Plank in the eye

I was listening to a Buddhist podcast on how to respond to difficult people. The story goes that there was this very difficult, angry and fault finding guy who went to test out Buddha's tolerance threshold. He spewed insults on Buddha to see his reaction. Buddha asked the man what would happen if he offered someone a gift and the later did not accept it. The man replied he would have to bring it home for his own use. Likewise Buddha told the man he would have to bring home all his "gifts" as Buddha did not take them

I thought this story would be a good one to tell my teenage client who often finds people around him intolerable and difficult.  However since he came from a Christian family I thought a teaching from the Bible may be helpful. From the web I found these verses from Mathew relevant:

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? ....first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

The Buddhist podcast had ended with a guide on metta meditation, a meditation on loving kindness towards the person whom we find difficult, quietly saying in our heart:
May you be happy
May you be safe
May you be healthy
May you live with ease

Since it may be difficult to go straight into wishing a difficult person well, we were guided to initially wish ourselves well with the same phrases. As I practiced quietly saying these well wishes for myself my body and mind settled into a quiet peace and when I turned the metta practice on the so called difficult person the intensity of adversity towards the person had already dwindled substantially. It dawns on me it was my own mood and the constitution in my mind and body that affect the degree of 'difficulty' I perceived of the person.

The verses in Mathew may be coming from a different context of not judging others so that you will not be judged. However I find the metaphor of a plank in your own eye so very relevant. The very plank so huge but of which we are oblivious is the way we perceived others often aggravated by our mood, misunderstanding and habitual tendencies.

Be it from the Bible or Buddhist teachings, there certainly is something to share with my client. Only I 'll be glad for some divine help whichever source it comes from.

Co-incidences ?

I don't normally bet on 4D but do so once in a blue moon when I have strange encounters involving numbers which seem strangely compelling. Just before Chinese New Year I left my bag in the toilet of a shopping mall. Though I realised it less than 5 minutes later, it was gone when I went to retrieve it. So I lost my handphone and wallet containing amongst other things cash, my IC, credit cards, ATM cards, home keys and a Big Sweep lottery ticket.  I lodged a police report and was in a flurry blocking the cards and getting replacements as well as changing the locks of my home. It gave me the creeps when I imagined the thief going through the contents of my bag and getting a glimpse of my private life including where I stay.  I also wondered whether the lottery ticket won any prize as I had yet to check the result and fantasized the thief becoming an instant millionaire.

Chinese New Year came along and I was too busy to think about the incident. Meanwhile it was in the news that many 铁树 plants in Singapore flowered, a rare occurrence given that these plants only blossom once in 15 to20 years. My garden has one such plant and 4 fragrant stalks of flowers bloomed.

Whilst tossing the "yusheng" during CNY at my mother-in-law's place, my sister in law asked my MIL to randomly utter a 4 digit number for them to place bets on. My MIL uttered "1234" just to humour them. Although I didn't participate in the betting the absence of good news meant the bet money had gone down the drain.

On the first working day after CNY the police informed me that someone had found my bag. Except for the cash and phone all the remaining items were intact including the lottery ticket. The ticket had a 7 digit number that ends with 1234. Just as I was musing at home about the coincidence of the number match  with that of my MIL's random  'lucky number', the thick novel lying on my dining table entitled 4321 by Paul Aster stared me in the face. The almost unthinkable recovery of my bag, the number coincidences together with the rare blooming of the 铁树 in the garden convinced me that there is something mysterious about the number and that signs are heralding something magical to come. As ridiculous as it sounds, I was surprised that 1234 did not win any prize on the draw date when I bet on it.  

One guy called Beitman did some research and found that some people are more prone to having coincidental experiences or maybe perceive so. They are people who describe themselves as spiritual, seeking for meaning or generally people who link external information to themselves.  People are also found to perceive coincidences when they are extremely sad, angry or anxious. A statistician, David Hand said that "extreme improbable events are commonplace....But humans generally aren't great at reasoning objectivity about probability as they go about their everyday lives."

Yet Carl Jung opined that coincidences are the workings of our unconscious mind. Perhaps when I bought the Big Sweep lottery ticket I had subconsciously taken note of the 7 digits. This plus the recent reading of the novel 4321 could have made my unconscious mind sent a telepathy message to my MIL's unconscious mind. Who knows?

Now I wonder who owns Singapore Pool. I won't feel so bad if it is state owned. Though I missed  winning the bet which would have thrilled me into thinking about the secret laws of nature, I am content that the money goes back to the state.

Those Forked Roads

My observation during a bus journey yesterday led me to rethink about whether people need to dream or find their authentic self, thoughts which preoccupied my previous blog. I had earlier on concluded that people who are authentic seem more alive.

The counselling center which I am attached to is at Eunos, near the Eunos Cresent Wet Market and Hawker Centre. I was in a bus on my way home from Eunos yesterday when I noticed that every single passenger in the fully occupied lower deck is an elderly person probably 55 and above. I started to observe the faces of people sitting just across me on the side bench, the passengers standing at the front half as well as any face within my view. Other than 2 elderly ladies engaged in a chat, the rest stared into empty space with eyes that don't seem to catch any passing object. It gave me the impression that each mind is adrift and watching a film rolling out scene after scene from the past, from a day ago perhaps or maybe a week ago or a month or a year or years, who knows. I thought to myself there must be thousands of scenes over a 50 year span, each unique to every single person. I wonder about each individual life story just as I know my own and I thought to myself, just in this bus there are so many stories untold.

My frivolous reflections could have been influenced by 4321, a book which I have been reading that tells 4 stories of a single person from the same set of parents but growing up under 4 different sets of circumstances. Apart from the inherent DNA which more or less determines his character and inclinations, the life stories of the  main character in the book are shaped by incidents that happened in his close circles as well as events in his country and the world. Within each set of  circumstances dished out by destiny, choices had to be made along the way, quite like a fish having to find its way in a whirlpool. The sense of lost opportunities and Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" come to mind often. Each of the 4 lives has its own share of drama. What also strikes me is the rippling effect a person's actions has on those around him and they in turn stir another level of ripples. Hence people have to steer their lives around these currents. In the book the 4 identical characters moved towards the same authentic self which their destined DNA bestowed, that of a writer.

Those drifting minds in the bus, those unseeing eyes. I wonder whether they are revisiting the forked roads in their lives.