Q: I have tried to avoid the killing of insects but realise that this is impossible. I therefore consider that the results of such killings could give minor results such as the little sufferings we get from insect bites.

A: Have you tried the path of Metta (Loving-kindness) to avoid killing? This the Buddha did perfectly and we can work towards it too.  Am not sure how it can be concluded that such killing can only ‘give minor results such as the little sufferings we get from insect bites’. I see it the other way round. If we generate Metta for even small animals and insects, there are major results – of advancing towards the perfection of Metta, of making it truly an immeasurable, as it is meant to be, for the welfare of all beings great and small, as taught by the Buddha in the Metta Sutta -

Whatever living beings there may be —
feeble or strong (or the seekers and the attained)
long, stout, or of medium size, short, small, large,
those seen or those unseen,
those dwelling far or near,
those who are born as well as those yet to be born —
may all beings have happy minds.

Related Article:
Should Bugs Be Killed Purposely?
http://moonpointer.com/new/2010/03/should-bugs-be-killed-purposely

From ‘The Art of Meditation’ by Matthieu Ricard

We have all, to varying degrees, had the experience of profound altruistic love, of a feeling of all-encompassing benevolence, of intense compassion for those who are suffering. Some of us are naturally more altruistic than others, sometimes to the point of heroism. Others are more turned in on themselves and find it hard to consider the welfare of others as an essential goal, and even harder to put the welfare of others before their own. Whichever the case may be, it is essential to cultivate altruism. Being altruistic not only helps us to benefit others, but it is also the most satisfying way to live. This is the opposite of a heightened feeling of self-importance that only brings pain to oneself and others.

In general, even when altruistic thoughts arise in our mind, they are fairly quickly replaced by other less wholesome thoughts such as those of anger or jealousy. That is why, if we want altruism to play a major role in our being, we must spend some time cultivating it, because just wishing is not enough.

As we discussed earlier, meditation is a means of familiarizing ourselves with a new way of being. Now, how can we meditate on altruism? First of all, we must realize that in the deepest part of ourselves, we do not want to suffer, we want to aspire to happiness. Once we have recognized this aspiration, the next thing we have to do is to realize that all beings share it. We also need to realize that the right not to suffer, though often ignored, is without a doubt the most fundamental right of all beings. Finally, we must realize that there are causes and conditions to suffering and therefore remedies to it.

Unfortunately, when it comes to choosing the means of creating happiness and preventing more suffering, we are often unskillful or altogether off the mark. Some people get lost on the wrong track by blindly seeking to achieve their own happiness at the price of others’ suffering. Generally speaking, we should unreservedly wish for all sentient beings to be delivered from the causes of suffering. To this end, the Buddhist texts advise us to cultivate four particular thoughts or attitudes and to expand them without limit. These are altruistic love, compassion, joy in the happiness of others, and impartiality.

Meditation One: Altruistic Love

Imagine a young child approaches you and gives you a look that is joyous, confident and full of innocence. You stroke his head, look at him with tenderness, and take him in your arms. You feel a sense of unconditional benevolence and love. Let yourself be entirely pervaded by this love that wishes for nothing more than his well-being. Then, cultivate, sustain and nourish this feeling of loving kindness. When it declines, revive it. At the end of the session, rest for a few moments in the mindful awareness of love.

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The ingenious film that is ‘Inception’ begins with the assumption that it is possible for multiple persons to enter someone’s dream, that can even be designed without that person knowing, thus digging out deep secrets from his sub-consciousness, or even implanting ideas which eventually shape one’s decisions. Thank goodness this doesn’t seem technologically viable at the moment… though it does seem possible in the near future? If so, may this movie be a cautionary tale for what may come to be! This is especially relevant in this information age, when the conceiving of the slightest ideas by the powerful can mushroom into world-changing actions.

In the story, dreams are elaborately crafted by architects who have an eye for detail and creativity – so as to trick the dreamer into believing the dream sequences to be real. This reminds me of the Buddha’s teaching in the Diamond Sutra, that all conditioned phenomena (including real life) is dream-like, due to their ethereal and transient nature. Even more confounding yet rich than the Matrix movies, the dream hackers are able to delve deeper into the subject’s mind by conjuring a dream… within a dream… within a dream! With intriguing cross-interaction over layers of dreams, even the hackers are at times unsure of whether they are still in a dream, which, and whose!

In the Matrix universe, it is possible to die when hooked to the Matrix, when one’s mind is weak enough to experience the illusion of simulated pain as real. In the dream world of Inception however, one cannot die in a dream – simply because it is just a dream. Yet, a dream is never just a dream – especially when it is perceived as reality in the moment. The hackers in the real world are synchronised to awaken together upon accomplishing their missions with a common wake-up call – which is heard as music fed through earphones, that penetrates all the layers of dreams. For a quick awakening, their sleeping bodies are jolted awake by dunking them into water! Almost Zennish – as in the sudden school! Buddhists use realisation of the Dharma as the spiritual wake-up call!

It is also proposed that an idea is the most resilient parasite. As they say, thoughts become words, which become actions, which become habits, which becomes character, which becomes destiny. The Buddha would concur, as he taught that the mind is the forerunner of all things. Ideas clung to can shape reality or sustain delusion. While the hackers admit that it is not easy to plant an idea in someone’s mind without the person realising, an idea that is firmly implanted can be difficult to let go off. Just recall your favourite delusion! Also discussed was planting the essence of an idea as a simple mantra-like phrase, so as to let it grow naturally, as one becomes one with it. What mantras or taglines do you live by? Good ones I hope!

In lucid dreaming, one is mindful enough to know one is dreaming, and is thus able to play with the ‘matter’ in the dream. The possibilities would be limited only by one’s imagination. The more sharp one’s mind is, the more intricately detailed and functional can one’s dream be. This would be control. However, for most dreamers, we are controlled by our delusional thinking instead – both when awake and asleep! The Avatamsaka Sutra says, ‘The mind is like a master painter experienced at painting all sorts of things.’ Inception proposes the same when it says the mind works so fast that it can simultaneously create and perceive scenes in dreams. Despite dreams, and especially dreams nested within dreams being inherently unstable, they can seem so solid due to the power of the mind.

Due to the reality of their imagination being limited, the dream architects use visual paradoxes (such as the Penrose Staircase) to create the illusion of vast or interconnected spaces. Nice touch! We too are already tricked by illusions when awake – what more when dreaming! It is interesting too, that we seldom remember the beginnings of our dreams; as we tend to end up smack in the middle of them. It’s a lot like life too – how we seem to be existentially stranded in the thick of Samsara once we realise we are. What we know for sure is that we do have layers of dream-like delusions to break through, before finally surfacing to reality. Inception offers powerful entertaining and enlightening imagery for this!

The plot suggests a time when those disillusioned with life pay to immerse themselves within dreams. However, if they are in too deep, they risk falling into the limbo of infinite unconstructed dream space. How vaguely reminiscent of the teaching that beings too attached to their deep meditation can be fruitlessly stuck in the plane of ‘neither perception nor non-perception’ for eons! Being an altered state of mind, dream time is substantially slower than that of real life too, which is similar to how meditators who enter samadhi (states of concentration) often lose track of time. ‘Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realise something was actually strange.’ Indeed! Insight via hindsight. The enlightened always readily smile when they look back to reflect on how deluded they once were!

While dream architects use their illusions to beguile others, they are also mindful not to lose their grip on reality, to be tricked by their own illusions. This is done by never projecting familiar or common places, which others might have mastery of. Mazes are created too, should their dreams be hacked into by others – so that they know exactly where to flee within them to lose their tails. The lead character however, was so attached to his deceased wife for having ’caused’ her suicide, that she continually appears to sabotage him in his dreams. This is reminiscent of how the wrathful demons of hell in Buddhist cosmology are really manifestations of one’s negative karma and guilt. Because he shared dreams with fellow hackers, his personal delusions threatened their safety too. As in real life, one’s delusion can spill over to harm others too, via the interplay of collective karma.

Severely ‘haunted’ by his wife, he decides that reality is no longer enough, as he creates an addictive dream to imprison his memories of her, in which he tries to create an alternate reality; or rather, alternate delusion. He had experimentally implanted the idea within her mind, that she might be in a dream while she was alive, which became a delusion so firmly lodged that she made a leap of blind faith to death… in order to ‘wake up’. Buddhism would say she is not gone forever though, as there is rebirth, but the husband clings on to the past version of her to relive their happier days and to make up for his mistakes. This he did, till he realised it didn’t bring him true happiness, as he knew it was an illusion, that continually punished him instead. Dreams then became not as worthy as reality, as he strived to wake up.

As in the Matrix trilogy, the audience is left existentially wondering if this very life is but a dream-like illusion. More perplexing than Zhuangzi pondering if he is actually the butterfly he dreamt, who is now dreaming himself to be a man, we ponder which of many dreams we might be in instead! The hackers each fashion a unique totem for themselves, which they always hold on to – an object, such as a chess piece, that is crafted and weighed in a manner that only one knows. With it, they would know if they are in someone else’s dream – as another hacker would be unable to create the exact totem. Methinks Inception has a perfect ending… the totem of the lead character, which is a top, spins on, but wobbles a little… and we’re unsure if it will fall. In a dream world, it could spin on indefinitely if one wills it to; in the real world, no top spins forever. An open-ended scene that summarises the state of our uncertain and unenlightened lives!

A Tit for a Tat (155)

Tit: I don’t like the world generally.
Tat: Why?
Tit: Because it is crappy.
Tat: But you’re here because you probably deserve the crappy!
Tit: What crap!
Tat: But you surely deserve better too.
Tit: How so?
Tat: You can make the world less crappy… beginning with yourself and how you see the world!

Next aT4aT: http://moonpointer.com/new/2010/08/do-you-really-need-it
Previous aT4aT: http://moonpointer.com/new/2010/07/look-so-red
About aT4aT: http://moonpointer.com/new/2010/02/logo-for-a-tit-for-a-tat-series

The film ‘Monga’ is unnerving because it is realistic – as what featured could really happen in real life, if not already… many times over. Of how innocence can easily become deviousness. What happens when a group of boys befriend one another with a strong sense of loyalty… while joining a triad? Conflict looms ahead. Is one to be true to another, or to the triad itself, or to personal motives? They share their weals and woes together, but that’s alright only when there are no conflicts of interest. Is honour really possible among thieves? Even if yes, to what extent? (Ironically, the triad headquarters is a temple.)

The life of a gangster is like a time-bomb, ready to explode any time due to so many tensions.  The father of the clean-shaven gangster nicknamed ‘Monk’ already lost an arm due to a triad conflict in the past. But he had since given up thoughts of vengeance, and even peacefully crafts Buddha images for a living and chants daily to repent for his misdeeds. But his son chooses to take upon the needless task of avenging him, even turning on his ‘brothers’ in the triad, who were supportive of the leader, whom he realised to be guilty for his father’s missing arm. Didn’t the Buddha say that the way to curb hate is not to feed its fire with more fuel of hate? ‘Monk’ should had learnt from his father, who already learnt the hard way.

The HP printer at home
starts printing pictures mysteriously,
from apparently ‘nowhere’.
How does it do that?
Via my iPhone’s iPrint app with Bluetooth.

There is invisible
but still present
cause and effect at play.
Nothing arises from nothing.
This is a after all universe of cause and effect.

A universe so tightly interconnected in its parts,
that everything controls everything to some extent
that everything creates everything to some extent.
Nothing arises from nothing
because everything arises from everything.

‘Hulk not monster!’ So yells the Hulk, as he slams stuff… monstrously… In ‘Hulk: Gray’ by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, we’re reminded of how the Hulk was first featured grey (not green) in the comics, of how anger, as embodied by him is not really ‘black or white’ but ‘black and white’ – because as much as his anger can be righteous at times, it is often destructive too.

The Hulk is really incredible not just for the feats he is capable of doing when angry, but because he is a truly classic personification of the nature of rage. For instance, the Hulk becomes stronger when he is more furious. Yet, he is limited by rashness and lack of clear-mindedness in proportion too – to the extent that his spoken vocabulary becomes simplistic and limited. ‘Hulk smash!’

Yet, thankfully, the Hulk still has enough mindfulness to pull off more heroic feats that horrific ones. A case of being able to transmute the raw energy of anger for altruistic use. If this wasn’t the case, he would be a truly loose canon, who is deemed more a villain than a hero. But still, the Hulk remains an ironic and tragic character – because it is not exactly that he gets a kick out of being mad, but that he does suffer from being so, because his powers lead to both heroism and demonisation.

Sometimes, he does accidentally hurt even Betty, the love of his life accidentally… though his fierce love had protected her many a time too. Yet, without his involvement with Betty, which made him continually persecuted by her father General Ross, she would need little protection. While Ross and the Hulk demonise each other, it’s a dilemma as to who is more monstrous or humane at times. Yes, Hulk matters… are truly grey. A lot like life.

Above is a vegetable bun (bao) bought at an airport in Taiwan.
I love it when stuff like these surprise me,
helping me to appreciate the value of being unconventional.

A bao need not be round.
A bao need not be small.
A bao need not be just a snack.

A bao can also be of an odd shape.
A bao can also be huge.
A bao can also be a full meal!

A bao need not be a traditional bao.
A bao can be something else,
yet still essentially being a bao!

Previous Taiwan Adventure:
http://moonpointer.com/new/2010/07/taiwan-adventure-13-paradox-of-rules

In ‘Secret Invasion’ by Brian Michael Bendis, it is realised that the alien Skrull race, which is capable of shape-shifting has infiltrated Earth in every major sector of life. Thus began the difficult dilemma of deciding who is friend or foe – even among the superheroes. But if you have been reading comics long enough, you will realise that even without the presence of the Skrulls, some superheroes do turn evil – even if for only a while – due to weaknesses in character.

The Skrull invasion only magnified the problem. This is the story of our lives too – we are sometimes skrull-like, without or without actual Skrulls. When we let Skrull-like mentality ‘take over’ us unmindfully, it would be likened to a ’secret invasion’ – not even known to us! Here is an interesting conversation between Black Widow (BW) and Iron Man (IM), when the latter is suffering from a virus, while suspecting he himself is a Skrull, as suggested by an actual Skrull in the guise of Spider-woman to warp his mind…

BW: Okay Tony, what’s wrong with you?
IM: Mmmight be a Skrull.
BW: You’re not a Skrull. She was working you over.
IM: No.
BW: Tony, focus!
IM: How do you know you’re not?…
BW: Tony… Iron Man… Skrull or not. I’m asking you right now. Do you want to kill me or kill them?
IM: Them.
BW: Let’s go with that feeling then. And worry about the rest later.

Okay,  not that I’m for killing, but that the only way to continually prove to ourselves and others that we are not Skrulls, not skrull-like, not evil… is to not be influenced by the evil, and to focus in the right direction, to do the right thing to keep evil at bay, and to transform it to good.

A scene in Taiwan’s Danshui’s Starbucks:
A student’s T-shirt reads,
‘There is no rule without exceptions.’
(E.g. Most but not all crows are black.)

But if that is a rule,
that rule too is without exception,
which means there are rules which are with exceptions.
(E.g. All mind and matter is subject to change.)

Next Taiwan Adventure:
http://moonpointer.com/new/2010/07/taiwan-adventure-14-beyond-convention
Previous Taiwan Adventure:
http://moonpointer.com/new/2010/07/taiwan-adventure-12-four-great-gems