Childhood memories

This morning finds me in school folding an A4 size paper to prepare working with my counselee to construct a snake and ladder game. The idea is for the child to identify specific good behaviour that are represented by forward leaps up the ladders and unfavourable behaviour which are like snake bites taking plunges in the teachers' approval of the pupil. As I sat doing this alone in the room amdidst strains of Malay gamelan music from the music room nearby, I whispered softly to myself "Let's hope this makes an impression." No amount of teachers' scolding and advice was of help for this 9 year old trouble maker. I picked up the idea of using such media from a book to drive messages across instead of using words.

I think about the strange impact of childhood memories and how sometimes even the most ordinary can leave a deep impression. The things which my children remember as a child often came as a surprise to me as they seem to be quite uneventful and unimpressionable when viewed by an adult. For example my son once related about the great tomato and egg soup served by the restaurants in HK which we visited when he was just about 6 or 7.

In the novel The Brothers Karamazov, the writer described how certain childhood memories affect the lives of the main characters. The eldest brother remembered the incident when a stranger bought him a pack of peanuts. That became the only pillar for his faith in human kindness. The third brother had a constant image of his mother lifting him up during his baptism which subconsciously became a motivating force in his religious pursuit. Their illegitimate brother was unable to assume an identity of his own because as a child the housekeeper told him he was not a human but was like the moss that grew in the bathroom; hence he had to leach onto the second brother as a model to follow blindly. The writer did not mention about the second brother having any childhood memories at all. This character was portrayed as a cold intellectual.

A dharma teacher once shared about his memories of his bus rides home as a child growing up in a small town in Italy. He would plonk himself at a seat just behind the single seat meant for the bus conductor. There he would watch the man counting the coins collected. That sense of warmth and well being of those moments propelled him to find more of such experiences in his life, thus motivating him to study the dharma and practise meditation.

My own good childhood memories centred around being loved and pampered by my maternal grandmother who remains in my mind as a passive but resilient figure in her quiet acceptance of the unfortunate things that happened to her family. She is my role model though I am still a far far cry from her.

In my dealings with the children I can only hope that messages whether told as a story, spoken by puppets, seen as drawings on a paper and figurines that stood out in a sandtray may dawn on some minds some time down the road.

Things They Do

The things that people do sometimes make us ponder over what we want for ourselves. The first is a doctor who is also the CEO of a company that created a device which uses the ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) technology to help diagnose heart diseases and strokes in patients. So firm was his belief that the monitoring device will benefit patients, he used all his nest eggs (including the proceeds from the sale of 10 condos) to ride over the critical period during the SARs outbreak when seed money was not forthcoming. The final break through came about when the Chinese health authorities In Chengdu set up booths in rural villages equipped with the devices and which are connected by internet to the hospitals in the cities. The company is now worth about US$800m and is a target for acquisition or IPO. The inspiring part of the story is when this doctor decided to place his shares in a trust. The mission of the trust is to promote education, intellectual property and provide disaster relief. He looks forward to becoming a doctor again without the hassle of being a CEO.He wants to do things which he is good at which is being a doctor and inventing things.

Yet another story is about an English couple in their 50s who sold all their assets and purchased a yacht to sail round the world. Unfortunately they were kidnapped by Somali pirates and were detained for a year whilst the pirates demanded a huge ransom of 4m pounds which is well beyond the means of their family. During the one year they lived through fear and despair at the fringe of death whilst the British government advised their relatives against engaging in ransom talks with the pirates. In the end it was a Somali British subject who raised a sum of 600,000 pounds amongst the somali community in UK and through contacts and connections in Somali managed to secure the couple's freedom. The inspiring part of the story is when asked what they would be doing, the couple said they would return to sailing soonest possible. The frightening experience did not hold back their pursuit of their dream.

Most of us are conditioned to feel secure only when we deem ourselves to have sufficient reserves in the bank and when we are living in a familiar environment. Hence we hold back our dreams, or perhaps never dare ourselves to dream or perhaps even worse don't know how to dream.

Unwise, Why So?

"If you are politically aware, the votes would have been much wiser," maintained LKY at a dialogue with the students at NTU. His opinion I guess is that everyone that votes for the oppoisiton is naive and I believe many PAP supporters think so too. He also described what it takes to be politically aware, "To be aware of the political situation in Singapore, you have to be aware of the political divide, the way the economy is going, what opportunities there are for different groups of people." In my opinion, the point he missed out is that we have to CULTIVATE such awareness that he so precisely described.

Wikileaks On Singapore have disclosed a situation whereby younger SPH journalists are disillusioned in reporting local news and are clamouring for the positions of overseas correspondents where there is significantly less restrictions and more freedom in reporting. Below is an extract from the leaked cable:

"Singapore journalists say they are increasingly frustrated with GOS-imposed limits on their domestic reporting. Political leaders put pressure on the Straits Times (ST) staff to ensure that the paper's domestic coverage follows the government line. Reporters say they are eager to produce more investigative and critical reporting,but they are stifled by editors who have been groomed to tow the line. Some reporters seek an outlet for their journalistic passions by serving as overseas correspondents,where ST allows reporters much greater latitude..." No wonder young readers scoff at ST and obtain news online from other sources.

I just listened to a public lecture by Ed Balls at London School of Economics where he challenged George Osborne(Chancellor of the Exchequer)'s draconian measures to cut UK deficit and offered advice to modify the strategies. Ed Balls is the Shadow Chancellor (lead economic spokesman for the Opposition) of the Labour Party. What impresses me is the free dialogue with the press, students and public with a diverse audience both supporting and contending his views as well as that of Osborne's. Are the Brits born discerning than Singaporeans? No, there are brought up in an environment where alternative views are easily available in the 10 London Newspapers and 68 regional dailies and are thus trained to think.

Back home one may discount and mock at the economic strategies put forth by our own opposition parties just before the election, but it is at least a beginning. LKY's scorn is like a parent mocking at a child learning to ride a bike. The child gave up and never learnt how to bike. The paraent then labels the child as stupid!

What is hell actually?

Just finished listenting to an audio book "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoyevsky. The book has various themes and the main plot describes the tormented mind of an university student who killed a mean and unscrupulous pawnbroker. It is a very interesting book that involves psychology, moral arguments, human pysche, human spirit and behaviour in abject povery and also reflects the danger of being guided solely by utilitarian ethics . It describes the various level of defence the murderer put up internally to justify his crime. At one stage he compared himself with Napolean who caused mass bloodshed in his conquest for the glory of his country. He reckoned his own act of murder was more purposeful in that it got rid of an evil element in society. However deep inside him he knew he was deceiving himself and suffered severe mental agony, repeatedly obsessing and rejecting each justification.

I am currently attending Buddhist class and during the first lesson, the teacher talked about the various realms of after-life one of which is hell, with its detailed description of various levels of torture. The sceptics in class questioned the origin of such an idea as to whether that was really from the Buddha himself or created by his followers to help people refrain from doing evil. The description of hell certainly was mentioned in the Sutra but the teacher was not very clear when explaining the concept of hell. She alluded to an equivalent level of suffering as described in hell. More will be discussed in the next lesson but in my own mind the vivid and detailed description of the torture that goes on in the 8 levels of hell is symbolic to the mental agony that is a result of various levels of evil thoughts, intentions and actions. The mental anguish and torture is so well described in the book "Crime and Punishment", an example of which was illustrated by the murderer's frequent dilemma whether to end it all by jumping into the river. In fact thoughts need not be evil to evoke sufferings, unskilled thoughts like cravings and coveting alone will bring about anguish and misery.

If hell is a symbol of the mental torture of the soul, then heaven must be the state of mind when a person or his soul is at complete peace with himself. It will naturally follow then that skillful thoughts and actions will lead to such a state.

In my very layman perception, for every night that a person is able sleep soundly and peacefully, it may be an indication that he is probably on the right path.