T22 reborn

My obsolete but much-travelled IBM T22 Thinkpad died some time back, and I have been tempted to buy new, a fancy dual core T60 or its smaller sibling the X60, for S$3000+ (£1000+). Yesterday in Sim Lim Square I found second hand T22 which, with a new keyboard, I bought for S$580. Not worth mentioning apart from the clear feeling I have that it was the right decision. I can re-use power supplies, wireless cards and swap memory. Doing nothing and waiting for the decision to make itself is often a good way!

And what is "success"?

That I cringe says much more about me than Ajahn Brahm: his wisdom clearly exceeds mine, and "meditation for corporate success" is only an extension of corporate yoga. He is not the only one entering the corporate fray – Steven Heine, Professor of Religion and History and Director of the Institute for Asian Studies at Florida International University, and an authority on Dogen, has "White Collar Zen: Using Zen Principles to Overcome Obstacles and Achieve Your Career Goals" (Oxford University Press, 2005).

I need to sit with my reaction to this. I think it is "success" as the 21st Century metric (corporate jargon) of worth that troubles me. Maybe I should attend.

The Bodhisattva of Compassion

At the foot of Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. To the memory of those who died.

Kuan Yin

I made a visit to Kong Men San Phoor Kark See Temple in the early morning thinking that the low light would reveal many things I had missed. I had also become saturated with the commercial life of Singapore and needed space. It is a magnificent temple complex, not least the magnificent Hall of No-Form.

The image is the statue of Kuan Yin (觀音), the bodhisattva of compassion, with the Dharma Hall to the left.

A service was being held in the Mahakaruna or Hall of Great Compassion. A slow chanting, quite different from what I have heard in Japan.

Think not lightly of good, saying,
" It will not come to me."
Drop by drop is the water pot filled.
Likewise, the wise man,
gathering it little by little,
fills himself with good.
- The Buddha (The Dhammapada: 122)


From http://www.kmspks.org/kmspks/donation.htm

Scale

I usually look at Buddhist images more as art than as objects for devotion - not that I decry the latter, it's just the way I am "wired". In particular large Kannon (観音) statues appearing over hilltops usually leave me cold - I'm thinking of a train ride to Kanazawa from Kyoto.

I was taken therefore by this image: a monk dwarfed by a huge Kannon statue. Perhaps that is what I was missing a sense of scale. Where this is I do not know - I need to use the "rikaichan" Firefox plugin to read the Japanese. The image is from the Sept. 3rd entry in the blog of Rev. Kameno of Teisho-in, Yokohama. Even not reading Japanese, it is an interesting site, and it's been a long-standing wish to visit the temple on a trip to Tokyo. There are views of the temple grounds from several web cameras and one (cam 3) can be remotely steered to look at the Koi!