Hacking the Good days…

Was flicking TV channels and was stunned by an old man talking about life as a flow of energy, he asked us to think about this,

‘Try recalling your favourite childhood memory. Yes, try… Now you may even think that you are part of the memory. But I have shocking news to tell you. You are not. None of ‘you’ was. None of the atoms in your body today was from the 5-year old.’

We all have regenerated, we are all fresh start. We come to being, we vanish. How cool is that?

That reminded me of someone complaining what’s the point of being alive when we all going to die?

But the question should be, what’s the point of living if we all never cease to die?

*I really didn’t get the poem recited at Obama’s inauguration.  Was it me or was it the poet?

‘The water of the valley stream is always flowing.  It races on, not pausing for even an instant.  Its sound, to me, is the sound of time.

The water of time glistens on the riverbed of the universe.  Though theirs is a much slower flow, Human beings and all things that have life flow.  Thought and culture, too, flow.  That all these appear to be unchanging is but illusion.

We make every effort to keep things as they are, because human beings, alone, lament transience. Yet no matter how we grieve or protest, there is no way to impede the flow or anything.  If we but see things as they are and flow with them, we may find enjoyment in transience.  Because human life is transient, all manner of figures are woven into its fabric.

[...]

When we listen subconsciously to the sound of flowing water, does it not seem to create a rhythm?  Yet not a single drop of water passes over the same rock twice, and the murmur of water rushing over a rock is constantly changing.  Sameness is but an illusion of the human ears, eyes, mind.  Water has once flowed along a riverbed can never retrace its course. Human life is no different.  It is only our mundane eyes and minds that see yesterday as being the same as today.

Enlightened eyes and minds should recognise that each moment has a form different from that of any other moment.’

Shundo Aoyama. (2001).  Zen Seeds (pp 1-2). Tokyo: Kosei Publishing Limited.

Buddhism maintains that the source of suffering is our inability to accept impermanence.  In ’secular’ geek terms, you won’t wake up thinking that all the data of your unback-up hard disk can be all gone for no reasons.  Obviously I cannot articulate as beautifully as Aoyama in her book Zen Seeds, hence reading her book is like looking at flaking candle flame for the first time – so magical, but yet so natural and non-contrieved.  I wish we possess enlightened eyes and minds and recognise that each moment IS different, be peaceful, see that there is nothing we can do and enjoy it as just it is.