Enlightenment

Enlightenment.

Spent some time with Grasshopper again yesterday. Hung at Orchard and later at City Hall. Told Shiner that I realise why I'm deeply touched that someone just wants to spend time with me. It's a choice, right, whether or not you want to spend time with this person or not. And we both made this choice to spend time with each other. So this thought is just quite touching. Quantity Time.

He bought a book for me - The Tibetan book of living and dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. Really thick. I shall read it when I go to Aceh and perhaps become an expert. =) Talking about Buddhism stuffs really makes me reminisce about the time in college, studying Design Theory electives - Remember the course that was about Buddhism architecture - the stupas, the mandalas, the sentient, the transient... Actually it's all quite interesting just that the lecturer who happens to be a friend of mine, cannot explain it really well. Like everything is shrouded in some sort of mystery and only the truly enlightened can begin to understand all of the forms and ... structures. Grass let me listen to this recording of this Indian guru expounding on the way of the Bodhisattva. The story goes like this(summarized):

About Shantideva. "During his childhood he had great respect to his parents, and his friends had great respect for him due to his extraordinary behavior. His father(King) died in order to show that sentient beings are subject to impermanence, and after this Shantideva developed more realizations into impermanence and death. When his father died, the subjects asked Shantideva to take his father's position. He could not refuse this, so he accepted to take the position of king. The night before the ceremony he had a dream about the throne he was going to sit on. Manjusri showed up in his dream and said: "You are going to sit on my throne. You are my student. How could student and disciple sit on the same throne?"

As he rose up from this dream, he realized he would be more beneficial to other people if he became a monk than a king. The same night he left for Nalanda monastery.

Students at Nalanda who didn't like Shantideva wanted to have him expelled from the monastery. They stated that the place is full of scholars, and said Shantideva is no scholar, he just knows about eating, sleeping and going to the bathroom.

So they asked Shantideva to give a teaching, and if he didn't do this, he would have to leave the monastery. They asked Shantideva to give a teaching. Shantideva didn't accept the first time, only the second time when asking did he accept their request. They planned to insult him in a big group of students. They built a very high throne(no staircase), assuming Shantideva would not know how to get up on the throne. They also assembled a big group of monks. When Shantideva came to the throne, he touched the throne, and the big throne shrank down so Shantideva could get up on it.

So this immediately gave a strange feeling to the group -- how could this happen? Then Shantideva sat on the throne and asked the group what kind of teaching he should give, something that has been taught before, or something that has never been taught before? The monks requested him to teach something that has never taught before. So this is why Shantideva taught Bodhisattva's Way of Life.Shantideva gave this teaching, and when his teaching came to the ninth chapter (the Wisdom chapter), there's a phrase in this chapter, "…whatever is existent and nonexistent..." At this point he rose to the sky, and from the sky he gave the tenth chapter.

He was invisible for the people, but they could hear his teachings.
The monks and the people who liked Shantideva felt very sad as Shantideva was now gone, and those who were against him felt very impressed and very sorry about what they'd done. "

I thought this story quite... interesting.

And into the wee hours of yesterday, lounging in X hotel, listening to 3 man band renditions of "Put your head on my shoulder" and "Love me(Colin Raye)" we were just dialoging, me sharing about my thoughts, my ministry, things that mean a lot to me. I asked him again, what do you really care about? I believe knowing what you really care about is important, for me I'm trying to find out too!

He said I wouldn't understand. I said, "Perhaps. But I'd try my best." Sometimes when you open your soul and mind, you start to open your heart too. He said, he cares about enlightenment. Such a beautiful word. And there's when I start to listen, to the story, to his heart.

In interpersonal communication, it is always good to keep an open mind.

There is a purpose for everything. An incident that caused me much sorrow more than a year ago, preps me up for this encounter now. And should I be on guard? Well, definitely. But if not for the previous incident, I might not know what I'm getting myself into this time round.