The month had past and it was a good break from any form of work. Probably I'm a little nervous about tml or due to the wu long tea i drank in the afternoon, I'm not ready to hit my bed and get unconscious for 7hrs. A little lack of sleep is not gonna do me much harm anyway. My entire month of sufficient sleep can easily offset the sleep debt. What the hell did I do for the month? It seems to crept pass silently before I came to realisation. No work is good. it relaxing. No work is bad too. No money. No income. Cannot do a lot of things. So I find solace in the comfort of my own house and do lots of reading. I think I achieved the most, counting by the number of books I completed. All chim books. I didn't retain much of what I read. Nvm.... that's me. Stephen Hawking's "A brief history of time" claims to be readable by avergae layman but I do have problems with comphrension of the bizzare phenomenal microscopic world. Not much better with the macro world of black holes and stars. About black holes, I only remember one line..... "Black holes are not so black afterall". It leaves the deepest impression on me because I always thought that black holes cannot be seen. That's y they are called black holes. It turns out that this "black" hole emit some kind of radiation and can be detected after all. Physics has become so complex and technical that only the expert can apprehend. A outsider of the field like me can only scratch my head and ponder about what I just read. Not that it's much of a help.

Next, I'm proud to proclaim that I finally read my first Buddhist sutra. A translated english version of "Lotus Sutra" by Burton Watson. My parents are Buddhist, so naturally I'm a Buddhist too. I know a little about the teachings and central ideas of Buddhism and I habour thoughts of verifying my knowledge through a sutra. I had big findings from the book. But, sad to say, all this are more to an academic point of view, it's easy to talk about stuffs, and say that u understand something, but it is totally different in terms of carrying out what you think is correct.

This story illustrates my point. A zen story goes like this. An old man asked a monk what is the way of living. The monk replied, "Do good deeds. Avoid evil deeds." The old man laughed and said, "Even a 7 yr old kid noes this!" The monk replied," But how many people can actually do this? "

At the end of the day, The lotus Sutra talks nothing about the Lotus Sutra. Perplexed? The reality and truth is not to be spoken, but felt and understood. Lotus Sutra, 28 chapters in all, talks bout circumstances where the Sutra should be spoken and benefits of the Sutra but never mention what the sutra preaches. It's like a book where there is only the preface but no true content. Its written in a poetic form, depicts a imagined scene where Buddha was speaking to all sorts of creatures, not just the human, but also non-human. If u asked me whether I have understood the Sutra, yes and no. I understood the words. But I did not capture the true wisdom of it. Afterall, the sutra, as it claims, is the gateway to attaining Buddhahood. Any normal layman will be confused, perplexed and troubled by it. I'm a normal layman. But I'm conclusive about the central theme of emptiness in Buddhism. I spotted the parallel doctrines with that Of Daoism, in which likewise, calls for the elimnation of distinctions. Distinctions are implied when words are used. So to rid of distinctions, one must rid of words. So the truth cannot be represented by words because distinctions do not exist in truth.

Reality is not as one percieved but there is more than one reality. Humans can only observe one of it. Shockingly, quantum mechanics spoke of a similar point about a dualism. That an electron can act as a particle, or as a wave. This means that the observer affected the result of the test. Before an observer comes along and look at the electron, it can either behave as a particle, or a wave, but once an observer comes and look at the electron, the electron have to fall into either one of the two states, either a particle, or an wave, depending on the circumstances applied.

It is particularly alluring to me that I would like to draw a link between non-distinction, highligthed in the Dao and Buddhist doctrine and quantum mechanics of dualism, where we can no longer be comfortable to give a definite claim to whether an electron is a particle or an wave. This inevitably leads to a non-distinction micrscopic world, where electrons are ruled and governed by probabilties. No matter how tempting it may be and that quantum mechanics may explain many things, but theories are not permanent conclusive claims. A theory can be disproved, when results differ from predictions. The old theory can make way for a new theory. It may not be a wise idea afterall to say that Zhuangzhi, a man so much ahead of his time, had predicted quantum mechanics.