Buddhist Teaching, The Essence

"Sabba papassa akaranam
Kusalassa upasampada
Sacitta pariyodapanam
Etham Buddhanasasanam"
To abstain from all evil
To cultivate the good
To purify one's mind
This is the teaching of the Buddhas

Jangan berbuat jahat
Perbanyak kebajikan
Sucikan hati dan pikiran
Itulah inti sari ajaran Buddha

Be successful at work!

“The more you include others, the more smoothly things flow and the more easily things come to you. When you give little help or no help to others or put obstacles in their path, the universe – in the form of people and circumstances – gives little or no help to you because you have cut yourself off from the whole.” (Eckhart Tolle, 2005: A New Earth; pg 123)
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“Your resentment of another person’s success curtails your own chances of success. In order to attract success, you need to welcome it wherever you see it.” (Eckhart Tolle: A New Earth, pg 123)

Dear Friend, Life Must Go On

It’s always good to hang out and get together with friends. As we’re getting along with our friends, we must still keep focusing on what we want to achieve in our life. While each of our friends has different goals in their life, we must also focus on ours, otherwise we will be left behind in our life.

Our friends one day may leave us to reach their dream, or it could be the other way around. It is such a common phenomenon in life. Have you ever thought about your old friends in elementary school, high school, or university? Where are they now? ... Yes, it is great if we still meet up or keep in touch with them. But some might have been disappeared from our radar. And again, that is just perfectly normal. They have to continue their life journey, and so do we.

Often I found very good friends in different places. But after some period of interaction, it is time to say good bye again. I’m not regretting that. To have such a high-quality friendship is a precious gift in this world. It’s a matter of whether we can deal with the sudden change of a situation where we have less and less time to interact with our friends. After all, true friends will always be close to our heart although they are separated thousand miles away from us.

The wise saying tells us that we should not have too much attachment to our friends in many respects. Indeed, experiences teach me that too much attachment to our close friends eventually causes more emotional pain when thing doesn’t work as what we expect. Unless, you are spiritually awakened enough to control your emotion, or in other words to say, you are free from attachment, that would be great! However, most people suffer “gloomy” period due to this emotional pain. It may take one week, a month, or even longer to dissolve such feeling.

“You may not know that you’re attached to something until you lose it or there is the threat of loss” (Tolle, 2005: A New Earth)

My colleague, Y. Apriliansyah, gave me a very good advice on how not to be overly attached to our fellow friends. Follows are the paraphrase on what he said: Attachment is caused by strong emotional bound, i.e. love, implicitly. Therefore, we must prioritize the distribution of our love. The first two highest priorities are to our Creator and to our parents (My comment: Most Indonesian believes that God is supposed to be the 1st priority to love then followed by our parents, but in India is the other way around. Despite different reasons in each country, both still agree that God and parents are the first two highest priorities to love. This is typical in most Eastern countries). Then we can dedicate our love to our spouse or sibling. Apparently, friends are relatively the last priority to love. The closest our bound with someone will be the more painful we suffer when we break up. In that case, only by shifting our love to the higher priorities we can dissolve such emotional pain.

My very personal suggestion is to be grateful always for those who still have good friends around. Be communicative and open to your good friends to avoid any misunderstanding. And ideally, we should not have overly attachment and too much dependency towards our friends, then we can enjoy our friendship without any prejudice, jealousy, and other kind of negative attitude.

So in this chance, I’d like to say to all my dearest friends: I’m sorry for my negative thoughts that have caused any problem and misunderstanding between you and I; Please forgive me; I love you; Thank you for being my friends and becoming part of my life (Ho'oponopono Teaching).

Many thanks to Mr. Thayalan and Yudi Apriliansyah

Mindset: How Can I Do More?

"Can I do that?" That sounds doubting our own capability; "How can I do better?" This is a more positive attitude.
I believe that in any life situation, we surely can do things to improve our lives. However, some people complain that most often they always run out of time to do their daily tasks, hence no more time to do other things that might enhance their life quality. In the end, they always say that their life situation is not as ideal as what they expect.

It’s very common to hear statement like “I wish I have more time to do that”, “I wish I could do more to get additional income”, “I wish I can cram that activity into my schedule”, etc. As a matter of fact, sure we can manage everything in a defined period. There is no time limitation as an excuse. Any life situation is certainly manageable. It’s all about whether or not a person knows how to manage it and really wants to do so.

The best way to manage our life is to get rid any inefficiency in our daily routine. Indeed, everyone has capability to live their life efficiently. Unfortunately, people tend to underestimate their own capacity to overcome such condition. I believe it is simply just a mindset problem. They accuse that their daily routine has killed most of their time.

A typical common example of a life situation is when your boss assigns you for a new task. The first reaction could be excited, nervous, doubtful, not confident, or mix between them. That’s still normal response. Yet, some people might feel stress or under pressure as they take it as more burdens to bear.

But lets we take a look at it through rose-tinted glasses. Would that be a big chance to get more precious experience? The boss might have considered several candidates, but then you’re the one who has been chosen and entrusted to perform the task.

In some case people are urged by their life situation to do more additional works to support their life. They still can manage it eventually. The key to success in managing more works is simply doing better time management, thus allocating time more efficiently within our daily routine.

Another point to bear in mind is to keep positive mindset: We can do anything as long as we put extra effort physically and mentally. Never ever give up! That is the moral value.

“How much we can do depends on how much we think we can do” (Schwartz, 1979: The Magic of Thinking Big)

Aris, our friend, can’t move his left hand after having an accident. Yet, he does not give up doing his normal activity even with one hand paralyzed. Playing pool is one of his hobby. He develops a technique to strike the ball with one hand. Now, he plays as great as other two-handed pro pool players. He enjoys his hobby till now. I really admire his inspiring spirit!!!

Dare to Dream

Edensor, a popular Indonesian novel by Andrea Hirata, tells about the author’s life reflection in attaining his dream. The story begins in a little village in Belitung, Indonesia. There lived a boy who had strong will in which his life journey led him to end up in France to study his master higher degree. France was the place of his dream, inspired by the old picture of Eiffel Tower hung in the almost-broken class room wall during his early school days.

Through his effort, he got a scholarship for his post graduate program. This was his starting point of his life adventure. A boy who previously lived in a low-level-society district, who thought that going overseas is only for someone economically capable, eventually just started to experience the world thousand miles away from his village. He learnt lots of things from his journey. There he realized that whatever he dreamed about during his early days, it would come true. Even by chance he found the most beautiful scenery of Edensor, a place that he could only see and imagine from a book given by someone important in his life when he was just a kid.

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This novel of Edensor inspires me to write this essay, an essay about having dreams in our life. Many people don’t want to realize their dreams. They think that the world is such a threatening place. That's why it’s better to be secure by not taking possible risks to chase what they really want to do, what they really dream about. Once you have a thought like this, then that is your world going to be. (Coelho, from the Alchemist)

It is very true that in realizing our dream, there will be lots of obstacle blocking up our way. But the essence behind that is how we learn to overcome such blockage by applying patience, hard work, effort, and persistence, so that we become a better individual. Unfortunately, most people give up in that situation. They don’t want to live their “personal legend” in making their dreams come true.

“Personal legend” is a term mentioned by the alchemist to refer to several processes that must be accomplished by someone to achieve the goal of their life. (Gee...I really like to refer to Coelho’s work. Coelho is such a genius!)

Regarding achieving our dream, here are best notes that I quote from another Coelho’s work “By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept”, part of the wisdom saying from the padre to Pilar:

“Follow your dreams, transform your life, take the path that leads to God. Perform you miracles. Cure. Make Prophecies. Listen to your guardian angel. Transform yourself. Be a warrior, and be happy as you wage the good fight. Take risks” (River Piedra, pg 132)
I would add a bit of my own interpretation and note.
Listen to your heart to chase your dream. There will be so many miracles for you to experience on the way to reach your dream and be grateful for every single miracle you receive. Be brave and take risks in moving forward to make the dream comes true. How soon your dream can come true depends on whether or not you move your step toward the realization of your dream.

So have your big dreams. Enjoy the journeys in achieving your dreams. Finally celebrate the moment when your dreams come true!

A Review: The Alchemist (Coelho)

This book is very challenging to read! Coelho is such a genius!

What I understand from this book is that an Alchemist is basically a person who gets fully awakened spiritually. The main character, Santiago, seems to have this “talent” which allows him to become more aware on things he deals with.

He learns thing very fast from his surrounding. That is why through his journey he eventually understood the Alchemy principle which is the basic philosophy of life. It’s a deep understanding he got from his learning that was inspired by his sheeps, the sea, crystal, fire, dessert, and other things he encountered in his journey. When he got inspiration, he became silent and impressed by the aura of each element around him. Such a trance condition he experienced!

Follows are several quotes I like from this book:

It is "old and wise" to learn lessons from any thing you experience in your life (Santiago's thought, pg 73)

"If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man" (phrase from camel driver, pg 85)

"The fear of suffering is worse than the suffering it self" (phrase from the Alchemist, pg 130)

Don’t be scared, coz when you are, you won’t be able to listen to your heart (paraphrase from the Alchemist saying, pg 141)

Transactional Analysis: I'm OK You're OK

(a book by Thomas A. Harris)
"I am a person. You are a person. Without you I am not a person, for only through you is language made possible and only through language is thought made possible, and only through thought is humanness made possible. You have made me important, Therefore, I am important and you are important. If I devalue you, I devalue myself." (Harris, 1969: page 223)

"learn to ignore the names that people call you, ... and you just trust who you are"

---Shrek, from Shrek the Third---