Gembira Sihat Kaya & Bijak!

Rakan-rakan sekalian, saya ucapkan kita semua

Selamat tahun baru yang:

Gembira
Sihat
Kaya &
Bijak!

Bagaimana untuk menjadi lebih bahagia? Buat orang bahagia dan damai, maka kita menjadi begitu. Untuk mendengar mereka, untuk berkongsi beban dan tekanan mereka. Membebaskan mereka dari penderitaan dan kesakitan.

Untuk menjadi lebih sihat? Bantu orang lain lebih sihat. Kongsi idea organik semulajadi dalam mengukuhkan sistem kekebalan tubuh yang betul. Bantu orang mengurangkan pergantungan pada bahan kimia dan hormon buatan. Mengelak dari dadah dan kecanduan toksik. Mengurangkan atau memotong makanan haiwan ternakan.

Untuk menjadi lebih kaya? Bantu orang yang kurang bernasib baik daripada kita untuk berjaya, untuk membantu mereka menyokong mata pencarian dan keluarga mereka. Bekerja dalam industri teliti dan jauh dari perniagaan yang tidak bertanggungjawab kepada masyarakat.

Untuk menjadi bijak? Bantu orang melihat hubungan dan keseimbangan badan, minda dan jiwa. Untuk melihat matlamat utama kewujudan individu. Untuk membebaskan orange ramai daripada ketakutan yang tidak diketahui ... Membantu manusia untuk memahami perjalanan kehidupan dan kematian ...

Semuanya, kita bekerja untuk orang bukan untuk diri kita sendiri. Jika kita hanya bekerja untuk diri kita sendiri, kita tidak ternyata menjadi tindakan "sebab dan akibat"; dan dengan itu tidak ada yang kembali kepada kita. Sesungguhnya itu tidak baik kerana 'kita' adalah sebahagian daripada manusia.

Ingat, dan lihat dengan jelas bahawa:

- Apa yang kita bagi akan kita dapat. Dan begitu juga sebaliknya.
- Pencegahan sentiasa lebih baik daripada rawatan/penyembuhan. Kebanyakan masa tidak ada ubat, untuk masa lain rawatan pun bukanlah pendekatan yang baik dan mungkin datang dengan kesan sampingan.
- Memberi adalah lebih baik daripada mendapat; betapa bertuah dan memberkati kita untuk bermampuan menawarkan bantuan kami kepada orang ramai.

Akhir sekali, melayan orang tua kita dengan baik. Mereka mungkin atau mungkin tidak ibubapa yang baik masih kita di sini sekarang kerana mereka. Tanpa ibubapa, datuk dan nenek moyang kita, tidak akan ada kebahagiaan, kesihatan, kekayaan dan kebijaksanaan yang baik untuk dimulakan.

Rakan-rakan sekalian, saya harap kita semua

Lebih bahagia
Lebih sihat
Lebih kaya &
Lebih bijak buat tahun baru!

Dan sekarang kita tahu apa yang perlu dilakukan untuk dapat semua ini!

快乐 健康 富裕 明智

亲爱的朋友们，我祝福大家

快乐
健康
富裕＆
明智的新年！

怎么更快乐开心？让人们快乐和平，然后我们变得如此。倾听他们，分担他们的负担和压力。让他们摆脱痛和苦。

如何更健康？帮助他人更健康。分享天然有机思想，增强身体正常免疫系统。帮助人们减少对人造化学品和激素的依赖。远离有毒药物和成瘾。减少或切断严重污染的动物性食物。

变得更富有？帮助比我们不幸的人，让大家繁荣，帮助他们支持他们的生计和家庭。在尽职尽责的行业工作，远离不道德的企业。

要更聪明？帮助人们看到身体，心灵和灵魂的联系和平衡。了解个人存在的终极目标。释放害怕未知的人......帮助人类了解生命生死之旅......

总而言之，我们做事情不只是为自己。如果我们只是为自己工作，它就不会表现为“前因后果”行为;因此没有任何回报给我们。当然，这听起来不太好，因为'我们'是人类的一部分。

请记住，并清楚地看到：

- 善有善报，恶有恶报。不是不报，因缘未到。
- 预防总是优于治疗。大多数时候是没有治愈方法，而其他时侯治疗并不是好方法，可能会产生不良副作用。
- 给予总是比得到更好;我们是多么幸运能够提供帮助给社会。

最后但同样重要的是：善待我们的老人。他们可能是也可能不是好父母，但是如果没有他们，我们就不会在这里。没有我们的父母、祖父母和我们共同的祖先，就没有任何幸福、健康、财富和智慧可言。

亲爱的朋友们，我祝福大家

更快乐
更健康
更富裕
更明智的新年！

现在我们知道该怎么做才能达到目的了！

Happier, Healthier, Wealthier, Wiser

My dear friends, I wish us all

Happy
Healthy
Wealthy &
Wise New Year!

How to be happier? Make people happy and peaceful, then we become so. To listen to them, to share their burdens and stress. Free them from suffering and pain.

To be healthier? Help others healthier. Share natural organic ideas in strengthening body righteous immune system. Help people reduce dependency on artificial chemicals and hormones. Stay away from toxic drugs and addictions. Reduce or cut off heavily tainted animal foods.

To be wealthier? Help the less fortunate people than us to prosper, to help them support their livelihoods and family. Work in conscientious industries and away from unscrupulous businesses.

To be wiser? Help people to see the connection and balance of body, mind and souls. To see the ultimate aim of individual existence. To free people of fear of unknowns... Help humans to understand the journey of life and death...

All in all, we work for people not for ourselves. If we just work for ourselves it doesn't manifest into "cause and effect" actions; and thus nothing comes back to us. Surely that doesn't sound good as 'us' is part of human beings.

Remember, and see it clear that:

- What goes around comes around. And vice versa.
- Prevention is always better than treatments/cure. Most of the time there's no cure, for other time treatments aren't good approaches and likely come with adverse side effects.
- To give is always better than to get; how lucky and blessed we are to be able to offer our helping hands.

My dear friends, I wish us all

Happier
Healthier
Wealthier &
Wiser New Year!

And now we know what to do to get there!

Ants move house

Ants move house

This is children's naughty act? Small stools lined up as road barriers blocking pedestrians? Or some sorts of children games? The boy and the girl use stools acting like daytime soap series? For behaviours of children, many adults who are busy making a living usually don't care, don't notice, don't understand about what children do.

Oh you, busy walking by, please bend down your body and take a good look. Underneath the row of stools is a team of living life force full of discipline and marching spirits. Ants are moving family/house! Up front are leaders with sharp destination in mind; no distractions get in the way. And follow by soldier ants of strong forces, many of whom carry heavy loads of grains.

These two children are setting up corridors from stools in order to protect the ants crossing the middle of the street safely. In the world of tens of thousands of climatic scenarios, there are many 'normal scenes' which get ignored by human beings. And thus many small and minute lives get jeopardized. In the journey of life, the weak life forms need to be protected. And that the sacred hearts of children, and children's behaviours that are full of love and care, need more nurture and encouragement!

Please praise and encourage children games such as this one that helps ants move house!

NOTE:
+) Comic: Comic drawn by the late Mr. 丰子恺 / 豐子愷 (FENG Zi Kai) in his book 《护生画集》; hu sheng hua ji; Protecting-lives-drawing-collections. Original writing in the comic: 蚂蚁搬家, Ma-Yi Ban Jia, "Ants Move Family/House".
+) Writing: Original writing in Chinese edited by 宋慧燕 (SONG Hui Yan), Sin Chew Plus， July 20th, 2011, of Sin Chew Daily, a Malaysian daily newspaper in Chinese language.
+) Translation: By John Lew, trying to keep the original tones and grammar patterns intact.

Materialism versus Idealism

Materialism versus Idealism

Life's short. Time passed fast. Before Johnny knew it, he had to, in a way, decide if he should opt for the passion of his life, which was music, or the cruel reality of sustainable living, in a big monetary city.

In fact, he wasn't given a choice. Coming from a relatively underprivileged family meant that he could only give in to the reality.

He would have very much liked to strive for a balance. He tried, but he was too young to be skillful in it. He failed miserably. In the end, he became so stressful and turned insane...

... ...

Stress is a phenomena taking place everywhere, all the time. We should learn to understand how it arises and deal with it.

Do you know how your stress comes around? The nature of it? And what are your solutions?

Note:
Comic strip from Johnny the Moron, http://www.lews.info/johnnythemoron/index-e.html

Interracial Marriage gives peace

Human beings are constantly in wars. We're in wars inside and outside. Wars take places because of ignorance of the real truth. We fail to see that we're all living life forms. We fail to see we're on the same boat sailing toward the same destination.

More often than not, we only see the physical differences among us: the colors of our skins, the different religions we believe in, the choice of foods we choose to eat, different parts of the world we come from and thus different cultures we are brought up with. There SEEMS to be so many differences among us...

Instead of embracing the beautiful diversity of human kinds, we choose to alienate with each other.

Some people believe, one way to help reduce the conflicts of races, religions, and cultures is to encourage interracial marriage.

Babies and children born of interracial parents usually see things in parental love rather than parents' skins or the traditional costumes they wear.

"I love my mommy, I love my daddy. Who are they? They're my mommy and daddy! I love them."

"My dad is red, my mom's white. My granddad is black, my grandmother's yellow."

"So much love! So colourful! I love them all. I love all colours!"

To keep things simple, it's that simple.

Eventually all single races will move on to another realm and newer generations with gray scales who blend all races, all religions, all cultures, and all backgrounds are here to stay.

And the result? Quite likely a more peaceful world and less wars.

It's much easier then to focus on the truly important things in life.

Are we all in the same boat sailing toward the same destination?

Yes, we are.

Note:
Comic strip from Johnny the Moron, http://www.lews.info/johnnythemoron/index-e.html

Spirit, Energy and Material worlds; Messages behind the movie Avatar

Watching the movie Avatar is an eye opener. The colors of flora and fauna are splendid and scenes of nature and jungles breathtaking. While the eye candies are delights to watch, the messages behind the film are more appealing to some, and to me too.

Let's look at the following scripts:

1: “I'm trying to understand this deep connection the people have to the forest. She (Neytiri, Na'vi native) talks about a network of energy that flows through all living things. She says all energy is only borrowed, and one day you have to give it back.”

In ancient and traditional world of living, jungles and rivers have always been the source of shelters, food, water, clothes. Any many ancient writings of scholars talked about how lives come and go around like an exchange of energy, albeit in different linguistic presentations. Many of us look at living and dying with such extreme joy and fear respectively, to the extend of horrible turbulence of emotional disturbance. If we see things through to their very real existence, all material things wear off, there are lifespans to everything. But the energy within lives on, taking different forms as mortal existence.

If we can come to appreciate all things are only borrowed, i.e., including our bodies, will we see life a little differently then?



2: “I see you... ...brother … and thank you. You spirit goes with Eywa (the spirit of the universe?). Your body stays behind... …to become part of the people.”

Jake said to the deer-like animal when taking her life. Neytiri watched to see if he had understood the meaning of life.

If you “have to” kill a living being, kill her quick. Kill her with the least pain involved. Offer your apology, give your reasons, ask for forgiveness, show your appreciation and share the benefits with mankind...

That is, if you “have to”...

The Na'vi people kill for 'good enough' and for the very basic need of everyday life. There is never greed or luxury in the motive. It's always about sustainability of the material bodies and balancing energy flow.

Look around us these days, the ideas of “simplicity”, and “good enough” are hardly found in the commercial world, where people are made into consumers of all sorts of things. We're being brainwashed into believing we need so many different kind of things in order to live a quality life.

I wonder if 'quality life' only means 'materialistic life' but not 'meaningful life'...

And how many people say “Thank you” to the unwilling sacrifice of animals? We take animal family members apart and we kill them for their flesh brutally and we make them into unrecognizable canned food and try to deceive people and we waste them by only finishing less than half of whatever we put into our stomachs.



It's obvious that's no appreciation and gratefulness... There isn't even awareness!

It's sad. It's a sad sad situation.

Human beings, please wake up to the reality, sooner or later you have to face the truth.

Let's make it sooner.

Vegetarianism promotes Intelligence and Wisdom

Vegetarianism promotes Intelligence and Wisdom

The book 《大戴礼记》 (Da Dai Li Ji； Big-DAI-Rites-Record), by 戴德 (DAI De; Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD)), says:

"食肉勇敢而悍，
食谷智慧而巧。"

shi rou yong gan er han,
shi gu zhi hui er qiao. (HAN YU Pronunciation)

"Eat meat brave strong thus fierce,
eat grains intelligent wise thus smart."

Many scholars believe this is the earliest written testimonial of Chinese literature which ascertains the idea of vegetarianism promoting intelligence and wisdom. The idea is of utmost important to the intellects these days. Many evangelists of vegetarianism promote the idea from the points of view of cause-and-effect and mother-nature-protectionism, very few scholars analyze vegetarianism promote intelligence and wisdom.

All of us want to be intelligent and wise. Vegetarianism can be one of the better approaches.

PS:

1) The book 《大戴礼记》(Da Dai Li Ji； Big-DAI-Rites-Record) is a classical literature on 儒学 (ru xue； Confucianism studies). Most of the articles in this book belong to students of 孔子 (Kong Zi； Confucius) and other scholars of confucianism around the time of 战国时期 (zhan guo shi qi； warring-states-time-period), 475 BC - 221 BC.

The first person who studied such Confucianism studies was 劉向 (LIU Xiang), the great Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD) scholar. Han scholars 戴德 (DAI De) and 戴圣 (DAI Sheng) collected and edited 130 articles and simplified them into 85. And thus it's called Big-DAI-Rites-Record.

This book narrates ancient Chinese rules and rituals, standards of the society and also is a text book on benevolence, humanity, justice, virtue and morality. It governs the management system and thoughts of Confucius' benevolence and justice.

2) Other translated names of the book include:
a) Book of Rites with Commentaries of DAI De;
b) Record of Rites of the Elder DAI.

Posted by John J. C. Lew at 1:32 PM, Feb 13th, 2009. Re-posted to avoid unsolicited postings.

Charitable works / Doing good deeds

Charitable works / Doing good deeds

These days I'm enjoying, or rather obsessed and possessed by, the thoughts of “cause and effect”. And would like to share with all of us the benefits of give-and-take, and charitable works below: [The ones in brackets is my own interpretation]

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Doing good deeds in time can prevent our thoughts from stemming corrupted ideas.
Those who delay charitable works find themselves constantly in contact with bad deeds.
[Constant work keeps our mind and conscience cleaned. The reward of serving is peace of mind that attracts similar peaceful events.]

No one can avoid death; we should do as many good deeds when we are around.
It's analogous to planting a baby tree in front of our house, nourishing her everyday, growing bigger and flourishing into big tree, and then you and even your children and grandchildren and the next generation of human beings can rest well underneath.

Do not under estimate small charities; and wrongfully believe that small charities will not yield great returns.
Small charities, if done everyday for months and years, kept accumulated, enable the whole of you be covered in great luck and fantastic returns.

Be tolerant in the crowd of angry people;
Be mild and gentle in the crowd of fierce people;
Be philanthropic in the crowd of greedy people.
[It's all so obvious people are greedy. An individual can be very unselfish but a group of people gathered for materialistic causes will always be greedy. This is the time we must be giving; when many others are greedy.]

Do not do any bad deeds.
Cultivate good deeds and the heart of compassion.
Cleanse the thoughts.

Rich people should help poor people, with hearts of compassion.
Poor people should learn the value of life, open the hearts, and strive to do charitable works to change the fates.
[Remember that no small giving is too small. It's not like we have to wait until we become millionaires to do something good for other people. Start now. Start today. No matter how small, or in what forms. Smile and make people happy!]

Doing things, if it's with a kind and helping thought, will help us to bridge closer relationship with people who used to distance us;
Doing things, on the other hand, if it's with the thought of hurting people, will distance people as close as our mothers and fathers from us and create common hatred.
[Thoughts matter. Be kind in and out.]

Rich people must learn:
Tens of thousands of angels money is;
Tens of thousand of devils money is, too.
Use it righteously, we build lucky foundations.
Use it evilly, we build bad obstacles.
If we can deduct a penny of self-use, add a penny of sharing, good luck may not be seen fairing, yet bad luck will diminish by itself.
Add a flavor of stinginess, and we may think we have gotten advantage. Once fallen in disaster, all the possessions will be gone. The tiny gain of being stingy will not be worth it. Too late to regret.
[The rich should act fast and huge. For the able people not acting kind is more sinful than those not-so-able ones.]

There are three kinds of treasures in life:
- We CAN rob them in life; CAN'T bring them with us when we die: Gold, silver and precious stones.
- We CAN'T rob them in life; CAN'T bring them with us either when we die: Intelligence, wisdom and ability.
- We CAN'T rob them in life; CAN bring them with us when we die: Good deeds and merits.

Those with THICK merits, be born in happy heaven.
Those with THIN merits, be born in miserable poverty.
[If our merits are thin or thick enough, we may see changes, be they negative or positive, almost immediately.]

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Note:
The writing is translated from chapter 12 of the brochure “Intelligent Lamp of the Heart” which is originally in Chinese language. There are a total of 29 chapters in the brochure. The God is watching if I'm able to translate them all. There is plenty of time I overestimate myself.

Me and my past

Me and my past

What's left behind? All these photos?

I was so young and beautiful... Not anymore... old and ugly now...

Am I happy now? Did I make mistakes? Big? small?

Any regrets?

Have I fulfilled my own destiny? Or is there any destiny? At all?

The house's dying. This place is dying... and I'm dying, too...

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Oh... John... my husband... He was so sweet. He was a good man. At least he tried to be. And good men die early... How cruel he left me alone... for all these years?

My children... They lead their own lives. Are they going to be alright? Without me? Or better without me? I'm now a burden to them. It's better if I just vanish from their lives...

My sisters... I'm sorry for what I've done... I shouldn't have... Will they pardon me? Set me free? And set themselves free from rage of hatred?

My father... I'm sorry I ran away from home. I made mistakes. Had you pardoned me before you left this world? All these years...

Mom... I'm sorry about the tortures you had to suffer all these years. It's my fault.

I'm sorry...

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

How am I going to be remembered? Will they remember me, at all? Or is it of any importance?

Will I ever meet John again? Where is he now? Heaven? Or hell? Where? Will I recognize him in next life? Is there next life? Reincarnation?

Is this what I have now? Memories of bitters and sweets? Questions unanswered?

What significant is my life? Or is it any important?

What now?...







+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

The house's dying. This place is dying... and I'm dying, too...








PS:
1) The story is about a lady; a lady in you and me.
2) Illustration taken from Gurbuz Dogan Eksioglu. Info of artist by Miki. Thank you, Miki!

Searching for something

Searching for something...

(Click on for clearer picture)

“Searching for forever... turns out to be... forever searching..."

We're searching for something, something so undefined, something vague. Yet we're sure there is something worth searching for in life. Many times we search for this very important something outside. We seem to believe this very important thing lies in the material and physical world.

And the thing is: It doesn't.

This very important thing that we've been searching high and low doesn't exist in the material or physical world. It's all in the mind. It's all in the soul. And it's always been there. There is no beginning, and there is no ending.

We've been searching for our soul. The purpose of our lives.

Our soul.

Our immortal and everlasting and perfect soul.

Once we find it, we will achieve permanent peace. And the purpose of our lives.

Note:

Comic strip from Johnny the Moron, http://www.lews.info/johnnythemoron/index-e.html