The Buddha's sermon on the Vulture Peak is considered as the most memorable sermon that had given. Here the Buddha held up the Udumbara flower in his hand and kept silence not uttering a word for the length of the sermon. One man grasped the significance oi this sermon and Maha Kasyapa became the next in the line of the lineage of Buddha's teachings. He had understood what the Buddha had meant by His strange act of not saying a word for the whole time of His presence to give His teaching. This was the first direct transmission beyond words, it was the transmission of mind to mind. Hence in meditation one sits to attain this state of silence of the mind whereby any teaching or consciousness that is to be experience happens as if out of the blue, out of the primordial source, out of the original Buddha Mind. The mind and body is refined to accept any revelation form the higher state of being or from God, the Source or the Buddha. Achieving the one pointedness of the mind is crucial and is the aim of meditation if there is such a thing as an aim in meditation. Our human mind is governed by the ego and thus we have to make every effort to bring the ego to submit to achieving this silence which the ego will not allow to happen as it spells the end of ego. Surrendering to God is the one means of achieving the silence as meditation progress, this surrendering or letting go frees the mind from being governed by the ego mind. It also acts a buffer towards warding off negative and demonic thoughts possessing our mind lead us into darkness away from light. Lost in the dark is not a good place to be, it is tantamount to being in the hell realm as the Buddhist would call it, a self created realm of pain and suffering a suffering due to the blindness of ignorance of the spiritual self.
Today I celebrate my 74th. Birthday feeling like my life has passed the three quarters of a century mark in the history of time; what have I to show for it? Where have I been and what have I done to to commemorate this 74 years of existence. I have always considered myself the fortunate few whose life have been filled with a vast array of experiences having traveled and lived in many parts of the world and cultures and indulged in numerous facets of life experiences both good and the not so so good, touched and was touched by many great minds, teachers and friends and I have brought into this life four children who are now adults and living their lives the best they can. I leave behind a legacy of being a spiritual seeker in my own right, having taken on life in my own ways through the best of times and the
worst. My journey of self discovery is not unlike the Divine Comedy of Dante; I have tasted hell and heaven in this one life and lived to talk about it. I am not proud of my life but I am satisfied that 'I did it my way,' as the song goes. My way has never been always the best of ways and I walked the path knowingly that I have came close to 'selling my soul to the devil.' through ignorance in the form of anger and dissolution; I have lived the hedonistic, debouched and dissipated life more often than I can remember. However I am still alive and by the Grace of my Lord I have been given the bonus of a long life in order to make up for all my transgressions and tribulations, asking for forgiveness and acceptance of whatever retribution that may lay in store for the likes of me. I absolutely lay my fate in His hands as the oft forgiving and Merciful God and there is nothing that transpires within or without in the course of my life that is not of His design.
Today, the 12th. of August is an election day for six States in Malaysia and I just did my part having voted early this morning The country is going through another major change in government and the people are left with making the choices of who or what to vote for; at present Malaysian politics sucks! Doing what is right is to vote and voting for the right party that you deem to be the lesser of two evils for me is how I cast my vote. This is a rich and beautiful country and deserves better management than it is presently being accorded to. There is division and rifts that seems to get wider and more negative as more and more of those in power or vying for more control resort to race and religion ad a tool for political gains; this is a reflection of what happens when the ego is in charge rather than humanity. And so on we go to the next levels of decadence and deceptions while the country sink deeper into debts and dilapidation. Am I proud to be a Malaysian? I will always be, however at my age I am worried for the future of the children, those who will inherit this never ending bumpy rides that the country is being subjected to by those in power to ruin her.
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