An Awareness Place (Well-being Centre) customer wanted to have a copy of The Daily Enlightenment Book 1 and 2 each. Since I have some copies left, I arranged for them to be sent there via a colleague (1), who will deliver them with other items to AP next week. I then emailed the AP colleague [...]

A Tit for a Tat (23) Tit: You should die happy… because you have done much good. Tat: I think I will… it’s just that I happen to live unhappily. Tit: You’re not satisfied with….? Tat: …. with not dying happily yet! Tit: Are you giving me material for ‘A Tit for a Tat’? Tat: [...]

The battery in the clock runs flat before you know it, before you are prepared for it, before you learn not to take it for granted. This life too, that you have, might run out before you know it, before you are prepared for it, before you learn not to take it for granted. Like [...]

In ‘The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’, the first emperor of China (Qin Shihuang), after his conquest of the whole of China, felt compelled to conquer what he perceived to be his last enemy – death, because he wanted for more than the span of a single normal life to fulfill his further ambitions. [...]

Pic: Dharma Hall at Kong Meng San After lunch, just before the next round of the Pureland retreat recitation, I realised I had a piece of vegetable wedged between two teeth in a corner of my mouth. I tried to extract it with the tip of my tongue, but to no avail. I took a [...]

In the ‘Final Destination’ thrillogy (pun intended), you see ‘creative’ ways through which death creeps up gradually yet surely upon its victims. Each of the movies are about how a group of youngsters have some vision of their impending deaths, who thereafter try to evade it, though few (if any) are really successful. Hey, death [...]

Jen: Your ‘imaginary funeral parlour notice’ [see below] is well written, seemingly depicting dying. Is it due to the way Buddhists view death, that there are no Buddhist obituaries in the papers? Shi’an: Actually, there are Buddhist obituaries in the papers locally (in Singapore) – but usually only the Chinese ones (because most Buddhists here [...]

While selecting films for a Buddhist film event, we sampled some movies. A friend wondered why many of the shortlisted films seem to end with some form of death. Someone else in the audience remarked that we all have to die anyway. Hmmm…. only half correct… some of us might be able to transcend life [...]

The ‘Twilight’ or Dawn of Desire? http://buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=12,7673,0,0,1,0 What if you have the power of great strength and speed, and are able to remain ever youthful? Sounds like invincible eternal life? Not really, as the vampires in the movie ‘Twilight’, like others, can die too – especially when slayed by other equally powerful vampires. What literally [...]

What’s the Meaning of Life? Once upon a time, there was a very small boy called Zeph, who wondered much about the very large world he lived in. After his first day at a new school (which he didn’t like), being surrounded by strangers in a strange land, it struck him that life could be [...]

There is a full page in ‘Invincible: Ultimate Collection, Vol. 1′ (by Robert Kirkman) which seems to accidentally portray the nature of an existential crisis. The young and new superhero ‘Invincible’ was told to fight an alien in Earth’s orbit. He takes a deep breath and flies up up and away… Yes, the superheroes super-hold [...]

In ‘Eternals’ by Neil Gaiman, Sprite the immortal utters this about becoming human – ‘I can even die - Do you know how cool that is? Every moment can be my last. How amazing is that?’ Some of us want to live forever, while some who live forever want to die forever! A case of the [...]

In ‘Chickens with Plums’ by Marjane Satrapi is this recounted story where Azrael, the angel of death was commanded by God to take the life of a man in India. But the day before, he bumps into him in Jerusalem. Terrified, the man runs to King Solomon to ask that he be sent far away [...]

In the book ‘The Meaning of Life’ by Terry Eagleton is this passage – “… we are in something like the situation of the narrator of Henry James’ story ‘The Figure in the Carpet’, who is told by a celebrated author he admires that there is a concealed design in his work, one implicit in [...]

Q: What’s your take on organ donations upon death? Some are against transplants in the first place, saying this is against the natural course of life itself. Anyway, if I were to die at home, I don’t think there would be much chance for timely transplants. A: A karmic coincidence! I just wrote a series of articles related [...]