Now that I’ve migrated the news column in the main site with the news board in the forum, I was wondering if this blog could benefit from integration. Granted, the entries I write over here are largely unrelated to Digital Buddha Vacana so maybe it may still be a good thing to keep it separate.
Thoughts?
This is just another placeholder for future entry … 
1st December, 2006
Some of the folks who come across my desk may wonder why a toothbrush is on my desk and not in the toilet where it belongs. Most people either miss it or are too polite to ask, so I shared with the Youth Ministry in Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery during their YMers retreat.
You see, sometimes in the day, I would find a piece of food stuck in my teeth, or find my teeth too grimy for myself, and no amount of rinsing or flossing ( … talking about flossing, they are there on my desk too! 
) will cleanse it. I’m sure we have that once a while … or maybe we don’t notice.
So I’ve been asked many times, if drinking red wine counts towards flouting the fifth precept (See “Five Precepts” … to be added later), and time and again, I gave a resounding yes. Drinking wine, beer, alcohol, or taking any form of intoxicants dulls one’s mind, impairs judgements, if not now, then develops one’s inclination towards such mental states in the future, be it tomorrow, next week, year or life.
After the jump below, a real story of how one’s drinking totally messed up another’s life. Warning: The link contains graphic images that may be gory to some and are unsuitable to minors, adults with heart conditions, pregnant ladies etc. You’ve been warned.
Read the rest of this entry »
So the other day, I was having a casual ‘one to one’ session with someone and he mentioned that he aspires to be a Dharma teacher.
(continued … )
While it is heartening that he aspires to be a Dhamma teacher, it is important not to become one for the sake of being a Dhamma teacher. Or simply put, not to give Dhamma talks for the sake of giving Dhamma talks.
Many years back, I learnt about how air-conditioning work. It basically works by transferring heat through conduction from the cooling fins to the air outside of the room/house/unit that it is supposed to cool.
Outside air < — Cooling fins <— metal tubes <— freon gas <— internal air (from room etc)
In the process, some heat is generated. This heat generated is due to inefficiency of the compressor, electronics etc found in air-conditioning units. This inefficiency is common in practically *all* electrical devices, where some electrical power is converted into actual intended work, while others are lost, either as heat, sound or kinetic energy or a combination of them all.
In a sense, air-conditioners do not create “coolness”. “Cold” cannot be created. Only heat can be created. Coldness appears to exist only in contrast to the lack or relative differences in heat. So while a heater generates heat, a cooler (eg air-con) do not actually create cold. It merely displaces it. Coldness itself is also empty of inherent characteristic.
Further to that, heaters do not actually generate or create heat as well. They merely release the potential energy “trapped” or “stored” in the fuel, or convert energy from one form to another, eg convert electrical energy to heat energy. In the process, most heaters “loose” some energy through ambient heating (ie, heating up the appliant itself in an unintended manner), unintended lighting, sound etc. We can perhaps say that heat itself is dependent arising, that it is also inherently empty.
I recently met two old friends … no, not that they are old, but more that we knew each other a long time ago.
To protect their identity (I always like this! :p) … let’s call my friend … ok, ok, let’s cut the bull and get it over. If my friend has problem with his name appearing on my obscure blog, then he need to stop living under a rock!
So ChingWi messaged me one day that she has a friend Hanguan who needs some advice from a monk and referred him to me. I agreed but didn’t thought much about the name, though I thought she was referring to Angguan, another friend from awhile back, but that’s another story.
Friday came, and when this Hanguan came over my cubicle (monks have cubicles? *gasp*), I was like “Hey, I know you!” and he was like “Yeah, wow … you … ”