Loss

Through the blog of Alex Ross, the New Yorker's music critic, I discovered the supremely gifted Lorraine Hunt Lieberson: through the same blog I learn that she died on July 4th. She was 52. Saddened and deeply grateful as I listen to Cantata BWV 82 - "Ich habe genug".

Please look at Alex Ross' entry.

Silent space

From Singapore to St John's, Newfoundland via London. A solitary manager in his empty malt whiskey store, a few hardened souls in O'Neill's bar, brisk business at Starbucks. Terminal 3 at 06:40 am is pleasingly quiet. Time to do nothing.

Landing at St John's the mist was rolling in, the rain-drenched runway appearing from nowhere. The real world, I thought, sufficient to itself and a thousand years away from where I had started.

Good chaos

Moving Mountain had a note on The Butterfly Effect the evocative popular name for Chaos Theory. Robert Brady of PureLandMountain who blogs on Life in Japan, has a note on happy chaos that parents will recognise.

On the train last night, I noticed the headline in a passenger's paper "Paralysed by Fear", about a poor soul petrified by a moth. Well, I look at the Atlas moth, and I see two snake heads - I guess the birds give it a miss. I would too.

A cooler place

In a few hours I leave for St. John's, Newfoundland via London - almost 20 hours in the air. There are plans for those arriving early enough on Sunday for a trip to watch the whales, now being a good season. Sadly I will arrive too late, but will be blissfully content with some cool sea air. By all accounts Newfoundlanders are most hospitable people.

Picking up a book in Kinokuniya this morning, I read "Have you said your prayers?" the child was asked. "No" she replied, "I'm going to sleep".

A koan.

Right livelihood?

"Summer heat and demand for biofuels to push up grain prices", says the front page of today's FT. (Israel and Hizbollah make page five).

Biofuels are a fantasy world, except to the City it seems. I begin to think they have either no sense or morals, or both, when you go on to read "Once the ethanol plants open, we will link the price of petrol to the price of bread, because the price of wheat will be settled by who pays more, the oil industry or the food industry," said Christopher Brodie, at UK-based commodities hedge fund Krom River.

Oh really!

Right Livelihood, the fifth way of the Noble Eightfold Path.

Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery

I have posted some pictures from Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery to Flickr.

A few (or all) may disappear as I edit - I'm learning!

Exuberance!

No understatement here!

Part of the temple complex at Kong Meng San Phor Kark See (MMSPKS) Monastery in Singapore.

Chance?

"The Hall of No-form"

Earlier this year, Reverend Master Mugo posted some pictures and impressions of her visit in June last year to the Venerable Hong Choon Memorial Hall, part of the Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery. Little did I know that a year on I would sit in the same hall. To the north of the City, this is the largest Buddhist Temple in Singapore. A description, outside the Hall, in English and Chinese, reads:

"The Hall of No-Form"

"A piece of calligraphy by the well-known Singaporean artist Tan Sie Hian etches across a signboard that hangs above the hall on the fourth storey of Venerable Hong Choon Memorial Hall. The words "The Hall of No_Form" are boldly engraved on it. At first glance, the name might bewilder many, but it also leads one to fathom on the essence of the Buddha's teachings.
The momentous four-storey building was commissioned by the current abbot of Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery, Venerable Sik Kwang Sheng, in commemeration of his late master, Venerable Seck Hong Choon. The outline of the majestic building resembles that of a huge ship.
On its highest storey it houses one of Asia's largest and most magnificent Shakyamuni Buddha images, which stands at 13.8 metres tall and weighs 55 tons. Venerable Kwang Sheng once commented that it is precisely because the form of this Buddha impresses many devotees that he named the hall "The Hall of No-Form". It reminds all that since all forms do not have inherent existence, substantiality or self-nature, one should not be attached to forms of any kind, including those of the Buddhas, as all forms, without a fixed nature, are changing all the time.
Of course, "form" and "no form" are relative and complementary concepts. Without "form", there is no way that the concept of "no form" which is synonymous with "changing forms", could manifest.
"No form" describes how all phenomena of the world arise only from the gathering of causes and conditions. Nothing by itself has an intrinsic and unchanging nature or self. Take our body for instance, which consits of the four compounded elements of earth, water, fire and wind. They do not have any lasting self-characteristics.
In fact, what we perceive is only the continual process of the rising and falling of the changing elements of phenomena, even though they might appear static in the moment. And since we do not understand the truth of dependent origination and non-self, we are attached to the idea that our "selves" are substantial. This is the cause for all kinds of suffering as it gives rise to differentiation between self and other, and attachment and aversion. As a result, everything the unenlightened experience arises from the deluded mind.
It is stated in the Avatamsaka Sutra that "If one wishes to know the Buddhas of the past, present and future, one should contemplate the nature of all phenomena as arising from one's mind". And in the Diamond Sutra, it is taught that "That which are of forms are of delusion. If one sees all forms as 'no form', one sees the Buddhas." Thus, as practising Buddhists, we should learn to let go of attachment to anything, that is, everything of name (mental content), and form (physical material).
As long as we are diligent and focused, it does not matter which method of Dharma practice we use. For instance, no matter which mantra one chants, one should be able to be able to use it easily for the attainment of spitual realisation. On the other hand, if one is attached to name and form, distraction and differentiation naturally arise, and they in turn impede one from the goal of Enlightenment.
Having used the term "no form" to share the Dharma, may all beings break through the web of delusion and realise the truth. May all enter the realm of the Dharma, and together be enlightened to the meaning of "no form". May all thus attain the ultimate emancipation."

More to follow.

Transcribed from poster. Copyright Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery.

The infinitesimally small and irritating...

I remember small blackfly in England, common around harvest time, that had the special knack of getting behind the sealed glass of picture frames. There is a tropical version that has been making my acquaintance this week, smaller than their English cousins, almost invisible, but just big enough to trigger the sensors in my skin. That they do with abandon. I half expect to see them walking behind the glass on my laptop screen!

It's the heat I tell myself - this is not England.

The Language of Water

The Botanic Gardens in Singapore.

The quiet language of running water.

Perilous existence

The cumulative evidence that we originated from one small location in Africa, and from one mother, is persuasive. How precarious was our early history is portrayed well in the animation "Journey of Mankind - The Peopling of the World" from the Bradshaw Foundation. It is a slow meditation to offer while pondering the slaughter and suffering that is everywhere. Mumbai, the once great Caliphate of Baghdad, Darfur, the list rolls on and on. How that ancestral mother must weep.

(Site found on the blog of the Canadian Cartographic Association).

The sun globe

Each morning I pass this globe, and each morning I think of how deeply the sun is buried in our unconscious, how many times we watched the sun set to leave us alone with our fears and rise to give new hope.

Air conditioning

Monday was the coolest day so far. A long rolling thunderstorm for an hour at 04:30, some rain and then grey skies. Wonderful. The pity was it was a workday!
The energy expended in air conditioning here must be enormous, and you can't help thinking that a different style of building, rather than a tranposition of Western glass and steel, would both give Singapore a unique architectural fingerprint, and save energy. Smaller deeply recessed windows, natural heat exchangers perhaps? Given a free hand and deep pockets, I'm sure architects would relish the challenge. Instead, system building, functional rather than beautiful, built to the lowest cost. Stores everywhere, big and small, with open doors pouring expensively chilled air onto the pavements.

And then there is China to come.

Orchids

Strange flowers, landing platforms for insects, small faces almost. And, so many. A hint of scent mid-morning, but I suspect that it would be much stronger late evening. At this latitude (1 deg N) there is no twilight as I know it in England, more like switching off the light.

When it rains, it rains!

It doesn't rain by half-measures in Singapore: twice a day I walk by what looks like a canal with no water in it. But when it rains, as it did this morning in the botanical gardens, it rains hard, and you realise the canal is really a storm drain. Within minutes it becomes a fast torrent of red muddy water (this picture was taken on a "dry" day - I have other priorities when it is pouring down). One day!

An upgrade too far

I have long felt that you should leave your computer alone once you are comfortable with it, and not be forever upgrading. I try to use Linux (as the Ubuntu distribution) wherever possible, but still need Microsoft Windows occasionally, and so have a dual-boot laptop. Security upgrades I install, be they from Microsoft, AntiVir or ZoneAlarm. After the last upgrade for ZoneAlarm, the disc drive is now accessed very few seconds in two quick "chirps", annoying and distracting. Shutting down ZoneAlarm returns me to blissful silence and as I live behind a router and have AntiVir running, I think I can safely live without ZoneAlarm. So, goodbye ZA, your last upgrade was too much.

Of course it is all much simpler under Linux ;-)

I noted in today's FT that the EU will likely rule next week that Microsoft has failed to comply with the antitrust decision that led to a record fine of 497 million euros in 2004. They now face fines of up to $5.5 million per day.

If you must use Microsoft at least switch from IE to Firefox or Opera.

Manga

Singapore's Kinokuniya with 500,000 volumes is said to be one of SE Asia's largest bookshops: not surprisingly, it has a large selection of Japanese books, including Manga and graphic novels. Manga is highly developed in Japan, and is spreading west. Blackwells in London now has a manga section.
I came across the first two volumes of Buddha by Osamu Tezuka ("the godfather of Japanese graphic art"). There are eight volumes in total, all in print as far as I can tell. Not scholarly works, nor making claim to historical accuracy, they are nonetheless a compelling read and cover the essence of Buddhist teachings well as best I can tell. A good introduction for young and old alike.

Now to read the other six volumes!

Essentials

Moving into a new place means buying some essentials. By chance there is a large Japanese department store in Singapore, Takeshimaya, and even better, June is a Sale month. So along with bed-linen and tatami mat, I bought two bowls and a small tea pot. Simple, functional, and while not Sen no Rikyu pieces, not unattractive. The tea pot and small bowls are for Sencha. What more do I need.

The camera is unforgiving, and I just did not "see" the reflected window in the bowls. Interesting how much filtering the brain does. You see what you expect to see, not what is "there".