Breathe : Something to share

I attended the last English Dhamma Talk for this semester /this year, last night.

I am really happy with myself that i didn't use 'busy/ packed schedule' as a reason for not attending it.

It was just a two hours session, but the things that i gained, perhaps could be used for more than 20 years if i could remember, learn and apply the things she mentioned in her talk in my life.

She is Dr. Belinda Khong, a psychologist. I loveeeeeeee her style and her talk! I really love the 'free style' that she had in giving her talk, which make us felt at ease and really comfortable. The topic for last night was 'mindfulness'. The interesting part was she tried to use stories, analogies and life experience to convey the messages that she wanted to, which was really interesting, funny and attention catching! Throughout the talk, she shared few stories of her clients with us. In a way, i found that me myself, in someway, often have the same kind of feelings and thoughts that are similar to her clients in life. Maybe this is a common phenomena in today's world.

As i'm writing my blog now, i am trying to recall what were the contents for last night's topic and i really hope that i could share it with anyone of you. It was a simple talk that was quite profound and meaningful, covering the aspects of life. It was really interesting to hear her explanation on the concepts that we used to hear, including impermanence, non-self and non attachment. I like the way she explained non-self. And she said that we tend to use the word 'sufferings' when we talk about the 4 noble truths. But she preferred to name it as 'dissatisfaction', which i'm quite agree on it.

She used the 'computer virus scanner' analogy to describe the way we control our emotions in daily lives. She said that we do always have a choice in life, on the way to treat and face our emotions. We can allow ourselves to really feel how we feel, or we can just be aware of our own feelings instead of too attaching to it. For example, it is sometimes unavoidable to feel sad in daily lives. such as you had a fight with your parents/ friends/ lover. Most of the time, we tend to focus on the external factor and neglecting the internal factor that also contribute to our feeling that time. When things happen, first thing that cross our mind is :

How could you treat me like this?
Why would you do this to me?

How could you break my heart?

Why did you do that?

and then you will end up with tons of tears T___________________T at the end of the day hahaha

We try hard to figure out the reasons based on our own assumption, according to our own perceptions on others and things. We like to draw a causation link between others' actions and our emotions or feelings. In fact, it is always the mind. Our mind, and we are unconsciously allowing our mind to do so, which lead us to feel the feeling of sad, happy, angry etc.

Another thing that i remembered about her talk is she said that doing all the practices that are beneficial such as meditation might seems difficult and the benefits couldn't be seen sometimes in short term. However, only through constant practice, when we come to a situation which is really unpleasant or something 'big', this is where our practice help us. She then talked about her own experience of how constant practice helped her in overcoming anxious and unpleasant feeling when she found that her husband was diagnosed with stomach cancer. It was sorry to hear that, but through her sharing, it really did provide some motivation and strong reason that convince me of the benefits of practising meditation.

She said, meditation is not about sitting in a quiet and calm context that you think you are calming your mind.

She said we were always mindfull-ness, but it would be so much better if we could slowly become 'mindfulness'. Haha. Got the difference?

She said, it's not that we need to learn to be mindful. But in fact, we are able to be mindful. It's an ability. It's just the matter of how much we want to do it. Mindfulness is like breathing. We are breathing the present air, but we would never breathe in the past air nor future air, which is true!!

Well, that's all that i could remember for now and i would really love to share her talk with you. I hope that in someday, when i feel that the sky in my life is grey, i could listen to her talk once again, take in her words and find the motivation and positivity that i am breathing in now, at this moment :)

Especially when we could not take the fact of 'impermanence', which happen in every aspect of life. We can be happy today but feeling disappointed tomorrow. We will grow old. Hair will fall no matter how we pamper our hair. Beauty will gone someday. Friendship will be gone when people leave the world. In other words, perhaps all things remain, but it transform into another form, which we named it with a different term. Fear of losing, anxious about letting go, we tend to magnify things we thought we are desperate to have, and forgetting what's on hand, things that we already have. Sometimes, afraid of the day that we will lose the things that we are having now. Trying hard to appreciate, trying hard to hold, trying hard to maintain and keep it to make sure it is according to our expectation.

If one day, when you feel that the colour is fading and you couldn't do anything but just to see it fading slowly and if you feel sad about its fade, thinking that it is really difficult to let go and you are never ready about letting go, perhaps you can try to sit under the blue sky, look up to the sky and try to find two pieces of clouds that are constant. And then, you may realize that this is the answer that you are looking for :)
And this is also a note to myself.