Happy Vesak Day 2016

 Happy Vesak Day!

Shakyamuni Buddha from Pelkor Chode

Hello again! First of all just wanna wish you a happy Vesak Day! May all living things be happy!

It's Vesak day once again, a day where Buddhists commemorate the birth, enlightenment and death (parinirvana) of the Buddha. It's a day where we contemplate about the Buddha's life, and to think of the Dharma - his teachings. Spent a good amount of time in the dawn meditating and reflecting about his teachings. He's my teacher in life, someone I look up to, and someone I wish I can have a conversation with. He's someone I admire with because he's a human who with all his dedication and determination, found a way to end the suffering in this life and become enlightened.

Every Vesak Day I also spend some time contemplating about being a Buddhist. Last year I spent the month of May knowing more about the Buddha himself. His core teachings and so on. Like I once said, I consider myself a "bad" Buddhist - because I only learn more about Buddhism back in 2011-2012. This year... I've decided to dig more into the Sutras. Currently reading more about the Prajnaparamita Sutra, and diving deep to find the significance of emptiness in Buddhism.

So far it's been going well. I've yet to finish a book which... I never seem to finish haha. 

Anyway I'm kind of convinced with the fact that Buddhism is really a great religion for people who question their existence in this universe. The more I learn about it, the more I feel that we are truly learning about ourselves and about this life in general through Buddhism. I used to ask myself a question like... Why am I here? What's the purpose of life? And Buddhism seems to give me lots of answers to these questions. Not in a clear, cut-throat fashion, but through contemplation.

My meditation has been going pretty well too. I've been meditating longer and longer in the past few months and I'm very happy with that. I still feel that meditation helps me a lot in life. And I always remind myself that practising the Dharma is not an A to B method but an on-going one. Even till my next life and so on. Till one day where my soul will finally be liberated from Samsara.

There are a lot of unanswered questions that I have about Buddhism. And I'm still on the conquest to search for them. Although well I'm actually very happy with the fact that searching for these answers are the most enlightening (duh!) part of Buddhism. Sometimes it is through random acts and situations in life that I find the most enlightening answers to my problems.

And so far my journey through emptiness has been going rather well. I'm going to talk about it in a different post. As crude as this may sound, but once you see through the emptiness of this life, you're on your way to becoming the happiest and richest person on earth. I've always believed that you need to see it first, before you can fill your life with all the great things you want it to be filled with.

Across my life as a Buddhists, I've encountered lots of people ridiculing our religion. Who the hell believes in reincarnation? How can you prove that there is life after death? You see the thing is does it even matter if there is life after death, when you dedicate and spend your life spending compassion and doing the best for the people around you? And that's what I love about Buddhism. Every human life is precious. And through the law and teaching of karma, we should really make full good use of our current lives to build up good karma to liberate our soul from this cycle of birth and death.

Thus even if at the end of our lives, we found out that "oh sorry it ends here", at least we live a life of goodness and kindness. And we don't "waste" our life away.

This is to me, my take on the emptiness of life.

Although to be honest, I think every religion is the same - they preach and ask their devotees to cultivate kindness and to live their life to the fullest. So... Even if there is no heaven at the end of your "good" life, does it matter? We've lived our lives to the fullest anyway! :)

Okay I think I digressed a lot heh. Alrighty that's all for today. Once again happy Vesak day and wishing you an awesome week ahead! Can't believe it's 9 more days till the end of May :O

Sabbe Satta Bhavantu Sukhitatta. May all living things be happy.