thoughts! I was having my daily morning fix of Nescafe tarik and Moi soup at the Astaka Taman Saadon when this happened and the food court was full of people having the breakfast while Hindustani songs were blarring over the air from a boombox at a close by stall.I attained a momentery state of Satori whereby all was silence despite all that was going on around me or should I say I spaced out without the aid of getting stoned.
I cannot pinpoint what was it that struck me most about Dawkin's rationale over the existance or not of God or the irrelevance of religion in mankind's history, but taken as a whole the book stopped my thinking mind or it tripped me. I do not confess to understanding absolutely all the scientific rationales the author had used for his arguments but from what I could I am impressed at the amount of knowledge and the manner in which the arguments were presented, so convincingly.
Yes, there is No God! There is only Allah and Allah is not a God and the closest mankind can come to describe Allah is like the Taoist ability to describe what is 'TAO'? And what I understand or have come to accept is that Allah is not out there, not sitting up there with a Moses look alike passing down judgements over the whole Galactic system, no Allah is if one has to pinpoint the location, within each and everyone of us at least in essence. Science can discover all the secrets of nature but at the final analysis all will arrive at where it all began, the heart. The physical heart, the spritual heart the heart of the soul where perhaps rest the devine spark that is the mark difference between humans and the rest of creation inclusive of JIns and Angels or aliens and extraterrestrials. I am not one to argue if I have been declared to have been created in my Creator's image or that the Devine essence is within me. Only a fool scientist or otherwise would take so much trouble to disclaim a great gift, for better or for worse. This Wisdom and not all scientists or Atheist for that matter are wise, they may have all the knowledge in the world about all things there to be learned or discovered but that does not make them wise. Wisdom as most ancients has pointed out 'happens' just like Satori.
If Dawkin or the likes of him prefer to knock their heads trying to dismiss the prescence of an ultimate intelligence that is their gig but to impose upon others who would rather evolve towards rediscovering their origins and the mysteries of this origins with such arrogance and intellectual impudence is BULL!
Yes, indeed there is no God! At least not the God that is seen through the eyes of anyone with a bias mind claiming this for that or this against that, comparing analyzing, deucting and eventually postulating all this done with a thinking mind, a mind that is functioned, as scientifically obeserved through the process of brain cells and neurons blah..blah. A mind percceiving the universe through its five aggregates of data collecting instruments inherent in the human physical form, that of eyes, nose, touch, smell and ears, and as most scientist would agree this is very limiting as far as instruments ot unlick the mysteries of the Universe much less "The secret of Secrets". And if and when these western scientific minds are indeed able to untangle the tangle to these questions then what?
I the meantime based upon our ignorant bungglings of our ancestors with regard to religions, the wars, the persecutions the fanatcisms that has resulted til this day and age with even greater vehemence we subject ourselves still with trying to prove or disprove whether there is or there is no God. Does God care? Does God have a religion? No! Religions have God or gods. Humans have Gods, but there is only One Creator and this is not God as our simplistic minds try to rationalize for or against. There is No God, only Allah.

The Dam broke loose

Yesterday I received three emails that brought tears of joy in me as they each carried three positve messages that touched my heart in the deepest corner of my being. I read the first which was from the Penang State Art Gallery telling me that the Director of the National Art gallery in KL has agreed to officiate the oppenning of my Solo Exhibition in July. This news brought about an impetus towards my effort to complete my long scroll sketches which has been dragging in coming to fruition for the last few weeks. The second was from my son the fly boy who has been silence for quite sometime the last few months and got me a little worried. He has his excuses but having received words from him he is alright and has not given up on his Dad has given me a great sigh of relief. Although we have not seen eachother for more then ten years now I still miss him everytime I open my email hoping that there there will be his usual two liners waiting for me like a shot of 'tongkat Ali' to make my day. It is good to know every once in awhile that your son really cares about you even if you have not been there for him a greater part of his life.
The third I read was a real pleasant surprise as it was from a total stranger who had happened to have read my Rambblings of the Cheeseburger Buddha Blog. This young lady I had just found out in today's email about how old she might be, wrote me a lovely letter that had raised my hopes and aspirations and that I am not fumbbling around in the dark all by myself. I had reached out for help in the past and a few friends from the States and Japan had reciprocated in kind which was the extent of my 'experiment' in life of human nature, the test proved both positive and negative. I received some financial support from people who were closest to me, who believed in me and son and I was accused of bring shameless and short of a bum by one or two anonymous friends who left a juicy criticism of my moral decadence in my blog. I am still experimenting with my life testing all possibilities making right and wrong choices knowingly and ready for their repercussions, but these moves ares till my testing ang proving that there is hope and there is compassion, there is light and there darkness, there are those who genuinely care and there are those who assume the worse rather than lend a helping hand or offer a word of kindness instead of a kick in the butt when you are down.

The crow was a subject of study while living in Japan

This young lady's email letter was written so well and tactfully offering me help towards any future need for my children's education broke my heart into tears and I was sobbing for the first time in a long time for all the three positive news I had received in one morning. Allah's greatest gift to His servant is the beggar at the door; I read this somewhere and till this date i have assumed myself a beggar testing Allah's servants and every once in awhile I find a pleasant surprise that there are those whose faith in their fellow beings is still genuinely intact, they are ready to lend a helping hand unconditionally when the needy knocks at their door. Then there those who judged and criticize a whole lot more than they afford to do in easing the the pain or burden in others and these I have found through my personal experiment with all those I had held my out to. Then there are those who I had avoid asking from and they who are aware with plight, directly or indirectly as they are by birth the closest to me , these I avoid on grounds of no comments but they too are a part and parcel of my on going observation of life. The stranger out of the blue is often times much more closer to you than your kith and kin will ever be even if blood is thicker than wine.

Ellections is around the corner!

Wake up Malaysians, time to choose your leaders, those who will lead you into the future, those who will make life alot simpler and less of a roller coaster. Wake up my fellow country men and women lets do our part in making sure that the same dogs do not gaurd the hen house, those that cleaned the chicken and the eggs truted in their care. I call out to you my fellow Malaysians lets look far and deep into this matter of who should be our servants and who our masters for making mistakes as in the past has been costing us too much aggravtion which we can ill afford in this day and age. Lets weed out the shysters and the wolves in sheepskins. Lets expose the phonies from the true server, lets join our efforts and ellect with our hearts those we know will not deviate from promisses made or will not squander what do not belong to them. Perhaps there are still out there the ones who is wise and noble enough that can be fully trusted to carry out the means for our hopes and dreams to be realised and not take advantage of every loopholes and fringe benifits when they are in power. Lets wake up my family and friends, forget the race and the tribes, forget the religion and the creed, ellect those that your hearts feels can carry us across to the other shore without rocking the boat or sinking it...lets vote!
Yesterday I was at the Little Penang Street Market located at the very end of Penang road across from the E&OHotel. This is an event like a flea market which is held once a month on the last weekend of the month. Alot of activities involving the seeling of arts and crafts and food mostly catering to tourists and there were also live music and such activities like reading and short plays being put on by local talents. Its a happening but like most happenings in Penang it is gradually becoming a 'Chinese Thing' rather than a genuine crosscultural event fit for the promotion of Tourism in this country. It is just my obeservation having spent the last four months as a participant at the market. Its not that there is no Malays on th island to make a presentation or Indians for that matter, however, it is the Chinese that seem to dominate the scene, the sound and the taste whereeveer you go here and this is definitely not a healthy scene for the uniqueness of being a multi-racial, multicultural state. Why come to penang when Singapore, Hong Kong or Taiwan can offer real Chinese cultural heritage.
The old 'Kongsi' culture is very much alive among the Chinese here and this is what keeps them well ahead economically in this State, the spirit of mutual support for the individual as well as between clan groups. Today the coverage of mutuasl help has grown much wider and stronger in the guise of the mainly Chinese dominated political parties such as the MCA and the DAP. It is rarely that you can see these Chinese group extending their help towards the other races the Malays and the Indians. The government may claim otherwise but the real state of the nation is such and cannot be ignored even if ther is nothing that can be done about. The coorperation especially financially or economically between the races is purely business and very little out of the 'milk of human kindness'. The Malays are not without their own blame over the state of affairs, most of it they have brought upon themselves with lack of drive towards securing their share of wealth through the open market. Perhaps their lack of knowhow or their lack of aptitude and attitude that places them a step behind the Chinese when it comes to making money, but for whatever lacking the Government of the day has made great effort towards compensating for the lackings. Among the Malays i found is a serious sense of not being able to share and trust when it comes to money and alot amount of greed and envy to boot. As a friend once said the Malay enjoys seeing his neighbor not doing so well as he does or that someone else has taken a fall, and if there is any success story among the Malays it will always be treated with suspicion or something is not right on how the success was acquired. The Malays has be known to go to lengthy ways and means to discredit their fellow Malays who they found to be overly successful in business or any other venture.Most threatening of all is the use of the supernatural forces like pukau and jampi in order to destroy the guy who made it next door. Ther is seldom a close coorperation between the successful and those who do not make it but alot of suspicion and envy and very little trust except on the surface which the Malays are great at acting it out so much so that to those unaware it would seems like everything is hunky-dori. Sadly enough the Malays of today are slowly loosing their sense of moral and religious virtues even if they wish to admit it or not, giving way to backbiting and slandering as the norm.
The Indians are the minority that has always been under pressure from both the other races, the Malays and the Chinese in all forms albeit economical or social as well as religious. Those who claim otherwise are not being honest just as the White Anglo Saxons in the United States claim against the Blacks. So much so it has manifested in the form of a politicalsocial issue 'Hindraff' whereby the discontentment felt by those being opporessed against rises to meet the oppressors and demand for justice. Given that the ways and means are not condoned by the government it is still an issue that is not going to fade away overnight just because a few arrests were being made. The festered sore has busted open and the puss is splattered all over the sheet, with or without aids from external influences out to exploit the already explosive situation. The Indians very well deserve to make the noise and raise the issue that has been haunting them since the independance, however they would have made more sense to aim their grievances at their party leaders, those hwo have been elected to carry their hopes and grievances for them into the parliament and failing this they should think deeply about replacing these leaders without fear or favor. Aiming their anger at the government will only bring down the wrath of the Malays and the Chinese on them and very little sympathy; this is the Indian Dillema.
Such is a little bit of my political observations of how faror how near the state of the nation is toward accomplishing its goals at the rate things are unfolding all over the land. There are a whole lot more that is going on that needs to be addressed and rectified, corrected and resdesigned, changes has to be made and with changes will come turmoil and with turmoil will come progress hopefully for the best of all interest.

Trip to Bukit Beruntong

We left all five of us in my cousin Mohd. Kalam's car with my two children and their cousin, myself and the driver my cousin Mr. Mohd. Kalam on Friday afternoon. It was a pleasant drive and it was good to be away from the Island of Penang after being cooped up within the confines of the hectic city life. The trip was to visit my brother in law who is suffering from cancer of the throat and also to drop in to say hello to my only surviving aunty who I had long not seen. She had raised me as an adopted child and so i was extra close to her. The kids were happy to get away from it all too and as part of a bonus they were treated to my reading to them from the Napoleon Hill Book, "The Law of Success". It was one way I could grab their attention for some motivational pep talk through the book.
We were originally supposed to go to KL where my brother in law was stating with his younger brother however upon making a phone call we discoverd that he was on his way to Lumut where his daughter lives that very night. Fortunately they were able to drop in at my auntie's house which was located along the their way from KL to Lumut. So that very same night we acoomplished what we set out to do without having to drive all the way to KL. The kids were offcourse a little bit disappointed as they were looking forward to being in KL for some R&R from their R&R in Penang. We left my auntie's the very next day and headed to Lumut ourselves where we made a special trip to the Pangkor Island. The kids had fun there and so it made up for their minor disappointment.
I had a relaxed time myself as I said it was relief to be able to break way from the Island and its routine. Along with reading the "Law of Success" I have picked up the book " The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Afte having read a few chapters of the book I realized that this guy is not fooling around with God, he is all out to grab God by the balls! It is interestingly pleasant to see that no one has threatened his life for some of the things he said especially about Islam! Well maybe it is becaue the fanatics are busy slaying somewhere else in the name of religion or they might just be tired of entertaining the likes of Richard Dawkins and Salman Rushidie (which would be to their credit if they do) having realized that to take on these individuals is giving them free publicity which is what they crave for in the first place. Anyone who knock down a hornets's nest has a reason for doing so and it is not for the sole purpose of getting a painful retribution from the act. The hornets, so long as their home is being threatened they attack regardless of what otheres may say or think over the matter.
What if there is or there is no God? What if there is or there is no Theology or Science for that matter? All these are products of a thinking mind a mind that creates all there is that we see and experience! What happens when we stop thinking all together? We humans are a thinking mamal that survives through the ages despite all the natural and supernatural traversities through our ability to think and act and all we are is still thinking and acting as we progress into the future albeit individually or collectively and more and more the so called scientists, and even theologists and philosphers are in agreement that as we think so we create. So waht have the like of Dawkins and his fellow atheists go to cry about whether there is or there is no God? Whether we evolved into who or what we are from the ape or that we dropped from the sky one day because our number one was booted out of the heavens for his minor discrepancy against his Maker, what the hell of a difference does it makes? Be an Atheist for God's sake! or be a Mullah that's your choise to be! To be or not to be it is your free choice. I hate to quote the scriptures or even the scieces on this matter of free choice or the freedom to choose, to belief or not to belief, or I do not even have to think about it at all and just act as my heart pleases me! It is utterly not the concern of mine if you worship five or ten times a day or that you burned your crucifix declaring yourself this or that to the world and as far as I am concern all you are doing is further adding fuel to the fire that is already burning wildly simply because of your dual thinking mind, right and wrong, good and evil; for so long as you are unable to transcend this dual thinking mind you are trapped in it like a cosmic karma, musterbating yourself over that existance or non existance of what cannot be accertained scientifically or otherwise. As a Zen master once pointed out it is as foolish as a farmer looking for his lost buffaloe while riding on it searching.
But these are what makes money and fame for those who are being given the ability to think beyond the poor farmer and produce such far out proofs and disqualifications for or against such an explosive issue as the existance of God. Dawkins got his International best seller and perhaps even numerous converts which Bertrand Russel and Jefferson were not able to do and he is singing his way to the bank after puking out what has already been known to most of us who ever dwell on the subject but had not inclination to air it in the open much less influence other to our ways of thinking, if nothing for fear that it will further aggravate an already aggravating sore in the heart of humanity.
If there is or there is no God it will make as little difference to the fact that tomorrow I will still have to wake up and face the world and the last thing i would need is another great thinker to inject my already messed up mind with some new ways of thinking things outs that will lead me into whatever freedom that is left worthwhile to be had in this life. I am a beleiver and i find comfort in my belief as I am positive that millions like me all over this planet, painful and rediculous as it may seems at times,feels the same way. I have spent my sleepless nights and read my quota of materials to justify my convictions over the matter of there is or there is no God. The last thing I or most of those like me is asking for is an anti- evangelist or anti-Jehovah witness, anti Imam or anti- Rabbi, brilliant deductionist and salesman/scientist to tell me and my 'God-forsaken kind how or what to believe in in this life.
You cannot obliterate religion or history for that matter by writing one best seller or one hundred best sellers for that matter as the answer is in your own heart of hearts and not in your mind where your belief is concern and no amount of scientific probings can draw the conclusion on this matter nor any number of miracles, but the Heart knows and only the heart can tell if and when it has found what the answer. But first if there is any consolation, look for the heart;for in your heart perhaps is "The Temple of the Living God"' if you happen to find God within your heart and not just some musscles and blood pumping due to some 'scientifically explained' act of nature, then truly you have found your Maker Who created your Ticker! If you find notthing but musscles and blood then be happy to know that you were right, as Carl Jung once said, ' If I believe or do not believe in God, it does not hurt God'.

Peeling onions and potatos

For the past three days I have been working with my cousin's catering business helping out in the preparation of huge pots of Dalca, Kurma and kari ayam among other dishes for the catering orders. I have been doing this eversince I was laid off from my last job at the Jerajak Resort and SPA and it helps to keep me going with the daily expenses. What is more rewarding about the job is the fact that it has become another form of practice towards self observation and discipline from the fact that one has to be up by five a.m. and sweating away for the next few hours while dealing with all manners of human interaction involved in the process of food preparation on a large scale. I have slowly got to know the characters involved from having close interpersonqal communication, their manners and habits their ups and downs. Most importantly i have come to recognize myself in the environment among those who are rellated to me and those who are not and then those who are foreign workers(mostly Bangladeshis).
There are the ladies who runs the kitchen prep like peeling onions and potatoes, preparing the souces and curry mix, cleaning the chicken and prepapring the salad etc. These are the spine of the whole process as without their expertise there would be chaos in the pots boiling over. Then there is the hierachy of men who does the preperation of drinks and one who does the rice, there those who keep virgil over the pots while they are simmering with spicy ingredients making sure that they are well stirred. The delivery guys comes a little later in the morning and begins sorting out what goes where untill everything is being assigned and delivered to their respective locations. My cousin Salleh runs the show and his wife Ana runs the cooking section and they are a great example of harmoniuosoly compatible duo which keeps the business alive and prospering.
The catering business like most food related businesses, can be a very lucrative venture if well planned and managed. It is not an easy task to run such a venture and it demands hard work without doubt and in these days and age most functions utilizes the catering people for their food and beverages, unlike in the older days when food for weddings and such were the worries of the bride and groom's famillies and neighbours. Theere is the good and bad for these changes however the pressures and cost of functions these days seems to favour the caterer than self production. It seems to me the catering business has a bright future in the food and beverages industry as more and more are opting for someone lese to do the preperation and clean up after than to have to be bothered by these themselves.
I enjoy working with my cousins and friends but there are times when the aging body is beginning to rebel against the push for an ounce more of physical force and the tired mind sometimes seems to succumb to quitting before the time to quit. Feeling the heeat from the pots and the wet from soaking onions, reacting to my fellow workers and keeping a straight face over all the vibes around me, it is a great experience in mastering your circumstances and environment. I sometimes keep reminding myself that i had once worked on a fishing vassel in the Bering Sea, off the Alaskan Coast or that i had worked in Downtown San Francisco on the water front or the fact that i had cut meat in Packing houses in Green bay and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this is but just one more vocation and it is just different in nature only the mind dealing with this circumstances is the same mind that dealt with the past vocations.

Healing a tooth ache?

Can you reverse the process of a tooth decay, or make the migraine that is nagging at the back of your skull disappear, can you renew your emotional energies that has been depleted over the years due to one form of traumatic experience or another that has plagued your life? Well, I can;t either, but I amsure as hell have been working o0n it the best I can as it has been and will continue on being some of the top priorities in my life other than just making sure that i get great art works done that is acceptable by the national galleries around the world.
Can you slow down or even reverse the aging process of you physical form or can you or can you place your spirit at the top of Mount Sumeru among the Gods and shoot the breeze? I cannot do this, nope, but I keep on trying for the life of me i sure keep on trying ans this is what I do with my mind when no one is looking! Some years ago while living and attending the University at Green Bay, Wisconsin I had a dream that I was Lord Krishna, perhaps this was because then I was busy into taking comparative religion as part of my semester load. Yes i was Krishna and I felt the bluish enrgy that eminates from my body, I was blue in color! In the dream as Krishna I performed some far out miracles like playfully defeating the demons that were floating down from the sky to attack me. There were those with large flapping ears and with a flick of my fingers I wrapped the ears over their faces and those with long fangs i simply turned the fangs into flexible rubeer and tied the two together, all these done with a sense of humour and no a bit of fear cause i was the Devine GodHead!
In this dream I was performing these feats in order to impress upon my mother who had seized a child and kept it as her own illegally ( I cannot explain why), and toward the end of the dream I was able to display like on a huge plasma screen before me, the entire process of creation itself like s lside show with the snap of my fingers. This part of the dream kind of reminded me of the Movie 'Altered States' at some scenes when the process of transformation was taking place during the xperiment.
I dont know what exactly happened but the dream was very real and I felt the energy, I felt it from deep within me and how easy it was to use these energies. I felt compassion, unbridled love for my mother not just because she was my mother but as a human, a love without boundaries. I felt what it must be like to be a deity for real or for just a state of mind in a dream! It was real! This is what i had been on a ques for most of my life to touch this state of conciousness in this life at least once more in a more real psycho=physical sense than just as a dreamstate. What is posibbility without putting a dream into motion towards the manifested reality? Is it far fetched to demand my right to become that which i have tasted as a part of my conciousness even if it was manifested as a dream? As those will ever take the time to browse through my journal, these ramblings of the cheeseburger buddha will realize, the very reason i have bveen writing all these mundane activities that is a part of my life is only because they are the disguise of what my true endeavors are, what my mind has set itself to discover, what my spirit has mapped for itself to accom0plish and my soul has printed upon itself as a goal before the curtaon is dropped.

The Law of Success

Found a copy of the book sitting among some items that looked like there were meant to be discarded after a spring cleaning jodb at my cousin's and started readng it, became engrossed and stuck with it. Napoleon Hill's book The Law of Success is like the Bible of 'How To"s a motivational work for those who are not too late to try for the moon. So ar what I have read has been most exhilerating and refreshing for me like a sort of the coming together of my own life's practices being put together in a more organized and analytical manner. Having just read the first hundred pages I have been able to indentify the parrelels o what I have put into motion some o the practices mentioned some thrity odd years ago when I was irst introduced to the book 'The Master Key'. In this book the key word used is the 'Master MInd' which is the prime focus of the whole process in the book.
The scientific analytical approach of the Law of Nature and the Law of Physics which started off the book helped me to better undrstand my own personal practice o 'autosuggestion' based on the teachings of Raja Yoga which suggested that "I am the master of my thoughts and consiousness, I am the master o my body speach and mind etc..... I command the elements, electrons, atoms, cells etc. that makes up this physical body to recharge..regenerate..etc. I have been doing this or years because i understood it way back when I first read it while living in Alaska and has eversince become a par o my Mantra beore sleeping everynight. Now with this new source of inormation I am more fully convinced that I had stumbled upon a good practice. It is uncanny that I shpould come by upon this book at a time when I was looking for something to read or do to get out of a state of mental letargic, I was looking or something to get me out of a rut and there it was!
Perhaps millions o people had read this great work o mapping the route or human succes and I just did not know about it like a great best seller that escaped ones reading list. I believe in right timing in all the events in my life as I believe that when the fruit is ripe will it fall to the ground and this work has arrived in my hands at the right moment in time like it is supposed to. To discover such a piece of work where it had been laying was in itself a curious occurence as there is only my cousin who is an Insuarence salesman who would most likely be the one who would read such a book and basically or the better approach to a better salesmanship. For me the book I amsure will have alot much more to offer as it is like a spiritual guide for anyone with an analytical thinking mind maintaining a good balance between what is scientiic and what is spiritual.I will continue on to enjoy this new find and see what great wisdom it will devulge urther down the pages.

It Chinese New Year and the Rat is in the picture ater the departure o the monkey and what has the Feng Shui masters got to say? I hope for a greater year than the last just like everyone else and am looking forward to ffinishing my hundred feet long sketching of the 'Heart and Soul of Penang'. It will be exhibited at the Penang State Art Gallery sometime in July, so I have aew months yet to work on it. Thus far I am quite content with what I have done and I have found that the use o charcoal as my primary medium is enjoyable and seems to work out fine, only it gets a little messy sometimes as I am a careless worker.
The paper itself was given to me by the former Dean of School of Fine Arts at USM, Proessor Najib who is now the Director of the National Art Gallery in KL. It was just before he left o take up his new appointment that we had a lunch together at one of the Nasi Kandar Restaurant and he offered me the paper to work with. The idea was to do sketching the way I had been doing depicting scenes and buildings of the the Island as I see it. Today after I had found out how long a roll the paer really is I realize that it was a challenge that he had set for me and I intend to give it the best of my ability and enjoy the look on his ace when he comes to officiate the openning. Whether he can make it or not is yet to be seen however the dye is cast and I am half way through the roll aleady. Who knows what the year o the rat has in store for me but I know one thing and that is this year I will have my solo show at the state gallery and it will be the talk of the city.

Gary Harold-Aptos Ca.

While sketching the cannon Ball Tree one morning at the Botanical Gardens I met a gentleman from Aptos, California, an elderly gentleman who was on a visit to the Island of Penang. The first thing he said to me was that he like my energy and would like to take a few pictures of the skecth I was working on and from then on we got along promising that I would call him the next day and take him places. I like the man as he reminded me of a few of my former cohorts at the Zen Center in Sausalito, California when I was living at Green Gulch Farm, in Marin County. Gary is into organic farming and the hare Kirsna Movement and is ahealth fanatic when it comes to food and beverages. He used to teach ESL among other things and was cosidering teaching in any of the countries in South East Asia,Penang included.
The next day I picked up gary at his place called the Hutton Lodge, a new hotel that caters mostly to foreigners seeking for a budget lodging. Later we headed out ot the USM muzium Gallery where I showed Garry the sketches I was working on the long scroll measuring no less than a hundred feet. he seemed to enjoy his visit to the Muzium and later we had lunch at the Minah restaurant where Gary picked out all the vegetable dishes he could lay his hands on and piled his plate with a little rice added to it. It was a funny sight to see tis American vegetarian eating these assorted dishes which normally for a local would seem odd.
I mentioned to gary of the possibility of sending my son next year to the States for his college education and wondered if he would be interested in helping out with the arrangement for his relocation. Gary was delighted to do it and suggested that the area where he is from has a very good college where my son can attend. He would not mind being an uncle and get my son broken into the American life. I saw a glimpse of hope in this meeting for my son's future in America as he will be completeing his secondary education by the end of the year and this means that his foreign student status would end and he would have to deal with finding his way of staying here unless I can get his citizenship issue solved before then. I am torn between sending him back to the States and having him stay here with me and a part of e wants him to have the opportunity to experience America like I did.
Upon discussing with my son about the possibilities of his venturing into the unknown on his own in the States where he is a citizen, he seemed tempted but still held reservations as I am sure he is not overly confident at this time and age. I would want to believe that I had planned my children's life to such that they would eventually end up back where they were born after they had had a good experience of life on the other side to the planet, after they had tasted what it is like to be poor and humbled by the experience of not having. I had every intention of them knowing their father's identity and his religion and cultural upbringing so that they can have a base to work from in their own lives, they at least know their roots and what they choose to do with it is for them to figure out in the future whereever they may end up. I have always maintained that i would like their lives to be as colorful if not more so than mine and returnig to America I am positive would open all sorts of doors and windows of opportunity for this. I know waht they will go through will not be easy but it will always be a challenge and great for their character building.
Gary Harold left yesterday morning for KL and will be there with his brother and his Hare Krishna friends, from there they will head for the Mauritius where they will spend ten days. What will come out of this chance meeting God only knows and if this gentleman is as genuine as he seems perhaps my son will find a footing in the United States and a wise teacher to boot.

The past few months...

I have not been writing much lately simple because I have lost saveral of my entries in the past that I believe it is not meant to be and that it is time to let go of this habit untill such time when it is meant to be. I like to write as it helps me to evaluate my status at the present by reflecting upon my past and hopefuly be able to forge into the future with a better sense of direction. So if this piece too is lost in the mail well then I still continue with the believe that the AlMighty is till holding me back from expressing myself for some unknown reason and no one for that matter will know about it and hence it does not really matter even what I am sayinng at present.
Hoping for the best I wish to relate my life as of the begining of the new year till the present, what major events has transpired since and where I am headed for henceforth. One of the most significant event that has taken place in my lifwe thus far is the fact that I have found a female companion, someone to keep me from totally in a depraved state of being lonely for opposite sex. It is not an easy move for me to make as I have been without any female companion eversince my wife left for the state four years ago and I have not had any sexual encounter eversince my daughter who is now almost sixteen was born! Nope! Not even with my wife and I never swore myself to become a celibate for whatever reasons. Its just a fact of life and there is none to blame for it is beyond blame. I missed having a sexual partner no doubt however out of respect for my marriage and my wife I hads never ventured to have any consummate relationship with anyone and somehow over the years gotten used to it.
My lady friend at present is someone I met by chance and she is from the Philipines. I like her simplicity which attracted me most about her and I enjoy talking to her about life and teasing her about her ways. Who knows where it will all lead to but at present I am happy that i have someone that I can allow myself to be a man again after all these years! Although i have only met her quite recently I am already beginning to feel my old self starting to come alive. It seems like I have been holding back a dam of emotional floatsam within me and they are about to break loose, released from their years of confinement locked within bY guilt and ignorance catering to the needs of others and what they have to say. Today I say to hell with all those who have been passing heavy duty judgements upon my life style and habits and i am goin to rise from my ashes of self deprivation and guilt ridden trips into what is in store for me for better or for worse.
I welcome the new year with a new breath and a new spirit, the spirit of liberation and freedom from cares and wants, from confinement and restrictions and subjugation, I am awaken.