To My Friends

You are not the limited, principle person you think you are. My personal experiences in life brought about changes with my conviction to become completely aware, and fully capable of achieving the greatest good for not only myself but also the people I loved and care. I do have my fair share of being upset about the people around me. Well, that is what life’s experiences is all about.

The only problem is that we do not recognize these things about ourselves and constantly lived in a deluded state and self-denial. Inside, we are empty because we give out but have not received any back whether from work, family or friends. Sometime we listen to to others pass judgments and evade our very own problems.

We are completely aware and fully capable of making changes but refuse to so because of Self-preservation. We become critical of others. What are we all out to prove? We got only ourselves to blame for constructing this image about ourselves, formed the habits of trying to outwit another.

Find out for yourself what is lurking inside your mind. Most of us, our mind is usually coloured by dualistic perspective like right and wrong, good and bad, joy and happiness. Every experience you have whether the things you like or do not is some how bounded by some sense of limitation.

Personal experience has taught me that it is possible to overcome any sense of personal limitation. Otherwise, I would not express my thoughts to you all.

Not by NATO (No Action, Talk Only) but by practices, it actually work and that is how meditation work. Not sitting or try to suppress rigidly and listening to what the teacher say. He can only guide but not meditate for you. Just find your own balance. Those feelings of limitation, anxiety, fear and so on are just so much of your mental gossip you have about yourself. In addition, habits formed by you can be unlearned. So much for neurons. We need to fine tune it.

I can say safely say that my understanding of the mind is no one created it. The fundamental nature of the mind is so vast that it completely transcends intellectual understanding. Somehow, humans impose so many ideas about themselves, like having faith and yet their actions speak louder than words. To me it make no sense running away from what is ultimately your rights as an individual to live life to the fullest. This world is what we all have created it.

Yours Truly

With Metta

Kelvin Tan

26/7/07

The Heart Sutra

Form is emptiness.

Emptiness is form.

Emptiness is nothing other than form.

Form is nothing other than emptiness.

Emptiness is described as the basis that makes everything – 12^th Tai Situpa Rinpoche.

Early translators of Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhist texts interpreted emptiness as “the Void” or nothingness - mistakenly equating emptiness with the idea that nothing at all exists.

The Buddha taught that the nature of the mind – in fact, the nature of all phenomena – is emptiness, only in the sense of something beyond our ability to perceive with our senses and our capacity to conceptualize. A better translation would be “inconceivable” or “unnamable”. Therefore, when Buddhists talk about emptiness, we do not mean nothingness, but rather an unlimited potential for anything to appear, change, or disappear.

Just as the vacuum is considered “empty,” yet is the source from which all manner of particles appear, the mind is essentially “empty” in that it defies absolute description. Yet out of this indefinable and incompletely knowable basis, all thoughts, emotions, and sensations perpetually arise.

Because the nature of your mind is emptiness, you possess the capacity to experience a potentially unlimited variety of thoughts, emotions, and sensations. Even misunderstandings of emptiness are simply phenomena arising out of emptiness!

One must realized that emptiness is not nothingness, because there must be something before there can be nothing. Emptiness is everything – all possibilities of existence and nonexistence imaginable, occurring simultaneously. Therefore, if our true nature is emptiness, then nobody can be said to truly die and no one can be said to be truly born, because the possibility of being in a certain way and not being in a certain way is present within us at every moment.

Ultimate truth cannot be taught without basis on relative truth… Nagaruna, Madhyamakarika.

The mind is empty in essence. Although empty, everything constantly arises in it.  – 3^rd Gyalwang Karmapa.

Whatever depends on conditions is explained to be empty…Sutra Requested by Madropa

A short Extract from The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

With Metta – Kelvin Tan 28/7/2007 Saturday

Quote: "What is it that leads you to think limitedly that:

"You are not the limited, principle person you think you are...." ?

How would you know that? "
.........

Hi,

It is my own Thinking Mind that gets caught by my very own perception, governed by my own set of principles of who I am. The heart sutra gave me a different perspective of what this mind is all about. I feel free from this bondage of my thoughts. Just my thoughts.

Regards

With Metta.

Quote: "Don't seek to achieve the greatest good for yourself and those you love and care for, but for all others even those who would seek to do you harm. If a person considers himself your enemy, that is his delusion. You don't have to accept his enmity."
.........

Hi,

Thank you for sharing.

May all be well and free from enmity.

With Metta

In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added.

In the practice of Zen, every day something is dropped.

Quote:

Without a dreamer, there would be no dream.

Without the mind of the dreamer, there would be no dream.

If the dreamer were not sleeping, there would be no dream.

All these circumstances have to come together in order for a dream to occur.

Whatever is the cause that binds is the path that liberates.

With Metta

other people have a purpose
I alone don't know
I drift like a wave on the ocean
I blow as aimless as the wind

you know you  "don't know"?

waving doesn't know waving

blowing doesn't know blowing

yes

Let your own experience serve as your guide and inspiration.

Let yourself enjoy the view as you drift like waves on the ocean

 The view is your own mind, and because your mind is already enlightened,

if you take the opportunity to reach is the place you already are.

The answer my friend is blowing in the  aimlessly in the wind.

With Metta