Compassion - Why we need it?

Compassion is the source of our happiness in life. Without loving kindness and compassion, there is no peace or happiness in the family, the society, the country or the world. Compassion is also the source of a healthy mind and a healthy body.

Practising compassion means hot harming others but only helping them, and helping others is the cause of our own success. If we are loving and compassionate, we make our life worthwhile by bringing happiness to others. Seeing others happy, should make us happy...

Compassion makes everyone our friend. If we lack compassion, we have difficulty finding friends, and when we do manage to find some, sooner or later they will become our enemies. Even the members of our family can become our enemies.

Without compassion, life is really miserable. People who are only concern about themselves and whose heart are empty of affection and compassion for others have no real peace or happiness. It brings loneliness, depression and many other problems.

If we don't have compassion, no matter how many friends or how much wealth we have, we have no real peace or satisfaction in our life. we won't be able to enjoy life as our heart will be like a hot, barren desert. If we lack these precious qualities and our attitude to life is selfish, our wealth actually brings a lot of worry and fear and unfulfilled expactations. We will also be afraid that one of our competitors will become richer, more powerful, better, stronger....etc etc thus our wealth actually create problems in our life bringing us enemies and even endangering our life.

Self-cherishing and lack of loving kindness and compassion makes lives of wealthy people unhappy and unsatisfying. No matter how much education and intellectual knowledge we have, we will have no peace in our heart if we lack loving kindness and compassion. Even if we spend our whole life studying, our education will only cause us problem if we are motivated simply by self-concern. Instead of bringing happiness and satisfaction, our education will cause pride, anger and other unhealthy thoughts to arise. If we don't have compassion, there is danger that we will use our education and intelligence to harm others, even to destroy ourselves and the world.

Excerpts from: Ultimate Healing - The Power of Compassion (by Lama Zopa Rinpoche)

Why Some People Have All The Luck
By Professor Richard Wiseman - University of Hertfordshire

Why do some people get all the luck while others never get the breaks they deserve?

A psychologist says he has discovered the answer. Ten years ago, I set out to examine luck. I wanted to know why some people are always in the right place at the right time, while others consistently experience ill fortune. I placed advertisements in national newspapers asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me. Hundreds of extraordinary men and women volunteered for my research and over the years, I have interviewed them, monitored their lives and had them take part in experiments. The results reveal that although these people have almost no insight into the causes of their luck, their thoughts and behavior are responsible for much of their good and bad fortune. Take the case of seemingly chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities,whereas unlucky people do not. I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities.

I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had secretly placed a large message halfway through the newspaper saying: "Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $50."This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than two inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it. Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected. As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and miss other types of jobs. Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for. My research eventuallyrevealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitudethat transforms bad luck into good.

Towards the end of the work, I wondered whether these principles could be used to create good luck. I asked a group of volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person. Dramatic results! These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to bad luck. One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80% of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier. The lucky people had become even luckier and the unlucky had become lucky. Finally, I had found the elusive "luck factor". Here are Professor Wiseman's four top tips for becoming lucky:

1) Listen to your gut instincts - they are normally right
2) Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine
3) Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well
4) Visualize yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call.

Have a Lucky day and work for it.

The happiest people in the world are not those who have no problems, but those who learn to live with things that are less than perfect! :)

Light at the end of tunnel

There is always light at the end of the tunnel. In life, we must always have faith! Without faith, life will be meaningless, like a ship without compass, a car without steering, or like child without their parents...

Life is full of challenges and we must face each of them head on. We have to learn to deal with them, manage it and most importantly do not let it overwhelm our life. Because of our self cherishing mind and strong attachments to our self, we begin to measure everything to our own desire and standards. If it did not satisfy our needs, then we are unhappy. Lets ponder for a moment, how lucky we are... to be alive, healthy, with a job, with a loving family etc etc and COMPARE this with others who may be dying, with some terminal diseases, retrenched, broken family, etc. .... Once we look beyond ourself, and have the right comparison, we should be happy and grateful. Nothing is enough to satisfy our immense ego, all our us need to learn to deal and manage it.

In short, learn to enjoy life to the fullest. Do good deeds, make yourself useful. Make somebody happy and make his / her day. It is lovely to see somebody smile - There is always hope!

Maiden Message

This is my first message & attempt to post in my own blog, I hope this is a start of something meaningful and helpful that can benefit more people. Through this, I also hope to create a platform for people to communciate & share their life story, problem and solutions

Over the last month, I have expereinced many mixed emotions & experience ! Sad, happy, overwhelming, rejoice, dissapointment, angry are some labels we can give to this expereince. Nevertheless, we must rejoice as we are lucky to be alive to be able to even scriblle these comments. Among some of my expereince in October are:-

• Quit Smoking: - After smoking for the last 20 odd years, I have finally decided to STOP. The ultimate day is 4th. October 2006, where I smoke my last stick (on Oct 3) and since then have been smoke free for close to a month. My style of quitting - COLD TURKEY with STRONG Determination ! I just packed all my stuff (cig & lightners, ash trays etc) and just throw them away. Hopefully with guru & buddha blessing, i can quit it completely. Thank you Lama Zopa Rinpoche & may you live a long & healthy life until samsara end to teach dharma to all sentient beings.




• So Sad for EVE:- Heard from my wife that her good friend - eve is critically ill (with breast & liver cancer). Apparently, she cannot eat, have no bladder control and extremely weak. Doc's prediction - she has less than 3 months. Every day when I pray, I offer all my merits accumulated and offer my prayers to her so that she can end this suffering. May Chenrezig have compassion towards Eve. Om Mani Padme Hum...
  


• So Near & Yet So Far:- Can you beat it, I miss the hole in one by a mere 5-6 inches on my round of golf on 24/10 in Port Dickson Golf. It is hole 17, island green, 150 m. With a smooth swing, I have a great contact and the ball went pass the hole. Of course I got a tap in birdie. The last time that i nearly got one was in Danau (Formerly KRUKM) @ hole 3 where I was short by 1 feet. Lets hope my day will come soon... with a hole in one!
  
  
So Blessed:- I am so blessed to be able to get the blessing & initiation of Thousand Arm Chenrezig from Ken Rinpoche during the Million Light Offering in KL from 20/10/06 -22/10/06. At last, I have been given the oral approval & transmittion of the teaching and I can do my practise officially now. I must have so much good merits & karma to be able to have lunch organized by my wife with a group of 7-8 sanghas together with Ken Rincpoche. We also join in to do Guru Puja dedicated to long life of Ken Rinpoche on 29/10/06 at LDC, PJ. Towards the end, we (me, my wife & my son XJ) offered gift to Ken Rinpoche. - Stupa & Tara. Also during the ceremony, I can feel the connection with Ken Rinpoche. I hope & pray that I (and my family) will have the opportunity & karma to visit KOPAN Monastry soonest possible.