This too will pass...

Well i have a cousin who became a monk
he asked me read this blog post he wrote
a very nice one(:
wanted to share so yea here it is.
it's LOOOONGGG but its really nice
so yea take some times n read it ba! :D

STARTS HERE :D:D
Felt like writing some things which may or may not relieve some friend's suffering. I may not be in the most qualified position to write about these topics because i might not have been through what they have gone through. But just pure intention to help them, with some simple reflections and changes in attitude towards life, relationships and crises. May this sharing help them.....


Love cover a very big part of our lives. Love for ourselves, love for our parents, friends and mates. But, do we really, know how to love, without hurting ourselves and others. Firstly I would like to say about two types of love. Conditional love, and Unconditional love.
Conditional love;
"I love you from the bottom of my heart........I love you forever....." We find these words coming frequently to our ears when we're in love with our mates. But, what does the love here means? Does it mean that we love them only if they love us, or do the way we want them to do, or love the feelings that we have inside us when we're with them? What are we in love with? The feelings when we're with them or they themselves no matter how stinky, rotten or smelly they are (after they finished a half marathon, *laughs*). The definition of love means to care for, to show friendliness or affection for another.....Many times in our life, we love the feeling when we're together or we love them coz they just make us happy with their monkey jokes (*laughs). I used to be a monkey also (*laugh*). Anyway thats why when whatever they do do not match with our feelings, or when we don't expect monkey shows but monkeys just run around jumping here and there, we suffer...we cannot endure it and get involve in a quarral. JUST because of feelings........See the impact of feelings? I'm not trying to say that when we love someone we do not have feelings, but the attachment to the feelings (which is impermanent) is the problem because we are grasping hold to something which is impermanent, which will disappear......but our attachment doesn't want it to disappear.......


When someone expects whatever is impossible as possible, they will surely fail their expectation and become disappointed because there is the law of nature, impermananc.....And when one doesn't want to face the reality of the law of nature happening around us, many suffer. Also.....with this conditional love attitude, many couples suffer......because it becomes a love game of controlling and wanting. Wanting my wife to be slimer....wanting my husband to be more sensitive......wanting my husband to be from a rich family........wanting him/her to make me feel this way or that way..........wanting my husband/wife to be only faithful to me.......wanting my husband to have a clean history of abstinence of sex before me.....wanting my mate to only be with me no matter he/she's happy or not..........My friends, THESE ARE IMPERMANENT AND HAVE A POSSIBILITY TO HAPPEN~Welcome to the real world....


I would like to share a story here at this point.....There was a young king, who had a problem of extreme emotions...... Whenever the country had a problem he could not solve and was hopeless, he would just go back to his room and sulk up and sob and get depressed for weeks and months......So when there was a crisis, all he could do was to get sooooo caught up in his emotions and just sulk up and get depressed.......On the other hand, when the country was prospering, he would party with his loyal ministers and citizens for weeks and months.......So....of course, the country was not very well managed and not prospering because the young king wasn't doing anything substantial and useful......So, the wiser minsters worked up a plan to help him........they gave him a ring with the words"this too will pass" and made him look at it everyday. So, whenever he gets depressed, he would look at the ring and tells himself "this too will pass"... Whenever the country is prospering, he would look at the ring and tells himself this too will pass"......So in the end, whenever he gets depressed, he doesn't lose hope because he knows that by bearing it for a period of time, the difficulty will pass......and he doesn't get too high-headed when the country is prospering because he knows, "this too will pass" and he continues to be viligiant over his duties. In this way, the country prospers with his stable emotions and attitude to life which accords to the law of nature.......
Are we doing it the same to our "country"(mind)? Whenever some crises in life happens to us, we get caught up in depression and when the happy moments come we just take it for granted and forget about planting the causes for more happiness in the future. So, i hope this phase "this too will pass" which reminds one of impermenancy will help my friends.


Unconditional love
There is on the other hand, another aspect of love....Love which is not bounded with conditions......Love which does not hurts......Love which only gives without ever wanting to have anything in return......This is , unconditional love towards another......
I found that many people I've seen, they get hurt because of love. Sometimes its because their mates do the wrong things at the wrong time....Sometimes its because their mates do some things which they cannot accept.....Sometimes it just because they don't FEEL like watching a monkey show, but their mates keep jumping around teasing or scolding them......Well, if we really want to get a perfect mate, we should just get a TV with the remote controller on our hands all the time (*laughs*)...... If we can realise that feelings, emotions and thinkings are impermanent, then there's no meaning to try to control and grasp our mate's thinking towards us, feelings towards us, wanting them to be happy all the time but when they get sad we get sad too........
But, if we can show them all the love and care(care and concern and affection) towards them, no matter if they reciprocrate and love us or not....If we have this knowing that whether they love us back or not is impermanent and is not definite even if in the end they will have been with us for a long time, we will have lesser suffering whenever our mates turn their backs on us because ITS THE WAY ITS SUPPOSE TO BE ACCORDING TO THE LAW OF NATURE. It's impermanent. This is wiser and truer love isn't it? Rather than trying to control and grasp our mate's feelings, thinkings to make them stay with us, trying means and ways to get love results.........There's no true sincerity in this.....Only greed and attachment.......


Also, if we want others to love ourselves, its only reasonable that we should make ourselves lovable and the first thing to make ourselves lovable is to love ourselves, no matter how much rubbish we have inside of us.....But it doesn't mean that we don't change the rubbish inside. Rather, if we can change our character and attitudes to being better, more positive, more happy and peace natured, more virtuous as a woman/man, more balanced emotional intelligence and less mind games with our mates, naturally we would have be planting the seeds (causes) for us to be lovable. Even if they don't, we're having such a great and happy time improving ourselves and loving ourselves without attachments and expectations that we don't need them anymore, whether they're there or not..... We did not choose to have rubbish inside us...Who doesn't want to be pure minded and with great character and appeearence since we were born. However, these are things we cannot control because phenomena happens to us because of various complicated cause and effects. We cannot choose to be a chinese or an indian. Our past causes made us this way and past causes also made happy and bad things happen to us........ So, since only now then we know more about the law of cause and effect and impermanence through The Buddha's Teaching, we have courage to embrace our negativities and because of impermanence, we have hope in changing for the better because things will not always be this way. "This too will pass".


Also another problem I see in couples nowadays are that they just want want want.......But very few couples think about give give give.....to their mates. With wanting with attachment, there would be controlling and greed......And with this wrong cause, there will be suffering when we do not get what we want.......Isn't that the same case in life. When we want many things with attachments, but when we do not get, we suffer disappointments, depression and some even suicidal thoughts. But things are just impermanent isn't it. Sometimes we get, sometimes we don't get..... Whats wrong? The only thing wrong i see is that we're trying to make human waste smell nice(*laugh*) . Human waste will always be smelly isn't it? This is the way of nature.....When we want things to be permanent but they change because the law of nature is impermanent, suffering is inevitable. So when our attitude defies the law of nature, we have mental suffering because of that. Wrong causes and wrong expectations and wrong attitude. If there is unconditional giving of love to others no matter the result or no matter they reciprocrate in return, we would not have such problems. If we can love others no matter their past is good or dirty, we would be truly loving them as they really are and not in love with our concepts of "cleaniness". Some may call this unconditional love stupid because it doesn't give any results and one-sided.....Precisely! When we do not want any result from our love and care for others, this would be truer love isn't it? Rather than the love of the result from giving....
All i want to say is that, if we really love others, we just want them to be well and happy. The concept of love is to want the ones we love to be well and happy isn't it. If they have found someone better, won't it be great for them to have found someone better and more happier with than us. We should be happy for them and still send them our love and concern....If they're happy with us now, who cares about their past since now we can show care and concern for each other. Thats more important isn't it, the well-being of that person and not us. If we can't do that, there's definitely some greed and attachment around and if we do not relinquish and let go of these attachments, we're bound to suffer. Because greed and attachments are causes of suffering according to The Buddha's teaching. If we can do that, we're sending selfless love to all beings.


But inevitably, there will be moments in life where we're just overwhelmed by our negative emotions and thoughts. So what should we do at that time? DON'T DO ANYTHING. DON'T TRUST YOUR FEELINGS, EMOTIONS, AND THOUGHTS. Here i would like to share a few stories....
Once there was a monk who had been walking under the hot sun for a long time.. Then he happened to walk past the beach....Though monks were not supposed to swim for fun, it was a hot afternoon and he had been walking under the sun for a long time. So he decided to go in for a dip. However, that beach was famous for its strong low tide under current. So after a while he realised that he was being pushed out towards the sea by the current.......So what did he do? He just relax and do nothing....and let the current push him out from the shore because he was very far from the shore at that time and the current was very strong. So it was until a while before the current subsided and then when he realised that the current had subsided, he swam with every bit of his remaining strength towards the shore and he managed to reach the shore.
Din we sometimes just get overwhelmed by our negative emotions or when disastorous things happen to us? So in that case, what should we do? Well the best and most effective way of handling such hopelessness is to DO NOTHING and let it pass. "This too will pass"~ Remember? Just relax and lie down and bear with it.....How many of us have made wrong and rush decisions when our mind and feelings were polluted with negative feelings and thoughts. Also there's another story about anger....
Once there was a king who reign in India. And then one day suddenly, a big ugly smelly offensive monster appear out of a sudden on his throne when he was away. So the guards and the ministers were taken aback and they appeared with sharp swords and spears and shouted to the monster to get out. With each offensive threat they made to the monster, the monster just gets bigger, and more smelly...than the smell of a fart after one eats durian, and more offensive in its speech.....than the complains made by BMT recruits who kanna night duty and stay in. (*laughs) Then the king came in, and this was a wise king. So when he saw that the monster just gets bigger and bigger, he stepped forward and said, Hello mr monster, how're you doing? Why din you come earlier? Did anyone get a cup of tea for you? Would you like peppermint or chamomile? With that, the monster gets a bit smaller.....And the ministers and guards, when they saw this, they knew what was going to help and they started to treat the monster in a nice way.....some offered pizza....MONSTER SIZE(*LAUGH) some helped to massage the feet.....someone did reiki on the monster.........some sang and danced for the monster......So with each kind act, the monster gets smaller and smaller and smaller.......until it just disappears.......
Many times in our life, as we look inside ourselves, din we always see the anger monster, greed monster, revenge monster, jealousy monster, controlling others monster coming up in our mind? What do we do with these monster that just come out of a sudden from nowhere? Do we treat it with hostility? or do we treat it with loving kindness and compassion? How is it possible, according to law of nature of cause and effect that unwholesomeness will overcome unwholesomeness to give us peace and happiness in our life.......In the law of nature, only love and patience can overcome anger...........So, similarly, only wholesome qualities can overcome unwholesome qualities......Therefore, the next time these monster come up to the door of your heart, invite them in, treat them nicely and invite them for a "monster party"! (*laughs). Well, they're impermanent in nature isn't it. So just let them come and go as they want, and do nothing with them....neither resist nor try to grasp and control them. Have a loving and understanding attitude towards them and then, they will go when their time is up.....Its just so simple......Dun get dragged by them by the nose..........Phenomena comes because there is condition....phenomena goes because the conditions for it disappears........."this too will pass" Dun worry too much about them. Its the same attitude of unconditional love that we show outside to others and inside to our defilements and bad habits and good habits whenever they come up..... Unconditional love can be practiced anytime, anywhere.......inside of us or to others.


A lot of things to share....one night isn't enough to finish typing.....i'll just share the last story here.......
Once, there was a monk who was building a wall......He did his best and he was very satisfied with his work. However, he saw that ONE of the bricks was not properly laid.......He was soooooooooo upset that he could not go for almsround or meditate. His mind just kept thinking about that ONE brick.......So one day, when there were visitors, they praised the wall for being nicely laid. The monk, was present and he was soo suprised. He asked them whether they saw the ONE brick which was laid inproperly.....So they told him that THAT brick was laid inproperly, but there the rest of the 99% of the bricks are okay......
Didn't we always in life, look at that ONE brick or two which was laid inproperly, but neglected the rest of the 99% of the wonderful bricks that we have within ourselves and happening to us.......Everytime we have problems, our minds tend to narrow down and just look at and magnify that ONE BRICK......But we have never thought of remembering the other 99% of the good bricks that we have laid. Similarly, when we look at our problems within ourselves, isn't it always that we always pay so much attention to the ONE brick that we have and forget about the other 99% good bricks that we've laid........It just makes people depressed and negative isn't it........Isn't it just be better to be contented with the 99% good bricks rather than turning around on that ONE brick? Not that we should not improve on it....but being sad and negative about it doesn't work.....Sometimes, improvements isn't just about changing our bad habits.....Improvements in life are also about improving our good habits and qualities we have within us isn't it.........Thats why its no wonder why sometimes people are just so down, because they keep seeing the bad side of themselves and the things outside which are happening them......But they never realistically tell themselves "hey theres good side also leh!!" and look at the good side of themselves and the things happening to them.........Therefore, I sincerely hope that my friends who are in trouble at some point of time in life, can remember the 99% good bricks, which have been laid out by them when they accidentally laid the ONE brick incorrectly........


Coming to the end, I wish to send phases of loving kindness to my friends who have problems.....Hope this Dhamma will help them in their lives, present and future.....


May all beings be well, peaceful and happy,no matter what happens to them~
May all beings be able to face all obstacles in life, in accordance with Dhamma~
May all beings be free from suffering!
THE END :D

Yepp hope you like it :D
"this too will pass"...