Watching a Candle

This morning during the Full Moon Retreat at Khadiravana Center in Hua Hin, I had some time to do meditation by myself. While the others were having their “Chi Gong” exercises, I sat in front of the alter and silently watched a candle that was burning in front of the Buddhas.

This is a very good way of doing the “calm abiding” meditation. For those of you who are rather serious practitioners, calm abiding is a precursor, and I would say a necessary condition, to insight meditation. In Pali the former is called “Samatha” and the latter “Vipassana” (In Sanskrit these are “Shamatha” and “Vipasyana”.)

Calm abiding is important because without having a very keenly focused mind, no real insight is possible. And without the insight, no liberation is possible. When I watched the candle, I kept repeating to myself “candle, candle, candle” (in fact I said to myself in Thai, but that’s not too important). The idea is to keep the mind focused on the candle without actually thinking anything. Whenever a thought arises, I just let it pass away without bothering too much. This takes some practice. But I am telling you what I am actually doing.

So I sat cross legged around 1.5 or 2 meters away from the burning candle, and the line of sight was quite parallel to the ground, so I did not have to look down or up much. The idea is to look straight ahead at your focus object, so the object should be about the same height from the ground as your eyes are. Then watch the candle without blinking. The idea is not to bother about blinking. The idea of having to blink does not enter your mind. But of course people blink, so when you blink just let it blink and then carry on the focusing.

During the meditation I thought of a teaching by Pakchok Rinpoche who was teaching about this topic last year. When you meditation, be like an eagle who is keeping a very intense, watchful eye over the terrain looking for preys. My metaphor is a cat who is intensely watching its prey and carefully, very silently, stalking it. The cat (or the eagle) does not think about whether it will blink or not. In fact if it blinks, chances are that the potential prey might fly away. So the cat keeps very silent, very still, moving very, very carefully. The mind is deeply single-pointed. Not one moment of scattering. This is what we should aim for in meditation.

At first it might not be practicable to maintain this single pointedness for a long time. It would be good if you can maintain this state for a few minutes. Then with more skill you can prolong this state and move on to insight meditation.

Filed under: meditation , calm abiding, calmness, candle, gap between thoughts, meditation, samatha, shamatha, silence, single-pointedness, vipassana, vipasyana, watching

A Sad Day for Thailand

Yesterday was one of the worst nightmares in Thai history. It was worse than 14 October 1973, 9 October 1976 or 17 May 1992 because this time Thai people were deeply divided. Not only did the majority of the people in Bangkok not support the protesters when they were attacked by the army, but they turned against them too. This time the protest was regarded as a riot. Instead of a group of people fighting for democracy, some from among this group did a lot of violent action, leading to their being branded by the government as rioters.

This is the worst incident also because this is the first time (I believe it will not be the only time) that people from the provinces came to Bangkok to demand democracy. The previous three times were the works of the people of Bangkok themselves. This explained the situation yesterday quite a lot. It is almost as if the only ones who can fight for democracy are the people of Bangkok themselves.

There are many questions in all this. First of all, what exactly did the red shirted protesters fight for. They came out in tens of thousands to demand a real change for Thailand. I know that deep down most of them were realistic enough to realize that this was too much. But in any case they made their power felt.

It was when there were incidents at the ASEAN summit in Pattaya when things turned badly against them. They barged inside the main venue of the meeting, causing the meeting to be canceled. A deep embarrassment for the government. This, plus their blockade of several key junctions in busy Bangkok contributed to the resentment of the Bangkokians too. And when the army turned against them, the red shirts then fought back, using guerrilla tactics. This is really troubling because it may mean that the unrest will continue.

So this gave the pretext and the justification for Abhisit to use force. This was indeed a sad situation. What the red shirts are demanding is legitimate. They are Thais and they want to voice their views as to how this country should be governed. But now they are branded as rioters.

What we can only hope is that there is no more violence and that everybody wakes up and realizes that violence from either side would only drag Thailand down to the failed state status sooner. The guerrilla tactics have to stop. The legitimate demands of the red shirts need to be seriously addressed. This will cancel any reasons they have for protesting. People need to talk. Let’s hope that Thais come to understand and respect one another.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Abhisit Vejjajiva, army, crackdown, demonstrations, military, politics, Thai politics, Thai unrest, Thailand, violence

Fellow Bloggers

I just had a look at the dashboard of my blog and found that it is linked to by another blog. This blog (Enlightenment Ward) put my blog here under the category of a Buddhist blog by a male practitioner. Some classification indeed. There are also categories of blogs by women practitioners, blogs by monks, nuns and others I didn’t remember.

It is indeed an honor to be linked to by a fellow blogger. And somehow I found it rather odd that this blog is put under the category of a ‘Buddhist blog by a practitioner.’ For one thing, this blog is “mostly” about Buddhism, but not “exclusively.” So I talk about other things, such as tennis, Thai politics, the internet, and right now in this blog I’m talking about other blogs. But thanks any way for linking to me. I am sure to link back.

Another thing is that this blog is even not always in English. So Thai readers find it rather difficult to follow it because about 80% of the time this blog is in English, but perhaps English readers might wonder what is going on in some of the posts in Thai. So you can pick and choose.

Maybe I’ll wait until somebody else picks this blog up for other things than Buddhism. Perhaps blogs about “all sorts of topics”. Sometimes there is a classification like this, you know. No, but seriously, this blog is for the most part about Buddhism, and I intend it to be that way.

Enlightenment Ward put me under the category of a “practitioner.” This kind of gave me goose bumps, because the word seems to conjure an image of someone who’s serious, with shaven head, sits cross-legged all the time, etc. But I think I am everything else but that. I do meditate from time to time, but perhaps that is not enough to dampen any surprise that will happen once someone sees me who has heard about me being listed as a practitioner.

But in any case, I am certain that I take at least this part of my Bodhisattva vow seriously — I would like this blog to contribute to sentient beings’s eventual realization of Buddhahood. But there are so many ways to Buddhahood….

Filed under: Uncategorized , blog, blogging, Language, meta-blog, musings, not about Buddhism, nothing, wordpress

Rarity of Human Birth

Here is another treasured Dharma snippet from Luang Pu Doon:

“The Buddha’s 84,000 dharma teachings are only skillful means so that people start looking at their own minds. The reason why the Buddha taught so many things is because people’s defilements are so varied. But there is only one way to eliminate suffering, which is nirvana. It is very rare for us to have a chance to practice the Dharma, so if we let this chance go we will lose the opportunity to become liberated in this lifetime. And then you will live with ignorance for a tremendously long time before you will have this chance again. Therefore, when we are born so that we meet Buddhism, we need to be diligent in practice to realize nirvana. Otherwise you will lost this very rare opportunity. When the Dharma is forgotten, sentient beings will live in total darkness for a very, very long time.”

Filed under: meditation , birth, Buddha, Buddhism, dharma, human, Luang Pu Doon, rarity, teaching

Linköping

I have been in Linköping for one full day already, having arrived here on Sunday. I left Trondheim on Friday and stayed with a Thai professor, Dr. Prayad Kullapa, who is teaching Thai studies and political science at Uppsala University. He took very good care of me and we had a lot of good conversations. His house was some kilometers north of Stockholm and was very close to the Arlanda airport, so it was convenient for him to pick me up.

Here is my picture with Aj. Prayad:

Linköping is the seat of the university which is also a partner in the Erasmus Mundus program. I will be here for about a month teaching a course on social and political ethics. The weather is a bit warmer than Trondheim, but today it is very windy.

Here is my picture at the main square, Stora Torget:

Filed under: Uncategorized , Linköping, Sweden

Meeting in Brussels

Last week I went to Brussels for a meeting related to the SEACOOP project. This is a project for collaboration of researchers in the EU and South-east Asia on ICT’s. NECTEC generously sponsored my travel here. This picture was taken inside the Radisson Hotel which was the conference venue.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Brussels, ICT, research

Trondheim and NTNU

I have been in Trondheim for about a week now and have kind of adjusted myself a bit. I have taken some pictures which I would like to share. So here are some of them.

In front of the house

This is the street in front of the house where I live. In front you will see a beautiful fjord.

My house on Stavsvegen

Here is my house on Stavsvegen. It’s a short walk from there to the NTNU Dragvoll campus.

NTNU Dragvoll Campus

Here is the campus building of NTNU. Everything is included in this complex.

Inside the campus building

Here is the atmosphere inside the campus building.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Dragvoll, NTNU, Trondheim

Trondheim

I am now writing this post from a friend’s house in Trondheim, Norway. I will be in Norway and Sweden for three months from now on. This will be a test of my cold weather endurance I used to be in a cold country before when I was a graduate student in Bloomington, Indiana in the US. But that was a long time ago and I am now used to the warm, tropical climate of Bangkok. So this will be a change.

I am here as a scholar of the Erasmus Mundus Program in Applied Ethics. I’ll give lectures and talk with students. This is a break from my teaching at Chula, a chance to get to know foreign students and to learn from them.

Trondheim is very different from Bangkok. Apart from the cold, it’s a small town, just like a suburb of Bangkok. And it is very quiet. When you come from a noisy place like Bangkok this is almost eerie and creepy. Somehow the silence gets into you because all the familiar sounds are gone.

The blog will still continue, and the topic will certainly be about Buddhism most of the time. I should have more time to write these posts.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Bangkok, Norway, teaching, Thailand, Trondheim

Visitors’ Location

I have found a nifty website where you can download a code that shows you the location of the visitor’s location on this website. It’s IPligence. If you have a website you might want to give this a look. The map generated looks better than the other visitor’s map site that I have encountered.

Filed under: Uncategorized , blog, internet, visitor's map, website, wordpress

Back to the Old Theme

I have tried the new Albeo theme for a while, and as I said in the previous post, I kind of feel a bit uneasy with all the fish swimming in there. So I decided to change it back to Chaos Theory, which is now the current theme of this blog. Another thing is that Albeo missed a lot of my links.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Albeo, blog, Chaos Theory, theme, wordpress