Love thyself

Cos no one else will...

Enjoying Twilight

Since the summer has come
I enjoy the day slowly turning into night
watching nature switch off, yet gradually come more alive
darkness fading into the ever expanding light
smells of burnt pine and sweet days gone
knowing the many more to come
crisp, hot and happy
do not leave this place oh glorious sunshine
and the eve winds slowly carressing the cool leaves
since this season has landed
i have been able to enjoy many things
cool icecreams, shorts, dresses and tanned skin
flip flops, grass laying and sun bathing
but most of all it mustbe
the sacredness of twilight bathing.

Updates...

It's past my bedtime, so I'll try to beat Peng at the shortest ever post competition!

I've just put some photos on my web album of Jin's and my last excursion (you can find the link on my last post on this blog). Seems like every time I write something here we've had a trip somewhere or other... must give the impression we don't do any work at all (not true of course).

In a totally unrelated incident, Jin twisted (suspected fractured) her ankle on Monday, so I have been nursing her the last couple of days. She can hardly walk at all without crutches but she is trying admirably to keep up her intensive work schedule. Here is a pic:

Damn, seems I have lost to Peng in the 'shortest ever blog post' competition. So now I may as well use up a few more lines to say how pleased I was Ant lost some prejudices during his trip to America (although, of course, I still retain those same prejudices). It's good that you could return to work full of exciting ideas. My research has been a bit dull recently so it might be time for me to find a conference in the states as well!

Hope you are all well, whichever country you find yourself in. Stay in the moment~

Raleigh, North Carolina

Hey yall!

I am sat on a bench in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. The sun is beating down, but there is a lovely cool breeze. Soon I will be heading back inside to hear more about the future of the world wide web. Last night I went to a special concert by a local band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops. The night before I was at the Google party. It has been a very fun week, and I have met loads of cool (albeit a bit nerdy) people.

A few weeks ago, I didn't even know where North Carolina was, let alone Raleigh (its capital city). But what a cool place this is. I am loving the southern hospitality, the perfect weather and the huge quantities of food (especially cake). The people here are really friendly, and particularly chilled. It is so different to Europe. I never thought I would say it, but I love it here and I want to stay longer!

Tomorrow I am off to New York for a couple of days, then it will be back to France and back to work -- but with a load of new ideas to put into action.

Hope yall are good. ;)

Ant

Since not many people are talking...

I might as well just write a short one about a book I read recently.

Many of you have probably read Paul Auster's Moon Palace. It only got published in China mainland in 2008. I mean, I'm not too outdated. Anyway, it is worth reading, Penguin tested. It shows the consequence of not being mindful ;)

Well, I'm afraid that's all I can say, I need to go to bed and get up early in the morning tomorrow...

Is this entry too short????????

Mark Told me...

Well Mark told me to make up a rumour to get activity going on this blog, if we can call it that, that was a dig, lol.

So i thought shall i say i am getting married, well nobody would believe that. or shall i say ant's getting married, thats even more unbelievable (another dig sorry)

but even with a bad back with nothing more to do than watch bad dvds that almost make me cry, i couldn't think of anything.

so what shall i say...

something deep and meaningful like i always do or something utterly meaningless and non sensical and has no other point than to make contact with you.

i chose the latter

i hope you are all well whereever you are

Love and Light

Hems xxx

p.s get blogging, you'd want the same if you were stuck at home watching 'In her shoes' for the third time.

Our Weekend

This weekend Jin and I went on a well-deserved trip. Poor Jin has hardly had a moments rest since last December with her father's illness, funeral and then clearing up the resulting backlog of work. So on Friday we finished early, packed up the car with some supplies (we remembered the food but forgot the clothes!) and our shiny new folding bikes, and set off for the sea. We visited two Islands -- Ganghwa and Seokmo. Seokmo is only reachable by ferry, and sufficiently unpopulated to temporarily wash from our minds images of the cramped concrete metropolis of Seoul which have been slowly engraving themselves on our long term memory. Unfortunately we had to finish the trip today as Jin teaches a class on Saturday evenings, but it was still a refreshing change.

It's hard to believe only a few days before the whole of Bucheon (the city where we live, part of the Seoul urban sprawl) had been covered in snow. We had heavy snowfall on Tuesday night -- an extremely unusual event for this time of year, and within a day and a half it had all vanished under the warm spring sun. Not before I managed to take some pictures of the newly carpeted campus though... you can find those and some pictures from our trip on my web album here.

Sorry to be out of touch for so long! My life is slowly settling down now, so hopefully I will get better. Love to you all :-)

Everything is a gift of the Universe

I used to think that some events in life were unexplainable, some sufferings unjustifiable, some happenings irreconcilable. Since watching the film Precious I have learnt that everything is a gift of the universe.

Our pains, our joys, our deepest darkest abyss, all fuel for the fire of our aspiration for growth. Indeed it is in our suffering where our greatest growth occurs. For me, here is where we learn of our strength to rise and grow from all we experience. The ability to turn manure into sweet fruit.

So before we sit, watch and judge our lives or the lives of another in pity or regret, we must reflect how are we using our manure, and wait to see how others are too. Are we letting our pain, our hurt harden us, or are we using it to help us rise ever further into life and inspire others to do the same.

I've often let my pain harden me, putting up with the putrid smells of my own and others suffering, refusing to wake up and smell the blossoming flowers that are rising up from that very state...And they are.

Greetings from the Forest Hermitage

I am back in England for a few days -- and I am loving it! I soaked up the rain for a day before suddenly on Thursday it turned to snow. That didn't stop me getting to the temple though! Yesterday we had a beautiful clear day which meant the snow did not last long, but I snapped this photograph before it disappeared. Last night during the sitting Luangpor talked about a specific verse of the Dhammapada that goes something like:

Others know not that in this quarrel we shall perish,
Those of them who realise it, have their quarrels calmed thereby.

I will let you chew it over.

On the subject of our own death, in the ghost room where I am staying (which I may add has failed on the ghost front so far), there is this sign on the wall that I think is a good thing to remind myself everyday:

"Every day I get older. One day I will get ill. One day I will die."

It is my pavement

I was just reading an article about the attitude to service in Paris. Well, hello! it is not just Paris, it is the entire country. The Brits, and even more so the Americans, really struggle to understand that the waiter is not being rude, he is just showing that he is not subservient to you. It has taken me a year and I am only just starting to 'comprendre'. The French hold strongly to the belief that everyone is equal. In some sense this is admirable. French girls must be the most liberated in the world. They are in no way the slave of men. You can see that they are as much in control of their relationships as men, perhaps more so. Even if they do make an effort, then it is because they want to, not to please anyone else. The rest of Europe makes an effort to be free, but no one really pulls it off quite as well as France. (I think that was a complement!)

There are benefits to this freedom and equality, but there is a negative side too. From my experiences it seems that politeness is not very popular. When I walk in the busy streets around Aix, no one stops to give the elderly or wheelchairs room. I have seen a blind person struggling to make his way as people walk straight at him. Even I find it frustrating how people cut across in front of me like I don't exist. The more I think about it, it is not necessarily that people are inherently rude, it is just that they subconsciously believe that they have equal right to that piece of space. Fair enough, but I have witnessed far too many aggressive scenes on the street when people inevitably bump into one another. I have seen shouting and even fighting between men and women, and between old and young. Now I know that the younger generation may not always act with respect, but if you knocked down someone who is clearly more senior than you then I hope most decent humans would check the person is not hurt and apologise even if it was not your fault. But in France, you don't have to act like this. The other day I held the door open for an elderly lady and I could see the element of surprise on her face. Next time you are in France, try moving out of the way for someone: no doubt you will be met with surprise or suspicion!

Once you get used to the French peculiarities then it is really not so bad. I have had a really pleasant week, not because anything significant happened, but just because I am feeling a bit more content to live here for a bit longer. When I came back from Thailand I was like a lost sheep. I think I made sure everyone felt my pain! Anyway, things are settling down and I will definitely be here until the summer. So if anyone wants to pop over then I will be happy to take you out 'door opening' with me!

Love's not a competition (but I'm winning)

Currently the song I'm listening to at the moment...

So many times in our existence, we must choose between going one way or another, we choose the path that we think is for our growth...the number of times i've stood with a hand on my heart in attempt to find out what the right thing was to do...the right thing to do?

Are we just doing something cos its what our instinct, our gut reaction, what we feel like doing at the first instant tells us...and is this a reliable measure by which to base decisions of our life?

What about following the mind, the rationale, many do...but as we know this may at times feel like the most logical, safe vessel of choice, but somehow something just doesn't fit. It is by my experience one of the most limited ways of making a decision?

And what about the path of the heart, what one feels most to be true and what one feels in this moment in time to contain the most definitive answer? As the Prince says the 'heart has reasons for reason knows nothing of.'..

Who knows which part of our being to follow; all i know that whatever we do, we eventaully experience the effects of that doing...and in search of the science of perfect doing i am ever more pulled into the art of perfect being...

And some say that in the end it does not matter which path you follow, for all lead to the same place...

Hems xxx

From hot to cold

One week ago I was in Ubon Ratchathani, enjoying the warm Thai weather. Yesterday I was in the French Alps, enjoying the cool mountain air. From circumambulating Ajahn Chah's chedi at Wat Nong Pah Pong, to snowboarding down the slopes of Risoul. How quickly things change!

BA2364 London to Marseille

"Seis, sept, huit, neuf, dix!"

A little girl counts the rows in the aircraft as she walks past my seat. A sea of French voices wash over me before it suddenly sinks in: the holiday is over, I am going back to France. A voice screams from within.

The eleven hour overnight flight from Bangkok to London passed as if I had been drugged. I don't remember boarding, or taking off, or anything significant during the flight, except some dirty farang sat next to me occasionally coughing in my general direction. An hour or so before we landed, I woke up to the hostess announcing to the entire cabin "special meal, sir" as though being vegetarian was an unfortunate disability I had been born with. Descending into the mist over London cheered me up and I began to feel that warm sensation of returning home. But only for a moment.

The pilot kicks back and we are powering down the north runway at Gatwick. I can see a few areas of snow in the corner of fields when we take off. As I attempt to listen to the conversations going on around me, it is evident how little French I understand. When in Thailand I am a devil for tuning into strangers' conversations at every opportunity, but when it comes to French it doesn't spark a fire in the same way. It dawns on me that I may have made a mistake in boarding the plane in Bangkok. I have lost count of the number of times I have been to Thailand, but I still find it new and exciting each time I visit.

This trip was rather less frantic than some of those previous. I visited less places but stayed longer -- perhaps this is a sign of age! It all started with a few days in Bangkok staying at Pie's palace and admiring the latest modifications to his car. I arrived on Christmas Day morning to a country open as usual and oblivious to the occasion. While Britain was putting the turkey in the oven, I was feasting at a Thai vegetarian restaurant. While families gathered around to watch the Queen's speech or to fall asleep in front of Indiana Jones, I was having a two-hour Thai massage. I can definitely recommend going away for Christmas! I think I may have eaten as much as usual over Christmas, but it was all Thai, with a bit a Japanese/Korean and plenty of cake/ice-cream. When I wasn't indulging myself, one of the projects of the trip was to find a printing company to publish Luangpor's book and as I write this article it should now be going to print. Thank you to everyone who has donated money and helped me out -- especially Joob!

After I had grown tired of Bangkok traffic, I joined some friends on an overnight bus to Chiang Mai and ended up sleeping in the luggage area as the bus was over-booked! It was not that easy to escape from the Bangkok crowds as they had migrated to the north for the New Year celebrations. Luckily we were out in a village called Ban Tham where it was very peaceful. We woke up at 6am to go 'tam boon' (offer food) at the local temple and after we borrowed a bicycle to see the rest of the village. The locals were surprised to see a farang riding along the lane, between the buffalo, smiling as he went! Next we drove up towards Mae Hong Sorn (sat in the back of a truck getting my nose a bit pink) to Hwai Nam Dung, arriving in time to see the sun set on 2009. The campsite was as busy as a music festival, tents crammed in and revellers suitably unprepared for the weather, which by Thai standards was quite cool. Many thought it to be below freezing, but it just felt like a normal summer evening to me. It was cute to watch them getting excited about seeing their breath! Imagine never having experienced a temperature below 20 degrees. We lit lanterns at midnight and set them free in the night sky to let go of the past year. Unfortunately one caught fire before it took off, and one got stuck in a tree! It was up again at 6am to watch the sun rise on 2010. Apparently it is very important to rise early on New Years Day -- more so than getting a good sleep. On New Years Day I got to see Pai. Not Pai as in P'Pie, but Pai as in the place that is a famous Thai tourist spot. Then it was a long drive back to Chiang Mai, along the mountainous road with 762 hairpin bends. People say that getting car sick is part of the Pai experience. I survived, but it was a lot of travelling, and sun exposure. Anyway, we stocked up on local delicacies (nam prik num) before jumping on another overnight bus to Bangkok.

I did a lot of sleeping when I arrived back in Bangkok, but as soon as I had recovered I was off to Koh Lan for one night to get my beach fix. And some fix it was, as the island was almost deserted after the new year holiday. I dashed back to Bangkok and almost missed my flight to Phitsanulok where I was met by Joob who was stressing over having to lecture for the first time. Naresuan University is in a lovely location, not too far from the city, but surrounded by countryside so the campus is very pretty. The people are wonderful, especially the lecturers in Maths and Computer Science who all seem to specialise in karaoke and dancing. We were out every night! My workshop went down rather well, almost as well the lunch that was organised with it. The whole stay was funded by the university so I did rather well out of this part of my trip. There is talk of a possible job there so I may be returning someday.

Now passing over the Alps and they look quite snowy. At least I have skiing to look forward to in the following weeks.

After Phitsanulok it was back to Bangkok again, one day in Nakhon Pathom at the market and taking a trip along the river, and then the following day Luangpor arrived. Early on Tuesday morning I met Ken, we went to pick Luangpor up, and then Ken drove us up to Ubon at an impressive speed. We got stopped by the police one and a half times (the second time we were going to fast to stop). He managed it easily in less than six hours. Luckily Luangpor had just been to the eye hospital for a check up and they had given him some eye drops that blurred his vision. Tahn Manapo on the other hand was able to fully experience Ken's overtaking skills. We had five nights up in Ubon which seemed to fly by. At the end of it I didn't want to leave. We had a day up at Wat Keuan, a forest temple on a peninsula sticking out into a huge reservoir created by Sirintorn dam. The best day of my entire trip though was when we went to Sakhon Nakorn, Mukdahan and Nakhon Phanom. We visited Luangpuu Mun's museum, Mae Chee Kaew's nunnery, Ajahn Kinaree's temple and the big chedi at Phra Ta Phanom. I will be adding some pics!

Then on my penultimate day we had the anniversary of the death of Luangpuu Chah. A fabulous event during which I spent most of my time wandering around chatting to people and eating while trying to find the ideal position to snap photographs of Luangpor during the circumambulation ('wien tien'). At the end of the day I went to Wat Pah Nanachat to have tea with Luangpor and Mae Chee. It was a perfect end to my trip to sit listening to Luangpor in the forest as the sky got darker and darker. By the time I left it was pitch black and I had a job finding my way to get out of the temple. It was a too late to catch a bus or songtaew so I walked up to the main road and tried to flag down a car. Despite my waving and smiling, it took ten minutes for someone to stop for me. I suspect my farang skin makes me easily mistakable for a ghost. I made it back to the hotel, although only after the people who gave me a lift had tried to convince me that I should join an ordination ceremony of 100,000 monks!

Touch-down. I have just landed in Marseille. I have had my fun, tomorrow it is back to work. I am far from those places in Thailand I adore so much, but that won't stop me carrying around a piece of the magic they possess. May I and all beings be well and happy.

A long held ambition fulfilled

Ever since I got back to Korea the mountains of snow have been begging me to anthropomorphise them. Finally I found some time on Tuesday to go down to the little park on campus and fulfill my ambition. Here is the result:

After an unusually warm day yesterday and rain this morning there isn't much left of the snow, so I was just in time. I feel a bit sorry for the poor snowman though.

From next week I am teaching in an intensive English programme here at the University, so I will probably disappear from the interwebs for four weeks. In the mean time, I will start uploading the monthly blog I write for a Korean webzine up on my old blog (here and there), so you can have a look at that.

As of Hema's post, this blog has more posts than my old one - keep it up everyone! :-D

이강소 (Gangso Lee) 1944-2010

Jin's father died at 11am on Monday, 11th January. He had been in hospital since the week before I left for England in December. When I visited him upon my return to Korea he was in a pretty bad state, the cancer in and around his lungs was restricting his ability to breathe to such an extent that he was struggling to take in enough oxygen. Jin stayed with him the few days before he died, as she had done most of the time I was in England. On Monday 11th he had to get up for some tests and it was just too much for him.

The funeral started the day he died. As is usual in Korea the ceremony was held continuously over three days, people visiting the funeral house to pay respects, say good-bye to their friend and show support for the family, with the cremation and burial held on the third day. During that time some Buddhist monks came by to perform various ceremonies. On the fifth and seventh days there were two more short ceremonies - one at the family mountain tomb (traditionally Koreans bury their dead in raised tombs in the mountains, at least, those that can afford to), and one at a Buddhist temple. Now there is one ceremony a week for the next seven weeks (forty-nine days of mourning is a Korean Buddhist tradition). It's quite a demand on the family, but I was quite impressed with the Korean funeral traditions, which allow enough time for positive rememberance of the life of the deceased, as well as for grief. Certainly they seem to have helped Jin and her mother to get through the death of their father and husband, and to start to move on.

To be honest I don't feel like I knew Jin's father all that well. He was a man of few words (even fewer given my broken Korean), and I didn't see much of him 'in action' either. Still, he was clearly kind and thoughtful, if a little stuck in the traditional patriachal image of the Korean man. May he attain peace.

Doing Nothing...

Hi,

I have just about recovered from the snow week. Everyday last week there was a weather crisis in many parts of England, which resulted in me and many others not knowing where to work from one day to the next. I loved the adventure of this for the first couple of days but then it got quite tiring. Being snowed in and not able to do much is not something people tend to deal with very well. But a good chance to go inside yourself and discover the wonders of another world.

Its raining now as I sit in my flat, silence permeates...I thought I would take this Saturday for myself and do nothing.I like to thing of it as medicine for the heavy doing that seems to consume my working week...so far i have spent a good chunk of my time laying in bed and drifting between contemplative and meditative states...making up for y'day's choas where some disturbance affected my being.

Things arise from within our consciouness and try to in various ways to disturb our Peace, Silence and Composure we may have established in our being. It's tough to navigate the fields of emotion and keep our centre. It's like somebody once said, if we knew what we really were, the infinite silence, joy and bliss, our identifiction with anything other than that would be impossible. As soon as anger, jealousy or the like come into our being we recognise them, acknowledge them and then feel and know them to be Not Self...somehow when we are tired, hungry and not a 100% this process gets somewhat inhibited, which is what happened y'day.

Anyway i will no longer bore you with my inner processes, although i have been quite boring in the outer world of late not been up too much, hibernating amd keeping warm.

May you all keep warm and well.

Love and Light to you all

Hems xxx

Flight LH718: The Return

I arrived back to Korea on Wednesday morning, and was greeted at the airport by my lovely wife :-).

I didn't write an essay during the flight this time, much to your disappointment I'm sure, however I did have a bit of a drama during the check-in at Heathrow. I'd just put my hand luggage into the x-ray scanner and to my surprise it caused quite a cufuffle amongst the security team there. "It might just be a USB memory stick" I heard one of them say, although I was pretty sure there wasn't one in there. Anyway, the bag came out and they asked me to empty it in front of them. I opened the two pockets and emptied a few books, a scarf and the cable for my laptop... nothing incriminating. They told me they would scan the bag again 'to be sure', but again they seemed to be unhappy about something. This time the security guy wouldn't let me touch the bag but went through the pockets himself. I was wondering what all the fuss was about when from a small flat pocket I'd all but forgotten about he pulled a sharp folding kitchen knife! It must have been there all the time since I'd left Seoul (which points to a worrying lapse of security on my flight to the UK). I apologised profusely and told them I didn't know it was there... at one point I thought I was going to be taken away and roughed up, but in the end they just confiscated the knife and took my details. I wonder if I made it onto the terrorist watchlist...

Anyway, the flight summed up a fruitful, though dukkha-tinged trip to England. Thanks to everyone who showed me hospitality during my stay. It was great to see so many `old' friends again! I'm especially grateful Ant and Hema managed to co-operate making a delicious lasagne without resorting to physical violence. Now back in Korea, writing this and thinking about the trip I am missing you all terribly. It will fade - to be honest, on flight back to England I wasn't in such a rush to see anyone - but the stay rekindled memories of my former life and it was heart-wrenching to have to leave again so quickly. There's probably a lesson in there somewhere.

Finally, a little moan: where are all the other bloggers? I do love the sound of my own voice but it's still a nice bit of variety for me to be able to read about other people's lives on this blog. Don't tell me you're all enjoying life too much to be able to write about it! That's not very Buddhist!