New Blogger

I am ambivalent about the new blogger. I have moved over, but have not implemented changes to the template as I don't see them as an improvement, certainly not without time spent recovering what I already have in place. The archive post changes are too computer-like for my taste, though I will have to do something soon as my archive list gets longer and longer. I had thought of moving wholesale to WordPress, which has some real advantages for scientific work, and that remains an option. I shall think more about this as my annual ISP contract comes up for renewal.

I read somewhere an estimate that 11% of the world's computers host 'bots', unseen pieces of software that can be woken up by their unseen masters to route spam or denial of service (DoS) attacks.

Science for communication

Tonight a Japanese colleague flew in, to work with me as a Visiting Professor for three months. This was his first trip outside Japan, and I'm pleased to be the means of achieving that. But, neither of us are sure how we will communicate. As a scientist he reads English with some effort, but speaking English will be tough. My Japanese is equally primitive and most of my lessons are forgotten. But I am saved by two things: first, science is a universal language believe it or not, and second, a very interesting student has joined me for a few months to do his final year project. He speaks some basic Japanese, and is already brushing up what he knows. He is a young man of unusual calm and maturity, most likely acquired (or enhanced) by his love of back-packing alone through SE-Asia. Last year he was in Tibet, well off the beaten trail, seeing one car a day at times, finding accommodation in private dwellings. After his exams and before joining me, he took two weeks in Cambodia and Vietnam. I'm looking forward to this, however it evolves - two very good (in the human sense) people.

I often feel my posts should end with the sound of a small bell or gong - not for their content, but that it ends a short meditation.

Home or lodgings?

I signed a two year lease when I moved here, after a week of looking, and so far, although big for my needs, the 2nd floor apartment overlooking much greenery and the pool, has served me well. Quiet and pleasant especially when a breeze blows through, and space for guests. It's in a condo(minium) (as the Americans and Singaporeans would say), is well-maintained and is convenient for my work (15 minutes), the MRT (train), and the City (30 minutes). Not bad, as these things go. But my landlord, a doctor, decides to sell and I have an stream of potential buyers which at first I could live with, but after three months it is becoming tiresome.

I don't attach much to the place, but I do value the peace, which seems generally undervalued in Singapore. Something will come up, it always does.

Meister Eckhart on Suzuki's fly.

Shunryu Suzuki's "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind", opens with the memorable line "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."

Meister Eckhart says:

"Were it the case that a fly had reason and could rationally seek out the eternal abyss of divine being, from which it came forth, we say that God, insofar as he is God, could not fulfill or satisfy the fly. Therefore pray God that we may be free of God."

Reflecting on a post and comments at Moving Mountains today.

USB memory sticks

Sooner or later it was bound to happen! I have lost or mislaid a USB memory stick, which although it contained nothing important, does serve as a reminder that you can lose a lot of data in this way. I always copy from disc to USB, so fortunately no data is irretrievably lost. USB sticks can be encrypted, but there are always more urgent things to do. TrueCrypt may be what I need - it's Open Source too! I read a detailed "how-to" description recently, but where? In a perverse way it is good timing, as I was planning to move a lot onto a large capacity USB memory stick for travelling. So password protection at the very least, and encryption even better!

How complicated we can make our lives. A pen and a notebook used to be enough.

"What are you optimistic about?"

The Edge can be an interesting read, and this year the editor John Brockman poses the question "What are you optimistic about?" It's a challenging question, and pessimist though this blog may cast me at times, I am actually "Dancing in the Water of Life" (the title of vol. 5 of the Journals of Thomas Merton).

I should return to this topic.

It's tough at the top

Corporate greed renumeration: "The good news is that Robert Nardelli, the imperious chief executive who had presided over a difficult, stagnant period for the company, has resigned. The bad news is that he'll be taking $210 million worth of compensation with him, one of the highest severance packages ever, which is saying a lot in this era of runaway executive pay".

As the editorial says, golden handshakes on joining, golden parachutes on being fired, and golden cushions to sit on during your tenure.

It's important not to take this stuff too seriously!

Editorial in IHT, Saturday-Sunday, January 6-7, 2007.

Corn for your SUV.

Under a picture of a combine harvester and clouds of dust "Farmers expect to send half of the bumper crop of corn crop forecast for 2007 to ethanol plants, which are being built at a record rate". Of course it is all about money, "For now, however, in anticipation of high potential returns, ethanol plants that rely on corn are being built by everyone from farmers to Bill Gates of Microsoft to a mix of Wall Street investors".

Source: IHT, Saturday-Sunday January 6-7, 2007

Our planetary footprint

We forget that "as we multiply, so do the things associated with us, including our livestock. At present there are about 1.5 billion cattle and domestic buffalo and about 1.7 billion sheep and goats". It is likely to be even higher for pigs and poultry which are reared more intensively.
The report continues, "Global livestock grazing and feed production use '30 percent of the land surface of the planet'. Livestock – which consume more food than they yield – also compete directly with humans for water. And the drive to expand grazing land destroys more biologically sensitive terrain, rain forests especially, than anything else."
As if that were not enough, "even more striking and alarming, is that livestock are responsible for about 18 percent of the global warming effect, more than transportation's contribution". The principal culprit is methane produced by all ruminants, a more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Source: International Herald Tribune, December 28th, 2006. quoting the "Livestock's Long Shadow" by the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

When least expected..

An extraordinary find, the Nei Xue Tang museum of Buddhist Art, essentially a private collection in a private dwelling (also of great interest). This must be one of the most under-stated gems of Singapore. The effect on entering is tangible.
Sadly no pictures or catalogues, but perhaps the better for that.

Reverend Mugo said it perfectly in a comment on her last post of 2006 "May there be many more years of practice that we can share in together".

Best wishes to the Sangha from Singapore.

Communication recovering

Yesterday's International Herald Tribune had more detail on the disruption, leading with front page headlines "Asia communications in chaos after earthquake jolts Taiwan", "Telecom links: Fragile yet resilient" and "Asia wakes up to a life without modern technology", and pages of detail inside. A map showed dense clustering of fibre-optic cables south of Taiwan routing traffic from all over SE Asia to S. Korea, Japan, and of course the US. Asia's "painful reliance" on the US was noted.

But, I am impressed by how rapidly traffic was rerouted over remaining cables and how fast recovery ships were dispatched to haul damaged cable to the surface for repairs. There can't be that many cable-laying ships lying idle just waiting for such incidents.

It has also been raining, more-or-less continuously: last week was some of the heaviest on record in Singapore causing flooding in low-lying areas. Singapore has an advanced infra-structure and massive storm drains, but many other SE Asian countries have fared badly. As always the poor suffer most.

Communication disrupted

Yesterday's earthquake off Taiwan has disrupted communication over SE Asia. Several undersea cables have been damaged, and repairs could take some weeks. For a while there was limited connection to the outside world, but it is getting better by the hour. I imagine technicians are working round the clock to re-route traffic and stabilise the network. In a way it is good to test systems which were originally designed for resilience in the case of a nuclear attack. Now we take this connectivity for granted and use it as part of our daily lives.

It is two years since the Asian Tsunami that claimed over 250,000 lives.

Rain without end...

It started raining 36 hours ago, and has not stopped since. When I asked how long this might last, "Oh, it should be over by Chinese New Year" was the reply. Chinese New Year is in February! Welcome to the rainy season. At least it is cooler!

Disconnected?

The chief executive of Morgan Stanley, John Mack, will receive "the biggest bonus for the head of a Wall Street firm ever" being awarded "$40 million as the company headed for the best profit in its 71-year history. Mack was granted shares valued at $36.2 million as of Tuesday and about $4 million in options". $57 million in bonuses goes to seven other executives. A well-deserved and generous helping from the ladle.

Police found 55 bodies on the streets of Baghdad on Saturday, 3 American GIs were blown up by a road-side bomb. The UK press no longer mentions this daily slaughter. The BBC has "Leona crowned winner of X factor" as a "top story".

It rained a lot today, and I thought felt how purifying and life-sustaining water is. I have to hold on to some good thoughts.

Sources: International Herald Tribune, Saturday 16th December and Juan Cole, Informed Comment.

A bigger ladle?

Yesterday's International Herald Tribune reports that Goldman Sachs quarterly earnings "left jaws agape on Wall Street". Profits rose 93%, $3.15 billion on revenues of $9.41 billion. That's $9.5 billion profit for the year. Much of this is driven by "building and trading complex derivative products". Of course, they don't actually make anything. Maybe as my friend says, the world is awash with money, some have just worked out how to use a bigger ladle than others.

The air is cool in the morning - it's the rainy season. Flowers on the trees, new growth.

Ecclesiastes

I dipped into Ecclesiastes today, oddly enough for a reason of science, though I confess to often visiting that prophet simply because the words resonate, especially in the King James Version. So today I have been brooding on the following:

Ecclesiates1:18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

I've been chewing on this all day. It's nothing to do with mis-use of knowledge, deeper than that.

Noise and the deaf

Being asymmetrically deaf, I have a heightened sensitivity to noise, most likely because I cannot place anything or anyone in the formless noise. Traffic, crowded places, voices all wear me down, but even alone and quiet, my deaf ear has loud tinnitus and my left (and hearing ear), some tinnitus. I am reminded of all this by my upstairs neighbour who every evening drags chairs across the tiled floor, my ceiling. I have been putting off reminding them that their floor is my ceiling. Sometimes thinking about taking an action is out of all proportion to the action! Note to self: just act and let go!

Poh Ern Shih (Temple of Thanksgiving)

I had the privilege of crawling round this temple with the architect Lee Coo one evening while it was under construction, through a kind introduction from Reverend Mugo. Thinking it must be much further on from when I last saw it, I looked up the web site, and yes, an 18-day thanksgiving ceremony is planned very soon as the old ceremony hall is closed and the new one brought into use.

The picture is taken from the Poh Ern Shih website and is copyright Lee Coo Consultant Associates. I recall that light and translucency would play a major part in the design. Time to get out of my routine and get down there.

Mr Lee Coo is the architect for the very fine Hall of No-Form at Kong Meng San Phor Kark See (KMSPK) Monastery.

Offered for the troubled soul of whom Rev. Mugo wrote in today's post and for all those who suffer loneliness and despair.

Hotei

Hotei works his magic.
Many years ago I received a small Hotei from Rev. Mugo: he lost his hands somewhere in my travels but is here in Singapore. His larger intact brother pictured above is in Bright Hill temple. Thanks for your post Rev. Mugo!

Bank robbery

How I love banks and the convoluted language they use to take your money from you. First Direct announced that it will charge £10 a month on current acccounts that are "dormant" to use its terminology. Current accounts are "expensive to administer". Then to add insult to injury, tortured language about needing to concentrate on customers having a "deeper" relationship (read, more credit).

"These changes are designed to encourage people to deepen their relationship with First Direct. I want to focus our efforts on our most important customers: those who use us as their main bank or have a number of products with us."
(Source: Business Guardian 15 Nov 2006)

To avoid the charge you must pay in £1,500 per month.

Since I no longer pay into my UK account each month, my "Always giving you extra" bank has dropped the interest to more-or-less zero on the balance. The idiocy is that should I withdraw the necessary feeder amount each month and promptly pay it back in, all would be well! This is the stupidity we get into when we let computers dominate our lives and remove all decision making from people.

If I didn't like it, I could close my account was the advice from the "banking advisor".

Well, I will do just that.

Maybe there is a more civilised form of banking than this blatant greed.

Updraft

Silent lighting flickering throughout this large storm cloud this evening. I should have tried for a short video clip! Impressive, I hope the aircraft coming into Changi could avoid it.

The Moon of No-Time

Small hand-held camera. We didn't speak for 10 minutes.

Longevity in Japan

I picked up from Living in Japan that there are now over 20,000 people in Japan over 100 years old. In a way it does not surprise me, and the source article by an active 92 year old doctor has advice good for any age and time.

"Living to a Grand Elderness" is how Robert Brady puts it. A nice expression, consonant with what Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By encourages us to write.

In memory of my Uncle Jim who died earlier this year aged 92, active to the end. A great and missed Elder.

Rootkit

Microsoft's monthly software update informed me that my old laptop had a Trojan or "root-kit" and offered some choices. I selected "delete", maybe unwisely as root-kits can be troublesome to remove, hiding and re-creating themselves when you think they are gone. Assuming it was real, how it got there is a mystery, as I verge on neurotic about the internet, and no other scans had shown anything untoward. Proceed with caution.

Good prevails

I keep reminding myself that most people are good, kind and helpful. It comes to mind when a respected blogger gets childish comments, when mail boxes are spammed, and when the news is unremittingly depressing. Then I notice a tree covered in pink blossom (yes, a tree, not a shrub), another tree with clusters of tiny orange flowers growing from the trunk without the distraction of leaves, and my house gecko watching me when I open the door: "foolish man, you thought I had gone?" A dip into two more fine blogs, "Time Goes By" and "Living in Japan" and I know I'm right. People are good. The world is as it is.

Remembrance

Have we become inured to barbarity?

The BBC this morning:

"Mr Abdul Ghani also said that five bodies - all blindfolded and with their legs bound - had been recovered at different locations in eastern Baghdad early on Sunday.

All had been mutilated by torture, he added."

Some 2,800 American service men and women killed since the war began.

A Lancet study puts the lower limit on the number of Iraqis killed at 420,000.

And then there is Darfur.

Brave people.

London

Flight from Singapore landed at 04:30, the earliest planes are allowed to land at Heathrow. Temperature +1 deg. C. Brrrr. Beautiful clear blue sky, the like of which you will not see in Singapore. Bank and mobile phone company tried to ruin my day, but the Luttrell Psalter in the British Library restored my calm. Now bringing some computers up-to-date then a visit North. A busy week ahead, but glad to be back.

Recalibration

Leaving for London in a few hours: flight time 14 hours 15 minutes.

Mid-term elections

The death toll for US troops in Iraq for the month of October rose to 100. Brave men and women. Today a huge bomb killed 30 poor labourers waiting for work in Sadr City, and wounded over 60. War has rarely been this savage.

I don't think I have ever cared as much about the American mid-term elections as I do now - a desperate hope for change and extrication from a disaster. Time to re-group and re-think under better leaders, for this is a long-term struggle.

The Blind leading the Blind

I've long felt that the market wunderkind with their ever more arcane financial "instruments" run rings around their bosses — to the danger of us all. Unless trading is very simple (and it may be), I cannot understand how a man in his mid-twenties has acquired the experience to see beyond his year-end bonus and take the long view.

It seems my fears are not entirely misplaced.

From the FT (Thursday, 26th Oct.), a letter:-

"Even the Professionals don't know all hedge fund risks".

"...If competent authorities such as Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, tell us that they neither fully understand the new complex products nor have full oversight about the possible domino effects of collapses of larger sizes, how can we then be sure that bigger and more complex collapses can be carried by the regulated part of the market?
...it is questionable that professional and institutional investors know all these risks. Since they do not play with the money only of rich people, but also with the hard-earned money of pensioners and workers, we would be inclined to regulate and monitor these so-called professionals more closely, to prevent them from running after hype, and the super-profits conjured up to them."

Apophasis

Michael Sells in "The Mystical Language of Unsaying" (1994) in the chapter on Meister Eckhart:

Eckhart says, "Were it the case that a fly had reason and could rationally seek out the eternal abyss of divine being, from which it came forth, we say that God, insofar as he is God, could not fulfill or satisfy the fly. Therefore pray God that we may be free of God."

The capitalisation is not accidental. Sells gives the medieval German. I'm drawn back to this again and again.

No wonder Eckhart came close to being burnt: his contemporary, Marguerite Porete, was.

Sells, Michael A. Mystical Languages of Unsaying. (1994), University of Chicago Press

Earned income?

From the FT, Tuesday Oct 24th:

"Four investors, led by Goldman Sachs, stand to make paper profits of $9bn when Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's shares begin trading in Hong Kong and Shanghai on Friday."

Paper profits because they are locked in and cannot sell for 3 years. So that's OK then!

Unbowed

I have just finished reading "Unbowed" a memoir by Wangari Maathai.

"Wangari Maathai is a prophet for our time, and Unbowed is a call to arms for all of us who feel the planet is overwhelmed by careless, corrupt, or violent leadership. I have long suspected that the voice to lead us forward would come out of Africa, and it has — a voice of humor, sense, strength and compassion. Read this book and pass it on."
Alexandra Fuller writing on the inside cover.

In Wangari Maathai's words:

"There are also the millions of Kenyans of tomorrow, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who will either curse us, or feel deeply ashamed at the lack of foresight, at the magnitude of greed, and at the arrogance of those who are promising destruction and want to call it development."

Hope, so needed in the bleak news that is our daily fodder. Women the builders, men the destroyers. The world will change when people change, one by one, and not by G8 summits.

Try to read it.

"Unbowed - a Memoir", by Wangari Maathai, published by Alfred A Knopf, New York, October 2006. (A fittingly beautiful book in design and choice of font, printed on 100% recycled paper)

Stings sings John Downland

Ionarts has a review of a new CD of Sting singing John Dowland. What amused me was the comment:

"One professor substituted a Sting track on his "drop-the-needle" exam, instead of the performance from the anthology he had played in class, but was disappointed that the students did not even notice. It turns out that students in college in 2006 are too young to have a connection to Sting. He is just some old dude singing music by an even older dude".

A "drop-the-needle" exam — this old dude likes that!

The Breaking of the Fast

Tomorrow is a public holiday in Singapore, the Muslim Festival of the Breaking of the Fast or "Eid ul-Fitr" - the end of Ramadan. In Singapore or Malaysia, Eid is also known as Hari Raya Aidilfitri or Hari Raya Puasa.

What is a job worth?

Richard Grasso, the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, has been ordered by a New York State judge to return up to $100 million of his fiercely contested $140 million payout. Needless to say Mr Grasso will appeal, and is further claiming that he had been "terminated", and thus due another $95 million.

Sounds reasonable to me: it's tough being a pensioner.

Source: International Herald Tribune Oct 21/22 2006

The energy cost of reading this!

It's known that processing information uses energy (well, strictly erasing bits uses energy), and your laptop may well be cooking your knees as you read this. The faster the clock speed, the hotter it gets. The roar of fans and forced air cooling are the first things that hit you when you enter a server room, and so-called "server farms", such as power the Google search engine, have to be located where power is cheap, and the fastest fibre-optic hubs are to hand. Few places meet both needs.

It is said that we have grown so accustomed to instantaneous response that a delay of 1/20 sec is now all we will tolerate. Next time you click, reflect on the extraordinary events that happen more-or-less instantaneously as your request flickers through an undersea cable, is switched, disassembled, routed to several servers, the responses assembled and back it comes.

But it comes at a cost - increasing electrical demand. It is said that "the total of electricity consumed by major search engines in 2006 approaches 5 gigawatts" and that we are on track by the end of the decade to have the global computing machine consuming half of all the world's output of electricity.

Wind turbines are not going to solve this one!

Source: Wired Oct 2006 "Cloudware"

Shakyamuni Buddha

Sotheby's Hong Kong autumn sale includes this beautiful statue of Shakyamuni Buddha. Tibetan in style, it was commissioned by the Ming emperor Yongle in the early 15th Century. Tibetan script prayer rolls are sealed inside the bronze. It last changed hands in France, and it hoped it will attract a Chinese buyer and return home. Bids exceeding $US7.7m (£4.1m) are expected. Prior to auction it had been on show in Shanghai and Beijing.

What a wonderful piece!

From the FT October 7/8 2006.

Note added: it sold for just under $US15 m, acquired by an Asian collector. Another picture is here.

Exuberance

Filing out after morning service at Kong Men San Phor Kark See Monastery
***

Shaded reporting

I read the on-line Guardian with amusement: it is too easy to see why it remains the most popular broadsheet in Universities! I can now only read Simon Hoggart and Polly Toynbee, the rest reminds me too much of academic sandals and corduroy orthodoxy.

Overnight I observed with increasing incredulity how one story evolved. The case of the veil (niqab) now rocking the British nation: first the headline read "teacher wins veil case" (curious I thought as she had lost three of the four actions), then it shifted to "teacher loses veil case" (closer I thought), now it is a sub-story to David Cameron's pronouncements on not making pronouncements, with the lost actions not mentioned at all.

I expect a slant from the Guardian, but the evolution of this short story over 24 hours is closer to taking a position.

Why can we not report those many positive things that happen each day instead of this relentless aggression and cynicism: responsibilities to each other as well as rights, care and compassion that might just lift us a bit?

Some things the Singaporeans have got right.

Customer inertia

Sometime ago I read in the FT that mobile phone companies make about 40% of their profit from customer inertia - in other words customers not knowing that they could be on a cheaper tariff. Sadly I fall into that 40%, but have been rudely awakened by a 50% increase in the monthly charge for a UK phone that has now been switched off for many months! So dear Vodafone, you will now lose me completely.

I thought about getting a mobile phone in Singapore, but the surreal phone shops in the malls don't cater for oldies who just want a prepaid tariff for an existing phone. No video, no camera, no ring tones, no Bluetooth, just a vanilla phone. Chinatown I have been told will hold the answer.

We'll all go VoIP within 18 months anyway - and then their revenue stream (I too know the jargon) will evaporate. I shall shed no tears.

Frozen in Time

When you tire of Wikipedia, try the 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, now free from copyright and available here. I was surprised to see that Building Societies had an entry. Buddhism is less surprising though quite different in style to what one would read today.

I should make it to "C" by next year!

Writing

Robert Brady at PureLandMountain comments on the demise of handwriting. People no longer write, they print - in Block Letters. My 80-year old mother's handwriting is beautiful to the eye (and a joy to read), and I confess to being obsessive about the pen I use. Here technology has made great progress, no more blobs from a ball-point pen, but real ink from a precision made yet disposable gel-ink Pilot HI-TEC.

There's a natural link between the hand and eye, a pace conducive to thinking while the hand does the writing. It's the same with fonts – I get carried away by beautiful fonts, and have even been known to buy a font or two for my laptop from a proper foundry - none of this Microsoft Comic Sans nonsense.

I noticed a shop-assistant writing the day's special deal with a brush pen, quick care-free strokes that looked good. But a Japanese colleague thinks computers will be the death of written Kanji, you forget the strokes and stroke order. I doubt it – once learned never forgotten – but I'm not Japanese.

One of the bigger shocks I faced in University life was marking essays - some handwriting was more-or-less illegible, yet all my wiser colleagues would say was "you get used to it".

I never did.

Deepavali

Singapore's "Little India" celebrates Deepavali (as do my neighbours which prompts this note). Little India is an extraordinary district at any time, traffic chaos, women in traditonal dress, much gold, temples, food - wonderful place!

From the entry in Wikipedia:

"Diwali (also called Deepavali, दिवाली or दीपावली) is a major Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Buddhist festival / celebration. Fireworks are associated with the festival in some regions of India. Known as the "Festival of Lights," it symbolises the victory of good over evil, and lamps are lit as a sign of celebration and hope for mankind. Celebrations focus on lights and lamps, particularly traditional diyas."

Opportunity on Mars

Since coming to Singapore, I had not kept up with the progress of the two Mars' rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, but recently I rediscovered the site that has raw images as they are uploaded each sol (Martian day). Expected to have just a three month mission, the two rovers are now coming up to three years continuous operation, having survived two Martian winters, a drive wheel failing, getting bogged down in soft terrain, and several communication and software glitches. I'm amazed at the skill and resourcefulness of the mission controllers in keeing the small craft alive. There is now little doubt that Mars had plentiful water, if not oceans.



After what seemed like an endless trek across a montonous flat landscape of blowing sand and treacherous drifts, Opportunity has now arrived at the vast crater "Victoria", and with the help of high-resolution images from the newly arrived Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the controllers back on Earth are exploring ways of entering it. The excitement is in the exposed rock strata that should give many clues as to the early history of Mars.

(The lower image is a composite taken through filters that approximate the actual colour. A rover has been added to the image to give a sense of scale - and is mostly likely what a martian would see!)

If we could only think a little more about our insignificance (and paradoxically, our likely uniqueness), then we might be more respectful of each other and of our small blue planet.

Offered for those whose life ends violently.

"OM Retreat"

Kong Men San Phor Kark See Monastery will hold a 100 Million Mani Recitation Retreat led by their Eminences Drubwang Konchok Norbu Rinpoche and Tritsab Gyabra Rinpoche from December 24th to December 31st. Known as the "OM retreat", referring to the recitation of the six syllable "Om Mani Padme Hum", the mantra will be recited 100 million times over the six days. It is described thus:

OM closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the gods’ realm. The suffering of the gods arises from foreseeing one’s fall from the gods’ realm.
This suffering comes from pride.

MA closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the warring gods (asuras) realm. The suffering of these asuras is constant fighting.
This suffering comes from jealousy.

NI closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the human realm. The suffering of humans is birth, sickness, old age, and death.
This suffering comes from desire.

PAD closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the animal realm. The suffering of animals is stupidity, preying upon one another, being killed by men for meat, skin, etc, and being beasts of burden.
This suffering comes from ignorance.

ME closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the hungry ghosts’realm. The suffering of hungry ghosts is hunger and thirst.
This suffering comes from greed.

HUM closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the hell realm. The suffering of the hell is heat and cold.
This suffering comes from anger or hatred.

Daily sessions are from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm, and the full sesshin must be attended.

Dharma vessel

The Hall of No Form at Bright Hill. Offered to Reverend Master Mugo in gratitude for her teaching.
*

Does it matter?

I like the idea of having things on which I am working available on-line, with someone else looking after their backup. So, when Google launched GMail, I was an early adopter, and it has become my principal mail account. I like its different organising principles and its accurate spam filter. When they acquired Writely, I quickly adopted that as I did the Spreadsheet. It's convenient to work from a computer anywhere irrespective of it being Microsoft or Linux or Mac. You can even keep Firefox on a memory stick so not even the host browser need be used. Fresh on the heels of their purchase of YouTube, Google today consolidated Writely and the Spreadsheet into "Google Docs". I'm not convinced this is a step forward, partly because I like small and simple applications (unlike Microsoft Office) . But it's free, does what I want, and the collaboration option of Writely is useful - two or more people can work on a document at the same time. You can also write directly to your blog!

But I remind myself that Google is not a charity and has the world's most powerful indexing service that can instantly pull together any number of tiny snippets of information that alone mean nothing but in aggregate may say more about you. Does this matter? I have always worked on the precautionary principle that the internet is not secure, and if you don't want something to be known, don't have it on a networked computer. This includes any computer on broadband.

Perhaps we are still enjoying internet freedom because the media barons have yet to work out how to "monetize" it. They will, so I enjoy it and learn while I can. Then I'll go back to pen and paper and writing letters. The hand and eye better coordinated.

I've added the link "Living in Japan" to the sidebar. Recommended.

Today's anchor point

Presentiment

I am like a flag surrounded by distances.
I sense the winds that are coming, and must live them,
while the things down below don't yet stir:
the doors still close softly, and in the chimneys there's silence;
the windows don't tremble yet, and the dust is still calm.

Then I know the storms already and grow embroiled like the sea.
And spread myself out and plunge deep inside myself
and cast myself off and am entirely alone
in the great storm.

from "The Book of Images"
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Edward Snow

Nuclear madmen

If, as seems certain, North Korea tested an underground nuclear device, two thoughts cross my mind - three if we include the failure of diplomacy. First, some individuals, companies, nations must have supplied the precision machine tools, the chemical engineering plant, the alloys and stainless steels for processing spent fuel, the electronics, the timing mechanisms, the computer software and hardware, even the tunneling machinery, or second, and this is more worrying, it is really not too difficult to assemble such a nuclear device. The latter has long been rumoured.

One day the earth will shrug off our hubris and the dolphins will inherit this beautiful blue planet again.

Haze-2

Walking down the hill tonight, I noticed a small orange ball in the sky, nothing like the fierce sun that normally cooks me on my short walk to the station. The haze is from the slash and burn fires in Indonesia, and air pollution in Singapore is said to be the worst since 1997.
When you want to feed your family you don't much care about global warming.

"After The Fire"

Last weekend I bought a book of poems "After the Fire" by Boey Kim Cheng, a poet from Singapore, now in Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Still reading it, but very moving and resonant - not the right words, but it will have to do for now.

From "Bear":

...

I remember my childhood bear;
it was coarser fur, but like hers
and most other bears, China-made.
My father won it shooting bottles
at a booth in Great or Happy World,
those fairs of dizzy rides and shows
that lasted the whole of your childhood
and have exited into the country's past.
I sat it, walked it, bedded and hugged
it like a raft in the stormy winds
of my parents' quarrels. When
my father left, Bear held faint promise
that he would come back,
and be sensible like Bear.
...

"After the Fire" by Boey Kim Cheng, New and Selected Poems, published by Firstfruits Publications, Singapore, ISBN 981-05-5873-2

Loss

Blessed with long life, one-by-one you lose your friends and the familiar world dissolves before your eyes: you say nothing, that is the way of your generation, but the pain is there. I know it and for all my worldly skill, feel powerless before it. Sometimes I think all the ancestors are there to care for you, other times I think there is nothing. It makes no difference what I think. May the compassion of the Bodhisattva enfold you both.

Haze

I thought it was my eyes, but the haze over Singapore and the Malayan Peninsula is real. It's from forest fires in Southern Sumatra!
Source: Channel News Asia.

The wisdom of the taxi driver

Coming home in a taxi I had to tell the driver I was deaf as, from his puzzled expression in the rear-view mirror, my guessed responses to his conversation were obviously off the mark. Then I noticed his hearing aid so he shouted more and I improved my guessing, and we had a fine conversation about deafness for the rest of the journey. Like mine, his appears to be familial. I gave up with the hearing aid fearing the sharp cracks and distorted racket more, but he assures me things have got better with digital technology. But it's becoming a serious handicap to my work, even talking in small groups, so I need to do something.

Sometimes you get help in strange ways. Thanks.

Gozen cereal

When you look at organic food, and put it back on the shelf as too expensive, console yourself with the thought that 40 - 60 percent of all the nitrogen in your body comes from ammonia synthesised by the Haber Bosch industrial process. Well over 160 million tonnes per year are produced, largely for fertiliser. Paying a premium price for the other 60 - 40% of your nitrogen seems rather pointless.

But the freedom to be irrational is an important freedom.

House friend

I share my place with a few insects, the thankfully rare cockroach, and my friend the gecko who lives behind one of the air conditioning units. They are considered welcome guests as they eat insects, and as it is a time of year when getting bitten by mosquitoes and ticks is a daily hazard, my friend is most welcome to stay. They talk too!

Last week I interrupted a trail of small ants marching upwards on an outside wall of the small services balcony. Where they were going was ant business, but they had come two floors with twelve more to go.

So far no parquet-floor eating termites.

I think my body clock is missing autumn: I need to make a trip to Europe.

Krill

The waters of the Antarctic oceans may be cold but teem with life. Among this abundance is the tiny Antarctic Krill part of a complex and self-sustaining ecosystem. Of course we can't just leave it alone! The International Herald Tribune (Sept. 16th - 17th) informs me that a new type of factory ship using powerful pumps will harvest up to 120,000 metric tonnes of krill per year: two such monsters will take the current annual catch of all krill fishing. And for what? To feed factory farmed salmon.

We are a frightening species.

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!

Laptop decisions

We never had "problems" in industry, only "challenges". Thus I wrestle with my laptop "challenge". My Linux laptop has failed: occasionally it will start, but so rarely to make it unusable. On those few occasions it starts it will likely stop abruptly. All obvious solutions have been tried, even the good "doctors" of Sim Lim Square: but no-one likes intermittent problems.

So do I buy yet another second hand IBM Thinkpad , with maybe the same risks, or a new one?

I am looking at a new very portable Thinkpad X60 or a second hand heavier but cheaper T30.

So now you know.

From the FT (Asian) on Saturday:

"Singapore has tightened regulations this month on leading international publications, including the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune, Time, Newsweek and the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER).
The rules, which already apply to the Asian Wall Street Journal, require the publications to post a security deposit of S$200,000 (US$127,000, €99,000, £68,000) and appoint a representative in Singapore who could be sued, and gives the government the power to restrict their circulation".

Just when I had moved to the International Herald Tribune for my news!

Growing Old

Thinking further on growing old, I would mention a book dealing with neurodegeneration that I found useful. "Aging with Grace" by Professor David Snowdon is a long term study of a religious community, told largely by the nuns with wonderful candour and love.

Recommended.

Beetles

Not sure if I could do this!

Neurodegeneration

A distinguished neuroscientist gave a public lecture last night on neurodegenerative disorders, well known examples being Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. I've had an interest in this field for a long time, after a collaboration at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, so have a working knowledge of some of the current research. It was an excellent lecture, the more so as there were many non-scientists in the audience, some most likely sufferers themselves or with relatives suffering these cruel afflictions. I was most impressed by his handling of questions at the end. These illnesses are particularly difficult to understand: though much progress has been made, there are no cures immanent. This is a hard message.
We may reflect that for over 99% of our time on the planet, average life expectancy has been only 20-30 years, largely due to high infant mortality. In the past 100 years, life expectancy has risen, roughly from 50 to 76 years, as infectious diseases were controlled, and we may squeeze out a few more years. But we are likely to only marginally increase the average lifespan. Diseases of old age are not the same as ageing. Old age has no evolutionary purpose so maybe we are uncovering problems for which evolution has not prepared us.
These are not just scientific problems, but challenges to society and to our compassion. We have never faced the challenge of an ageing population and a diminishing working population. I have always felt that palliative care is as important, maybe more important, than research into disease.
Compassion works at so many levels and in so many ways to giver and receiver.

In memory of my Uncle Jim.

Buddhist Temples in Singapore

This list is transcribed from the "Street Atlas Singapore". It may not be complete, nor are all the entries strictly Temples, but it is a start, and will be updated as I explore them. Any input is welcome.

Buddhist Temples

An-Le Temple
BanRuo Jiang Tang Temple
Bee Low See Temple
Bo Tien Temple
Buddhist Heritage Centre
Buddhist Union, The
Burmese Buddhist Temple
Cheng Hwa Cher Siah Temple
Dharma Cakra Society
Fa Hua Monastery
Foo Hai Ch'an Monastery
Golden Pagoda Buddhist Temple
Hock Teck See Temple
Hong Lai Sze Temple
Hong San See Temple
Hong San Si Temple
Jayamangal Buddhist Temple, The
Jin Long Si Temple
Kancanrama Buddhist Temple
Karma Kagyud Buddhist Centre
Kew Hua San Poh Ern Shih Temple
Kim San Temple
Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Temple
Kuan Im Tng Temple
Kuang Chee Tng Buddhist Association
Kwan Im Tng Temple
Kwan Im Tong Hood Che Temple
Kwan Imm See Temple
Kwan Yam Theng Buddhist Temple
Kwang Hua Buddhist Monastery
Leang San King Buddhist Temple
Leng Ern Jee Temple
Leong San See Temple
Leong Wah Chan Si Temple
Lian Chi Ge Si Temple
Lian Shan Shuang Lin Monastery
Man Fatt Lam Buddhist Temple
Mangala Vihara Buddhist Temple
Nan Hai Fei Lai Temple
Nan Hai Temple
Pagoda
Palelai Buddhist Temple
Pao Kwan Foh Tang Temple
Phor Beng See Temple
Poh Jay Buddhist Research Institute
Poh Tiong Kiong Temple
Poo Thor Jee Temple
Pu Ti Buddhist Temple
Puat Jit Buddhist Temple
Sakaya Muni Buddha Gaya Temple
Sakaya Tenphel Ling Temple
Sattha Puchaniyaram Buddhist Temple
Shuang Lin Cheng Huang Temple
Sim Poh Seng Temple
Singapore Buddhist Lodge
Singapore Buddhist Lodge, The
Singapore Buddhist Meditation Centre
Singapore Buddhist Mission
Singapore Buddhist Youth Mission
Sri Lankarayama Temple
Tai Kak Seah Temple
Tai Pei Buddhist Centre
Tai Pei Yuen Temple
Tee Kwee Hood Sia Temple
Thai Buddhist Temple
Tian Kong Buddhist Temple
Tsan Tan Lin Temple
Tse Tho Aum Temple
Uttamayanmuni Buddhist Temple
Wu Tai Shan Buddhist Temple
Yuan Ming Si Temple
Zu-Lin Temple

"Street Atlas Singapore" Periplus Editions 2005-2006

The computer's revenge (part 2)

I knew I should not have written about it: now the Linux computer has packed up completely. Starts the boot process, must be spinning the disc as the boot sector is read, but then it dies, all lights go out. Very occasionally it will boot. Fortunately having just loaded Ubuntu from scratch there is no data to lose.

I'll take it down to Sim Lim Square - nothing to lose.

The computer's revenge

I was up early to fix my laptop: late last night, I took the wireless card out to test something, and on putting it back it Windows decided it was new hardware, and re-installed the driver! "What the ...." - I thought, stopping just short of the expletive! I left it and went to bed and read Amartya Sen's "Identity and Violence" (apt given Thursday's events in London). Never fix anything if the mood is wrong!

I now had two instances of the wireless software running. A sure recipe for confusion and problems. This morning I removed both, deleting the drivers and the application, only to find that D-Link no longer have the driver on their web page. My card is obsolete! I mentally kicked myself for not checking first. By pure luck, or the care of a guardian angel, I found a copy of the driver on a memory stick, having hit this problem some year or two back. So I'm running again.

Then on to the next challenge: I have another laptop running Ubuntu (Linux). I upgraded to the latest version thinking that the effort of getting it back to usable shape would be worth it as Ubuntu 6.06 has long term support. How to get the wireless card working? I know it worked in the UK in the British Library for instance, but here I am using WEP encryption (yes, I know it can be readily cracked). After an hour and much Google searching I was no further forward. Then I changed the WEP key yet again, and lo, it was working. Had I not just done that several times?

A little more maintenance and I'm done - should be good for another year or two! Why these things happen I will call a mystery. They just happen.

Quiet Dawn

By nature I am an early riser and summer mornings in the UK would often see me up well before 5:00 watching the reddening sky. The world from my window was still and calm, the occasional car, a blackbird accentuating the silence as it finished its singing and flew off to do what blackbirds do. I miss those slow awakenings. In Singapore the dawn is short, within 30 minutes it's over, punctuated by the double beep of cars being electronically unlocked in the nearby carpark.

It's a busy world here.

Public Holiday

National Day provided a welcome mid-week break — and a 20% discount on all books in Kinokinuya. I thought I should know more about the region in which I now live, so bought "SouthEast Asian Affairs 2006", dealing with Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor Leste and Vietnam. As a counter balance to national identity, I added "Identity and Violence - The Illusion of Destiny" by Amartya Sen.

Motivated by a MovingMountains audio blog, I found an iRiver 30, which plays music in mp3 and ogg formats, has a radio, and records sound in mp3 (and presumably ogg). I have a well-used Sony recorder, but cannot find a way of converting the proprietary .msv files into a shareable format. Both will have their uses.

"SouthEast Asian Affairs 2006" edited by Daljit Singh and Lorraine C. Salazar, Institute of SouthEast Asian Studies, Singapore (2006).
"Identity and Violence - The Illusion of Destiny" by Amartya Sen, W.W. Norton & Company Ltd (2006)

Troubleshooting

One of the skills I look for in hiring is the ability to troubleshoot. I work in a technical area where things often go wrong, less in the sense of breakdown (though it happens), but more in the sense of something working sub-optimally. To recognise it and then to systematically analyse the problem is not something you are taught, yet it is a crucial skill that makes all the difference. Troubleshooting can be very difficult for intermittent problems and very stressful if not approached in the right way.

I am thinking about this after watching an electrician at work last week: I lost all the lights with a spectacular bang. The first man, local to the apartment complex, did his best but missed the problem: at least he quickly called his mate who arrived within the hour (try that in London!), and then went about the task in a way that really impressed me. The problem was ultimately simple: a sealed long-life fluorescent bulb that must have arced inside and drawn a heavy current to trip the breakers. He reproduced it with an equally loud bang. Fortunately he worked with full precautions!

He recommended I change the "no-name" long-life bulbs for named brands like Philips or Panasonic. Photographers will know that light bulbs have a colour temperature, so I used the opportunity to change from "operating theatre" white to a warmer light — much better!

So a problem became an opportunity - so often the case.

In the dark

Home, I thought, grocery bag in hand. A loud bang as I switched on the lights, and darkness. All the light circuits are out - except one, in the storage room where the distribution box lives! That is forward thinking indeed, putting the one light that matters on a separate circuit.
Yes, the circuit breaker for the lights had tripped and will not reset, so there is a short-circuit in one of the ceiling fittings. It will have to wait, a ladder in the dark is not a good idea.

You never know where the next teaching is coming from!

The Cherry

Remember when fruit was seasonal and not "on-demand"? Mis-shapen, full of seeds and pips and flavour, not just selected for shipping convenience and shelf-life? Tomatoes you could hold to your nose and savour?
The last hope is the cherry! Perishable, short season, a stone to crack your teeth, but full of dark juice and astringency.

Wonderful.

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".

Torpor

The humidity is getting to me: it is the cloying dampness, paper that feels twice its normal weight, air that does not move, clothes that do not dry. Of course there is air conditioning, but welcome though it is, it is a solution of last resort. Some days are better than others, a thunderstorm helps.

The picture is the conical structure on Orchard Road known as Wheelock place. Taken at night, looking upwards, it is very different to the day. Indra's net perhaps?

Now to sort out a new wireless router whose default settings are devoid of any security - open to the world.

Added later: set a 128 bit WEP key, not impossible to crack, but better than nothing!

Passing thoughts

From today's FT: shares in VeraSun Energy Corporation, the second largest ethanol producer in the US, soared by 30% on their listing in New York. Shares in ADM, the largest US ethanol producer have risen by 85% in the past year.

Are we collectively mad? The idea of using cultivatable land to produce fuel for cars makes no sense - morally, scientifically or economically. Even if those without food were fed, it would still make no sense.

An hour in one of SingTel's shops tonight, and I will have a phoneline, broadband access and a number in a week's time. I move at the weekend.

Reverend Master Mugo of Moving Mountains is also moving: my thoughts are with you.

Hot?

They laughed kindly when I said I thought it was hot!
An excuse for a green tea ice on the way back.

Standards

The British three-pin plug, big and bulky for travelling, impossible to pack, is alive and well in Singapore. But there is always an upside - I bought a small adaptor block with the three-pin monster on the cable and European and US / Japanese sockets on the short block. This is will be very useful for my motley collection of non-UK devices. I now don't need a tree of adaptors hanging from the nearest socket (in hotels, always too few and inaccessible). The Japanese are masters of such things, and I treasure a laptop power supply from the railway arches of Akihabara, at least half the size of the official one, with pins that fold flat into a recess in the body. That and my "Road Warrior" plug and I am ready to travel!

No room for error

I watched this ship coming very, very slowly into the already occupied harbour: when very close to the point of no return, it began to slowly rotate on the spot and edge into the berth — sideways. No white churning water, just power applied carefully and at the right spots. I thought of the officers in charge, watching their instruments, absolutely no room for error. And yet mistakes are part of being human. Why mention this at all?

Momentum is mass times velocity: a slowly turning ship has very low velocity but enormous mass, so the momentum is very high and will destroy anything in its path. Likewise, listen or not, my true Nature works within me, cares naught for my thoughts and is unstoppable. Sometimes I don't listen and get in the way.