The Malaysian Chinese Mentality

The parcel box I picked up from the Post Office *I was not in my room when the postman delivered it so I had to pick up there...stupid procedure*;

Unboxing begins!! Can't believe the T-shirt could be actually folded into such a small size;

woohoo! The T-shirt and the album, which comes in both CD and a karaoke DVD. Unfortunately, 我還是我 and 不罵粗話 are taken out because Malaysian government said the songs are *political*

Just got my Namewee (黃明志) album last night from post office, and the unpacking really is something. Fetching the album and yes, the T-Shirt out of the box, that's like, wow-ness.

Then it gives me some thought on the Malaysian Chinese mentality I seen. Well, I would say Malaysian Chinese coz it's a little over if I include the Malay, Indian, Kadazan etc into this puddle of water. Of course, to be honest, the Malaysian Chinese is a generalization of those who I met. But seriously, don't take it seriously. =)


1) Malaysian Chinese will be very shocked when you tell them they need to commit. Well, here what I mean is, tell them to sign their names on a particular political petition. Or tell them to write down their names so that they will be responsible for something in the future. Usually, they will laugh kesi-kesi-ly (假死假死-ly), and try to find an excuse to run away;

2) Don't tell Malaysian Chinese to pay for something, for example, events etc. They will perform the kesi act as stated in No.1 and 'run' away. Or worse, they will pretend that they forgot to pay you back and hope that time will forget their 'forgetfulness';

3) For every free event, almost all Malaysian Chinese will attend (kinda true for my uni, HKUST);

4) When you tell a Malaysian Chinese to do something and he actually says "okay, okay", then be careful. That actually means "okay la, cincai la, you go die la, I do my own things can liao". And then you later will find that whatever things you tell him/her to do, it's just...never get started;

5) Malaysian Chinese will never make up their minds on the spot. They need time to think about it, and will react only on the very last moment of the deadline. So if you ask them to attend something, make sure you call them before last minute...only that time you will get a solid answer. Well, this includes asking them out for a simple dinner;

6) You need to understand that, Malaysian Chinese are a strange group that will easily believe negative side of things instead of the positive side. They are just so insecure and suspicious of almost all things. For example, you tell a Malaysian Chinese that xxx is actually a bad guy in spite of what he's done, an American will go "Really?", a Malaysian Malay will go "Tak sangka la", but for Malaysian Chinese, the reaction would be "Oooooo...是咩?", and you knew it, they are actually ingesting the words!!

7) Malaysian Chinese, although multi-lingual, is never proud of that. They always feel that their English is second-grade because of the accent, the Cantonese is not pure because it doesn't sound Hong Kong style, the Hokkien is not up to standard because we campur Malay words, and the Putonghua spoken is embarrassing because it's simply a joke to the Mainland and Taiwan Chinese.


I know a lot of you are skeptical of Namewee. You think that he just wanna get famous. But, be honest to yourself, who doesn't want to? At least Namewee tells you in your face that, yes, he wants to become 明星偶像.

Stand up, Malaysian Chinese. Stop all those cheapskates' habits. Stand up, be a man. Stand up to what you said. Speak the right words, and speak them rightfully and honestly. Don't just keep scolding and scolding then cower in a corner when somebody asked you to commit to what you said.

If you want Malaysia to change, change yourself first. Be honest, be yourself. And, come on, don't look down on your own culture and accent. 連自己的文化都瞧不起，到底發生了什麽事情？You are a Malaysian after all, no??


And the Namewee's "Say No to Racism" T-shirt!

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Science on Enlightenment!

Huge surprise!! Science is finally setting its foot on enlightenment, but the researchers might not know that they are doing it, in fact. Check this science cover story by New York Times on "When the Mind Wanders, Happiness Also Strays" out.

In this era, science is the dominating force. Science churns out technology, explanations, knowledge which saturate our lives with logic, the need for evidence etc. This actually brings us away from enlightenment, or you would say, the few major paths you can adopt to reach enlightenment, namely Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism etc. Look at the explanations of all scriptures today. They talk about 'proofs', they talk about 'evidences', they talk about 'explanation on how a Prophet is coming to this and that'. These are not what the scriptures are originally about anyway.

When science hits itself at how to become more happy, things get interesting.

"When asked to rate their feelings on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being “very good,” the people having sex gave an average rating of 90. That was a good 15 points higher than the next-best activity, exercising, which was followed closely by conversation, listening to music, taking a walk, eating, praying and meditating, cooking, shopping, taking care of one’s children and reading. Near the bottom of the list were personal grooming, commuting and working."

Sex is one of the cores of a lot of religion scriptures, especially those in the east. They try something really simple, how does being in the moment feels like? It feels like sex!

And in Christianity, the core concept is Love. When you are loving, when you are deeply in love, a lot of these times you transcend your mind. You go into the moments of now without judging what they are. That's why, God is love.

And look at the quote, 'eating' is so far behind on the list! That's why Buddhism and Hinduism said, 'taste every bite like it will never repeat again'. That's why Christianity wants you to pray before a meal, not to thank God, but to bring you to this moment, this moment you are eating your meal! Don't stray away, enjoy every bite as it's God's truly special gift!

And that's why religions practice fasting too. When you enjoy your first meal after such a long time without devouring anything, even a simple piece of vegetable tastes like heaven. Urm, isn't it true with all things you eat? Why you don't feel that bliss? Coz your mind takes you away!

Every religion works the same. They want you to be in this moment, to be truly happy, to end your suffering (going into nirvana? go to heaven?).

But today, when everyone talks about logic and reasons, religion starts to fail. Religious scriptures tell you to experience, not to think. In fact, the ultimate core of religion is to reduce your mind less and less, until to nothingness. Christianity and Islam have a good start on this though, to submit, to believe without a hunch. This works like a charm if you do not think, do not go and prove whether God exists. But look at the people who preach today. Do they actually know what they are doing? Do they actually know what the scriptures want them to do?

Science can be reduced to one word: philosophy. Yes, that's why there are such thing called Ph.D.

Religion is not. Religion is about totality. Totally experience it.

I would like to quote Osho. He has quite a good way of presenting this:-

"Philosophy is concerned with the mind. Your head is enough; your totality is not required. Really, any question can be tackled in two ways: philosophically or totally; intellectually or existentially. For example, if someone asks, "What is love?" you can tackle it intellectually, you can discuss, you can propose theories, you can argue for a particular hypothesis. You can create a system, a doctrine ---- and you may not have known love at all.

To create a doctrine, experience is not needed. Really, on the contrary, the less you know the better because then you can propose a system unhesitatingly. Only a blind man can easily define what light is. When you do not know, you are bold. Ignorance is always bold; knowledge hesitates. And the more you know, the more you feel that the ground underneath is dissolving. The more you know, the more you feel how ignorant you are. And those who are really wise, they become ignorant. They become as simple as children, or as simple as idiots.

The less you know, the better. To be philosophical, to be dogmatic, to be doctrinaire --- this is easy. To tackle a problem intellectually is very easy. But to tackle a problem existentially --- not just to think about it, but to live it through, to go through it, to allow yourself to be transformed through it --- is difficult. That is, to know love one will have to be in love. That is dangerous because you will not remain the same. The experience is going to change you. The moment you enter love, you enter a different person. And when you come out you will not be able to recognize your old face; it will not belong to you. A discontinuity will have happened. Now there is a gap, the old man is dead and the new man is born. That is what known as rebirth --- being twice-born."

Philosophy, or science, is neverending. How can a mind ends? When you ask questions, you have answers. You ask how those answers come, you have another set of answers. And you know it too, these answers will come over the course of time. When you are working things out using your mind but not experiencing it, you are in a loop, forever and ever. That's 輪回. You go in a cycle, and you come back. You are stagnant. You never move forward. You never grow.

In fact, check Gurdjieff's books out. He actually combines a few east meditation techniques (Sufi's technique, or Islamic techniques) into the scriptures of Christianity, and in the course, he brought a lot of his students into enlightenment. Quote one of his students, Ouspensky's notes when he got out from the house after 3 months of practising the technique confined in a house:-

"
Then Gurdjieff said, "Come with me," They were residing in a Russian town, Tiflis. Gurdjieff called him out and they went into the street. Ouspensky writes in his diary, 'For the first time I could understand what Jesus meant when he said that man is asleep. The whole city looked to me as if it was asleep. People were moving in their sleep; shopkeepers were selling in their sleep. The whole city was asleep. I looked at Gurdjieff: only he was awake. The whole city was asleep. They were angry, they were fighting, they were loving, buying, selling, doing everything, now I could see their faces, their eyes: they were asleep. They were not there. The inner center was missing, it was not there. Ouspensky then said to Gurdjieff: "I do not want to go there any more. What has happened to the city? Everyone seems asleep, drugged."

Gurdjieff said, "Nothing has happened to the city, something has happened to you. You have been undrugged; the city is the same. It is the same place you moved around three months ago, but you couldn't see that other people are asleep because you were also asleep. Now you can see because a certain quality of awareness has come to you. You have become aware in every small measure by practising the technique. You have become aware! A part of your consciousness has gone beyond dreaming. That is why you can see that everyone is asleep, dead, moving, drugged, as if hypnotized."
"

And check Pythagoras out. You thought that he is the man of mathematics and philosophy? Actually he discovered those after he got enlightened! Interesting, no?

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It is claimed that Pythagoras went onto Egypt with a letter of introduction written by Polycrates, making the journey with some Egyptian sailors who believed that a god had taken passage on their ship. Arriving in Egypt, Pythagoras tried to gain entry into the Mystery Schools of that country. He applied again and again, but he was told that unless he goes through a particular training of fasting and breathing, he cannot be allowed to enter the school. Pythagoras is reported to have said, " I have come for knowledge, not any sort of discipline." But the school authorities said," we cannot give you knowledge unless you are different. And really, we are not interested in knowledge at all, we are interested in actual experience. No knowledge is knowledge unless it is lived and experienced. So you will have to go on a 40 day fast, continuously breathing in a certain manner, with a certain awareness on certain points." After 40 days of fasting and breathing, aware, attentive, he was allowed to enter the school at Diospolis. It is said that Pythagoras said,"You are not allowing Pythagoras in. I am a different man, I am reborn. You were right and I was wrong, because then my whole standpoint was intellectual. Through this purification, my center of being has changed. Before this training I could only understand through the intellect, through the head. Now I can feel. Now truth is not a concept to me, but a life."
"

It's exciting to read in the New York Times report that:-

"
“I find it kind of weird now to look down a crowded street and realize that half the people aren’t really there,” Dr. Gilbert says.
"

In fact, not just half. You would say, almost all.

Maybe one day science will transcend itself into the realm of enlightenment. We do not know. But after reading that report, I can't really know, how many people actually know what they are reading? Or, are they there AT ALL when reading it? Visit "How to Consume Contents: the other way" by me. I didn't mention the context of "being there", but in fact that's the center of the post anyway. Be there, relaxed, no mind no judgment, and you will have pleasure reading everything.

Wait, no. You will have pleasure every moment of your life.



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How to Consume Contents: the other way

After years of studying in school and achieving good results + reading a lot of magazines and books weekly, I guess I have the accountability (sort of) to express a little of my experience on how to consume contents (or knowledge) smartly (or efficiently) bah.

Consuming contents has been a happening-around-the-corner daily routine, whether you realize it or not. Facebook, online news, blog feeds, wiki, newspaper, television, magazines, tabloids etc. In this era, unless you live in North Korea which there's less than 0.01% chance of you reading my post, every single person on earth deals with content consuming. You might have read a few articles or books or whatsoever on how to select books, magazine for efficient reading but here I am going a tad different. I go into the state of mind during content consuming.

Yes you sort of got it. It can be shrunk into one word: Feelings.

Basically I would differentiate two different feelings during content consuming, just for the purpose of illustration of course. You can explore your own afterward.


1) The feeling of "I want to get something out of this!";
2) The feeling of "Just glancing through...";


As I expect most of you reading this would at least gone through high school education, I bet all of you encountered problems studying subjects, and sometimes even reading novels/magazines. All along I noticed a few problems I encountered:-


a) I couldn't understand a shit, and I decided to understand word by word, and in the end I spent hours on a single page;
b) My feelings do not match that of the content I am consuming, creating frustrations and mixed feelings instead;
c) Almost contradictory views and supporting statistics on all sort of opinions focused on one single issue;
d) By and by I seem to have something locking me (seems like my eyesight could not move freely, and also arms etc) when I am consuming the content, this especially true when I am reading newspaper or magazines;


Well I couldn't list all, but those are what I could think of at the moment. All situations from A to D are encountered in both feelings 1 and 2. I always been wondering what's wrong with me until recent experience (aikido, enlightenment etc) led me to a better understanding and observation of the problem.

I notice there's a third feeling often goes unnoticed underneath our eyes. You have to observe yourself to find that state of mind. In this state of mind, you are not reading to get something out of it, rather you are not just glancing the content. Usually in this state of mind you enjoy the most out of your reading, because it is relaxing and refreshing, and you don't feel stressed doing it. And the knowledge absorbed during this state stays for the longest time in your memory. You wouldn't seem to forget it, somehow.

I call this state of mind: Experiencing the contents.

This is very different from imagining that you are the main character and walks through the story. If you do that, sometimes your current emotions clash with the content and you couldn't continue. You are actually doing Feeling 1, trying to sync yourself with the story. In this sense you bound to fail anyhow.

To experience the content is like listening to the sound of a river, or a waterfall. You won't mind too much on what each word means. Rather, you are going with the content in its flow. You are accepting it and you are following it, continuously. Mind that "continuously" is very, very important.

Also in order to fully experience the content, you have to accept yourself. Yes, accept your own feelings and emotions. And constantly check how stiffened your body is. Is it in a naturally relaxed condition? Naturally relaxed as in your back is straight when you are sitting. Somehow when you check your own body like running it through a program, your body will start to relax itself.

Accepting and constantly checking your own state (body + mind), and at the pretext of accepting the content as what it is and going with its flow, then you are in the third feeling, experiencing.

Usually in this state, you will have judgments on the contents but your judgment won't linger long enough to trouble you, because you are already immediately moving past your judgment before it troubles your mind. But you know you have these judgments.

This is very interesting. You can even come to observe your own thoughts.

But what if the text itself is too hard to comprehend for you? Go with the flow, and then start over again. If you linger over a few of the words too much, you would bound to get stuck and thus miss out a lot of stuff.

In this state, I found that knowledge is absorbed relaxingly, and I don't have overacted judgments and at the same the content sticks on my mind!!

Try it and tell me how you feel!

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一丁點的接受；一小步的超越

什麼時候，有些東西的某個部份好像被超越了。

可是超越了不代表你離開抑或拋棄。超越和脫離是同一個意思，可是卻不代表離開。

就像自由一樣，只要你還在活著，你就沒有所謂的全面實踐上的自由。你有的只是從一個框架里超越的自由。在這個意義上，你只是在超越，在脫離，而不是離開，拋開。

這幾天的經歷對我來說無比重要。它讓我開始體驗什麽叫超越愛。

愛，一直是我的最重最大的負擔。因為對我來說‘愛’這個字包涵了‘負責’與‘擁有’的意義。這裡的愛，包掛了對家人，對朋友，對女友，以及對親人。老媽的一言一語是如此的影響我；女友的一顰一笑是如何的令我茶飯不思。一直以來，一直一直如此。

這幾天來，有一點點改變。

我得道的路程上，一直以來都有一個中心，十分重要的概念：接受。

要看清楚什麽是根，你就必須接受。你和老媽吵架，很多時候都是因為你們在吵著一些你們兩個都不能接受的事情，而在這個根本上，逐漸演變成你無法接受你老媽，甚至你連自己的某個部份也無法接受。

當東西去到那種level，你就很難瞭解及看到根源在哪裡。可是，當你開始接受，那就開始變了。

一直以來得道的路上，我接受了很多事情。但有幾樣是沒有接受的。一個是老媽，另一個是自己對女友的無能為力。

知道和接受是完完全全不一樣的。

知道外面在下雨和接受外面在下雨，這兩種心情截然不同。如果你只是知道外面在下雨，你很有可能會在很多層面上開始討厭下雨（在這裡也可以喻為喜歡下雨），從而下雨就影響了你。可是你如果接受天在下雨，你的心情則很自然，下雨就下吧。當你接受了，你就move forward了。你開始看到new possibilites, 開始注意到周圍的細節。

接受我老媽，這發生在幾天前。接受我對女友的無能為力，這個則在半小時多前。

有東西開始蠢蠢欲動。開始有某些東西的一部份在被超越著。

我發現，當我接受了我老媽就是如此的時候，我不再唉聲歎氣。我反而可以聽到老媽講話，第一次那麼的清晰。我聽到了她的心聲，她的痛苦，她的期許。這很重要，更重要的是，我聽到了自己。我無助的感覺第一次那麼完整的在全身體現了出來，不是被壓抑的。

我接受了我與女友之間的遠距離確實讓我自己十分無能為力。就這麼一個小小差別，那種鬱鬱寡歡變成了一種完整的不舒服。一種沒有壓抑的不舒服，然後，好像自己可以放開了很多。

這也是我的道路。我不相信躲在山中的得道，因為那是逃離，但很多根源上的其實還在，而這些，在日常生活中，與親人朋友交流，在這種得得失失中，接受后，體驗后，得道后，這種得道才是完整的。

我不知道這種情形會進行多久。因為接受了兩個對我來說一直都是十分關鍵性的事情，所以也開始看到了許多自己一直以來都看不到的，許多許多自己束縛自己的conditioning.

然後想起了遠藤師範所說過的一段話：-

There is no such thing as a freedom just like that.

It is an aim to become free.

Freedom is often referred to as being free of something.

But that kind of freedom, to be free, for example, of a duty, or a person, is not real freedom.

So what is? That is an important question.

It certainly is nothing you get just like that.

There is no easy-going freedom.

I think, in order to become free, you have to restrict yourself at first to a very unfree form. By practising within that form, you will learn to be free.

Step by step, you practice within a restriction. But in the course of the repetition, within that restriction, it may happen, that the restriction rids you off itself.

And the whole practice becomes egoless, light, and free. Practising a form thoroughly will, at some point, rid you off the form.

To reach that stage in a practice means that, to have acquired freedom, but within a form.



這個旅途還在走著。有一天，凡所有相，皆是虛妄。若見諸相非相，即見如來。諸相非相，那就是接受了，任何思緒也沒了，也就是超越了人，可是還是有人的身體，那，就是人生中可以得到最大的自由啊。過後，到了要死的時候，那就是完完整整的自由了。

修行進行中。這幾天的若有所獲，都是基於接受與超越。思緒的消失，不代表離開。這個經歷，十分十分的重要啊。

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Something...

I guess the time has finally come for another change which surfaces itself out of nowhere.

I feel that something of my spiritual experience is at the beginning of fusing with my daily activities, including work.

I will go into silence from this point. Not all silence, but silence whenever I can, so that I can observe, even more.

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