During one of the telecasted auditions of American Idol Season 8, a girl entered the audition room, like most others, with hopes to sing her way to stardom. However, when she opened her mouth to sing, her pitch, tune and tone were really off. As the camera panned to the judges’ faces, their expressions were [...]

The Myth of Pointing at the Moon? A strange urban legend(?) of no specific origin has it that if one points at the full moon, one will wake up the next day with a fine cut behind a ear. Though a small cut, one feels the stinging pain from it for a while. This article [...]

There was a solar eclipse yesterday. Traditionally, the Chinese (and even Indians) call the phenomenon ‘the heavenly dog eating the sun’. (Hmmm…. why would a humongous dog in the sky devour it so slowly? How does the single bite’s size increase? And if it took bites at it, how does it spit it out whole?) [...]

I was looking through my old phone’s notes… a collection of words, most of which do not form complete sentences, semi-shorthand notes taken in a hurry to remind me of what to write later. But it was a ‘later’ largely to late, because, to my aghast, many of the notes are incoherent now. I can [...]

Do check out three versions of the 2005 song ‘Fix You’, followed by some reflections on them in terms of how they were performed… By Coldplay:

If you are deluded that the deluded are so, are you not similar? – Stonepeace When you are petty towards the petty just because they are petty towards you, how are you different from them? When you are angry towards the angry just because they are angry towards you, how are you different from them? [...]

After picking up Buddhism, I found my threshold of being able to withstand seeing others in suffering to have reduced significantly. I can’t sit long in front of the television watching people scheming against each other, even though I know it’s just a show. Well, scriptwriters don’t get their stories out of thin air – many are [...]

My English is not perfect, but I know some friends with worse English. Knowing there is a need for them to do some Dharma translation work from Chinese to English now and then, I offered to help check for accuracy… not just once, not just twice, but at least thrice… in an unimposing way. For [...]

‘Go’ (围棋) is not an ordinary board game, but one that involves much wits and strategising. Unlike it’s counterpart Chinese chess (中国象棋), Go is a very minimal game with simple rules and only two different pieces (black and white). The objective is to conquer a larger portion of the board than the opponent, to capture [...]

Though what they do not understand as yet is as it totally irrelevant to them now, what they do not understand is that it might be totally relevant. From the Dhammapada:  Those who mistake the unessential to be essential and the essential to be unessential, dwelling in wrong thoughts, never arrive at the essential. Those [...]

Me: You’ll find me weird… only if you don’t understand me. He: But what if you still seem weird after I try to understand you? Me: Well, like I said, ‘You’ll find me weird… only if you don’t understand me.’ He: As in… don’t really understand you fully yet? Me: Yup. Food for thought… The Buddha [...]

A friend texted me a question – ‘How to have compassion for terrorists?’ He was asking about the recent Mumbai siege, which killed about 120. My answer would be this – ‘We can nurture compassion for terrorists by realising that they had created immense negative karma (which is likely to bear fruit as much suffering) [...]

My Macbook’s power supply unit stopped working suddenly. It didn’t trouble me as much as it made me curious as to why it happened. (I’ll have to buy a new unit tomorrow though… expending time, money and energy) Just when I thought being a Mac convert would give me less software problems, my Macbook finally [...]

A toddler nephew is undergoing a strange phase of growing up. Barely a month ago, his baby sister was born. Suddenly, his behaviour became a little incomprehensibly moody and anger-prone… even to himself! He seemed to experience a form of existential anguish that he couldn’t articulate with his limited vocabulary. When asked ‘Are you alright?’, [...]

While chatting with someone on something serious, he suggested that I be as candid as possible with him. I laughed and said, ‘I’m always candid. I only conceal the truth from those who cannot take it.’ Upon further reflection later, I realised that I am seldom as candid as I wish I could be – [...]