The practice of non-attachment and independence

There is nothing wrong to enjoy and appreciate the presence of agreeable companionship, support and interaction from some other beings, however, the mind that is endowed with non-attachment and independence, can also enjoy and appreciate aloneness or solitude under the absence of agreeable companionship, support or interaction from some other beings, where the mind has no problem, or unhappiness, or suffering, upon the absence of agreeable companionship, support and interaction from some others.

One's peace and happiness doesn't come from the presence of agreeable companionship, support and interaction from some other beings.

One is peaceful and happy as one is, regardless of whether with or without the company, support and interaction from some other beings.

That is indeed the basic foundation of the yoga practice.

All kinds of enhanced physical health, fitness, ability, skill, stamina, strength and flexibility through performing some kinds of yoga practice regularly don't determine that the mind is practicing yoga, or realizes yoga, if without the basic essential non-attachment and independence.

Love without attachment and possessiveness

"How can a person being engaged in any kind of relationship with someone, and appreciates and loves that person sincerely, but then at the same time, one is not being determined by the absence and presence of agreeable and disagreeable, desirable and undesirable, pleasant and unpleasant interactions and events that occur in any form of human relationship, regardless of whether it's relationship with family, friends and lover or spouse?"

The passionate minds that are being conditioned by worldly egoistic thinking, belief, values and practice, would have great difficulty in understanding towards "One can love and appreciate some others in different type of relationship in life very much, but won't be feeling "losing/missing someone or something that oneself loves and appreciates very much" upon the absence of that person and/or the relationship."

The passionate minds think and believe that, all kinds of love, can only exist along with attachment and possessiveness/the sense of belonging, where the amount of love is being determined or measured by the degrees of attachment and possessiveness in any kind of relationship.

The minds that truly understand towards the truth of selflessness and impermanence in all and everything, would understand that there's nothing or none belonged to anything or anyone.

One knows how to love all and everyone without attachment and possessiveness, where one doesn't own any kind of existing relationship as well as the person(s) in the relationship with oneself.

Without attachment and possessiveness towards the relationship and the person(s) in the relationship with oneself, it doesn't mean that one doesn't care about or doesn't take the relationship and the person(s) in the relationship with oneself seriously.

One appreciates all the different kind of human relationships existing in the present moment now, as they are, not necessarily all desirable and agreeable, as well as loves the person(s) in the relationship with oneself unconditionally as it is, without the idea of "You are my family," or "You are my friend,", or "You are my lover/spouse," or "You belonged to me," or "You are mine," or "This is my family/my friend/my lover/my spouse/my relationship." And hence, one doesn't loose anything and/or anyone, upon the absence of the relationship and/or the person(s) in the different type of relationship with oneself, upon impermanent changes that are not necessarily being the way that how everyone would like it to be. Upon the realization of selflessness, there's no 'I' being there to be claiming, "I am losing something or someone," or "I don't want to loose something or someone that is upmost important to me," as well as, there's nothing or none to loose, as nothing/none belonged to anyone.

"Loving others unconditionally, as they are" doesn't mean that one should be blindly agreeing with everything and saying "yes" to everything, or one wouldn't be having any dislike or disagreement towards any kind of ignorant thinking and behavior, or shouldn't be saying "no" to any kind of demands, or allowing oneself to be mistreated or abused by other people's ignorant hurtful behavior repeatedly, encouraging and empowering such ignorance. However, one is not being determined by the likes and dislikes, agreements and disagreements, and pleasant or unpleasant affairs and events that occur in any kind of relationship. One can choose to move away from such ignorance, if necessarily, if possible, not to be encouraging and empowering such ignorance.

The passionate minds would react and feel disappointed and dissatisfied, upon one's desires/demands/cravings are not being gratified, as well as would react and feel disappointed, confused and hurt, if someone in any kind of relationship with oneself telling oneself about, "There's nothing to loose in any kind of relationship with anything and anyone," or "You are free to love me, or not, and you are free to stay or leave as you wish," or "I love you as you are, even if you don't love me and/or are not in a relationship with me," as they would interpret that as "You don't love me. You don't appreciate me or our relationship. I mean nothing to you. I am not important to you. Our relationship doesn't mean anything to you," not understanding that, that is unconditional non-possessive type of love.

The minds that feel disappointed and hurt by someone in any kind of relationship because one's desires/demands/cravings are not being gratified by those in any form of relationship with oneself, would react in the way that would hurt oneself and those in certain type of relationship with oneself, out of disappointment, resentment, or rebelliousness. Such minds don't even love themselves, not to say, they don't really love those whom they think they love very much, as they would do things that would hurt anyone, including themselves, upon not getting what they like and want, and/or are getting what they don't like and don't want. They only love their desires of what they like and want.

The minds that know how to love themselves and others unconditionally won't do anything that would hurt oneself and/or others deliberately, out of disappointment, resentment, or rebelliousness, upon the non-gratification of their desires or demands. Such as when the parents reject their children's demands for something, the children might react and behave in the way that would hurt themselves and their parents deliberately, out of disappointment, resentment and rebelliousness. Or, one would react and behave in the way that hurt oneself and the partner/spouse intentionally, out of disappointment, resentment and rebelliousness, upon one's demands towards the partner/spouse and the relationship are not being gratified.

Most minds don't appreciate such unconditional non-possessive type of love, instead, they would rather be chasing after passionate possessive type of love, where there is intense attachment, identification, possessiveness, clinging and craving towards one another, to receive attention, love, care, support, comfort, encouragement, companionship, interaction, acknowledgement, agreement, appreciation, praise and compliment from one another, to boost the sense of self-esteem, goodness, happiness, accomplishment, positiveness and meaningfulness.

The minds that realized selflessness and impermanence transcend all these names and forms, not being determined by all these names and forms to be 'I', transcending the sense of self-esteem, goodness, happiness, accomplishment, positiveness and meaningfulness, where they don't need to feel confident, good, happy, accomplished, positive or meaningful at all, not to say, to be building and boosting the sense of self-esteem, goodness, happiness, accomplishment, positiveness and meaningfulness out of all kinds of selfless impermanent names and forms, being determined and empowered by passionate egoistic attachment, identification, desire of craving and aversion, comparison, judgment and expectation.

Many minds would think and believe that, "Good friends, or friends, are those who regularly meet up with one another, visit each other, spend lots of time together and doing something together, or keeping in touch, talking to and sharing with each other all the time. Otherwise, they are not good friends, or they are not my friends at all." These minds cannot understand that, "True friends are not necessarily have to be regularly meeting up with one another, visiting each other, spending lots of time together and doing something together, or keeping in touch, talking to and sharing with each other." They cannot comprehend that, "friends" are those who will always be a friend even after many years not meeting up with one another, not visiting each other, not spending lots of time together and not doing something together, or not keeping in touch, not talking to and not sharing with each other, either with or without any reasons.

Most passionate egoistic minds have no such understanding, and they would feel disappointed, unhappy or lonely, if they think they don't have any friends to interact, socialize, share and play with, then know that it's due to the attachment and possessiveness towards 'friends' and 'friendship', as well as the craving towards the presence of friends with the interactions and activities, and the aversion towards the absence of friends and the interactions and activities, are not being gratified.

To truly understand this dispassionate unconditional non-possessive type of love, one must perform self-inquiry towards what are "selflessness in all and everything" and "attachment and possessiveness", as well as what is "love without attachment and possessiveness" or "dispassionate unconditional love," to attain direct realization towards all these terms.

"Love without attachment and possessiveness" is nothing to do with the passionate engagement in multiple intimate love affairs or relationships with many different people/lovers/partners on different timing or at the same time, while thinking and believing that that's what unconditional love and care towards all and everyone is about.

Non-attachment and non-possessiveness is nothing to do with non-commitment, or non-seriousness, or non-appreciative, or irresponsibility towards any kind of human relationship. One can be seriously and genuinely engaging in as well as being responsible and appreciative towards all kind of human relationship, as well as being contented with having one single committed intimate love affair or relationship with someone, but without any attachment or the sense of possessiveness, respecting all kind of impermanent changes as they are.

However, unconditional love that is void of attachment and possessiveness is highly being misused by the passionate minds, including some yoga practitioners or yoga teachers, as the 'spiritual' excuse to justify one's irresponsibility towards one's existing relationship with family, friends or lover/spouse/partner, or to justify one's greedy discontented lustful desire to be enjoying or engaging in "many different intimate love affair/relationship with different people at different timing," or "multiple committed/uncommitted intimate love affairs/relationships with different lovers/partners at the same time," or "any kind of sexual misconduct," using the excuse of 'love sharing' or 'spiritual healing' to be engaging in intimate love/sexual affair/relationship with the disturbed minds that are longing to be comforted, loved or healed by some others, while thinking and believing and propagating that, "unconditional love without attachment and possessiveness" means "I have so much love and care (lust) that needed to share with as many people as possible, without being limited by any commitment or responsibility," as well as, using the excuse of "unconditional love without attachment and commitment" to be expecting one's lover/spouse shouldn't be disturbed or hurt by one's greedy lustful desire that needed to be shared with many other different lovers/partners, thinking and believing that it's what unconditional love is about, but not really. That's their freedom of thinking and behavior, however, it's completely nothing to do with yoga.

One can be loving one's lover/spouse unconditionally, but it doesn't mean that one should be encouraging or empowering such ignorant thinking and behavior of the lover/spouse that is over-powered by greedy lustful desires, where one can let go such "relationship" without any disappointment or resentment, loving the lover/spouse as he/she is, being ignorant and behaving ignorantly, thinking and believing that he/she loves his/her lover/partner/spouse very much, but he/she would do things that hurt those whom they think they love very much out of greed, discontentment and lustful desires, or out of disappointment, dissatisfaction, resentment or rebelliousness, due to ungratified desires. One doesn't need to stay in such relationship, but more importantly, one is not being determined or bothered by such ignorance and ignorant behavior of the lover/partner/spouse that is being ignorant towards his/her own ignorance and ignorant behavior. It's only due to the presence of attachment and possessiveness as well as the desire of craving and aversion, most people can't let go and would feel disappointed, hurt and disturbed for being in any relationship with anyone that is under the influence of ignorance with the presence of ignorant behavior, but then oneself also reacting and behaving in the way that would be hurting oneself and those in the relationship with oneself, intentionally, out of resentment and rebelliousness.

"You hurt me, I'll hurt you back" is not love at all.

Some people might not be doing anything hurtful directly to the lover/partner/spouse, refuse to communicate and have better understanding among one another, but then would go behind their back saying and doing many things that would hurt them. That is more evil and hurtful than those who express their disagreement directly to their lover/partner/spouse to communicate about any issues or misunderstanding. However, it seems to be part of certain cultural practice to not express any disagreement directly with the person involved, but to go behind people's back to complain, bitching and hurt the person, to seek support and agreement from other people towards one's disagreement towards the lover/partner/spouse, to relieve one's dissatisfaction and unhappiness. By complaining and bitching about one's lover/partner/spouse whom oneself dislikes and hates so much, with or without the intention of getting other people's support and agreement towards oneself, so that other people will also dislike and hating one's lover/partner/spouse for something that oneself dislikes and disagrees with, while thinking that oneself is a 'victim' of the bad behavior of one's lover/partner/spouse, it only shows that oneself doesn't love the lover/partner/spouse at all.

Yoga practitioners need to stay away from such ignorant thinking, belief, values and practice, while not encouraging or empowering such ignorance.

Many yoga teachers might think and believe that they are doing the right thing or the compassionate action to be 'helping' and 'comforting' other people's unhappy mind by being a sympathetic/empathetic listener and supporter to other people who need to be complaining about what they think and believe is their relationship problem and unhappiness, not being aware of that is actually empowering the ignorance in such minds. These minds themselves don't really love themselves, not to say, they don't love their lover/partner/spouse at all, but they only love their selfish desire and expectation towards their lover/partner/spouse and their love relationship to be in certain way, and out of one's dissatisfaction and disappointment, when they don't get what they like and want, and are getting what they don't like and don't want, upon the lover/partner/spouse and the relationship is not being the way that they expect and desire it to be, they felt 'disappointed', 'unhappy' and 'hurt', and need to be complaining to other people about all kinds of bad and terrible things about their lover/partner/spouse, while thinking and believing that they love their lover/partner/spouse very much, but they are being 'disappointed', 'disturbed' and 'hurt' by their lover/partner/spouse who is bad and terrible, "Oh, I love him/her so much, but he/she is so bad and terrible. I am a victim of his/her bad and terrible behavior, but I can't, and I don't want to let go this relationship because I love him/her so much. I feel so hurt and unhappy because of this bad relationship, and I need sympathy, empathy, comfort and support from other people, acknowledging that my hurt and my unhappiness is due to my lover/partner/spouse is so bad and terrible."

The minds that understand, if one truly loves someone, there's no hurt or disappointment arising in oneself regardless of all kinds of undesirable and disagreeable interactions and happenings in the relationship, and there won't be such 'need' to be complaining to other people, to be seeking sympathy, empathy, comfort and support from some others to justify about "I am loving, good and right, while he/she is unloving, bad and wrong." One can choose to remain in the relationship that is not all desirable and agreeable, or let go any relationship that involved ignorant and hurtful behavior that keep hurting oneself and those in any kind of relationship with oneself out of ignorance, without disappointment or resentment.

If yoga teachers truly want to help the disturbed suffering minds that are under the influence of ignorance to be free from all kinds of disappointment, disturb, hurt and unhappiness due to ignorance, it's not by comforting and supporting their ignorant thinking or incorrect understanding, to be encouraging and empowering their ignorance, but it's guiding and allowing them to see the ignorance in themselves that give rise to such disappointment, disturb, hurt and unhappiness. Even though it's an unpleasant process, and most minds don't like such confrontation to be seeing and acknowledging the ignorance in themselves as well as all kinds of incorrect thinking and understanding that hurt themselves and those whom they think they love very much, but that's liberation for oneself and those in any kind of relationship with oneself.

Sincere yoga practitioners who really want to practice yoga and realize yoga, need to have the basic wisdom to inquire towards the truth of everything, and not being conditioned by any kind of passionate egoistic thinking, belief, values and practice in the world of ignorance and egoism, as well as not being 'deluded' by any kind of impure understanding and intention that exist in the world of yoga.

All kinds of love and connection

Regardless of family, friendship, relationship, community, spiritual or transcendental love and connection, allowing all kinds of love and connection to be present or absent, and being what it is, as it is, regardless of whether agreeable or disagreeable. Without chasing after, longing or clinging towards all kinds of love and connection. Without expectation towards all kinds of love and connection to be or not to be in certain way.

Want to learn and practice yoga? (24)

In certain social and cultural thinking, belief, values and practice, people are being taught about the benefits of making as many friends as possible, while making as less enemies as possible, in order to make life easier and less difficult.

The parents told the young children, "At home, you depend on family. Outside, at school, at work place, in career, in business, in social status and wealth, you depend on friends and connections."

The main intention and aspiration for building and expanding one's social connections and personal friends circle, is about getting as much love, care, help and support as possible, while getting as less obstacles and hardships as possible, in order to be advancing and attaining higher and higher success in one's life, career, business, status, or wealth.

People have the idea and values of "Friends are being there to be caring, loving, helping and supporting one another physically, mentally, emotionally or financially, especially during difficult times, where it will make life more easy and less difficult."

'Personal friends' or 'social connections' are being seen as one of the important assets that one should be accumulating and appreciating in order to be successful, joyful and meaningful in life.

People are being conditioned to think and believe that, "Having very few friends, or not having many friends in one's life, or not having any personal friends at all, to be playing, enjoying and sharing life with, or to be supporting and interacting with physically, mentally and emotionally, is something terrible and miserable, bad and wrong. Where one's life is doomed to be lonely, dulled, sad, joyless and meaningless, if without many or any personal friends, or life is doomed to be more hard, miserable and suffering, if without many or any social connections."

The sense of self-esteem, self-worth, confidence, success, positiveness and meaningfulness that doesn't need to be there in any human beings, is very much being determined by the quantity and quality of the personal friends circle and the social connections or social networking. Many people spend a lot of time and effort performing certain actions in order to be pleasing some others for getting the liking and acceptance, to be making friendship or building social connection with some others.

Some people who don't have spouse or children, or don't want to have spouse or children will be comforting themselves or be consoled by others, "I (You) don't have spouse or children, but at least, I (you) have many friends." Most people cannot understand that how come someone can be alone by oneself, and still be peaceful and happy, free from loneliness or self-pity.

Similarly, in certain worldly spiritual, religious and political thinking, belief, values and practice, making as many connections, members, followers, supporters and contributors as possible, in order to achieve certain selfish desire, aspiration or ambition, to be preserving, expanding, protecting and empowering one's particular spirituality, or religion, or political/national existence, identity, ideas, values and movements.

In the teachings and practice of Yoga and Buddhism, it's about letting go such thinking, belief, values and practice that is about making many personal friendships as well as social connections with the selfish intention to be benefiting oneself in certain way, to achieve one's personal desires and ambitions, or to get rid of loneliness, boredom and meaninglessness, but it's about be truly friendly, helpful and kind towards all beings without any selfish intention or expectation, out of humanity and compassion, without discrimination of 'friends' or 'not friends', 'connections' or 'non-connections', 'my people' or 'not my people'.

Be kind, friendly and helpful towards all and everyone, and provide necessary assistance particularly towards those who are 'truly' in need of certain help, within one's reach and ability, without discrimination or expectation. Being kind, friendly and helpful but ignorantly providing 'requested help' to those who don't really need help at all, but merely to be taking advantage of 'friends' and 'connections' to enjoy certain conveniences and benefits for oneself, doesn't help the world to have less ignorance and the consequences of ignorance.

Free from the idea and values of "Making as many friends as possible so that one will always have some friends to play with at anytime, because sometimes certain friends might not be available to be there for oneself, but at least there are many more other friends that might still be available to play with, or to be there for oneself whenever one needs help, or whenever one encounters any difficulties in life."

Many people might not be aware of that is what they have been learning and practicing from young, as well as passing down those selfish thinking, belief, values and practice onto their next generations, which they think is normal, and there's nothing selfish about it.

In social and cultural idea and values,

"Friends/connections are something good and positive."

"Friends/connections are there to make life easier and less difficult, more meaningful and less lonely."

"Friends/connections are there to help one's career and business to grow and be successful."

"Friends/connections are there to play with, to comfort, support and stand up for each other, and to protect one another."

"Friends/connections are there for helping one another to achieve everyone's aspirations and ambitions in life."

"You are not my friend, or you are not a good friend, because you are not there for me when I needed you, and you didn't keep in touch or stay connected with me for so long."

In certain spiritual, religious and political idea and values,

"You support me, I'll support you. You help me, I'll help you. You scratch my back, I'll scratch your back, and vice versa."

"You disagree with me and go against me, or you disrespect and disobey me, I'll punish and hurt you."

"The friends of my enemies are my enemies. The enemies of my enemies are my friends."

In the teachings and practice of Yoga and Buddhism,

Regardless of whether staying or not staying in touch/connected, with or without personal friendship/connection, agreeable or disagreeable, one just be kind and friendly to all, without discrimination, without selfish intention or expectation.

The best help to all humanity, is helping and guiding all, without discrimination, to be free from ignorance and egoism, which is the root cause of suffering arising in oneself and inflicting unto others, and not empowering the ignorance and egoism in the minds.

Inquire the truth of everything.

'Good friend' vs 'wise company' or Satsanga

People often talk about 'Friends are highly important in life', where 'good friends' are those who are intelligent/educated/knowledgeable enough to inspire one another in those fields, who are like-minded, who are available being there physically/mentally/emotionally 'caring' for one another, to be fun interacting and playing with, to do something 'great' together, to 'help' and 'console' one another or to 'protect' and 'stand up for' one another when it's needed. Some people can't even manage their own existing life problems, but still want to be busy minding other people's or so called friend's ceaseless many kind of 'problems', and ending up bringing more 'problems' into one's life.

People might think and say that "This is what true good friends are, sharing one's another problems. The world is such a wonderful place full of people unhesitating generating all kinds of problem here and there that can be shared by many good friends. Creating problems, sharing problems and standing up for one another indicate that the world is full of love and kindness."

On the path of yoga or Buddhism, a true 'good friend' is a 'wise company' or 'Satsanga' who is not necessarily someone intelligent/educated/knowledgeable to inspire one another in those fields, or being like-minded and being there physically/mentally/emotionally for one another, being fun to interact and play with, but someone who is wise and independent enough to look after oneself by minimizing or not generating unnecessary 'problems'/'inconvenience' in one's life and/or other people's life, where oneself doesn't really 'need' anyone who is like-minded being there physically/mentally/emotionally to be fun to 'interact and play with', or to 'help', 'console', 'protect' and 'stand up for' oneself for anything, as the one who is free from ignorance and egoism, doesn't generate unnecessary 'problems' and knows how not to get involve with other people's unnecessary 'life problem'/'social media related problem'/'relationship problem'/'emotional problem'/'financial problem' that occur due to ignorance, egoism and impurities, while 'selflessly' and 'intentionlessly', one's wisdom and independence might or might not be inspiring others to also be wise and independent to be looking after themselves, by minimizing or stop generating unnecessary 'problems' in one's life and/or other people's life.

Meanwhile, 'Kutsanga' are those so called 'friends' who consume one's time, attention and energy into 'sharing and solving' their unnecessary 'problems' that arise due to ignorance and egoism, as these 'friends', even among the intelligent/educated/knowledgeable group of people, will keep generating 'problems' in their life 'unwittingly' out of ignorance and egoism that 'needed' to be shared by their friends, and cause distraction/obstacle to one's practice for yoga of silencing the modification of the mind. But then this would be perceived as something 'selfish', 'inhuman', or 'wrong' by many passionate people in the world.

Selfless yoga practitioners don't have any intention/aspiration to inspire anyone for anything, while allowing everyone to perceive, react and feel the way as they are.

Whether people would be inspired by someone or something, or not, it's coming from the people themselves perceiving, reacting and feeling being inspired, or not, it's not coming from someone or something being inspiring and has the 'power' to inspire everyone. Most of the time, something really 'good' might appear to be 'uninspiring' for many people, and vice versa.

Compassion manifests along the realization of selflessness, respecting the law of nature, impermanence, cause and effect, while may or may not selflessly/intentionlessly 'guiding' other beings towards the realization of selflessness, wisdom and compassion, be free from ignorance and egoism, though this might appear to be 'inhuman', 'unloving', 'wrong' or 'harsh' for the passionate minds. It's nothing to do with what the passionate minds think and believe as 'The kind of human relationship, interaction and behavior that project loving kindness in certain way' that is unwittingly encouraging and empowering ignorance and egoism in the world.

This teaching is not about one shouldn't have any friends in life. It's about whether the mind is free from ignorance and egoism, or not, especially for those who want to practice yoga and meditation to transcend the mind perception of a worldly life existence of names and forms that is subject to impermanence and selflessness.

The minds that are free from ignorance and egoism, will be friendly towards all and everyone, unconditionally without discrimination of personal likes and dislikes/agreements and disagreements based on particular thinking and belief, appearance, gender, race, nationality, behavior, cultural/religious values and practice, without the 'need' of making and accumulating personal friendships that can share and interact with physically/mentally/emotionally in order to feel good, happy, love, joyful or meaningful, or to be 'healthy' physically/mentally/emotionally. There's no 'friends' or 'not friends' in the minds that are free from ignorance and egoism.

Passionate minds, including health professionals and yoga enthusiasts, cannot comprehend that human beings can be happy and healthy as one is, regardless of whether being interacting or not interacting with some other human beings physically/mentally/emotionally, without suffering from the sense of loneliness, joylessness, meaninglessness, left out or unloved if there's lack of such social interaction.

There's nothing wrong with having a few or many friends in life, but if the mind strongly thinks and believes that having no 'friends' to share, interact or play with, is something bad, wrong, negative, terrible, joyless, meaningless, unhealthy or lonely, then it shows that the mind is not free from ignorance and egoism. If the mind is free from ignorance and egoism, free from egoistic attachment, identification, desire of craving and aversion and expectation, then regardless of whether one has none, or a few, or many friends in life, to share, interact and play with physically/mentally/emotionally, there's no difference. This mind is free and peaceful as it is, being undetermined by 'how many (good) friends one has', to be happy, joyful and peaceful, or not. The mind is free from the sense of loneliness/meaninglessness/joylessness/left out/unloved, if 'friends' that can share, interact and play with physically/mentally/emotionally are not available.

Truthfulness and worldly social mingling and interaction

To practice truthfulness (one of the basic practice of yoga), we learn how to minimize as much as possible from engaging in worldly social mingling and interaction, because these worldly social activities empower egoism and strengthen worldly ideas, which is the opposite of yoga practice.

If we analyze our daily interactions and conversations with other people, we will see that it's mostly about the empowerment of egoistic personal and worldly attachment, identification, judgment, comparison, expectation, desires of craving and aversion, the past and the future. Yoga practice is to free the mind from all these mind activities of egoism. There is also intentional and unintentional hypocrisy, untruthfulness and ego flattering elements in many of the social interactions and conversations.

It's a normal cultural social politeness for many people to be HYPOCRITE and UNTRUTHFUL and FLATTERING when interacting with other people, to maintain 'good relationship' with everyone in the society and this game of hypocrisy and untruthfulness exists even among family members, couples and friends.

Most people don't want to know the truth as the truth is not necessarily something that they like or agree with.

Since little, everyone was being taught to be polite, to be good and say only good thing in front of everyone, to please other people, to gain love and liking, and acknowledgment/acceptance/recognition from other people, to maintain 'good relationship' with everyone, but then, behind people's back, there's complaints, gossips, slandering, back-biting, criticism, blame, or bitching. There are many this type of 'good relationships' everywhere in the worldly life. And this is being perceived as the 'correct' behavior or 'normal' way of life in the society and in the family. People don't like truthfulness and straightforwardness. Being truthful and straightforward is something very rude and wrong.

Truth seekers don't waste energy, time and effort in this worldly egoistic game of accumulating and cultivating such type of 'good relationships'. And hence, the practice of silence comes into everyday life to minimize involving in unnecessary social game of hypocrisy, untruthfulness and flattering of the ego of oneself and others. Performing selfless service in a huge community, is not about cultivating and accumulating personal friendships or relationships at all, if one truly knows what is selflessness and selfless service.

There are not many 'yoga and meditation enthusiasts' have the understanding, initiative and willpower to cut down or cut off worldly passionate social activities. It's a painful and contradicting process for the mind to retreat from worldly social activities, as it is going against 'normal cultural thinking and behavior'. There are lots of 'justifications' coming from the egoistic mind to avoid or give up renunciation from a passionate worldly life of social activities.

Those who aren't really interested in the path of yoga and meditation to free the mind from the root cause of all suffering - ignorance and egoism, they don't have to practice truthfulness or dispassion or renunciation from worldly social activities.

It's everyone's freedom for what they want to do with their life existence, and what they want to think and believe.

Treat others the way that how we would like to be treated?

"Treat others the way that how we would like to be treated?"

Though this is a good and positive thinking we hear very often from here and there, but we are not free, as we still have expectation towards how others should treat us the way we would like to be treated in return. We will be very disappointed if after we treat others the way that we would also like to be treated the same by them, but they don't. And most of the time, they don't.

Even when we think we have shown lots of love and cares to another being, it's not necessarily that this being will treat us the way how we treat them, or how we would like to be treated in return. 

Be free. Just be ourselves. And let others to treat us the way that they want to treat us. It's their freedom of thinking, action and speech.

We can only appreciate if others treat us the way we like them to treat us, and if they don't, let them be.

Om shanti.

Friendliness and making friends are two different things...

Being friendly to all beings is not the same as when we want to be friend with certain people whom we like and agree with, and expect some sort of friendship, accompany and social interaction in return.

A person who is an introvert, who doesn't talk much and doesn't appear to be warm nor sociable, but it's not necessarily unfriendly. Not having many friends to hang out with doesn't necessarily means that we are unfriendly beings. We might be free from negative thinking and judgment about ourselves and other people, and have no ill-thinking and ill-will towards ourselves and others.

A person can be an extrovert, who might be talkative and appear to be very warm and sociable, but it's not necessarily friendly. Having many friends to hang out with doesn't necessarily means that we are friendly beings. We might have lots of negative thinking and judgment about ourselves and other people, and have ill-thinking and ill-will towards ourselves and others.

In a casual conversation among people whether it's with somebody whom we recognize as friend or acquaintance, what we talk about usually are mostly about the past, the future, third party, judgment, comparison, expectation, likes and dislikes, agreements and disagreements, as well as using mocking, teasing, criticism, slandering, back-biting about someone else as an entertaining subject to talk about and laugh about. One common thing that happens naturally in human social conversation is we like to say nice things in front of other people, but then we will mock, tease and criticize about them behind their back. All these interactive conversations are actually move our mind away from the present moment, and are empowering ignorance, impurities and egoism.

One of our yoga practice is talk less, and strictly refrain from any interactive conversations that involve slandering, back-biting, condemn, mocking, teasing, flirting, lies telling, exaggeration, boasting, manipulation, conflict, discrimination, hatred and any kinds of speech that will generate or promote disharmony in ourselves and in others.

This is part of the yoga practice of eliminating the ego, pride and arrogance by filtering, restricting and controlling our thinking, actions and speech. This is the practice of silence (Mauna) which is very important in our yoga and meditation practice.

We can appear to be very 'friendly', make friendship with many people and have many social interactive friends, but it is not necessarily that we are free from ill-will, jealousy, ill-thinking, criticism, slandering, back-biting, and discrimination towards all these 'friends'. Not to say when we come in contact with the people whom we dislike and disagree with, we might criticize, or condemn, or might say and do things that will hurt the reputation and feelings of these people whom we dislike and disagree with.

This type of egoistic friendliness is conditional. We can only be friendly to those whom we like and agree with, but not to those whom we dislike and disagree with.

Cultivate universal friendliness is part our yoga practice.

This type of friendliness is free from ill-will, jealousy, ill-thinking, criticism, slandering, back-biting or discrimination of likes and dislikes, agreements and disagreements towards all beings. There's no 'special' treatment towards certain people, whether they are our 'friends' whom we like or they are not our 'friends' whom we dislike.

Universal friendliness is being kind towards all and everyone without discrimination nor judgment, without superiority nor inferiority, without selfish desires nor expectation, without influenced by the likes and dislikes, agreements and disagreements coming from our egoistic mind.

As long as we are still not free from discrimination, have ill-will, anger and hatred towards certain people and things that our mind dislikes and disagrees with, we are not really friendly even if we have many social friends in life.

Be truly friendly to all without discrimination.

Be happy.

Impermanence...

Impermanence is the permanent truth of everything with all the qualities of names and forms.

Whenever somebody talks to me about this or that person is very nice, or this or that person is not good, usually I'll just listen, with no comment. Or my reply is, it's not necessarily. Everyone is just being what they are in the present moment. They aren't nice or not nice, good or not good, happy or unhappy. All these impermanent states of mind are not who they really are.

How we think and feel about others, is coming our own mind reacts towards what it perceives through the senses, based on what it likes and dislikes, agrees and disagrees with. Most of the time other people have no intention to be 'not nice' to us, but our own mind perceives it as a 'not nice' treatment from other people, because we expect other people to treat us in certain ways that we like other people to treat us, or we expect other people should treat us the way that we think they should treat us. When we don't receive what we think we should be receiving, our mind is not happy, or dissatisfied and angry.

I am aware that sometimes people may appear to be nice and sometimes may appear to be not so nice, and it's fine. Even if that person is a 'saint' or highly respected person, everyone is allowed to be nice or not nice, or behave differently from time to time. As I have no expectation towards other people how they should be like.

I seldom ask people who they are, where they come from, what they did in the past, what they do for living, and what they want to do in the future, as all these names and forms are not important, because I only see everyone as they are, in the present moment. And even how they are in this present moment now, is also impermanent.

I do not 'fall in love' with anyone who appears to be very nice, nor do I get unhappy with anyone who appears to be not nice, nor do I get disappointed or unhappy when the people who used to be nice, but now appear to be not nice. As I have no attachment nor expectation towards anyone or anything.

I just do my best to be friendly and nice to all and everyone without discrimination of different names and forms. I have no interest in accumulating personal social friendships. But I do my best to be a universal friend to all and everyone.

I see everyone as universal friends, even though there are people who dislike me and disagree with me. They are free to dislike and disagree with me. They are allowed to reject or ignore my friendliness. I still can be friendly and be nice to everyone even if I am not 'their' friend.

If people want to be nice and friendly to me without any expectation, I appreciate and be grateful.

Some people might get offended if they want to be friend with somebody, but that person has no interest to be friend with them. People get offended is because they expect that if they are nice to other people, then other people should also be nice to them, and they don't really want to be friend to other people, but they just want other people to be 'their' friend. And when this desire is not being gratified, they are not happy. Just like when some people fall in love with another person, and they have the desire to be with that person, hoping that person will also love them in return and have a love relationship with them. And if this desire is not being gratified, they will feel so unhappy.

If some people want to create problems, I'll just move away.

Whenever somebody told us that we are so lucky to be living in Langkawi and our yoga studio is so lovely and it's such a very nice place to practice yoga and meditation, I told them that even this lovely yoga studio that everyone loves so much is also impermanent. Someday sooner or later, this yoga studio will not be available. And it's fine. I just appreciate the present moment that it is still available for teaching yoga, for now.

It is fine whether I live in Langkawi or in Malaysia, or not. It is fine whether I am teaching yoga or not.

May all be happy.

Om shanti.

My life stories - Part 2

My life stories – Part 2
Stories from my past memories – childhood, family, friends, growing up, poverty, integrity, dreams come true, finding peace and happiness, Buddhism, Yoga, and now…
 

(Updated November 2020)

I went to an English medium preschool kindergarten for one year before I entered a Chinese medium primary school for six years. I met and mixed with other children who were same age as me and from multi races. I made some good friends and learned about life from these friendships.

Whether I was born this way, or I was brainwashed and taught to be like this, there is something that I always strongly believe in – truthfulness and honesty. I was always very careful about not committing any wrong or immoral doings. If I realized I did something that I believed was wrong, I would admit my wrong doings and ask for forgiveness immediately. Though during the two years when I was disturbed by unhappiness, anger and hatred, I had intentionally hurt other people through my thoughts, actions and speech, especially to my parents.

Sometimes I forgot to do my homework, I went to inform the teacher that I hadn’t done my homework and gave my palm to the teacher to discipline me with a stroke of caning. When the marked exam paper came back to us, I would go to the teacher and asked for remarking and to deduct the extra points if I found out that the teacher mistakenly gave me more points than it should be. We don’t take what doesn’t belong to us. This might be referred as “stupid honesty” by some people, but it’s a great virtue in the teachings of Buddhism and Yoga.

If I found something left unattended in the school compound, I would bring it to the teacher. When the cashiers in the shops carelessly gave me extra change, I would give it back to them so that they wouldn’t get into trouble for losing money from the cash machine. I wouldn’t take anything that doesn’t belong to me. I wouldn’t accept any gifts or receive help from anyone, unless I knew the person who wanted to give me something or help me was pure and sincere.

I was very self-independent and self-initiative. I didn’t need my parents to wake me up in the morning to prepare myself to go to school. I was always punctual and be responsible for myself and all my duties. I always kept my promises that I made to other people. I would show up on time after I had arranged a date to meet up with my friends, even if the date was months later. I would do what I said I wanted to do for myself or for others. That’s why I don’t simply make promises to anybody unless I know I can do it.

My primary school’s class teacher was aware of the truthfulness and honesty in me. One day, she granted me an honour for being honest – In front of all the classmates, she stood up for me and guaranteed that I am an honest and truthful person who won’t tell lies or steal anything, to defend my innocence because of a little incident that happened in our classroom that day.

Someone in the class had been stealing things from most of the classmates from time to time. Things had been missing from our bags or desks. My colour pencils and water bottle also went missing.

One day, my classmate who sat in front of me told our teacher that his exercise book was missing. And so, our teacher called upon everyone and asked whoever took his exercise book to come forward and return the book. He or she would be excused and be forgiven. But there was nobody stepped forward or said anything. The entire class was never been so quiet. Then the teacher asked everyone to search their bags to see if there might be a chance that the exercise book was in one of our bags. I didn’t know what happened, but surprisingly, I found the exercise book in my bag.

Without any fear or guilt I told the teacher and everyone that the exercise book was in my bag and I honestly didn’t know why it was in my bag. I might have put it in my bag accidentally, or someone might had put it into my bag unintentionally or intentionally. For me, it really didn’t matter because I knew I didn’t take it or steal it. But then everyone had the same reaction of thinking that I must be the thief who had stolen the exercise book. The entire class went from silent to noisy. Everyone was pointing their fingers at me and whispering to each other, as if I was guilty for stealing the book. But because I was always being truthful, honest and straightforward, my teacher immediately stood up for me and defend my innocence. She asked everyone to believe in me that I was innocent and I was an honest and truthful person that I wouldn’t tell any lies or steal anything, and she would guarantee that. And so, everyone stopped judging me, but respected me for being a truthful and honest person from that moment.

Since then, my belief about being truthful and honest became stronger than before. By observing truthfulness and honesty will gain such trustworthy and respect from everyone. If somebody who was jealous of me tried to accuse me for something that I wasn’t responsible for, or if someone questioned about my honesty, the people who knew me would believe in me and stood up for me. That’s the power of truthfulness and honesty.

For the first three years in the primary school, I was very bad at Mandarin, but I was good at Malay and English. This was because I had went to an English medium kindergarten. I was good at mathematics and science too. I always paid attention in the class and would asked the teacher immediately after class if there was anything that I missed out or didn’t understand. I seldom study after school, but I could get good results for the examinations. Unintentionally, all my subjects in Mandarin started to improve significantly from the fourth year onwards.

I was never being close to my two brothers and my sister. We seldom played together when I was growing up. I guess one of the reasons was because there were many years difference between me and them. It’s also because they went to English and Malay medium’s school. They didn’t know Chinese at all. And so, they couldn’t help me in my homework and study, as all my subjects were in Chinese. Anyway, I didn’t need anyone to help me in my homework and study. I never needed to go for extra tuition classes like most of my classmates.

I also had very good image memory to remember what I had read. I didn’t need to revise what the teachers taught us in school every day. I just needed to go to sleep early on the night before the exam, and got up at three in the morning. I browsed through the text book while listening to some music. I would remember page by page of what I had read and could answer the questions exactly like a print out from the book. Though I never bothered about the results and placing in the class, I often had very good results from the examinations. Maybe it was because my parents never pressured us and we didn’t feel that we needed to compete with other people or among our siblings. I never felt that I needed to be good enough so that I would receive love and attention from my parents. My parents never tried to bribe us with things or presents to encourage us to get good results in school examinations. They just told us to do our best. Even though my parents never pressured me to achieve good results, I was self-initiated to do well most of the time, not that I needed to prove to my parents or myself, but naturally, I just did well because I wanted to. My parents loved us the same even though my brothers weren’t very smart and always failed in most of the subjects in school examinations. I am really glad we have such parents.

On one of the celebration days where everyone cooked and ate glutinous rice dumpling, my family had come together to tease me. The lesson I learned from that incident was we shouldn’t eat too much glutinous rice dumpling at one time no matter how delicious they are, as eating too much glutinous rice is indigestible and will cause drowsiness. When I came back from school that afternoon, I ate a few of the dumplings my mother made for the family and they were really delicious. Not long after eating, I felt really drowsy and I went for a nap which turned into a deep sleep for a few hours.

Then my mother came to my room to wake me up and told me that it was time to go to school. I was still in a very drowsy condition. I was blur-blur. I didn’t know what was going on and I believed what my mother said to me. I turned to look at the clock, it was six something. Usually the school bus came around that time in the morning to pick me up. At that moment, I heard the bus went passed our house.

I panicked. I was never late for anything. I quickly jumped off the bed and ran to the bathroom. I washed my face and brushed my teeth, ran back to my room and changed into my school uniform, took my school bag and ran out to the gate, and stood there waiting for the school bus to come back for me. I remembered that I was telling myself, “I haven’t done all my homework yet!”

When I was running to the bathroom which was located at the back of our house, I passed by the living hall and the kitchen. I saw my brother was in the living hall pumping the kerosene lamp for the house. Our house didn’t have electricity supply yet at that time. Meanwhile, my mother was cooking in the kitchen. Usually they wouldn’t be awake and do all these things in the early morning. When I ran out to the gate I also saw some children were talking and playing around. Usually nobody would be playing and making noise in the early hours. It all didn’t make sense, but I didn’t suspect anything because I was panicking about being late for school. I still hadn’t a clue what was going on. I was so blurred by the drowsiness and so naive to believe what my mother said to me – “It’s time to go to school.”

I was standing in front of the gate in my school uniform with my school bag.

A few moments later, everyone started to look at me and laughed. My mother came out from the house, grabbed me with her strong arms and carried me back into the house while telling me the truth that it was evening time, not morning! It was dinner time. That’s why there were children playing out there! That’s why my mother was cooking and my brother was pumping the kerosene lamp to light up the house! And the school bus that I heard was sending school children from the afternoon session back home.

Until now we still remember what happened that day and we would have a good laugh about it.

I was an outgoing girl who liked to ride my bicycle and went everywhere. I danced most of the time, climbed up the trees, and played with the boys and fought with them playing ‘kung fu fighting’. I played football, basketball, baseball, badminton, flying kites and catching butterflies. I also played rope jumping, hide and seek, slippers throwing, hopscotch, ‘five stones’, and etc. I liked to hang out on the sand hills and the wood factory on top the hill opposite our house. Sometimes I hung out at my friend’s house. I was the leader of the gang of our friends in the village. Among them were two sisters named Ya Li and Ya Fang. They lived further inside the village closer to the Klang River. There was a Sikh family who had a small cowshed near the river. They bred some cows for fresh milk and sold it in a big milk can placed on top of a bicycle going around the village. I liked to organize games like playing court case, where each of us played a character in the court. We also liked to sing in the school bus. Because of my energetic activities, I had several scars on my knees coming from falling onto the ground while playing and fell off the bicycle many times.

One day, I went to sleep over at my friend’s house. I brought my own pillow and bolster with me, and walked to her house which was about 200 meters away from our house. I was seven years old then. I was so embarrassed that day because I peed on her bed in the middle of the night. I apologized to her parents the next morning. Everyone knew about it and teased me for that incident and laughed about it for some time. Though this childhood good friend of mine whose name was Lye Wan didn’t go to the school that I went to, she and I had spent so much time together as we grew up together in Kampung Pinang. We lost contact for more than 23 years after the village was demolished. However, one day, she found me on Facebook in 2009.

I befriended a few other kids who were living in the same village, but not from the same school or taking the same school bus. I was a good friend to a girl named Shi Huey who was five years younger than me and her house was right behind our house. She always came over to my house to play with me. She fell down on our terrace and lost two of her front teeth on my twelfth birthday’s party. I also knew a girl named Sally who was one year older than me. She came from a Catholic family. I spent lots of time hanging out with her for many years. She became a hairdresser and had her own hair salon near Old Klang Road. I even rented a room in her hair salon to set up my first aerobics dance studio when I was eighteen years old.

There was a Punjabi girl named Sonny who lived opposite my house had picked up Cantonese from being friend with me. We spent lots of time together cycling in and around the village. Sometimes I went to her house for Punjabi meal and she also came to our house for Chinese meal.

I was good friend with a brother and sister too. They were Ah Sang and Ah Fong, who were a few years younger than me. They lived next door to our house and we have the same surname. Our surname ‘Lai’, was not a common surname. In the Chinese tradition, those who have the same surname will treat each other like brother and sister even though they might not relate to each other. They always came over to our house and we liked to climb up the big cherry tree in our garden.

I even organized a ‘bank saving account’ game. I was the banker and a few of my friends would save some coins with me every day. I kept a note book and wrote down the amount of money that they gave me, or took out. Sometimes we would use the total savings to buy some snacks and shared among ourselves. Those were such happy days.

All these childhood happy days disappeared when my family suffered from financial problem for some reasons related to my sister and her late husband, which made me very angry, and continuously being greatly unhappy for more than two years. Anyway, he died from a horrific work accident years later.

During the financial difficult moments in our family, I had shut myself off from everybody. I was full of anger and hatred and I was very depressed. I cried every day. I didn’t want to talk to my family for a long time. I locked myself in the bedroom and danced every night for a few hours to release my unhappiness. I developed a very special affection for small insects during that time and would prefer to talk to little insects especially bugs, than talking to people. I went out in the middle of the night and sat on the hilltop by myself watching the stars in the sky. I was not afraid of anything.

It is true that a person who is full of anger and hatred will not be afraid of anything, not even God, Devil, Hell or Death. When a person has intense anger and hatred in the heart, he or she doesn’t believe in anything at all. And so, what is hell and what is God are meaningless to this person. I prayed to Devil when I was very angry and I cursed everything and everyone, including my parents, my family, the people on the street, the sun, the moon, the stars, and God, even though all these things, people and the universe has nothing to do with my unhappiness. I was so unhappy, angry and full of hatred.

My second elder brother was three years older than me. He was also greatly disturbed by our family financial problem and became very cold and rebellious. He couldn’t forgive our parents and our sister and her late husband for many years. I left school a year before the secondary school final year, which was a pity, but I never regret about it because in the end, wisdom and peace and happiness are not coming from school education, but it’s coming from within ourselves through learning from life experiences and self-realization towards the truth of suffering. No doubt that school education is very important to learn how to read and write and communicate, to learn about different languages, cultures, religions, sports, morality, geography, history, mathematics, science and professional skills for making a living, but how many schools teach us how to be happy and have peace, or teach us how to transcend suffering and be free from ignorance, unhappiness, hurt, anger, hatred, greed, fear and worry?

We may have read a lot of books, have many talented skills, know and speak many languages, know about many things, have been to many places in the world, and have many friends, but it doesn’t guarantee that we will be free from ignorance and the suffering of hurt, anger, hatred, jealousy, greed, dissatisfaction, disappointment, doubt, fear and worry, and will have peace and be happy in life.

I was lucky to be able to transform myself and came out from misery that had kept me in darkness for more than two years. I started to talk to my parents again and showed love and care for them. But my brother was continuing to be very unhappy for many years. Only until recently he forgave my family and started to care for my parents again just a couple of years before my mother died, which was good for him and my parents. Or else, he would regret for the rest of his life, if he hadn’t forgave my parents before my mother died, and she wouldn’t have peace as well.

Though I wasn’t a sociable person at school, I made a few true and sincere friends at school. After spending six years together in the same class at the primary school, I made a long term friendship with two of my classmates. One of them was always on the top of the placing in the class, while the other one was always at the bottom placing in the class, but we became good friends because we didn’t discriminate one another. We continued to be friends and kept in touch with each other once in a while after we finished primary school. Sadly, one of them killed herself in 2004 just before I went to India for the Yoga Teachers Training Course. Her sudden death gave me a great reflection about life, suffering and happiness.

She was born into a broken family. Her father was a wealthy businessman. Her parents were forced to get married as her mother was pregnant with her at young aged. They were separated when my friend was just a few months old and both of them had formed another family after their divorce. Both her parents abandoned her. Her grandmother took her in and looked after her. She was very grateful for that and she loved her grandmother very much, which was also the reason why her depression became more serious when her grandmother passed away. She was one of the top graduates of higher education. She worked as a marketing manager in a big advertising company, and smoked at least 2 packets of cigarettes a day.

Her first marriage lasted for one year. She married to the man whom she thought she knew very well after being best friend for 10 years. The husband was well-educated and had a high income nine to five office job, just like some other well-educated men.

Not long after they were married, she then realized her newly-wed husband was like a complete stranger to her. She started to discover many things that she didn’t know about him. She was so shocked with the truth of his real personality and was deeply disappointed with their relationship and marriage. She didn’t know that he was such an irresponsible man until they lived together sharing a life under the same roof. She found out that her husband was addicted to gambling seriously. She knew he gambled occasionally just like all the other Chinese community, but she thought that was just one of the leisure activities that most Chinese like to engage with. He liked to go to Genting Highlands Casino for gambling. Unfortunately, he lost a lot of money and started to borrow money from the loan sharks money lender. He lost all the money borrowed from the loan sharks and didn’t have the money to pay back the loan. He secretly went to her father and borrowed a lot of money from him. He lied to her father about why he needed to borrow so much money and convinced him not to let her know about it. He took all the money borrowed from her father to Genting Highlands again for more gambling hoping to win back what he had lost, but instead, he lost everything he had. He couldn’t pay back the loan sharks and was in debt with the father-in-law. And so, what he did? He ran away without telling her and went missing for many months without any contact from him.

What worst was, he didn’t just run away. He also took all her savings in cash which she kept in the house. She didn’t want to keep money in the banks. She said she didn’t trust the bank. She taught she could trust her husband, but she was wrong.

She only found out the truth about her husband when the loan sharks came to her house looking for the husband, and threatened her to pay back the money borrowed by her husband who had ran away shamelessly. She also found out about the husband had borrowed lots of money from her father. She was completely heartbroken.

Meanwhile she found out that she was pregnant, which the husband had no idea about it. She was supposed to be very happy for having to be pregnant because she always wanted to have her own children ever since she was a young girl. She strongly believed that a woman’s life wouldn’t be complete until she had her own children to form a perfect family. She was very worried for her unborn child to have such an irresponsible, selfish and shameless father. She made a very heart-breaking decision. She went for an abortion out of great anger and disappointment. She felt guilty for that afterwards and had regretted it for the rest of her life. She filed a divorce after her husband’s disappearance for many months. He showed up one day to sign the divorce paper, but seeing him again was like putting salt onto the existing wounds.

Few years later she met another well-educated man also with a decent high income job. She fell in love and got married again. Not long after they were married, she got pregnant not once, but twice. She was very happy to have her own children that she always dreamt of. She was determined to quit smoking while she was pregnant for the sake of the baby’s health. She continued her two boxes of cigarettes every day as soon as she stopped breast feeding.

She suffered post natal depression after the first baby. She recovered, but not for long. She wanted another baby to fulfill her wish to have a few children to complete her perfect happy family life. She was pregnant again two years later and gave birth to another baby boy. We went to her house to visit her and the baby. She didn’t talk about her problems. She seemed happy with her wishes came true and was very loving towards her new born baby boy. Her husband seemed like a good gentleman.

A few months later, one of our classmates called me in great distressed and told me that she had passed away about a month ago. The three of us used to hang out together frequently before her second marriage and the two pregnancies. We didn’t know what had happened to her or how she died. Nobody knew anything about her sudden death, not any of our classmates. The husband didn’t inform anyone of us about her death and the funeral. I had called her and texted her many times before and after her death, but there was no reply. Then only I knew why she hadn’t returned my calls and messages. Because she was dead. We couldn’t keep in the dark and wanted to find out what had happened to her.

My friend called her husband. The husband didn’t want to tell her anything about her death, but just said that the two boys were living with his parents in Penang. We were looking for an answer. Finally, we found our answer from an old newspaper dated November 9th, 2004. It was really heart-breaking and painful for us to read the article about her death. The article was about how she had jumped from her 15th floor apartment’s balcony and fell to her death instantly in the morning about 10.30 a.m. on November 8th, 2004. The neighbours told the reporters that they always heard arguments from her apartment about money issues.

We knew about her death in December 2004, and I went to India in early January 2005. I was very sad about her death, but I was more determined to find out the truth about suffering and the path of liberation from suffering. She had chosen what she wanted to do with her life. I respect her decision.

That was the past. I continued my journey in search for real peace and happiness.

I also made a long term friendship with a pair of twin sisters in my secondary school, who both worked as flight attendant for more than eighteen years. We were in the same class for our first year in the secondary school, but then we were separated in different classes afterwards. They looked after me knowing that I had financial difficulty at home. They brought me gift from everywhere in the world that they flew to, and brought me out for a coffee and/or meal when they were back at home. They are both happily married and have beautiful children who are grown-ups now. They were very understanding when I renounced social life more than ten years ago. Good friends don’t need to meet up and connect with one another frequently, and still being friend and understanding towards one another.

Thanks to the Dhamma, Madonna and everyone who had inspired and helped me to come out from miseries. Thanks to my parents who didn’t question me for my bad behaviour and they didn’t abandon me and were very patient with me, and continued to love me and care for me, gave me their supports to pursue my dreams in dancing, and having the opportunity to become an aerobics dance instructor teaching aerobics classes making a living to support myself and my parents.

My mother was the driver who sent me everywhere to teach aerobics classes. She waited patiently in the car park until I finished teaching and then sent me back home because I hadn’t learn how to drive yet, not until I was thirty three years old. I had fear of crossing the road and fear of driving in the past because I was involved in a few car accidents as a passenger when I was a child. It would take me very long time to cross over the road. I would wait until there was completely no cars in sight to cross the road. But now it’s a different story. I love and enjoy driving very much. I’m free from fear. After I learned how to drive and bought a small car to travel in and around Kuala Lumpur, I managed to teach a lot more aerobics classes which led to a higher income that allowed me to have a little bit of savings for myself after giving money to support my parents’ living every month.

And thanks to myself, who had initiated to uplift and love myself, and saved myself out of the ocean of ignorance and suffering.

Read on...

My life stories - Part 1

My life stories - Part 1
Stories from my past memories - childhood, family, friends, growing up, poverty, integrity, dreams come true, finding peace and happiness, Buddhism, Yoga, and now...

(Updated November 2020)

Me and my second elder brother in the background. Photo taken at Kampong Manggis.

I was very fond of music since I was a baby. That was what my parents told me.

When they wanted to put me to sleep, they just had to switch on the radio or the cassette player, and played some music. As soon as they switched it off I would wake up naturally. They said I shook and bounced my body trying to dance any time that I heard music. I guess most babies have the same reaction when they hear music. Babies are naturally connected with music. That connection becomes less and less for many people as they grow older, but for some, they will continue to stay connected with music. I am very grateful for being one of them. That’s why I love dancing so much when I grew into a young girl, aspiring to be a dancer, with the ambition to be a dance champion once in my life, but somehow I became an aerobics dance instructor for over twenty years, which also unintentionally, had initiated me towards the path of teaching yoga.

Part of the earliest memories that I still remember is when I was maybe 3 years old, my family moved from Kampong Manggis to another village nearby called Kampong Pinang less than two kilometres from where we were. Kampong Pinang was built on top of an abandoned tin mine situated at the borderline of Kuala Lumpur and Southern Petaling Jaya where the older generations named that area Petaling Tin.

There wasn’t anyone living on that land at that time. My parents and some of their friends came to know about the empty land and started to build their own houses on it, just like what human beings would do in the old times to have a shelter. Everyone built a fence with barb wires to mark their own piece of land. My parents built their dream house with the help from some friends and relatives. They also planted many kinds of trees, flowers, fruit trees and vegetables on the land. I still remember one scene about my mother spreading the cement over the floor of our house while carrying me on her back by wrapping me securely in a piece of cloth around her body.

Our house was very big, especially seeing from the eyes of a little girl. It was built with bricks and wooden planks and zinc roof. It had two big separate living halls, a dining hall, five spacious bedrooms, a huge open space kitchen, a washing area with a well, a bathroom and a separate traditional squatting toilet with septic tank. The entire compound surrounding the house was very large too.

Very soon all the other empty plots on the land were filled with other houses and eventually it became a big village.

We didn’t have clean water supply from the government in the house for the first few years. We used the water from the well for washing and showering. We also collected rain water in big plastic barrel. Because the land was a tin mine previously, the water from the well was orange. Our hair and skin became orange from using the well water for showering every day for many years. We jokingly called ourselves the orange people.

My parents built a water filter with a big earthen pot. They filled it with layers of sand, gravels, stones, charcoals and dried leaves. We had to get safe water for drinking and cooking in buckets and water containers at a communal pipe a few hundreds metres away. We washed all the laundries by hand. There was no electricity. We used kerosene lamps at night in the beginning. Later on we had a generator to generate electricity for the fridge and to watch television. After many years living there our villagers got together and applied for electricity and water supply from the government.

There was a Chinese primary school built by the boss of the old tin mine factory. The school might be still operating but it would be in a complete different setting now. It should be more than forty five years old at this date. The reputation of that school wasn’t very good at that time, though it had improved significantly after the nineties. I didn’t go to that school because my parents wanted to send me to a better school in PJ Old Town which was a few kilometres away from our home. I am thankful and grateful that my parents had chosen to send me to that school to spend my early childhood with some good friends and great teachers that influenced me in the good way. For me, good friends aren’t necessarily the people whom I like to hang out with and spend some happy time together, but they are those who have good and positive influence to my personal growth and well-being, and who inspire and uplift me to be a better and kinder person.

I learned about the basic humanity of morality, truthfulness, honesty, humility, responsibility, discipline, initiative, tolerance and respect from the Chinese primary school which I truly appreciate. I also learned about all these qualities from my parents whom had allowed me and my brothers and sister to have absolute freedom to do whatever we wanted to do, without abandoning the traditional Chinese cultural values, such like self-control, acceptance, adjustment, adaptation, forbearance, generosity, forgiveness, gratefulness and appreciation. We were allowed to do whatever we liked to do, but strictly no stealing, speaking harsh words and telling lies. Once, my brothers were punished by my mother rubbing hot chilies onto their mouth because they had spoken bad words. We were free to go anywhere by ourselves. We could have any ambitions and we were free to express all our thoughts and feelings. Though my parents only earned enough for our living, they did their best to provide us with everything they could possibly give to support us in pursuing all our dreams.

Nothing is perfect. There are pros and cons in this type of complete freedom parenting. If we don’t know how to utilize this freedom wisely, we could end up with lots of unnecessary problems in life. But then there is nothing wrong about it as well because we will learn from our own mistakes and grow wiser eventually.

I grew up in the village house until sixteen years old. The government wanted to demolish all the illegal squatter houses in and around Kuala Lumpur to turn it into a modern city with high rise concrete buildings, shopping malls, flats, apartments and condominiums.

I remember during the twelve years we were living in Kampong Pinang, there was no such thing as petty theft or crime happening in our village. Everyone knew each other and were nice to each other. We looked after one another. We let the doors, windows and the front gate wide opened throughout the day and night without the need of locking the doors or closing the gate. My parents had no fear of letting us went out with friends to play outside the house at the nearby sand hills, the riverbank and the fields in the village. Sometimes they left us at home by ourselves.

Nowadays, it isn’t the same anymore in the big city. There is so much fear in everyone whether being at home or outside their homes. Everyone locks themselves in with thick metal grills on all doors and windows. There are very few people who know or have interactions with their neighbours, especially those who are living in the modern high density apartments and condominiums with higher security.

People don’t feel safe to hitch hike a ride like what we used to do in the past. Drivers don’t feel safe to stop their cars to pick up strangers, or if they see someone needs help at the roadside. Children are not allowed to go outside to play by themselves without the supervision of the adults.

The children have very little freedom to do what they like to do, or choose what they want to become when they grow up because their parents have already decided for them what they shall become. The parents who have better income will arrange their children to attend extra tuition classes and activities that the parents think are good for the children’s future, hoping that they will become successful people in the society, or in another term, to be able to find a secure good income job and attain a higher standard of living. But, how many people are truly happy with themselves and what they do, or in harmony with the world that they are living in? Why do some people need to depend on doping or drugs to relax themselves, to feel good, or to escape from something that they aren’t happy about?

Some parents send their children to dance and music lessons even though the children aren’t interested in dancing or music because the parents want to revive their own childhood unfulfilled dreams that they hadn’t accomplished when they were young. They want to fulfill their own dreams through their children. Of course there are children who love to take up dance and music lessons, but not all parents can’t afford it. Most children don’t have enough playtime like what we used to have in the old days, especially outdoor activities in the nature, as the children are too busy with studying the school text books preparing for ongoing exams because of so much expectation coming from their parents and from themselves, so that they will be able to compete and survive in a competitive materialistic society when they finish study.

I really loved that old house very much. When we saw the house and all the fruit trees and vegetable garden were all gone after the housing developer sent in the bulldozers, I felt so sad, and cried. My parents couldn’t hold their tears too.

We had big area inside and outside the house to play and run about. There were trees surrounding the house providing shade to the house and there’s a beautiful garden with colourful flowers. We had a vegetable garden and lots of fruit trees – durian, rambutan, mango, chiku, guava, papaya, custard apple, ambarella, pineapple and starfruit.

My father built two concrete fish ponds beside the house. He loves fishing. Sometimes he brought me and my brothers with him to go fishing at the big pond not too far from our house. The big pond was part of the abandoned tin mine where the garbage trucks and the villagers threw the rubbish at. There were lots of Tilapias and cat fish in the pond. If we were lucky we would get a few Tilapias, my mother would cook them for dinner on that same evening. If not, my father would keep the fish that were still alive in the two little fish ponds beside our house. There were more than a hundred of Tilapias and cat fish living in the fish ponds before we moved to Pantai Dalam long house.

I still remember the Tilapias tasted like mud. My father said it was because they grew up eating the mud in the rubbish pond. It is so expensive to eat fish like Tilapias nowadays, but back then they were just a common food on the table for poor people.

There was a big carport for my parents’ cars and a big open store room beside the house. Though my father worked as a mechanical fitter for weighing machines, my parents could afford two Ford Cortinas when we were living in the old house. One was white and the other one, blue. One for my father and one for my mother. There were not many women who could drive a car at that time. Once my father had a Volkswagen Beetle which we called it the frog car in Chinese. My father adored all the cars like his family. Nowadays, many people working hard for many hours a day six days a week also can’t afford to buy a house under the exploitation of capitalism and high cost of living.

Once my mother asked someone to build a big chicken cage behind the house to breed live chicken for sale and for our own consumption. I remember my mother had to watch out for Monitor lizards as they like hunting for chicken. She also needed to monitor the temperature inside the cage so that the chicken wouldn’t get heat stroke. She would spray the ceiling of the cage with water from time to time when the weather was hot. She kept the cage as clean as possible to keep away diseases. Some of the chicken died of heart-attacked during new year celebrations and other kinds of celebration day because of the loud noise coming from the villagers playing the firecrackers. My mother buried those dead chicken at the back of the garden. She said that dead chicken were not good for eating as chicken had to be slaughtered while they were alive. I watched my mother many times when she slaughtered the live chicken. After my mother tided the chicken’s legs with string and hanged the chicken upside down, she gently hold the chicken head back with one hand and used a knife cutting just a little of the chicken’s throat with the other hand, to allow the blood drained-off completely while the chicken was still alive.

At one stage, my parents also grew beansprouts to sell at the local vegetables morning market and night market. They bought a few big earthen pots with several holes at the bottom of the pots to allow water-draining. They lined the bottom of the pots with a hemp sack and placed a thick layer of mung beans over the hemp sack. Then they place another layer of hemp sack over the mung beans to keep them in the dark and give a little bit of pressure on the beans, so that they wouldn’t grow long and thin, but fat and short, as the texture would be much better and crunchier when eaten. My parents needed to water the beansprouts every two hours, even during the night, as the mung beans wouldn’t sprout nicely and evenly if they didn’t get enough water, and the sprouted mung beans would rot from the heat built up under the hemp sack, if they didn’t get watering on time to cool down the temperature.

Our living was close to a self-contained way of life. If it wasn’t because of my sister and her late husband needed money for starting a business and had failed in every business that they ventured, as well as the government had taken away our house and the land we lived on, we wouldn’t have financial problems later on.

My father was a mechanical fitter for Avery Weighing Machine Company for forty years from sixteen years old until the day he retired. He was the longest working employee for Avery Malaysia and was very loyal to the company (that’s what he told me) and never worked for any other companies. He was very passionate about his job and he was very thankful to his English boss who had employed him when he was only sixteen years old and without any educational background. When I was little, my father told me that he always felt indebted to his English boss for being very kind to him. The boss trained my father for his assigned job and also taught him how to read and write in English. That was also the biggest reason why my father never left the company because he treated the company like his home. But during the last ten years or so after the English boss had retired and went back to England, my father was very disappointed and unhappy with the new Malaysian boss whom my father said that he was a very arrogant, selfish and unthoughtful man who never care for the welfare and well-being of the employees.

My father was born in Johor and grew up during the Japanese war time in Malaysia. Like many other children who grew up at that time, he didn’t receive any formal education. His widowed mother brought up six children by washing clothes for the Japanese army quarters somewhere in the Southern Malaya at that time. My father said he had studied Japanese at the Japanese army camp for two weeks when he was a small boy, but he didn’t know why he was sent there to study Japanese.

My mother was born in Perak. She was the eldest daughter and had to help her parents to take care of her six younger brothers and sisters when she was growing up. My mother told us that she went around a few wealthy families to wash their laundry everyday helping out my grandparents financially when she was just nine years old. She said that she had to bring her toddler brother with her and carried him on her back while she washed the laundry.

Like my father, she didn’t receive any formal education, but both my parents learned to read and write in Chinese through self-effort. My parents first met each other while attended Chinese language class at a night school in Kuala Lumpur for a few months when my father was sixteen, while my mother was fourteen. My father had just arrived in Kuala Lumpur to find a job at that time. My mother’s parents house happened to have a vacant room to let. And so, my father rented the room from my grandparents. Very soon, my parents were fond of each other. My grandparents had no objection and were very happy when my father told them that he liked my mother very much and asked for permission to have a relationship with my mother. My grandparents also liked my father very much as he was a very down to earth and hardworking young man. When my parents went out for a movie, my father would take my mother on his bicycle to the cinema first, and then came back to take my grandmother. When the movie finished, he would send my grandmother back first and then went back for my mother. On the way back, they would take-away fried noodles for my mother’s whole family for supper. That was their love story that my parents told us.

My mother was a good house wife. She was very multi-talented and independent. She did many types of small business to help out our family living expenses. She was a tailor, a driver sending children to school, a hawker selling many types of local delicacies, a vegetables seller, a chicken livestock seller and some other direct-selling works. She was an active member of Amway and was very active participating in local community activities and services. She was a very good cook. She made most of our clothes and school bags. She also cut the hair for the entire family.

Even though my mother never went to school, but she had a huge collection of books written in Chinese about cooking, tailoring, parenting, healthcare and medicine.

My parents were down to earth, honest and modest people. They were very generous towards other people and had helped countless people who were injured in road accidents. They sent the injured people to the hospital in their car. It didn’t matter to them when the car seats were tainted by blood. They also helped many of the villagers countless times. May it be someone needed a car ride to somewhere, or there were emergency cases and someone had to go to the hospital. There weren’t many people had cars in the village those days. Because of my parents’ generosity, there were many people always came to them asking for help and to borrow tools, food, or money, even though my parents weren’t rich.

I remember there were snakes frequently coming into our house and the neighbour’s house. Our neighbours would come to ask for my mother’s help to chase away the snakes. My mother was a fearless woman. Sometimes she had to kill the snakes. This was something that she regretted when she got older in life, which she told me before she died.

My parents never asked anything in return from the people they had helped. When people wanted to give them some presents to repay their kindness, my parents didn’t want to accept the presents at all.

These were the values my parents had showed to us. My grandparents taught my parents about living everyday life with enough food on the table for that day, and needless to worry about tomorrow. We must always live in the present moment and be grateful for every little thing. They also taught us to stay humble all the time and be grateful for other people’s kindness and generosity and never forget to repay them. My parents insisted that we must repay other people’s kindness to us, but we should let go of what we had done for others.

Unwittingly, I learned from my parents about depriving the ego. We don’t ask to be credited or be acknowledged after we have given or done something to others, or have helped other people through action or speech. This is exactly the spirit of the teachings and practice of yoga. Nowadays, in the worldly society, most people expect other people to show appreciation and be thankful, and they expect to be credited or acknowledged for what they have done for others, or else they will be disappointed and unhappy. They will only be happy to give or do something for others only if other people say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ to them, or else, they aren’t pleased to give or do something for others. There’s nothing wrong with this kind of worldly social ethic and cultural practice, but it is not what yoga practice is about. We don’t need anyone to say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ for us to give or do something for anybody. We don’t need to be credited or acknowledged for what we have done. We renounce the fruit of actions.

We were satisfied and contented with simple living and weren’t ambitious to make lots of money or to have many material and leisure enjoyments.

Before the financial crisis, my father liked to bring us to the beach in Morib or Port Dickson to have picnics and enjoy the sea breeze on the weekends. But we couldn’t afford to have such leisure anymore during our family financial crisis.

Though my parents made just enough money for our living, they still managed to bring up the four of us and provide us with enough basic education and some other moral supports that money couldn’t provide. They loved us so much. Though my mother would discipline us if we did something really wrong, which I appreciate very much. My mother didn’t have to discipline me at all, as I was very self-disciplined and be careful with my actions and didn’t want to commit any so called ‘wrong doings’. My father never scolded anyone of us even when we were playful and broke something in the house. Only once, I overheard my parents arguing over some money issues after we all had went to bed that night. I still remember I felt very sad and cried under the blanket as I never saw or heard my parents arguing before.

Although our family had went through some financial difficult time and everyone was very unhappy and frustrated, but we were fine. We didn’t steal, rob, or cheat anyone.

There were days that we didn’t have any money left for food. We were in debt because of some other people’s selfishness and greed. One day, when my father sent me to school, he was crying with tears down his cheeks telling me that he didn’t have money to give me to buy food at school because we have no more money left. It was the first time I saw my father cried. At that moment, I was very sad, and very angry as well, because we didn’t do anything bad to other people and we were always kind to others, but somehow all the bad luck and hardship came to our family. That moment had inspired me to do well in life, so that I could look after my parents and my family. Those few years of hardship was the reason why I am not a fussy health food freak. I am always grateful to be able to have food on the table every day, where I don’t have to suffer hunger like some other less fortunate people out there.

There aren’t many Chinese families that have such openness to allow their children to have the freedom to do whatever they like to do and make their own choice to be what they want to be. Though I was very angry with the financial problems in my family because I was ignorant at that time, I am glad to be born in this family. I didn’t understand about life and suffering at that time. But when I realized the truth about life and suffering, I surrendered my ignorance and unhappiness to forgiveness, acceptance and compassion. Since then I was glad to have this family and was grateful to have such parents to love me, to accept and support me as I am.

My mother passed away in 2006 on the day before Christmas. She loved me so much and gave me the freedom and guidance to grow, to do what I wanted to do, and to be what I am now.

Most of the conservative Chinese people from the older generations might categorize dancing as something bad and evil for girls, that we must be bad girls if we dance. It’s because dancing is usually being associated with night clubs where there were ladies who wear sexy clothing and heavy make-up, and they would dance with any men to make a living. In many artistic dance performances, dancing is a form of intimate physical expression of feelings and emotions. And hence, for the people who have conservative thinking, dancing is something immoral and indecent. But my open-minded parents had no problem with my enthusiasm towards dancing and they encouraged and supported me to pursue my dreams to dance and take part in many dance competitions.

Dancing was something spiritual for me. I felt like I was dancing for life, for nature, for the whole universe. I danced from within. There’s no specific steps, or rules, or styles. It didn’t matter what types of music I heard, I just moved and danced to the music. Even when there was no music, I danced in my own rhythm in silence.

This is part of my scattering memories remembering about my parents and the old house that I grew up in. A childhood in a village called Kampong Pinang from 1974 – 1986.

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