Lhabab Duchen Day

Yesterday afternoon I saw unknown name on my We Chat apps on my handphone. I almost deleted it, but something stopped me. I thought, if the person knows me, he/she would send me message. So I just left the name there under my contact list.

At night time, suddenly my phone blinked in green. There were three voice messages from the unknown name.

"Hi OC, how are you? It's good to see you at the We Chat here. Actually I haven't got your We Chat, I don't know why, but today because my phone was hang, I went to repair it. After taking more than 3 hours to fix it, I had to re-add everybody, then I saw you, so I added you in. So you were in Bhutan recently, weren't you? When did you visit? I haven't visited it yet. Really want to go. My friend has asked me to go there and wanted to invite me so that I can go use the invitation Visa, but I haven't got time to go yet. Maybe next year, because I want to go to Tibet first. 

Are you a Buddhist believer? I just want to share with you. Tomorrow, according to the Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist, tomorrow is the day where Buddha descent from heaven down to the earth after he attained the enlightenment to give teaching. So it's a very holy and auspicious day. Whatever virtues that you did will be multiplied by million, and vice versa. So if you can, tomorrow you can chant your own prayer and be vegetarian for a day, I think it will be very good.

Oh btw I forgot to tell you. I've changed my name now, to YY, no more calling SP. Because a few Buddhist friends told me that my name was not good, so I decided to change it. So I'm called YY now. I think it sounds good also. People may not get used to it. But I prefer you to call me my new name, so it will work for me. Ok, good night."

Ahhh.... then I knew who was the person. By hearing to the voice I knew it was SP, my ex-school mate many years back. She is Malaysian Chinese and although she was studying there only for a year, we had good relationship as friend. Even after we graduated and came back to Asia, we still kept in touch and sometimes met each other whenever she came to Singapore.She is very active, committed and and dedicated Buddhist believer. It's great to hear from her again.

So I replied her message using the voice message back to her. I told her that I almost deleted the unknown name haha... I also told her about my recent Bhutan trip and asked her back how was she now? Talked about her plan to Tibet and asked her if she had been to Dharamsala before.

She replied, "Wow, you're so lucky, you have good merit you know to be able to visit a holy place. So you went on a tour? With some friends? Or with your families? And how much the visa cost now per day? And have you been to Tibet before? I've been to Dharamsala twice and I'm going to India in December. I'm going to three places actually. Firstly I am going to attend Puja, my Guru in Himachal Pradesh, which is very far away. After that I will fly back to Delhi. I'm going to Dehradun to visit my Guru Rinpoche. After that I will go to Bodhigaya and Varanasi.

So I'll be spending about 3 weeks in total. I'll be back to KL on 6th January. I'll be going with my two other girlfriends, one is Singaporean and one is Taiwanese. So this will be my longest stay in India. I've never stayed so long in India before. I was supposed to go to Bodhigaya end of January for the Nyingma Monlam but since because my Taiwanese friend really wanted to go there as she has never been there, so I decided to take her along. And this monk is free to bring us, so it's a good opportunity. That's why I won't go in January but in December instead. So are you free thinker now or are you a little bit of Buddhist now?

But for sure, you have some Buddhist root, you know OC. Because even though you are not a strong Buddhist believer, but you're able to visit Bhutan, such a holy Buddhist land, so for sure in your past life you have got good connection with Buddhist teaching. I just let you know tomorrow is the Buddha's descent from heaven down. So it's a very very holy and auspicious day. All the Tibetan monasteries will be doing sixteen Arahat Puja, other Puja, lamp lighting. So if you can you just become vegetarian, half day or whole day, whatever la. Shui yuan la (goes with the flow)."

After that I replied her with longer messages. Before ending it, she said she would contact and meet up with me when she visits Singapore next year.

Due to her message, I told myself before sleeping, "Alright. I might not a very committed and dedicated Buddhist believer like her, but at least, I should be able to be vegetarian tomorrow, at least half day."

I slept quite late yesterday and woke up very late too, at about 11.30am hahaha... My half-day vegetarian was almost gone right? After waking up, I straightly went outside and sat at dining table. I saw a plastic bag filled with snacks from Korea. My hubby said, it was given by my mother-in-law's friend who just came back from Korea.
 
I took a look at it. There were few packets of seaweed. Korea is well-known for its seaweed snacks. It's written 'spicy', so I put it back. I'm not so fancy of seaweed though, especially spicy one, to be eaten in the morning.

Mandarin Chocolate from Jeju, South Korea

But there were other things there, a small box. Outside the box, it was written Jeju Harubang mandarin chocolate. Wow!! Jeju is well-known for its tangerine orchard. I immediately opened the box up. There were 7 small packs of plastic wrapped chocolates inside. I opened the wrapper up. Wow!! A cute grandfather's stone shape chocolate (see the photo above).

I put it inside my mouth almost immediately. Hm... nyummy... It melted inside. Then I realized... err... Was I supposed to be vegetarian today?? And it was only half past eleven, not even twelve o'clock yet. Hahahahaha... "I guess they don't use meat to make the chocolate,"excused myself, and I went to toilet to take a bath. Lolx!!!

From Facebook, I found out more about the holy and auspicious day that my friend told me. See below:

Lhabab Duchen

"Lhabab Düchen is one of the four Buddhist festivals commemorating four events in the life of the Buddha, according to Tibetan traditions. Lhabab Düchen occurs on the 22nd day of the ninth month on a Tibetan calendar. This is a Buddhist festival celebrated to observe the descent of Buddha from heaven back to earth. Buddha had left for heaven at the age of 41, having ascended to The Heaven of Thirty-Three (Trayastrimsa) in order to give teachings to benefit the gods in the desire realms and to repay the kindness of his mother by liberating her from Samsara. He was exhorted by his follower and representative Maugalyayana to return, and after a long debate managed to return. This is considered to be one of the eight great deeds of the Buddha. He returned to earth by a special triple ladder prepared by Viswakarma, the god of machines. On Lhabab Duchen, the effects of positive or negative actions are multiplied ten million times. It is part of Tibetan Buddhist tradition to engage in virtuous activities and prayer on this day."

So, this afternoon we went to Bugis. We had our lunch first. I bought vegetarian fried bee hoon with fake char siew, stir-fried cabbage and crispy tofu skin, ate two pieces of chee kweh - made of rice flour and water, topped with preserved radish and eaten with chilli, plus a bowl of ah balling peanut soup.Hahaha.. :D I had this believe that I would be very fast getting hungry when I ate vegetarian food. That's why I ate so much this afternoon. Lolx! Anyway, it was my brunch as I skipped the morning breakfast, again, excusing myself :P We went praying at Kwan Im temple afterwards, then shopped around at nearby shopping mall.

Bugis Junction had changed a lot. It had undergone renovation. Wow!! I felt lost ya!! I went there many times but never went inside as usually my visit was only to go to Kwan Im temple to pray before heading back to office during lunch time. We had a break again at about 3.30pm. My son bought a vegetarian bee hoon at another stall, which tasted good hehehe... I took some bites plus the vegetarian curry puff. Hmm.. nyummy.... :D

Clouds at Punggol

After going back home, I tried to read my book. However, only after reading for a while, I fell asleep. When I woke up, it's fifteen past six already. I saw the weather was good outside. I washed my face, took my handphone, earpiece, my home key, took my bicycle, then went out. I slowly took my time enjoying the beautiful clouds above me. It was sunset time but the sun was too low to be seen. I could see the dark orange slowly swallowed by the water behind the bushes and I continued my cycling to another direction.
 
Suddenly I felt hungry. There was curry chicken back home, which obviously I couldn't eat. I thought of buying food outside but I didn't bring my bicycle lock's key, so I decided to go home. Once reached home, I went into the kitchen, checked inside the fridge.

It reminded me the time when I was hungry at one evening in Thimphu. Riku immediately went to his kitchen and whipped something out for me. Once it's ready, he called me out. He cooked a small bowl of noodles.

Wow!! I was so touched ya. People usually said, "Action was louder than words." Hehehe... just kidding. Anyway, he cooked it for me and it was made of onion, tomatoes and noodle. That was almost exactly with what I cooked just now, but with slight different ingredients. I used red shallot, tomatoes, cabbage, chilli, and Chinese white noodles. To be frank, both were tasteless. Well, you know, we didn't use much ingredients, no meat, and as simple as possible. Therefore, I had to add the Indonesian sambal chilli to eat it with, then it tasted much better. Riku knew that it didn't taste that great, but I really appreciated his effort to prepare and cook it for me, and honestly, I miss the taste of his noodles. Thank you very much Riku for all that you've done for me!!!

I felt very full and satisfied. So, there was my whole day of how I spent the holy and auspicious day. I listened to some chant song (before I fell asleep), and not much of virtue deed though. However, just tried my best to always think positive. Hope all of you had a much better way to spend the day so that all your good virtues would be multiplied by million times in your life and vice versa. Have a great week ahead everyone!!! :)