Moonpointer moderators will be away on the road soon, on Buddhist pilgrimage in India and Nepal. In the mean time, there will most likely be no new articles till after 3rd January 2010. Till then, merry Christmas and happy new year in advance!
Spiritual retreats and pilgrimages
are journeys into the heart of reality;
not away from reality.
- [...]

The epic movie ‘Avatar’ is a must-see – for every generation, every kid and adult. Its dramatic and educational messages are direct and simple, but portrayed in probably the most powerful and inspiring manner to date on the silver screen. In the future, after fully milking the Earth’s minerals for energy, humans travel to another [...]

A Tit for a Tat (78)
Tit: Why didn’t you shave yet?
Tat: Because the sooner I shave, the sooner I’ll have to shave later.
Tit: But the sooner you shave, the sooner you need not shave later too!
Next aT4aT: http://moonpointer.com/new/2010/01/two-stupid-questions
Previous aT4aT: http://moonpointer.com/new/2009/12/we-are-unwell

Question: In Chinese horoscope, the next year is that of the tiger. Some say it’s not a ‘good’ animal. How would you respond to those who discourage having a tiger baby?
Answer: Is it so that tigers are all not ‘good’? I have at least two good tiger friends. Just as there are good and bad [...]

Bought a big box of biscuits…
at a great price.
Then it turned out…
that the expiry date is really close.
Can I finish them before they expire?
Why should I imagine I can?
Can I finish them before I expire?
Why should I imagine I can?
Surely, many die with unfinished biscuits,
‘biting’ off more than they can ‘chew’!
What other ‘biscuits’ have I [...]

A Tit for a Tat (77)
Tit: I think he suffers from some mental disorder.
Tat: Which one?
Tit: It doesn’t matter.
Tat: What do you mean?
Tit: Can you imagine the days when disorders like depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD… weren’t well researched?
Tat: Yes, but what are you trying to say?
Tit: I think it’s unfair to just classify him [...]

Mos Burger’s paper cup above.
I only go for its guava juice and fries;
not its animal stuff!
Look at its minimal design…
A ‘hand-drawn’ line runs around it.
A single dot above it.
Without the line (horizon?), it would be too plain?
With the line alone, would it still be too plain?
With the dot (sun?), is it complete?
Then again, what design [...]

I finally decided to relinquish the stack of unread newspapers to the rag and bone man (karang guni) for recycling. The stack came to be the last time I went overseas. It felt a somewhat uneasy letting go of the stack. There was a subtle fear of possibly missing out some crucial information in the [...]

The comic strip (from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) above illustrates classic ignorance about vegetarianism and rationalisation for meat-eating. While we know that it’s near impossible to have an absolute guilt-free meals, the best thing is to minimise killing for food. If you think that it’s murder when many small animals and insects are killed when [...]

Yah: I’m apolitical.
Jat: More like apathetic.
Yah: Apathetic to politics… yes!
Jat: How so?
Yah: Because politics has too many shades of grey. So I would rather spend time on something more real, like studying the Pureland sutras.
Jat: And Pureland is more real than our world?
Yah: A world without the complexity of three poisons (greed, hate, delusion) at [...]