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!