Infinite Brightness

To my nephew with love #3 human resilience

To my darling nephew, we are in an unprecedented time in the history of mankind now. The world is in a standstill and more than half of humanity are locked down due to the pandemic starting from the emergence of a virus that we can’t even see with naked eyes (it is believed to have transmitted to the human host from wild lives, but there are a few other controversial debates behind this). But the point is, this has never happened before in our generation. It is unlike Ebola, H1N1 back in 2009 or SARS back in 2003. This pandemic is of a much larger scale that has paralysed the entire world. It is unprecedented because we will all look back decades later to realise the significance of it, and the lessons that humanity will learn (or never learn) from it.

I have stopped consuming the news and social media altogether as the sheer statistics that are displaying there are depressing. All I know is that many people have died, have contracted the viruses, and some of the most advanced health systems in the world have collapsed.

But then, human beings, by our very nature, are very resilient. Across the world, healthcare workers like your mum, are now at the frontline working tirelessly and selflessly to make sure that the health system is running for folks (like me) who need the services. The logistic workers are keeping our supply chain running. The cleaners and foreign workers are making sure that the sewerage, waste management systems and other essential services are functioning to serve the common folks. I read that medical waste workers are doubling up their capacity to ensure that the heightened amount of medical waste created during this period is properly processed before they are sent to the incinerators. Social distancing officers (yes, they actually create this new job in Singapore now!) are making sure that people are adhering the a safe distance of at least 2m apart in the grocery shops, supermarkets and hawker centres. All these are done with the aim to flatten the curve of infection.

In the midst of this crisis and sufferings that we witness now, most people have chosen to rise above that. Yes, there is still fear, worry and anxiety all around. In fact, the mental health pandemic is likely going to be the next wave of pandemic once this virus pandemic subsides. But look at our forefathers, our ancestors, just two generations ago. Our grandparents and your great-grandparents. They have all survived the two World Wars, the Japanese occupation in Malaya, and particularly for our maternal and paternal grandfathers (your great-grandfathers), the extreme hardship and rough journeys when they sailed on the South China Sea to set foot on the land that we are living in now. Of course there are people who did not make it, and that’s fine, because we know that they have tried their best. Really. Life is not a dualistic function of surviving or dying, but how we have all dealt, learned and managed it gracefully in the process of living.

Resilience, the world that I have come to know in a deeper sense now, is not about defining what should be the outcome of each hardship or crisis. It is always the process that counts. So never mind if you fail your journey. Not forgetting that the process of showing up, trying your best, and be at peace with yourself ultimately are things that we should applaud. And the pandemic is inviting all of us know to look within ourselves so intimately and deeply, to find that real peace within ourselves, to look into our restless mind of always wanting to seek for external stimuli or excitement elsewhere, when you are forced to stay home for one month and beyond. The process of being fully aware with the transient nature of all the emotions, feelings and thoughts that are going through our mind right now. Knowing that these too, shall pass. No matter how long more we all have to endure this, we know that this will pass. It will be merely just another event in the history 100 years from now.

Let us all endure with hope and inner peace. 🙂

The isolation journal…starting with managing insomnia

Dealing with an additional issue in the face of the pandemic is not easy.

The doctor has decided on a 3-month treatment break after I conveyed to her about my chronic insomnia that started since January. Maybe this is the only way to help me get back some sleep, she said. This, to me, came as a total surprise as I wasn’t expecting a 3-month treatment break. Maybe she already sensed that I was desperate and helpless about the inability to sleep.

In the face of pandemic, everyone is helpless. We can only surrender to the flow, aren’t we? I have been complaining to my loved ones about my sleep problem and how it affects my daily functioning, to the point that I think I may have started creating stress on them. But this insomnia is real, and it is hitting me hard right now. We have experimented with so many ways, drinking chamomile tea, aromatherapy, massage, moxibution, Traditional Chinese Medicine herbal remedy, Qigong, supplements, all do not seem to work consistently so far. Or perhaps I was not persistent and determined enough to try out long enough? Or maybe I should just let go and live with the possibility of no sleep or 2-3 hours of sleep every night (i.e. train the body to adapt to this new normal)?

I have been told to let go again and again. To let go of the worry, anxiety and fear, and even the thought and desire to sleep. And find other meaningful ways to fill up the void at night. For example, deep breathing exercises and meditation. The sage and highly acclaimed monks do not have to sleep long when they are in deep meditative state, we all know that. However, I told my therapist that I am not a sage and neither am I an acclaimed monastic. But this itself is a self-limiting belief. Didn’t the sage and highly acclaimed monastic started somewhere before they become who they are?

Lorazepam 1mg is what I have been relying on for the past 3 months. Every night I resist taking it until I cannot sleep at 2am or 3am. Should I continue to take it or should I just endure few sleepless nights, tire the body enough that it will just doze off by then?

Letting go seems easier said than done when tough challenges like that hit you. The saving grace is my loved ones have been supportive, but I am aware about caregiver fatigue. And I do not want them to go there.

I am managing, it is hard. Maybe I should stop trying. Let the mind rest. Let go of all debilitating and unnecessary thoughts. And let it come to a standstill. Just like how the world has also come to a standstill. The law of nature will take its own course.

I try.

The roots and the stream

Recently, I miss some of my friends that I met and knew from childhood, teenage-hood and young adulthood so much. The connections remain strong with some of them. So much more than I once thought!

A recent conversation with Woonli, my brave friend who took the less travelled path and went to live in India after her marriage, made me realised how much I have missed her. I have not seen her for a good seven years, but it didn’t quite feel that long actually. Memories from the days when we gathered in our dorm rooms for those late night chats and choir practices in First College and University Tower, remain so alive and vivid. I remember so well how she drove me around her hometown in Kota Bahru, Kelantan, in which we chanced upon a “Wayang Kulit” show in a Malay Kampung at the heartland of Kelantan (a northern state in Malaysia) and got so excited! The thing is, even though I grew up in Malaysia, I have never really seen a Wayang Kulit up till that point. It must be year 2007 if my memory serves me right. Seeing a wayang kulit at the age of 23 makes me feel like a child again. I remember the sumptuous Thai dinner that we had near the Thai-Malaysia border, bordering at Kelantan. Till now, I miss her charming smile and her vintage and beautiful eyes. 🙂

I also miss my childhood friend YT whom I have known for a good 28 years by now. She took a flight all the way from Penang to see me a month ago when I was unable to make the trip back home for CNY celebration. We have known each other since Primary 2 and this has been the longest friendship that I have held on to up till today. There were several years in our lives that we were preoccupied with other life priorities that we have kind of lost one another in those years, but I am so thankful that our friendship has remained stable, strong and still blossoming. She did something that still touches me so much, and I never thought such gesture would come from someone like her. Being almost an atheist who never subscribe to any religious believes, she went all the way to lit a candlelight for me in a Guanyin temple to pray for my well-being two days before I went to the hospital to receive my scan results. I was close to tearing at that point.

And I miss HK, a very rare guy friend whom I regard as one of the best buddies to date. We have been through some of the most eventful activities that crazy teenagers do – representing our school for national Chinese debate competition, taking the first group trip on our own to KL at the age of 16, doing so many overnight hang-outs at SL’s in the name to brainstorm for ideas for our debating competition, just to find ourselves chatting and singing karaoke the whole night. He has always been the rational type of friend that always give rational advice, maybe this is a guy thing. But when the scan results were out, he sent me a text message that moved me so much.

Of course, there are few more people whose support that I appreciate so much! SL whose support has always been unwavering since the very beginning (and a friend that I will be celebrating 23 years of sustained friendship this year!), and, YC (another long-time friend that I have so much good karma to reunite after 7 years of separation living in different parts of the world, and we are celebrating 16 years of friendship this year). She is expecting this year and I feel so happy and excited for her….

I start to revisit my roots a lot more recently. These appreciations also make me yearn about going back to my roots, and returning to the stream where I once come from. I am yet to discover what would this mean to me in the longer run. But the thought and idea of returning home, which surfaced a while back, has started to become stronger.

I still need a bit more clarity to really find out what does going back to the roots ultimately means. But the soul-searching has begun and I am opening my arms to embrace everything that the future holds for me.

I pray that my inner wisdom, inner eyes and inner ears will guide me in my journey of healing and discovery.

The gift of time

After completing 5 cycles of treatment, a series of CT scans show favourable results early this week. In medical terms, there is an ‘interval sclerosis’ detected in the bone where the lesions was found in the last scan. Which means the bone is healing and patching up, according to how the doctor was describing to me. No other distant metastases were observed from the scans. Technically and clinically speaking, I am cancer free at this point. (However, the targeted treatment and hormonal therapy will continue as part of the clinical protocol, I have learned that this treatment could be perpetual).

Strange enough (and I think this is a psychological effect), I suddenly feel that I have time again. The truth is, all of us do not know what is going to happen in the next moment, and any mishap and crisis could inflict anyone anytime. But for someone living with chronic illness like cancer, we do know that we are always living on borrowed time. The everyday event, even as simple as cooking a hearty meal for yourself and your loved ones, becomes an extremely real, authentic and vivid experience. I would like to think of this transformation as a good thing. Most of us never truly live until we are sick or when crisis happens. Especially in the spiritual sense. Because we have this flawed thinking that we have time. And things can wait.

I spoke to Gabriele, my long lost friend, yesterday. He is my PhD mate and has moved from Italy to Israel 2 years ago to start a charitable foundation that focuses on youth empowerment. Even though he is an Italian, he has Jewish roots as his grandparents migrated from Israel to Italy decades ago. Returning to Israel to do something for the young people has always been his dream. Since day one, he was very sure that he wasn’t eyeing a career in the academia. Born with physical disabilities and being wheelchair bound the whole of his life, he has never ever lamented about his limitations in all our encounters that I remember in the 2 years that he was living in Singapore. He is such a marvel of positive light and a bundle of jubilant energies. I miss him so much. After finding out my scan results, I actually made a conscious effort to reconnect with him again, feeling that this is the right time to connect again, and he will be able to raise my energy. The last time we met was April 2018 when I visited him in Turin, North Italy, when I decided to make a detour while en-route to London for a meeting. He hosted me for a couple days in his beautiful hometown and introduced me to many of his childhood friends. I will never forget the warm hospitality that he has extended to me. Reconnecting with him and speaking about what I have gone through past few months was very therapeutic. We discussed about spirituality, and what our conditions (his disability and my cancer) mean to us. We agreed and promise each other that they are not to be seen as obstacles. They are opportunities for profound spiritual realisation and growth. Yes, our conditions do come with limitations. He is finding it hard to focus and write these days with the progression of his condition (he still wants to finish his PhD), while I also feel that fatigue sets in more easily these days and sometimes I need to lift up my mindfulness at night due to the bone pain, hot flushes and sinking mood. In his words, we should not accept our limitations, we should celebrate them! (how powerful!) Celebrate them as part of the human experiences, the opportunity to contemplate on the inevitable decay of our physical body. Ultimately, this body is bound to degenerate and decay, it is a question of how and when for each of us.

In Dr David R. Hawkins’s words, “A benefit of life-threatening illness is that it breaks down the denial of mortality that is necessary to initiate serious spiritual work in most people who are otherwise too busy with the affairs of daily live to embark upon an inner quest.”

I told Gabriele about my intention to stop working for a while to rest. And hopefully during this time my body will be able to adjust fully to the menopausal condition once and for all. Well, no expectation is what I was told, just try. Because things come and go. I think that being able to just let go of the job and do nothing is the first step towards real courage. Taking full charge of my journey by allowing the body to heal from it. It will never ever return to the pre-treatment baseline. But giving it the time and space to adjust to the new normal is important. We want to have the gift of time to recover, to heal, and to thrive again.

Thank you, Gabriele. You do not know how much your comforting words have meant to me. You are an inspiration.

To my nephew with love #2 overcoming fear

To my darling nephew:

You know, this world that we are living in, is getting so much harder to navigate. I think the entire world is stressed out. As I am writing this to you, the Ukranian Flight 752 was shot down by the Iranian missiles just about a week ago. The US President had earlier approved a drone strike on the Iranian General Soleimani. The never ending fights in the Middle East since decades ago had never solved the world’s problem, but propel vengeance and instigate more hatred. Elsewhere, you have Africa that continues to suffer from the world’s most pressing developmental problems – HIV/AIDS, child malnutrition, malaria, hunger, poverty, etc. Such is the chaotic world that we are living in today. You will grow up reading and learning more about extreme inequities in resource distributions, and people fighting all the time for power, oils and influences. Governments seem to be doing a lot, but these problems have never been truly resolved.

You know, you are extremely lucky to be born in Singapore. What I have just described above are alienated sights to an average kid here. You are born in one of the most affluent, stable, and effective societies in the world. Sufferings from war and famine are unheard of and unimaginable here. We should all count our blessings, really.

But there are other less visible problems that people in this society is suffering from. Extreme stress stemmed from high workload, high academic demand, and lack of mental well-being that leads to anxiety and depression. You will see and hear more of these when you grow up. These days, when I look at the news, teenagers resort to suicide when they cannot handle stress.

I want to let you know that you should not feel alone when you feel stressful. Growing up, stress is an inevitable challenge that all of us have to deal with. Stressful emotions are most commonly exhibited as anxiety and fear. These emotions are multi-faceted. In the layman’s world, they are often related to work demand, exam stress, relationship conflicts, domestic violence, diseases and life crises.

You know what I have found as a potentially useful antidote to deal with fear and anxiety stemming from stressful events? You should try it for yourself! The antidote is to forget yourself. How to? Well, there are many ways that you can do it. Volunteering is one way that I find to be particularly useful. I recently come across a Q&A posed to the late and revered Sri Lankan monk Dr K Sri Dhammananda. “How to overcome fear?” someone asked. And he said “Try to do something for others.” When I read this, I was immensely touched and encouraged by this simple act of kindness. To volunteer our time, expertise, expertise for others is to forget about our own sufferings, to be part of a thing that is larger than ourselves. Because a focused mind cannot be occupied by two things at the same time. Which means when we focus on doing something for others, it stops us from worrying about our own problems, and we see life as a larger scheme of things. And sometimes, in the process, we may realise that our problems are quite trivial as compared to others. Really, give this a try! And journal your experiences and keep them. Over the years you will find out how far you have come in overcoming your own stress.

Good luck in navigating your life my dear. It is going to be hard, but do not give in to your fear. Rise above that by doing something for others 🙂

To my nephew with love #1 Self-compassion

My darling nephew, I saw you growing up so rapidly over the past 18 months. From a newborn who finds comfort only in sucking milk and sleeping, you are now a toddler who loves to play hide and seek, and enjoys mimicking others’ words. You are like a sponge, absorbing the world around you curiously, candidly and intensively. You are a bundle of joy and an innocent child that we all once were. Sometimes I wish that time will freeze and you will always remain unscathed and joyful the way you are now. This is a wishful thinking. There are so many things that I want to say to you and so many life lessons that I want to share with you, so that you grow up feeling whole and be a happy kid, a brave teenager and later, a fulfilled adult, because the world around you will be much more challenging than mine when I was growing up. But I cannot force the path of enlightenment on you. You have to construct your own journey, and experience your share of triumphs and failures. Maybe my story can be your life compass when you feel loss and despair, maybe it will give you some strength and comfort knowing that someone else has also gone through similar pitfalls. I thought it would be wonderful to share this, because some of these words can be healing, and I believe they transcend time, space and generation.

The first thing I want to share with you is to love yourself wholly and deeply. When you are in school, most people will tell you that the most important thing in life is to get good grades, so that you can get into the university and then land on the most desirable job that pays you handsomely. These milestones are what a successful life is all about, many will say this. Even if they do not tell you these things upright, the world that revolves around you will delude you into feeling that these are the benchmarks of a successful life. Some of your peers will outshine you. The bright ones who perform well academically will always get the accolades and praises, while those at the margins of failure will always be counselled and advised to work harder and harder for academic success is the only thing that you should be focusing on. Please, for goodness sake, when others tell you this, ignore them. For this world is not designed with a single universal recipe for success. The world is multi-dimensional, diverse, and far more complex than we think.

We have very ingrained formulas of what constitute success in life, and everything else that you choose to pursue will be frowned upon. Failures or alternative paths are not embraced, sometimes they will make you feel stupid and disheartened. And at times, you may even compare yourself with your peers and feel that you are not as good as them, and you always feel inferior, you always feel that you are not good enough. When you have all these feelings and experiences, first of all, take a LONG AND DEEP BREATH. Breath, and say it to yourself, that it is okay to fail, it is okay to not be as good as your friends, it is okay to just take your time to figure out what you want in life. It is okay to just be yourself, really. Remember, your very existence in life is already worthy of celebration and love. Like all your friends, you are worthy of everybody’s love and your own love. Please be kind to yourself. I wish I had been kinder to myself when I was younger but I was not like that. I was just too stressed out and preoccupied with the need to prove to others who I shall become. When I was in high school, I thought the most important thing I should do is to work extremely hard to secure an overseas scholarship to study abroad. When that did not happen, I tried even harder at the pre-university entrance exam in order to get into the most desirable program in the top university in the country. When that again did not happen, I thought of pursuing a master degree overseas, thinking that only by achieving all these I am worthy of other’s love, respect and recognition and that I can be happy. So I went on to finally clinch scholarships to attend some of the world’s best universities in Hong Kong and England. But when I finally achieve these, still I was not happy. I thought I should get a PhD to be really perceived as someone serious enough and scholastic. See, my whole life is all about how I want others to perceive me, and not so much about what sort of life I truly want to lead and what sort of life that will truly liberate me from the endless cycles of birth and death. And before I can even decide if my life is going to be happy ever after, cancer strikes me. This is a vicious cycle. And the characteristics that I manifest are very much the trademarks of a firstborn – high-achiever, fiesty, fiery, ambitious, and always feeling the need to prove others wrong. I hope you can break this mentality because we do not need to operate so rigidly and tirelessly to feel that we are worthy of other people’s love and respect. Please, do care for yourself more. Because true love and respect comes from within.

Self-compassion is the one of the biggest and most important attitude we have to adopt in this life. It is the only thing that matters when the world around you crumbles. Because only when you love yourself, it endows you with the freedom, space and capacity to to reach out to others who demands your attention and love. What does self-compassion or self-love mean? It means not judging yourself too much, setting reasonable goals for yourself but not be overly disappointed if you do not achieve them. It means allowing yourself the time to explore the mysteries of life, and sometimes, drift in the process of searching for what intrigues you and who you really want to become. It means giving yourself a gap year to explore the world and throw yourself in swarms and dirt to see the world from another person’s lens. It means giving yourself occasional nice breaks, treating yourself to nice desserts, and taking time off from what you are doing when things get too overwhelming. It means caring for yourself just like how the elders at home used to care for you. It means allowing yourself to cry and weep like a baby when you feel being let down and disappointed. It also means telling yourself it is ok to be depressed or angry sometimes, to be ill, to go slow, and to rest if you need to.

This is the first advice that I want to share with you. I hope it will come in handy when you start navigating your life on your own two decades from now. There will be nothing else that I want to wish you for except for sustained happiness and eternal bliss.

緊記三大哲學

最近聽到的一些法語，在這裡簡單的用自己的理解記錄一下，警惕自己也當作是一個新年的修行展望。要是真的做到這些，人生必能百戰百勝。

1）老二哲學：

修行要成就，一定要做到“無爭”。保持謙卑，不要辯論，不用什麼都要贏。讓別人沾光，永遠不要和別人爭奪，永遠的默默耕耘。不說是非，不念舊惡。

2）剎車哲學：

貪念，嗔恨心，執著心，傲慢心升起的時候，好好的關照它。但是要提起正念，及時剎車，不要允許這些惡念繼續在腦海裡製造無謂的煩惱。

3）一半哲學：

這個世界，有贏必有輸，有得必有失，有勝也有敗，把得失心放下，則世界將變得空曠無比。

2019: A year of spiritual transcendence

I would like to end the year by thanking myself (for not giving in to fear) and everyone who has been caring so much for me during this time.

2019 is a year that I will forever remember as a year of spiritual transcendence. A year when I finally realise that this life is just an illusion and the things that we cling so much on are mere bubbles. We come to this world empty handed, and will leave the world with nothing except with our own karma. I have come to also realise that this body is none other than a vessel that serves the very function to keep our existence intact. We are merely a combustion of energy held together to sustain this life form. When the conditions disperse one day, the energy disintegrates and we move on to a new realm of existence.

If we are not a solid entity to begin with, why do we hold on to ill-will, resentment and grudges? Why do we find-fault with small little things and hurt not only others, but ourselves too, in the process of getting angry? Why do we continue to dream-walk, swim aimlessly, and allow ourselves to be trapped in the endless cycle of life and death?

The fever of living in a material world that uses GDP and all sorts of performance indexes to benchmark ourselves with one another has never been so strong the whole of my life. Yes this is the reality that we cannot escape. To survive in this world does mean that we have to play some sort of numeric game. But this game can go a little out of hand sometimes. We lose ourselves in the process and forget our own priorities.

I do not want to end this year with more rants. But thank you year 2019, for making me realise what is important in my life. With this contemplation, I wish that we will all move on to the new decade with a heightened sense of seeing impermanence, and make the best of every single day that we are alive. To do good, to create peace and harmony, to be more mindful with the six sense doors (yes, watch the cravings!), and more importantly, to be kind. If I can make a spiritual resolution in the new year, these will be the values that I want to work towards.

My healing forest

I have officially named Mc Ritchie Reservoir as my HEALING FOREST. Over the past two months, I have made it a point to take at least 3 to 4 long walks in it every week. It is an activity that I look forward to doing most now!

With my condition stabilising and the pain vanishing (yes the pain is gone!), I start to take a lot of solo walks these days. For most of the weekdays, they are mostly silent walks along the woods, as the trail runners are mostly present only during the weekends for their training. Casual runners or hikers do not come that often during weekdays, and I think very few people are as crazy as me to show up there every other day. Thanks to my extremely understanding boss who allows me to work from home now, I can afford to take such long walks on weekday mornings. I usually hit the trail by 7am. It may feel eerie and dangerous to some, but I have grown to enjoy this experience tremendously. I always do a silent prayer and contemplation to thank the Devas before embarking on the trail, believing that they will extend their protection to me. I call my solo walk in Mc Ritchie the most ‘un-Singapore’ experience ever. After all, where else in Singapore can you walk almost silently with no one else in sight for an hour?

It is also during the weekdays’ solo walks that I can afford to sit in the woods for my Qigong practice and meditation. I have had new experiences ever since I started sitting in the woods. Halfway through almost every sitting, there is always a surge of cooling air that appears to have emitted from the middle of the woods, slowly made its way to me, before engulfing my entire body. It feels cooling after that. I have been experiencing this again and again. I was told by my spiritual teacher, that this a signal that my body is exchanging energy with the nature, and potentially the air element in the forest is repairing the dysfunctional element in my body 🙂 I am so fascinated by this energy exchange now, but unfortunately there has not been much scientific studies backing this energy exchange theory yet. But who cares right. Science has not been able to explain much of the phenomenon in the metaphysical world so far. To me, I always believe that we are probably the most backward species in this universe.

In silence and stillness, space and time have no definitions. The world dissolves in one long breathing. We become one with nature, and one with the universe. Everything else seems secondary and unimportant. But nature does not ask that we relinquish our worldly duties and responsibilities. Rather, it just creates that avenue for us to find the roots of our sufferings, and propels our enthusiasms to carry on by living calmly and gently. We do not have to fight all the time. For fighting only create more stress to our bodies. Nature asks that we surrender, surrendering to the higher forces in the universe that is unseen and inexplicable, and make peace with the arising and cessation of all phenomenon.

Reflections from the final verse of Diamond Sutra

“Thus shall you think of all this fleeting world: A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.” ～ Diamond Sutra

Reading the final verse from the Diamond Sutra a decade after I first encountered this profound Buddhist Sutra encircling the concepts of formless and emptiness, brings a whole new understanding towards what emptiness and formless entail. Ultimately the ‘self’ that we carry in the form of bodily vessels is merely an illusion, it serves a confined worldly purpose within a designated period before it decomposes into the earth when the conditions of its existence ceases. The milky way in this universe has been moving endlessly since beginningless time, leaving inprints along the way, but never turns back to its original trajectory. Things arise and cease. As we disintegrate, the combustion of energy in this physical form transcends and the stream of consciousness continues to flow. We are all actors and actresses narrating diverse stories that unfold in different forms. Many of us, however, are disillusioned actors and actresses. Crises might be a blessing in disguise ultimately to wake us up from this dream and disillusionment. That nothing in this world is permanent and immortal. While we will still need to fulfil our duty to complete the play as an actor or actress before we exit this very human life, we can choose to narrate it with a much more weighted sense of meaning and purpose. Our life should not be in lived in vain.

“凡所有相，皆是虛妄。一切有為法，皆如夢幻泡影，如露亦如電，應作如是觀。” ~金剛經

十年前初次見到這句金剛經的精髓時，並沒有太大的感觸。也許當年年幼無知還未開竅，也還沒有體會人生苦短，未曾真正體會什麼叫做無我無常。在生死邊緣徘徊的時候，對這一句至理名言突然有了新的啟發。人生如夢，也如一場戲。而我們是戲裡的演員。但我們往往是迷惑的演員，追求錯誤的東西，不停的尋找虛妄不實的東西，把假相當成是真的，把假我當成真我，放不下執著，顛倒，妄想，分別，所以人生才會痛苦，被打在生死輪迴裡轉不出來。但我想，既然是演員，還是要把這場戲演好，把俗世的任務做好，把物質世界和精神世界的修習分配好和做好。把握當下把眼前的事做好，不管生命的長短，都時時刻刻以正念，積極，智慧，勇氣生活，就算不枉此生吧！