To all Buddhists friends, hope you’ve had a good and happy Vesak!
In the afternoon we are off to the Buddhist Fellowship to attend a talk by Ajahn Brahm about procrastination. Ajahn’s talk covers two themes: learning to relax, and managing our priorities.
Relaxation, he says, leads to improvements in the quality and productivity of our work; in turn, this gives us a competitive edge in the long run. Relaxation also helps us to live longer! Because it diminishes the tensions within us: we need to learn to loosen ourselves when we encounter stressful situations, only then do we stand a higher chance of overcoming them. Ajahn tells us how he used to relax in-between his exams, rather than mug through his notes. And he passed!
On the topic of managing our priorities, he says that we should only focus on one thing at any one time, because thinking about too many things at once would lead to stress. Therefore, procrastination is good in this sense, he quips, because the completion of items that aren’t too important can be delayed.
How do we rank our priorities? Put yourself in such a situation: you are going to die soon. In a few hours, in less than a day. What would you do first? Ajahn recommends that we do the things we need to do RIGHT NOW, and he means NOW. Forget about fears and worries, to use Nike’s slogan, just do it. Like telling loved ones that you love them, seeking forgiveness for misdeeds and harm inflicted upon them in the past. This means not procrastinating on what needs to be done with great immediacy!
To Ajahn, it doesn’t matter which path you take, it’s HOW you travel along it.
We do not stay for the remainder of the question-and-answer session, the queries deviate far from the topic which does not pique our interest. We leave to visit a couple of temples.
First we go to the Sri Lankaramaya Buddhist Temple (http://www.basicbuddhism.org/index.cfm?GPID=85) at St Michael’s, where Mike and Aiwei’s teacher resides. The temple is nestled in a quiet residential neighbourhood; there’s a lot of greenery in its compound. First we visit the hall, which contains the reclining Buddha. There is a relic on display, although the bhante (teacher) present is unable to identify which part of the Gautama Buddha it comes from. It is really small – much like a piece of diamond on a ring – that a magnifying glass has to be used for closer examination.
Across the road is a two-storey building for congregations: the ground floor consists of a hall for talks and performances – on this occasion, we spot keyboards at the side of a stage. The hall is also filled with people who seem to be expecting a performance to begin. On the second floor is a meditation hall; there is a little exhibition gallery behind the Buddha. It contains figures of not only the Buddha, but other deities such as Guan Yin (the Goddess of Mercy). We also spot a Japanese Good-Luck Cat as well as a Laughing Buddha. It’s interesting as the temple belongs to the Sri Lankan Therevadan tradition, while Guan Yin is better-known from the Mahayana school. How the Laughing Buddha and Good-Luck Cat ended there is a curiosity. Also I wonder how the devotees practising meditation in this hall deal with the noise and merry-making from the ground floor – furthermore music is piped through the speakers in this quiet corner! But in meditation, one disciplines oneself to acknowledge external disturbances and not dwell on them.
We return to the ground floor and chance upon Bhante outdoors. We exchange a few pleasantries, and then we’re off to explore the rest of the temple grounds – of which there isn’t really much left because the main buildings of interest are at the fore, while the rear contains the living quarters for the members of the sangha.
The next temple we go to is the Burmese Buddhist Temple (BTT), whose towering stupa you can see when you enter the expressway from the town centre of Toa Payoh in the direction. The temple is located next to the Sun Yat Sen Villa. We try to visit the Villa, but upon reaching the main building, we find that admission to the rest of the compound is via a fee. Oh well, you need money to keep the building maintained.
The third floor of this temple contains stunning artwork: at the back of the hall is a mural depicting the history behind the temple’s two massive statues. There is a white Buddha statue located on the main hall on the ground floor; this statue dates back to 1916, when it was constructed in Myanmar (then known as Burma). The statue made many journeys and resided in locations about Myanmar before being shipped to Singapore, where it too was placed in several temples, before arriving at its current home (who knows whether the statue will be moved again!) at the BTT. The golden statue on the third floor has a more recent history. Along the walls near the ceiling are murals depicting various characters and situations that the Buddha encountered during his lifetime. All these artwork were hand-painted on the walls, no synthetic printing a la bus advertisements.
On the third floor, at the base of the stupa is a small room with three Buddhas within, this is used for ordination ceremonies. We stand on the roof looking at the stupa, and Mike tells me that in Myanmar, a diamond is placed at the pinnacle of the stupa, and lights are directed at it from ground level, enabling the diamond to glow at night.
On the way out I pick up a couple of books. I especially can’t wait to read Kampol Thongbunnum’s story Bright and Shining Mind in a Disabled Body – he was paralysed from the neck down after a diving accident and he recounts how he lived with his disability.
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