Tag: Quality of Life

Q&A: Internet addiction, chanting Buddha’s name and pungent roots

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Question and Answers

Below is a repost of some questions and answers that I thought would be helpful for all.

Reformatted for clarity.

Hi venerable!

Thanks for answering my questions, I really appreciate it! I have a couple of questions to ask the venerable:

1)Regarding my question on internet addiction, let’s say that the person surfs the internet for a total of 6 hours( 3 hours in the afternoon, another 3 hours at night) and has started to neglect his studies, what can he do to reduce his addiction and concentrate on his
studies?

2) Also, can chanting a buddha’s name really enhance a person’s wisdom? Can I chant the buddha’s name( or Bodhisattva’s name. Say, Manjusri Boddhisattva’s name) so that I can memorise and understand a lot of Mathematics equations well?

3) Why is it that Mahayana Buddhist are encouraged not to eat the 5 pungent plant?

Thanks for answering my questions!

Hi Pandaboy,

Apologies for the delay in replies. Hope this is still helpful!

1. Internet Addiction

What makes you Tick?
The first thing one should perhaps do is ask oneself why the addiction should be dropped. It has to be one’s personal reasons. And by personal, I mean, reasons that matter to you and not from some guidebook.

Only when you have good enough reasons to do so, will the suggestions below work.

Peer Support/Pressure
A way to reduce the addiction, is to Change the cycle. And by that, I don’t mean stop using internet. I mean, using it in a different manner.

Tell someone you trust about your situation and see if they can help you out. Access the internet with him/her and limit it to that period. It should not be someone who also uses the internet for 6 hours or more a day!

Telling someone about it and making the above arrangement creates peer support so that you get someone you trust to help you out. Because you’ve made your plan open, you also get a little positive peer pressure to do it right!

Cold Turkey
Another way is to Break the cycle.
Get involved in other activities that does not require the internet. Let your friends know in advance that you will be off-line for a few weeks. This may be tricky if your school requires you to correspond on subject matters using the internet. If possible, get a trusted friend to assist in this area.

Path of Least Resistance
We humans typically choose the path of least resistance. Make it harder to access internet. Say, cut off your internet access at home? This may only prove to be useful if you are under direct supervision of your parents or guardian(s). If not, it is likely that you will circumvent the very obstacles you setup and then go on an internet-binge thereafter.

Whoever you are trying to help break the addiction, it may be helpful to bring the person to seek help in person.

2. Chanting of a Buddha’s name

Reciting the Buddha’s name has been endowed with numerous “powers”. My personal take is that while such claims had been experienced by individuals, it may be helpful to see how it can be practically put to practice.

For one, reciting the Buddha’s name is a form of simple meditation that can lead to inner calm and tranquility. This clears up our mind and make it easier to focus and learn. In that way, recital of the Buddha’s name can be helpful for your wisdom and studies. But you still need to do the studying!

It is like the sharpening of an axe; you still need to do the chopping!

3. The Five Pungent Plants

The avoidance of the five pungent plants fall under the Bodhisattva vows. The five pungent plants are said to be strong stimulants that can agitate the mind. The aim of avoiding them is to reduce the impact of stimulants on our mind. This is especially true for those striving to be a Bodhisattva.

For most people who are not training on the path, the impact of the pungent plants may seem negligible. This is because our mind is already agitated by our constant pursuit of our wants, desires and cravings. It does not however mean that there is no impact; it just mean that we are unaware of the impact because our mind is too desensitized already.

Consider how we can hear clearly something drop in a (quiet!) library while we are oblivious to many things when we are in shopping mall. In the former, there are little distractions, while in the latter, we are too busy with all the attractions
out there to see or hear anything else.

Hope this clear things up for you.

With metta,

🙂

Of Haze, Rain and Sunshine

Posted onAuthorShi ZhiXing2 Comments

For the past week, there is one word that enshrouds all our conversations: Haze.  Singapore, a small island nation, is cradled between peninsular Malaysia to the north, separated by the Johor Straits (in other countries, this is really like the size of a river or large stream!) and to the south, the Sumatra island, Indonesia.  For the past few weeks, we’ve been having haze from the recent forest fire in Sumatra island with PSI level as high as 371 and on one day peaking past 400!

Soon, facebook and whatsapp started getting flooded with updates on the PSI levels, with warnings and advisory notes about respiratory safety.  Very quickly, the SWAT complain kings and queens also started complaining about the haze, about our neighbouring country, about the government etc etc.

For the most part, I was actually oblivious to the haze.  I am indoors mostly and when I do give talks in the evening, transport is provided, so it is relatively harder to notice the haze.  As a matter of fact, I was wondering why the sun rise from Buddhist Library is so beautiful these days.  Then my students started asking me about the haze  and I was like, ah yes, the haze!

Sunrise at 7:12am 9th June 2013 The light haze two weeks ago was beginning to give us a much more crimson sunrise than usual!

With N95 and surgical masks being passed around and complaints about the haze abound, a few observations and reflections came to me.  Not to sound callous, but the haze kinda made it quite ‘exciting’!  Suddenly, Singapore as a nation was facing a crisis together.  A part of me felt like I was in a movie set when I went outdoors.  There was this sense of wonder when I saw familiar places in a new light or haze if you will!  It was like, the haze had transported the whole nation into a new realm a new place, without us moving an inch.

Suddenly, I felt like I was a tourist and the hazy look reminded me of yesteryears in Taipei plus the charred smell.  If the haze has no smell and negative health impact, it is quite a welcome ‘change’ if you will.  A week ago, the media was going on and on about the town council like it meant the world, and now, everything look so distant with the haze.

With this crisis, we suddenly have a common ‘problem’ that in a way unite us.  No more awkward lift moments or silent conversation gaps.  Anyone can say “the haze is quite bad ‘hor’?”.  And we also have a convenient excuse to break out of our Singaporean-Asian straight-face culture and care even more for each other “Drink more water, be careful ok?”, “Do you need some N95 or surgical masks?”  The haze and masks had in one blanketing sweep, achieved what our nation has tried so hard to get us to do, be more gracious and be kind.

The haze has also brought out another quintessential aspect of Singaporeans:  Kiasu 怕輸 and Kiasi 怕死, namely fear of losing and fear of dying.  While these two qualities are sometimes manifested in an ugly fashion, I sometimes wonder if we are being
too hard on ourselves, after all, these two are also seen elsewhere, but perhaps more as passion to win / competitiveness, and self-preservation.  Self-deprecation aside, stories of long queues and stock piling begin to come in.  Should stores have a quota per customer?  The very fact that this is a solution that comes to my mind also reveals another fact about Singaporeans, that we are so happy to have rules and regulations in place.  This, according to a friend in journalism, restricts maturity of the people and disallow the growth of civil exchanges on an individual basis such that we learn to trust each other to do the right thing.  But I digress.

On our way to Buddha Tooth Relic Temple on Friday morning (21st June 2013), we see Bugis area enshrouded in a dream like state. The trees in the foreground looks crisp and clear but is betrayed by the Bugis Plus mall (and not ION or Luma? Thanks to a tip-off by a dear friend!) in the hazy background.

Trust is good.  And we do trust others to do the right thing even if we sometimes do not!  haha … we trust our neighbours to put out the fire.  Do we trust them to do so or do we actually expect or demand that they do so?  It’s a fine line between trust and expectations.  Singaporeans trust the government to safeguard our interest and to generally “take care of things”.  And there is no reason not to.  After all, for the past forty odd years, our government (that is, the civil servants, not just the party) has done fairly well by any standards.  Over the years, this trust in our government and the system to take care of things, take care of us, has evolved into an expectation that it will be so.

Whenever anything go wrong, a common reaction is “What is the government doing?”  Perhaps as spider man movie put it, “With great power, comes great responsibility”.  So is it any wonder when there is the haze, we start looking at the government and ask what is being done?  Facebook, twitter and messaging apps start to be clogged with complaints about the government.  Can Singapore really go over and make another country do something about the fire?  Perhaps some fire fighting missions may help a bit, but looking at some of the satellite images, I wonder how much can really be done.  Others wonder if the government should declare a state of emergency and start issuing free medical assistance and masks to people.  Most importantly, why isn’t there a day or two of crisis holiday declared?

While it seem rather bleak or silly that we are grouching over such matters while other nations are facing dire situations that is literally life and death, I find a certain glimmer of light amidst these rantings.  As a nation and people, we are really quite simple.  Simple, not in a condescending manner, but in a positive fashion.  That of all the things one could ask of, we just want a day off.  Seriously, a day off.  *laugh*  We are really people of fairly simple wants.  We just want a day off.  Take a moment to soak that in.

It is a poignant moment and I’m somewhat comforted by this, that despite our self-deprecative kiasu and kiasistic tendencies, we just want a day off.  Sure, we may sometimes have bouts of greed and desire, but hey, we are still human, unenlightened human beings.  By and large, Singaporeans are fairly simple in needs and wants.  Perhaps that is why our country is so stable.  So stable that a haze becomes the talking point for the past few weeks.

Today, I can finally see a clear day with nice shiny sun.  Was there a shower last night?  Was it the prayers by this or that religion?  When I saw posting of different religious groups doing prayers, I almost wanted to suggest that we pray and request for rain only on specific days so that due credit is given.  haha Or maybe it is not our prayers or some divinity, but just a matter of conditions.

While we enjoy a day or two of respite from the haze, and take a breather from our complaints, perhaps we should also remember those hundreds, thousands, and millions of animals, birds and insects that are harmed or burnt alive.  Perhaps we can and should focus not just on the haze, but also on this massive collateral harm to the eco-system.  The haze will go away in a few weeks time, but the lives lost is gone and acres of forest cleared is not so easily restored.
Haze or not, may we care for each other’s well being.
Clear skies or not, may we give comfort and cooling drinks that quenches and cools not just our body, but also our heart and mind.

May all beings who are harmed or killed in all these fire find peace and be reborn in a happier state.
May all beings be free from harm and danger.
May all beings be free from anger and ill-will.

May all beings be Well and Happy!

Reference

http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0624-greenpeace-photos.html

Simulations by Scientists Suggests Waste Heat Warms Up Climate

Posted onAuthorShi ZhiXingLeave a comment

In one microprocessor class back in university, a professor once declared “A cpu is a heater that happens to calculate”.  The cpu in the computer or handphone you are using is a super duper transistor.  Most cpus today consist of billions of transistors and is built around the same fundamental design of logic gates using transistors.

Transistors in an analogue circuit amplify input signals while transistors in a digital circuits make use of the cut-off behaviour of a transistor to act as a switch.  In both cases, heat is unwittingly
produced.

Newer cpus are more “efficient” in that lesser heat is produced, i.e. lesser energy is required to compute while lesser energy is expended as heat.

All the appliances and devices we use, including the screen you are reading this on, dissipates heat.  The heat must go somewhere and it does go somewhere.  The environment.

Air-conditioning

The funny thing is that even the air-conditioners that cools down our rooms also generates heat.  Back in August 2006, I wrote about how air-conditioners do not really produce ‘cold’ or that it is really a displacement of heat [1].  This heat from the air-conditioners and all the other appliances must go some where as well.  It dissipates to the air around, i.e. the atmosphere.

Now consider earth, with its atmosphere as the ‘Room’. The rooms we are cooling are akin to tiny little fridges in this big Room. Owing to heat loss to space, the whole earth cools off at night. But in the day itself, the reverse is true. Heat from sunlight is warming up the surfaces of earth and air, while these little fridges are doing their part to displace heat, and inevitably adding on ambient heat to the environment. Simply put, air-cons do not just ‘cool’ the rooms, it also heats up the environment.

In recent studies by scientists, simulations are pointing to a similar conclusion.

Human-made waste heat warms climate [2]

Energy dissipated as heat in cities can cause regional temperature changes, simulations suggest

The waste heat generated by car engines, power plants, home furnaces and other fossil fuel-burning machinery plays an unappreciated role in influencing regional climates, new computer simulations suggest. By altering atmospheric circulation, human-made heat may raise temperatures by as much as 1 degree Celsius during winter in the northernmost parts of the world.

From the air-conditioning to the pc or mobile, from the television in your living room to the car on the street and the plane in the sky, all appliances, equipments and machineries produce heat, and it is adding up.

Proposing to remove all these modern creature comforts (or to some, necessities) is impractical.  Energy efficient appliances and cars can definitely help to reduce the amount of energy wasted, in most cases as heat.

Earth Day raises awareness by having people around the world turn off the lights for an hour at 8pm once a year.  Perhaps it may be more effective to turn off the air-conditioner as well.  After all, air-conditioners consumes much more energy than than lighting and merely displaces heat while producing heat at the same time!

Are we ready to live without or with lesser air-conditioning?

References