Life is in your hands

In life, we have to deal with our thought every millisecond of the time. It is how our brain created – to think. I often ask myself, why, O why, and why I always talk to myself, inside me. I always find it weird on how come we are created this way, to always think and ponder around within our thinking, and it is non-stop, unless when we were sleeping, with no dream appears.

Often time, I ask myself, why can’t we shut our thinking down when we are not sleeping? I often feel tired with it. Do you feel the same thing too? It can be an exhausting process. Imagine, like I said above, every millisecond of it!!!

“Only we know what we think, and nobody else.” 

The above is what I always say to everyone. We can think the devilish things inside our mind. We can think of killing, torturing, stealing, hating, jealousy, and so on. But we can also think the most angelic things inside our mind. We can think a great amount of love, honesty, compassion, forgiveness, etc.

How we behave towards others in the outside, may be different with what we feel in the inside. Often time, we hear from others – two faced people, hypocrite, liar, fake people, and so on. Or we also hear about “Life is like a drama. We act in different roles towards different people.” It is just like when we see the Korean drama, Japanese drama, or Taiwanese drama series. We often curse those who play good or holy at the outside but rotten in the inside, but at the end of the day, these people will always receive their karma and retribution due to their actions and behavior. It is just like, you can hide your bad deed from the outside but you can’t hide it forever. Eventually people will know your true color. But I am impressed to those who can hide it well. Even after so many bad deeds done, people still think he or she is the hero or the angel who rescue the world. These people still get support and trust and people believe that they are true color from the outside AND the inside. People still think that those bullied are the one in the wrong and these hero and the angel are always hero and angel.

Don’t you find that our mind scary? What we think is the source of what we will do next. We may do or may not do it. But all starts from our thinking. That is why in Buddhism, the first thing mention as the “Human Life’s Guides” is – The main enemy of the human being is him or herself. And it is all started from our mind, our thinking.

That is also why Buddha always conquered himself first before he could deal other challenges with others. And he found the enlightenment by doing meditation: practiced the consciousness of his thinking and be aware of what he was doing. Instead of making the mind blank – which some may think that is the way of doing it – by doing meditation, it trains our mind to relax, build our internal energy and force, and here, we can slowly develop the positive thinking, such as: love, compassion, forgiveness, generosity, patience, etc. (in generalization).

By right, this has to be practice daily since any negative thought may arise in every millisecond of our thought. Practice makes perfect. And many times, it is easy to say rather than to do. So, it will again depend on our goal and purpose in life. What do you want your life becomes? What kind of results in life that you want to create from your actions? 

I don’t say that we are perfect by doing this. After all, we are just normal human beings, who often make mistakes in our daily life. It is fine to make mistakes, as long as we realize that it is wrong and we try our best not to do the same mistake again (may do another type of mistake though, he-he.. just kidding. Lolx!).

But most importantly, we learn from our mistakes. We find out, what is the cause of it? Why we still do it despite knowing that it may be unwise to do so? And most of the time, the answer is that we do not control our mind properly. It goes haywire. It flows uncontrollably and the worse thing is that we make it happen and harm others unknowingly.

That is why controlling our mind in form of meditation is very important in our lives. Even if we don’t practice meditation regularly, we still can control our mind and let our mind to be reminded over and over again, through more practical ways in our daily life, such as: reading the positive quotes (print and paste it in any visible place of your room, office, etc.), thinking and doing positive things that benefit others, e.g. involve in volunteering work with the community, donate regularly for a good cause, and so on.

So, it will go back to you on what kind of life you want to have in your life. It is all in your HANDS.

Daily Teaching day 95