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At 2 am of new year’s day as part of a post ‘Spiritual Countdown’ to 2009 celebration program, I helped to lead a chanting session at the largest temple in Singapore. We practised mindfulness of Amitabha Buddha (Amituofo) by reciting his name. For the occasion, I wrote a short aspiration prayer, which was read for all present:<\/p>\n
In this new year, may we be mindful of Buddha as much as possible. May we emulate these virtues as much as possible. As we aspire to be reborn in Pure Land to learn from the Buddha in our next life, During the chanting, I stole a few glances at the towering Buddha image in the hall, where I was seated beneath, facing it right in the centre. To my pleasant surprise, I saw the image smiling in a way I had never seen before… despite having visited the hall numerous time before. The Buddha image was beaming. Nope, not beaming in the sense of radiating beams of light; but beaming as in smiling broadly. This was in great contrast with its more serious countenance, which is what I usually saw.\u00a0<\/p>\n What changed? Was it my physical perspective? Was it my spiritual perception? Or both? Was I seeing the Buddha image with more of my Buddha-nature, as a subtle purifying effect of practising mindfulness of Buddha? I hope so. In case you think it’s obviously a personal illusion, another fellow Buddhist also saw the image to be smiling in a way never seen before… while a third Buddhist friend did not see anything out of the ordinary. The third friend was busy helping the activity in another way – so he was not practising mindfulness of Buddha along with us then.<\/p>\n Maybe this is a little similar to the case of the largest outdoor Guanyin Bodhisattva image on Mount Putuo (the sacred mountain dedicated to her). When afar, the image looked displeased to\/at me. But the closer I approached, the more kindly she smiled. It was a shocking ‘shift’ of expression, which had a humbling and stress-relieving effect on me. It’s as if this thought ran through my mind – ‘Phew! Here I am, on pilgrimage to Guanyin Pusa’s holy mountain and “she’s” not really mad at me!’<\/p>\n Even if this might be an optical illusion due to the way the Bodhisattva image was designed, this is unlikely to be the case for the Buddha image – because I had walked around it and looked at it from near and far many times before. A nice mystery! Incidentally, from the case of the Guanyin image with ‘changing’ expressions, I was reminded of the truth that some people might seem unfriendly or even downright hostile from afar, but are really cheery and warm-hearted when you become closer to them. Never judge a person by his appearance – and not even from the person’s few initial words or gestures.<\/p>\n Though first impressions tend to last, – Stonepeace<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At 2 am of new year’s day as part of a post ‘Spiritual Countdown’ to 2009 celebration program, I helped…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[42,229,225,223,121,126,194,89,228,111,41,128,226,224],"class_list":["post-556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mix","tag-amitabha-buddha","tag-appearance","tag-aspiration","tag-bodhisattva","tag-buddha","tag-buddha-nature","tag-humility","tag-mindfulness","tag-mystery","tag-perception","tag-pure-land","tag-smile","tag-stress","tag-virtues","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMay we remind ourselves of the virtues of the Buddha –
\nhis great compassion, his great wisdom.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nMay we become more and more like the Buddha.
\nMay we progress towards Buddhahood.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nmay we also, by the power of our virtues,
\naspire to make this world a Pure Land as much as we can.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nthey should not be the last.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n