Sir Francis of Assisi

O Lord make me an instrument of thy peace,
Where there is hatred, let me bring love,
Where there is resentment, let me bring forgiveness,
Where there is discord, let me bring unity,
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith,
Where there is error, let me bring thruth,
Where there is dispair, let me bring happiness,
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy,
Where there is darkness, let me bring light.
O Master grant that I may desire rather:
To console than to be consoled.
To understand than to be understood.
To love rather than to be loved.
Because it is in giving that we obtain forgiveness,
In dying that we rise to eternal life.

What was said?

Tina said that he said that she said that they said that we said that you said that I said yes!

I didn’t say that.

Fire Sermon

Phra Mick’s lesson to me:

We rule with ideas and are imprisoned by ideas. We die for ideas and are reborn to ideas. Self is an idea. Destroying that idea of self is an idea. Nibbana is recognising this flame.

The Buddha taught in the Aditta-pariyaya Sutta (The Fire Discourse) that all is aflame with the fire of passion, aversion, and delusion. Aflame with birth, aging, and death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, and despairs. Seeing thus, one grows disenchanted. Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is released.

Destiny quiz

Tina, your destiny is to be a Provider

Whether you know it or not, this is the role that is most in tune with who you are at your core. As a Provider, you have a genuine nurturing concern for the welfare of others and you’re eager to serve them. You can recognize exactly what people need and your friendly, helpful, social nature makes them feel comforted. With your kind and generous heart, you are personable, talkative, and outward with your emotions, and your openness and sensitivity makes you concerned about the way others view you. Along these lines, be careful not to blame yourself when things go wrong. You cannot prevent bad things from happening, even though your tendency to be orderly with a strong sense of right and wrong may lead you to believe you can. Accept that you do what you can to take care of things and that this will get you far in the world.

More quizzes here 

infatuation

My friend thought she would be the last person to fall head over heels for a guy. I remember telling her, love comes when you least expect it, and even, when you least want it. I must have cursed it, because now she’s walking around in a zombie daze infatuated with a certain someone. So…this blog is a tribute to her.

In a way she and I are quite similar. We were once DestinyChild Women, independent and didn’t care for all this love crap. There were much better things to do and think about. Whenever a relationship could possibly come about, we would rationalise this and that – maybe he feels the same, maybe he doesn’t, maybe this isn’t the right guy, maybe he’s not serious, maybe this feeling will go away, maybe this isn’t the right time, maybe this maybe that.

And yet the feeling is still there. Left hanging, unfullfilled, attention-seeking, intruding, binding…

Feelings are just feelings, and yet, they are so real, so immediate, so spellbinding.

The chase drives us crazy, and yet we love it. We grasp onto every subtle hint and it can make our day. We read their sms’ three times. Then read it another three more the next day. And all he said was, “Sure, ok.” (I’m exaggerating, but something equally banal.) We have a silent wish the next call’s from him, or we look around so we might bump into him somewhere “accidentally”. (Girls, don’t stalk. Not cool.)

But when he does call, or when we do see him, we slight him off a bit. sms? What sms? Oh that sms. Playing it cool, but within we’ve got flushes of excitement. Playing hard to get, like it’s a privilege we even care. And this isn’t just girls, btw. Guys do it too (I know, they’ve told me).

I think these games act as defense mechanisms at the initial stage – in case he doesn’t really like you. In relationships, it might be your signs to tell the guy – hey, pucker up or i’m gone.

This is the part where even i don’t understand. You like this person, and yet you act as if you don’t. When do you tip the scales? It’s surprising how we end up with each other at all! Then there are those complicated times when you don’t like someone and they think you do because of these silly misleading signs.

Ok, now for the fairytale ending. Despite all this complication, something wonderful can come from all this. You might get together, you might not. But don’t worry. Either way the games are here to stay. At the beginning of the relationship you might be testing each other out, pushing each other’s boundaries, exploring and defining the relationship. (Seeing whether you made the right choice!)

But eventually, you do get tired of all this nonsense. You become so comfortable with the other person, you don’t need to put on an appearance anymore, you don’t need to hide the fact that you care, and most importantly, you can open yourself up completely and truly for the other person to accept. You can throw away the defensive mechanisms, the ego-building, the facardes and masquerades. You can just be you, and he can be he. You can tackle the world’s worries together, without having to worry about the relationship. You can do all that you did as a DestinyChild girl, this time, with someone by your side.

The day i was born

Depending on how you know me, you might think that the day i was born there was probably:

1. Miracles like the sun refusing to set, or rainbows flowering the sky, OR
2. Earthquakes and lightening bolts at random intervals.

Well, I found out today that the day i was born was quite uneventful. Just the Southern Baptist convention deciding “no women clergy members.”

Really shapes my life doesn’t it? Lucky I’m Buddhist.

In the words of Mother Teresa

Some of my favourite quotes from Mother Teresa. I hope they inspire you too.

It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.

Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.

Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.

Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.

Jesus said love one another. He didn’t say love the whole world.

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

So many signatures for such a small heart.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.

The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.

The Energy of Kindness

When I have worries, I throw them up to the Heavens, and watch them drift away with the clouds.

I watch Mother Nature sweep them up and spread her sunshines of Loving Kindness over me.

Quote of the Day

“A great life is born in the soul, grown in the mind, and lived from the heart.”

~Suzanne Willis Zoglio~

vipassana on sensations

Feelings are just…feelings.
Watch them come…and go.
Like waves, they crash, but subsides.
No judgment, no aversion, no desire, no attachment.