This year saw the biggest monastery in Singapore i.e. Bright Hill building a new buddhist college and also accepting nuns. They have strict criterion, and they make it affordable as well.
Still, because everybody came through Foo Hai Chan monastery before, and we were once impressed enough by Venerable Shi Ming Yi and about what he wanted to do at Renci, so perhaps, as the City Harvest trial comes to a formal closure, the original prosecuting plea was life imprisonment for Kong Hee, now one may ask whether as a Singaporean - regardless of race, language, or religion - or as a believer of any religion, is it fair if you put Kong Hee on life while you let Ming Yi out in less than a year?
Well, we have hundreds or thousands of monastics in Singapore, we know there are a few that served time in Changi Prison, yet how many high profile monastics are convicted in Singapore because of token 'angbaos' and luxury cameras. Now we spend alot of time complaining that PAP candidates draw high salaries, yet they fly the world to meet e.g. our Chinese Presidents and welcome foreign delegates, you see. In other words, why will you fault somebody who is higher paid because that's his/her job i.e. being highly paid? Why do you protect or let scot-free monks and nuns who are supposed to be lowly paid or more specifically their job was to die in the first place so that their supramundane visions are accomplished while others can live.
Now Jesus Christ can die for the Jews and their clan when He was only 33. Lim Bo Seng can die for the Singapura-ians when He was less than 50. Well, while the Gautama Buddha lived till 80 before He died, He made sure that He lived in stone or cement cottages with minimal plumbing and lighting when He was at least 28 years old, more specifically when He founded a ministry at 35. So now if I were to ask a question, why does Aik TC and I have an internet connection, wow straightaway, a joke is popped. Too much affluence, too little meaning, too few cultivation, too much pretence behind a computer screen or android tablet.
Now if Aik and / or I am guilty of any transgressions, wow, why are there Windows 8.1 on monastic centers? Well, because it is dana. Somebody gave you the instrument, to screw yourself up with. If you use a dharma instrument to screw yourself, to screw another sangha member, you are adding a transgression on top of another transgression, which makes perfect sense for the deluded.
Now the problem is when it makes perfect sense. I am deluded. Are you enlightened?
Or are you just more corrupt?
If you are corrupt, do you live in a jungle where your trees and critters are your only friends as a hermit, or do you live in a city where you have laws to obey. If you are corrupt and there are laws, expect accusation and punishment. Look at Kong Hee. Accusations, and proposed punishment. Look at Ming Yi, accusations, punishment meted. Doing a good job is your job, getting acknowledged is your bad karma.
Now Tzuchi's probable corruption scandals have gone really big worldwide. Since January, their Taiwanese media reported it day in day out. The corruption was there, is there, you cannot just say that because Venerable Cheng Yen is as old as Mother Teresa was, so just her die sooner or later. The truth is, corruption is corruption, taints are taints. It hardly affects an ordinary Singaporean or an ordinary Taiwanese, because the Buddha was never a Chinese, one can disparage His branding and legacy all one wanted, there may be karma, ought to be. After all the Buddha died, His only biological heir died too, does Ming Yi have a son? Well, Reverend Kong Hee does have sons. It's a householder thing. He never promised the world that He will discard His wife, so if His wife wanted a better Music Video, it's karma as well because he either did something really right before, so his wife eventually had a 'better' music video.
If the Buddha died without a living son, a living heir, it's karma as well. He deserves it, Buddhism deserves it. If He deserves it, He deserves it, if you defend Him out of sentimental compassion, you are more deluded than delusion.
So let's say Amos Yee likes to scold old people, well at least old people in Singapore bothered having sons that can sue Amos Yee. Amos Yee deserves it. He thought he is the only son in the world, which ain't true. Others have got fathers, other fathers have got sons, not all fathers and sons have got time to waste on Amos Yee even if his mother's taoist Guanyin figurine is shinier than my mother's. So, we give it to him. IMH, I don't know if he did prison, but he sure deserved IMH having been going through all that publicity.
Same goes for Han Hui Hui and Roy Ngerng, now some people in this world are very strange like Aik TC on sgforums. They are afraid of talking, so they quote people's news articles. And since he/she is using Aik TC, you can neither sue him, nor have time to waste asking that his/her role be reviewed. It is very normal that's why most people use Facebook since the Government went online. Han Hui Hui went publicly asking people to sue Han Hui Hui i.e. her, she was provoking people. Roy Ngerng was a problem, because he wanted to do something, what he wanted to do goes against the norm including homosexuality. Now some nuns in Taiwan are especially fond of LBGT laws, because they find friendship in men that wanted to get married and women that wanted to get married. The common point, is because like monastics, LBGT are incapable of procreating on an ordinary day without medical assistance. So in Singapore, if you want to be LBGT, I never attended their event at Hong Lim Park, if you want to be shaven monastic, I also never attended their event at Bright Hill, yet I do know one thing, they are abnormal people. Medically they are abnormal, legally they also are abnormal, so we can let them be. Yet if monastics and LBGT behaviour get in the way of the ordinary folks, either they excuse themselves completely into a system that suits them, armed with their visas, or most likely some won't, they want to stay on and fight from your genitals till your ancestors' ashes.
We take the war to them.
They thought they are helping themselves and the world, why doesn't the world understand them.
The world doesn't need to understand monks and LBGT, they are not normal.
Now, as I bring back the issue of Buddhism, since this is a Buddhist forum, the Gautama Buddha kept His hair on after He realised that monks don't work. So the shaven monks gotta lie - amidst misinformation - that it is some sacred mane. Now lions have manes, Buddhas have manes, humans have hair. Monks have none, they wear wigs when they visit bars and pubs with your donated moolah. You cannot arrest or regulate them because they are abnormal people, buddhist monks are not bodhisattvas, they are abonormal even though they recite sutras on Guan Yin and Pu Xian till their end of days. Your ordinary Guan Yin has hair, so does all the other major bodhisattvas. So if a monastic gets in your way asking you for donations or asking you to form a non-profit, give it to them i.e. get them into trouble. They can only learn if you give them abnormal things. They will even talk to you if you give them weird things. If you give them an opposite gender wife or a husband they cry, like LBGTS, they want to be with their own kind. LBGTs like to hang around with LBGTs, monastics like to hang around with monastics, yet they want your money because that's legal tender for them in a city, well that's where the suffering of us ordinary people hit a koan then. Some people live for the sake of protecting monastics, because in a link-less imagined past life, a monk saved them, they feel indebted. You can't change their brains, it's hard-coded in them. Your husband and wife will almost certainly suffer from such freak behaviour as they age as well, it's gravity, aging is very tedious. It's purposeless even, yet they do it, because they can't die, they are not willing to die, sometimes they are not willing to die for you, not willing to die for children, not willing to die for parents, not willing to die for others. Some are not willing to even die for themselves.
Whether as lay counsellors or preachers we cannot get too involved even though we may, besides we cannot kill them because apart from it being illegal, it doesn't deviate from the basic characteristic of this world, it's a shitty suffering stressful world. So, in closure, before anybody starts buddhism, suffer first. Suffer enough, know stress, e.g. by completing your school assignments on time, earning enough pay, looking after enough kids, so when you have done that, at least you have more experience then somebody that throws in a towel straightaway and tells you he/she wants a haircut.
Why is Mr Lee Kuan Yew regarded as wise or even shrewd, because it's in the minds of people, automagic. The wisdom of the ordinary begging or shaven monk or nun is stupid, that's why we call them wise because it keeps them alive.
Over these weeks, Aik TC posted alot of 'updates' on Buddhism, these updates have been prevalent since thousands of years ago. Westernised monastics doing stupid things that offend Christians. Easternised monastics talking stupid things that bullshit householders. Southernised monastics committing rubbish acts so that they harm governments. In the north, the monastics cannot live in Siberia and deep in the Arctic so nothing is reported in the name of Buddhism.
Buddhists are embarassing, and they rather you think otherwise.
They will say can you please shut up it's bad karma and it offends this or upsets that. They are true, yet subtly, it's because they can hardly put up with their own views and stupidity. They are stupid, they hope we are less stupid, so if you are 'stupid' in the slightest way, they want to cry or kill themselves yet they cannot do so because it's in their teachings, their principles, their rhetorics.
Now why is all the above malarkey important, because you live amongst people amidst their passions, you have to serve National Service. If the enemy comes shooting at your best buddy or spouse, you kill him/her i.e. the enemy with the best bullet or dagger you have. You don't listen to a bunch of bullshitting monks saying killing is evil, when you need to kill because your life is threatened, YOU KILL. You maim, you behead, and you destroy. It is easier for a wartime murderer to be taught because he has seen death, than a monk that has never served NS to teach you anything other than how to wipe your own genitals when you are done masturbating after somebody gave him/her a better robe.
An old zen riddle goes, "If you see a Buddha on the street, kill him". Absolutely correct.
More than that, why do you need to ask 'why' when you are bullying a monastic. Give it to him/her! The only reason why we may hold back, is because we are afraid of being punished as well, if we have the opportunity, if the monk or nun doesn't need hell, who needs that sh1t!
Values are like the shifting sands, they shift over the times. What that(values) is tolerated today maybe unacceptable in the past. Get over it!
Your comments are all over the place! Perhaps there is much dissatisfaction in your personal's experience. The world is sacred at the same time as it is profane. As much as it can be livable or we allow it to make our unlivable. Put away our disdain and humble ourselves just to be a better person tomorrow to what we are today.
Put away our false modesty and self righteousness in that we want others to acknowledge we are superior beings without admitting it ourselves personally.
Let us start dealing issues one issue at a time. Perhaps, then, we can get somewhere.Because I am afraid I do not understand the thrust of your article. Your cynicism are all over the place!
So do you come here seeking knowledge or dispensing it, pray tell.
Or let the teller is both teacher and student.
Dear Weychin, Respectable Weychin,
What comes, was without an ego, just a body from a womb. What were left as words, are the enemies of the intellectuals and the devotees, yet the outputs of an energetic. What is the problem with the body - not an ego - is food. Too much food. What is the cause of too much food, is too successful a governance and society.
In Buddhism, poverty is not an enemy to cultivation or meditative trances, it is a pre-requisite.
In Buddhism, subtle poverty is when your elders keep feeding you before you and I and everybody else die. Because poverty was, poverty is apparently no longer, poverty is deemed nation-wide is low fertility rates. Now, how can somebody without a womb possibly have a low fertility rate?
Pray tell. Pray answer. How can somebody without a womb possibly have a low fertility rate?
Now, let me bring in the Surangama Sutra, because if you need to dispense with ceremonies I need to do it more than you as a Buddhist. There are tibetan followers all over lately, which ain't a bad thing if vajrayana is that hot. Yet, if you note that nobody has really seen the walking and breathing specific Gautama Buddha alive this lifetime, you fall back on the basic teachings. Now the Surangama is special, you can only find it in East Asia, you can't find it in Tibet.
Bright Hill Monastery distributed it very religiously as a published full teaching since years back, they took away these books lately at the same time they wanted nuns instead while at the same time so that Ven Kwang Sheng becomes PM Lee's presidential religious advisor of sorts iirc. PM Lee wants babies, everybody wants babies these days, or so it seems.
You know natural progression better than me, it doesn't affect me. I am a householder. I look after pioneer generations and myself.
Yet if I need to make a topic typing 'Nuns and their undergarments', 'Babies and embryoes', it ain't about a value system.
You take a look at ousted Thai premier Yingluck, is it about a value system?
When ferries capsize in Korea and children die, and North Korea follows up by putting its forces on alert against a female South Korea Prime Minister, is it about a value system?
If 'I' read a Surangama Sutra, will 'you' understand it because 'I' read it?
If 'I' hold my non-killing precepts the whole day, will 'you' be blessed because 'I' held it?
If the Tibetans lost the Surangama Sutra and still keep them lost, is it doomsday for them or doomsday for the world?
Yet if Venerable Rahula dies, who are you [sic: as well as I] to represent the Gautama Buddha in His name unless you are given the special permission from another [sic: 'me']?
Once you 'got over it', you won't need to ask me to get over it, I would already have.
If you can't get over it, now, get over it. I am telling you this is an instruction this is an admonishment, now go, get over it.
Is it my job to know what you cannot get over? Because I am reluctant on billing you.
Oh yes, so dad wants to sell his house, the worse part is that he forgot he didn't own one. So mom wants to die, the worse part is that she no longer was alive. I gave them my blessings, do you prefer me to do a schism with a house and a wife or do you prefer me to do a schism with a mother and a father. Honestly I can offer you that option, yet I don't expect truth.
Without knowing poverty, one would not know what good fortune one has, one would not have develop gratefulness.
If the teachings of Buddha cannot lead to enlightenment, then we do not need to become Buddhist, it is with this faith that we are Buddhist.
If I were an illiterate, then I could'nt have read and understood the Shurangama Sutra.
However, if you could read and gotten enlightened by the Shurangama Sutra, then there is a possibility that I might understand if you have taught me.
It is with faith that what my father and mother taught is right, as I was young and do not know any better. Then it is with faith that I believe my teacher tought is right, as I would have known otherwise. Then is the teachings of the Buddha to contemplate with a discerning mind that dawns on what that is important and what is is right!
Sabbe satta sukhita hontu!
Sadhu! Sadhu! Sadhu!
Because of the importance of the Surangama Sutra in the dharma-ending age amidst all kinds of monks and nuns, especially tibetan ones, owing the grace and magnamity of Namo Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva I bother to reply.
We are living on an island where we come top in many aspects. I offer and provide you the most important ones:
However, Ananda was a monk. He was totally shaven when the Gautama Buddha had His hair of gnosis. If one is only a bald monk, you know better than to hang around with kings, so when the Buddha was enjoying a luxurious lunch, Ananda decided he will get himself raped by a hooker or her daughter on the pretext of begging for alms. So his unique form of negative demonstration found himself in tears before the Buddha.
The Buddha told Him approximately, Ananda we are fucked up. Life is shitty, I don't have time to monitor every single stupid thing you do. I gave you the basic teachings, but we are not in it for ourselves, it is a huge sitcom we have to put up with. I sent a major bodhisattva to give you a major piece of cosmic shit so that you realise that we are bullshitting, yet you gotta keep it real because I am married I have a wife and I have a son Rahula right beside you. Even though I am not sleeping with Yasodhara, Rahula is my only son. If you screw yourself up Ananda, and I have to punish Rahula and the other boys because of you, I will kill you as well.
So since I am a male and I too had a son, I cannot deprive you Ananda of your right to fornicate at a whorehouse, yet if you want to do it, disrobe. I got to look so damn handsome every day, it is not because I want you Ananda to be LBGT. It is because we already looking lowly, already renounced our kingdoms - now Ananda remember we are princes and kings we are not school dropouts like Amos Yee or retrenchees like Roy Ngerng we are not 'elite' we are more than elite we are autocrats. You take a look at Upali, he was a barber I make him look like a saint because he is easier to teach as a poor kid. You take a look at Mahakassayppa, he doesn't like to sleep with his wife if I and his parents put a pretty one beside him, he rather get a haircut and stay bald, if I ask you Ananda to learn from these jokers Upali and Mahakassappya, both you and I deserve to go to hell even more other than being impoverished!
So I have to ask a dozen or more hairy bodhisattvas, what do you think is better when people becoming increasing stupid. So each and every one of these hairy bodhisattvas says, maybe if we focus on the eyes and / or what the eyes see - including pretty girls, we can liberate ourselves. More ensues.
Maybe if we follow on the nose and / or what the nose smells..
Maybe if we follow on the tongue and / or what the tongue tastes..
Maybe if we follow on the skin and / or what the skin touches..
Maybe if we keep working, pathing roads, doing this, doing that, and / or what is being worked and done..
So finally the Buddha says, fuck you all guys, go kill yourselves all. I rather talk to a zhabor. So Avalokitesvara or Guan Yin says, I listen alot, I listen to my stupidity, your stupidity, everybody else's stupidity, and because you call me stupid again and again, I be nasty and I turn back on suffering and your sounds, views, voices, ideas and opinions and I ask you all to go and 'jiak sai'.
So the Gautama Buddha says, that is the right, that is the best. Ask all this people who suffer and keep complaining to go home and 'jiak sai', that is the best way in the dharma-ending age! So Ananda stops crying, everybody rejoices.
So they talk about things you cannot see and prove on an ordinary day. They talk about devas, about asuras, about hungry ghosts, about hell beings, and they go further and classify and classify all the way until Ananda almost can pee in his pants after his original cum dries up. However because this is a public sermon, because of stupid Ananda and his cum everybody already missed their feast, I am hungry also [sic: cursing, go to hell Ananda!] So we are adjourning for lunch, I need to assign somebody in charge, okay so you you you this guy with the bald head I always arrowed you I'll arrow you again, you uphold this sutra when I die you die and you come back and you continue this bullshit, less people forgot what's the problem with girls and nuns. If you never get to reincarnate, at least print this sermon out, somebody can pretend they got reincarnated, if they want to carry on the show they can carry on the show I'll be dead by then [pun: if I get reincarnated I'm going to be an Emeritus Senior Minister and tour China instead so that you can fight over this bullshit, at least the China Chinese are smarter than you guys and gals who are lowly offsprings of slaves like Upali]
Hopefully it is not due to the wrong notion that they have realized ‘non-self’ and that they are now beyond reproach; Not bound anymore by the law of karma; that they can discard whatever precepts they have being taught and is now blameless since there is not a ‘self’ left in them.
Somebody sees a self in oneself and another. Pity. Alas!
The above piece of neither moderation nor non-moderation is a perfect piece of evidence suggesting that the Buddha was an Indian who neither spoke English nor Chinese or other modernised Asian languages.
Why so? Because in a very simplistic reply, the pseudo respondent indicates that this world actually has a mark of sentient beings, a mark of life, a mark of attainment, or a mark of ego, and a mark of lifespan. In troubleshooting what appears to be an ordinary person with an ordinary problem, somebody with a labelled status accorded has firstly implied that there is such a label in this world that apart from 'non-self' - which was an American and British colloquial invention like 'Windows' and 'Android' instead of a Buddhaya Sanskrit or Pali term - is actually the only thing in the world characteristic of Buddhist doctrine. Now, 'stress' and 'impermanence' are two english words, they are what a modern-day Westernised sangha community - again mostly shaven bald monastics at times - invented because they needed lunch.
Instead of poking fun by quoting more scriptures, we get straight to the point attacking the opinion, "Did the Buddha teach any teaching [especially one on not-self]".
Are you sure the Buddha can speak English?
Are you sure an English speaking guy including Geofrey Thomas, Andrew O*ski, Ajahn Brahm, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dalai Lama, and 17th Karmapa were individually or all certified as having attained anything at all by an Indian guru i.e. the Buddha?
The Buddha didn't even certify anybody since 2500 years. So who certified you as a moderator, were you imagining a Buddha or did you really see one?
Now before I use the Lotus Dharma Flower approach to teach gravity, let's be humane, remember to take your lunch, you came from an Ministry of Education system, don't embarrass us Singaporeans further with your sharing of buddhish news articles that neither came from a major local news vendor nor a Buddha's mouth.
Firstly, other buddhists have their own beliefs, as a Singaporean the island gives you an electronic sangha and it is not approved entirely by the Government or our own citizens. Why so? Jeyel has been hosting these forums and Sggirls in the UK quite a while, they know they are not entirely accepted in the LAW OF OUR TIME and space. In case you don't know modern law, whatever you moderate here, you also represent Jeyel and a chain of Sggirls camwhores. If one's innocence cannot be proven by the Buddha in an entirety since 2500 years and more, don't hold too much hope of oneself and others, you are most probably guilty of something anyways.
If you start off by repenting, which also isn't a secure practice, there is more than one approach in the Mahayana to address a transgression on what appears to be on your end as well as mine perhaps. Yet if you start off talking by not-self, you have to keep going the wrong way, because not-self in the western sense is what is imagined to be the problem with the world. Not-self is not the intended outcome of Buddhist endeavour.
The outcome of Buddhist endeavour i.e. liberation suggests that oneself never existed, not that you go around labelling others as 'not-self' or 'stressed' or 'changing'. As a moderator how anybody misses this point is usual of the dharma-ending age.
Now there were buddhists that were arahants during their childhood during the time of the Buddha. If you lack attainment like I do, and you confess that 'we are all learning' or even 'we are all dying', I let you go home scot-free with a basic teaching like why 'I am dying'.
Because I was born.
I can even show you my mother and father and I say look, this is why I am dying, because they gave birth to me! Yippee!
Yet instead of recognising such a simple human teaching that has already been granted, you insist on being a deva, well owing the grace of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, you gotta work harder then to stay in your job. They put you here to look after a hell, if you don't have hells whence come the heavens? If you don't have hells and heavens, why will anybody need a bodhisattva or a moderator? If you don't need bodhisattvas and moderators, why do you need monks without hair on this island?
Egoism?
Pragmatism.
You don't need a reason to bully a monk. But you cannot assault a fellow lay person without special stupidity and / pr permission.
Self is a mind construct, in as much as a dream is not real, it exists at the point of occurrence. The tangibility of it exist in memory. Self is a process of human consciousness, tangibility of it's existence as resultant action propelled by it. Self arise and we are affected, self does not arise no actions come out of it. Without Self, there is neither positive or negative.
Mind thoughts are just mind thoughts, in it, self may arise, or self may not arise. Nothing is permanent. Self does not inherently exist, it is dependant on the aggregates.
The Shurangama Sutra is a skilful means to an end. Not unlike a parable,only serving a different set of audience. You are probably seeking gospel truths.
Names, time, location and situation is changed without being subject to chronological and historical authenticity.
Your version of Shurangama Sutra only serve to showcase your opinions without further educational benefits.
Ah, so now you realise, why Buddhists seldom publish New Translations like Hsuan Hua. Because if you publish a new translation, you have a new problem like a New Testament, people have to go and find out what went right or wrong - not with the Gospel or the Bodhi - but with the translator that has yet died like Charles Luk and others that translated this sutra.
Now you know what bad karma may mean.
Each new translation that you make especially in English, if you go bing you can see somebody translating his own in-house personalised version of the Diamond Sutra. Since last year, a Westerner has kept advertising he is coming up with his own render of the Flower Adornment Sutra i.e. Avatamsaka, it scared the publishers of Thomas ClearyÅ› edition so much that they decided to scan the entire book from the cover page till the last page and put it online as a pdf for free, because with each new book and each new translation you get a new schism.
I can bring in the first chapter of the Threefold Lotus now.
The world is about meaning, innumerable meaning, when you seek it, you find your own meaning. Your meaning and interpretation differs from mine, thatÅ› what we wanted and intended. Arbitrarily we offer a variety of practices that we accord merits, yet these merits neither translate all the time into hard cash, nor do they translate into newborn babies or civil service passes. Effectively thereÅ› no such legal tender known as a merit that abides more than years that your fingers can count.
Which is why the books used to be free since centuries ago if you could read Chinese or even Mongolian. They were made with the blood of the Chinese that took over what the Hindus drove out.
However, the commonwealth states today are not Chinese. They will commercialise freely with ISBN numbers when you teach them Chinese and let them translate into English as the tibetans offer their libraries at $250 a page at http://84000.co. If I translate the Surangama Sutra properly for you and everybody, I can get $250 a page from the tibetans.
However, I can teach you how to read Chinese which you already know. Go http://bfnn.org itÅ› just one entry point for those who like Buddhism in its native language.
Buddhism in English is a very different portfolio from Buddhism in Chinese because the audience is different. If you are a Singaporean, without me teaching you, you will know where to find the Surangama and more commentaries in Chinese.
This is a dilemma of a Singaporean. Buddhism was not a profiteering buddhism. However, since we are effectively multi-lingual in Asian and Western languages, our demand is less than small. When your technical recession comes in, itÅ› not just me, every temple wants to do this i.e. translating this sutra, that sutra. Why will I want to help Jeyel?
Haaa, reminds me of donut.