What is zen? It is something that fits into your hand.

I chose to live in simplicity and self-reflection during this vacation. I was trying to live a life on my own, away from people and the hustle and bustle of the city, so that i can learn to enjoy solitude and loneliness. I had some insights, as I tried these new experiences. On the quest to find my true self, and to find what's the best way to live one's life. What luck I had as I stumbled upon treasures of wisdom, written works passed down by great writers. It was merely a stroke of coincidence that I found a book "The importance of living" by Liu Yutang. An english book written by a Chinese Prof. His work enthralled me. He has adopted the spirit of Zhuangzhi, to advocate laziness and simplicity. To him, the way of life is to just idle and be humorous. He proposed the half-half philosophy, integrating Confucianism and Taoism as the way of life. I hardly could disagree with him. A contemporary writer applying ancient Chinese wisdom to daily modern life, he proves that ancient wisdom can still be practised till the very day. It has not grown obsolete in this rapid growing world of materialistic comfort.

So happy I was that I gaily went to botanical gardens and east coast park on my own, to enjoy the nature the way I never did. The essence of Zen and Taoism is so simple, yet so difficult to be practised. Zhuangzi, had, through his philosophical works, thought us not to think so much and just flow along with the course of the river. The bad thing about being a human, is the concept of distinction. That is the root of all problem. There is hatred, and so the opposite exist. Love and hatred complements. Life and there is death. Sadness and there is happiness. Good and bad. Beautiful and ugly. Abandon thinking, spontaneous action is the key to handling all matter. It has a scientific background. I shall care to explain this. Have u heard of a reflex action? It's a automatic response from our nervous system to deal with situations where fast action is required. When we commit an action, and stop down to think and analyse, some precious time is lost in the mood of thinking. If u touch a hot kettle, your hand automatically retracts to avoid burn damage. If u slow down, distinguish it and tell urself that the kettle is hot, and then process the information with your brain that what u should do, finally u react, how much time is wasted for the whole process. Think about it urself, by that time, your hand could have been burn already. Stopping down to think is bad in this case. These ideas can be found in Lao Tze's teachings. I found some passages that imply this.

The Daodejing

Chapter Two

Everyone in the world knows that when the beautiful strives to be beautiful, it is repulsive.
Everyone knows that when the good strives to be good, it is no good.
And so, to have and to lack generate each other.

This talks about opposites and how they co-exist with each other. The uselessness of desires is that the more u want something, the more u drift away from it. Don't say i want something, just do it! The style of nike!

Chapter 19
Cut off sageliness, abandon wisdom, and the people will benefit one-hundred-fold......
Cut off cleverness, abandon profit, and robbers and thieves will be no more.....
Manifest plainess.
Embrace simplicity.
Do not think just of yourself.
MAke few your desires.

Do not think, do not think highly of wisdom. Wisdom and knowledge is the root of all problem. When Eve and Adam ate the fruit of the Tree of knowledge, they got knowledge and got into trouble. God kicked them out of the paradise they used to be in. To get back to the Eden gardens, put the fruit of knowledge back to where it is. Abandon knowledge!

Fine tune your senses, train urself to be in what u r, then u will know how to react appropriately. Thinking doesn't help. Wanting something and desiring it also does not help u to achieve ur goal. A Zen master told me. The way to attain peace in ur heart is so simple, yet so difficult to do for so many people. This is also what Lao Tze had said before.

Chapter 70
My teachings are easy to understand and easy to implement;
But no one in the whole world has been able to understand or implement them.
My teachings have an ancestor and my activities have a lord;
But people fail to understand these and so I am not understood.

The Zen master carried on with his explanation. It is so simple, yet so difficult for people to do it. I wonder how many people can attain this level of tranquility. The way of life, is to be in what you are doing, the mindfulness mind of awareness. That is all. When u take a train, take a train. When u watch a movie, watch a movie. When u listen to a lecture, listen to a lecture. When u eat, just eat. When u talk, just talk. When u shower, just shower. When u sleep, just sleep. When u drink a good brew of tea, just drink the tea. I wish to abandon the thinking mind. It is thinking that brings about negative thoughts. It is distinctions that give rise to discrimination. But since i'm born with it, i shouldn't try so hard to be stupid and forget knowledge. I can have the best of both worlds.

So here i am, sitting in my house. Drinking my tea, not thinking about anything. So here I am, in the botanical gardens, being one with nature. I feed the swans at the swan lake. I saw two mices trying to steal food at the bandstand, a favourite picnic spot for visitors. I saw a bird catch an earth worm and enjoy its meal after its hunt. I saw pigeons flying around, cooing, not daunted by the presence of humans. I saw dogs run happily in the fields, they look happy. How do i noe they are happy? I noe it because they seem to be not thinking about anything at all, just running. I saw bougainvilleas and hibiscus plants. I saw a green fern and i went forward to feel the fern for myself. I flipped the leaves and look at the spore bags underneath. I saw three birds resting at a rock. I didn't know its name. For a moment, I was fooled into thinking that they were part of the decor. They were motionless and looked unalive. Then I was startled when one flapped its wing and flew off. Before I knew it, I was hungry and went for dinner.

When i'm on the train, everyone else don't seem to be on the train. Their minds are somewhere else. I observe those people around me. Some people were sleeping, some talking to their friends, kids play game boy, adults read newspaper. This jc kid was so into smsing. A women dressed in the business attire stares blankly. She seems to be lost in her own thought. I was the only one on the train. Some look back at me when they realise I'm looking at them. Maybe, they weren't so distracted afterall. I was a observer. And I see so many things I never use to see.

I have grown to like simplicity. So what is zen? Zen teaches u the way of life. The way of life is something so simple. It is something that can even fit into your palm.

I went to watch spider-lilies on my own. I was fully aware it's a art house film, made with intention of flaunting the aesthetical nature rather than a commercial film made for the audience's taste. I appreciate such films, owing to exposure and knowledge from one of the film modules I took in NUS. I wanted to watch this film, despite I know no one else would one to go. The fact that it's a Taiwanese film, a female director and the likes of Rainie Yang and Isabella Leong drives me to want to catch the film. According to my knowledge, there is not a lot of prominent female directors in the movie industry. Every director has their way of telling their story. A female perspective offers something new and refreshing. Though the show is not highly rated by the reviews and revolves around the theme of lesbians, it has much more to offer than what I had thought it would be. I enjoy the movie a lot, at least that's what I feel. The movie does not deserves the criticism that does so much injustice to its plot.

Zero Chou tells a sad tale of loneliness, emptiness and the burdens of memories and fantasies with her own style. The chinese name of the film, chi ching which means tattoo would be a more important theme than the lesbian element in the show. Every tattoo is significant. The tattoo is the identity of its bearer. The tattoo makes the bearer who he is. Jade (rainie)wants a spider lilly tattoo on her because she was forever obsessed with her first lover, who had the spider lilly tattoo on her.(her first lover is actually Takeko. but it was only one-sided, Takeko took no fancy of her) There was a punk on the show who felt his only existence was through his prove of might by beating up people on the street. He felt strong only when he had a sabre tattoo on both his arms. Chou is not the only director nor the first who plays with identity formation through external tangible objects. One common cinematic language is the use of clothes in relation to identity. But to say so about the significance of the tattoo to its bearer is new to me. The director explains so when the opening scene question whether a tattoo can be seen as a form of clothing on the human body. I do think that she did a fine job to express the message she wants to tell the audience with that. Takeko (Isabella Leong) was trapped in her world and obsessed with her memories and tattoos. To Jade, that tattoo is the reminiscence of the happy past romance, which contrast so much to that for Takeko, in which the tattoo reminds her of the obligations she had to her family and how costly love was for her. Through Takeko interspersed play-backs, the dark story of the spider Lilly was revealed. Takeko was in the arms of her lover one night. After their rendezvous, Takeko found out in shock that an earthquake had hit her home and she lost her parents, leaving only his younger brother still alive and traumatized. the spider-lilly tattoo on his father's arm was the only thing he could identify with and feel comfortable with. Takeko was guilt-ridden and decided to had that tattoo. It was the only way she could break into her brother's self-centered world and allow him to trust her again. She never trusted love again, for it had proven to only take more away from her.

I like the plot, and its insights to how much a tattoo can do. Everyone in the show fall prey to their dependence on the tattoo such that they had forgotten that the tattoos do not really determine who they are and how it can shape their lifes. It was a twist from how much it was expected out of tattoos,to how much it can really do. The outcome was a wicked cruel waking up to the reality. Memories are embodied in the tattoos. Although memories shape us who we are and how we think, the past that haunts us, can never allow us to break-though the stress and problems, unless we forget it and live afresh. It is so painful to live in the past, if only we can abandon the past and embrace the present, we can live more meaningfully. That is how i would interpret the movie. It is worth watching, but only with the awarness of it content, then can u appreciate the movie. Maybe it could come of as boring to most people, but if u catch all the little details and piece them together, it's possible to make sense out of it. The outcome is an art piece, clear and coherent, that delivers it sensual sensation to its viewer.

Finally, I got my lap top back. It's the only computer I have, and one of the important communication devices for me to keep myself updated on NUS commencment matters and contact friends with MSN. Problems followed after one another. The screen of my hp just went blank. Warrany is over. Using my old hand phone instead, which I was still keeping in case such a thing happen. I lost some of my friend's hp numbers, augmenting my inconveniences. No portable music player equipment to keep myself occupied during boring trips. Everything seems to mul-function at the same time. How timely! I neglect to mention that HP service center took 3 weeks to fix my lap top. How efficient they can get! I had a good break from the computers. Har! Like real....