My Soul Sanctuary

I guess race-based politics and racial segregation has been too ingrained in the Malaysian society for the past 50 years.  Generally speaking, 50 years of independence and self governance had not uplifted our maturity and wisdom, in turn it had retarded our mental growth and narrowed down our spectrum, view and tolerance.

Hotly discussed in the country for the past 2 weeks was the derogatory racist remark that ‘Chinese minorities in Msia are squatters’ by the Penang UMNO Bukit Bendera Division leader Datuk Ahmad.

This remark merely indicated that racial issues can be easily manipulated in order to stir negative emotion and racial tension among the people by some irresponsible and power-craving politicians. They fail to see that all Malaysians of different ethnicity had consistently and extensively contributed to the stability and wealth of the nation for the past 50 years hand in hand. They fail to understand that we are actually such a diverse multi-racial society in which the survival of the nation totally rely on the interdependence of all ethnicity and social groups in the country. They had forgotten that we used to be a nation with great respect and tolerance among each other once upon a time.

We have more important issues to deal with and resolve at the moment. Inflation, rising fuel price, corruption, economic problems and income disparities among the people are issues that far worth the attention of the public and government. We should stop politicizing about this issue for now. Let it subside for now, at least. And let go! For damage has been done, there’s no use to continue dwelling on it and make a fuss about it. The only thing that everybody has to remember is that we will never evolve forever if self-interests continue to be prioritized above national security and integrity. We have to wake up from the racism nightmare which has haunted us for so long, and start rejuvenating and revitalizing ourselves.

I started my graduate studies in HKU 2 days ago, and for those of you whom I have never told about this (I was totally unaware that I have not even told one of my best buddies like Mr. Kenneth Lim which made him very angry about me), I will be in HK for the next 2 years.

Meanwhile, I have also launched a new blog, recording details about my current life, and of course the purpose I publicized here is to increase the traffic of my blog (the same intention as my best mate OngYeeTing, haha….). The link is as below:

http://www.siyingtan.blogspot.com/

I will keep this blog strictly political (ok maybe philosophical or spiritual too at times)
from this point onwards. Now I will be free to criticize the government without having to worry of ISA detention since I’m not in the country, hahaha….

I cannot resist from not writing about Anwar Ibrahim. And I’m sure many Malaysian bloggers share the same view tonight.

Yes, Anwar has won the Permatang Pauh by-election, and he has won big! The margin is even bigger than what his wife had achieved during the March 8th GE.

I am not an enthusiastic supporter of him. But I must admit that his multi-racial party vision which fight for equal opportunities among all races has certainly struck my attention. He is certainly one of the most charismatic and influential leaders in the history of our country. Back in 1998 when he was still the Deputy Prime Minister at the prime of his political career, he was suddenly sacked, charged with sodomization and corruption which later put him into jail for the next couple of years. He claimed all these to be political conspiracy which of course remain a mystery to date. Upon his release in 2004, he started to regain popularity, enhance the status of his new-formed party, and most important of all, he has successfully unite the opposition during the recent GE and subsequently stirred political tsunami, causing the governance of 5 states to fall to the opposition earlier this year.

If a person can be transformed under the most extreme circumstance, then jail has certainly changed Anwar. Used to be an extremist and racist, today, he portrays a very dynamic and open-minded personality and political vision, and he promises change to Malaysia should he be elected tonight.

And whether he is going to become the next Prime Minister is not an important issue. The more important things are whether or not he and his alliances can play an even more effective role of check and balance, whether or not they are able to transformed the rotten image of our country and whether or not they can really effect racial unity and equality in this segregated country.

Malaysia urgently needs to be reformed. A talented orator and a born leader, Anwar Ibrahim might be the most capable person to achieve this mission. Let’s anticipate.

I  had a random discussion with dad last night. It all started with his random stories of his visit to India’s pilgrimage sites last year. He was telling me about the ‘total cultural shock’ that he experienced when he witnessed huge piles of untreated wastes/litters being dumped everywhere along one of his railway journey and the poor hygiene condition there where even visitors like us have no choice but to urinate publicly. I don’t know how  but this story of him then led to the discussion about environmental issues.

We were wondering what has caused rampant and massive pollution at such a sky-rocketing pace nowadays. I thought it was consumerism.With globalization and the world getting ‘flatter’, competitiveness rise and everybody just wants to be rich. People strive to earn more and more money nowadays, in the hope that with that they are able to buy more and more things to accommodate their desired lifestyle. I remember a Taiwanese environmentalist who came to Msia last year used to say this: Imagine one day when each and everybody on the earth has got a car and everybody is living a first world lifestyle, how disastrous it will be to mother earth. Can we ever imagine that? I used to think that people in India and Africa don’t deserve to starve and suffer, don’t deserve to be deprived of education and don’t deserve to have so many public health problems. But what if one day each and every one of them had managed to strive and become rich with every African civilian leading an American lifestyle? Will mother earth be able support all burdens? Oh….I thought this is totally beyond imagination. The strong desire to prosper had seen economic boom particularly in India and China today. Take for example China. China is the worst pollutant contributor nowadays. With massive deforestation taking place in the name of development, China is only left with 16% of forested land in its country, a very serious figure as compared to the whole world.Chinese are the largest consumer and producer of tobacco. Their boost in the manufacturing industry also indicates that more and more pollutant are created and drained to the same river and sea. China’s problem is the world’s problem.

Gone are the days where our ancestors practiced barter system and gather food. Nowadays express is the global and common culture. People just want to get things done fast. Basically all we have to do now is just to make a trip to the supermarket and sweep all your needed stuff. But what are we left with after that? Tonnes and tonnes of non-degradable wastes which is going to become a disaster to mankind. Mother earth is running out of resources and yet we are disposing more and more wastes each and every day. Both dad and I agreed that the earth is in its annihilating process now and it is coming to a complete destruction soon. Oh, perhaps sooner than what had been predicted.

We both come to a mutual conclusion at the end: We had better get enlightened fast, the world is no longer a good place to live, liberation is the only way. haha….

朋友，你要加油，你要快乐，你要快点好起来。

第一次为你感到无助，对不起，和你那么要好，我竟然没办法帮上你，无法为你解决你的困惑，无法安抚你的悲伤与孤独感，我竟然什么都不能做也做不了，我真的觉得很痛心和汗颜。

想起男友当初一直拿来鼓励我的几句话，现在我也想把它送给你：天欲降大任于斯人也，必先苦其心志，劳共筋骨，饿其肌肤，空乏其身。

我们要有信念，我坚信有一天你一定能修成正果，不管前路有多艰苦难熬，不管它是如何地荆棘满布，我们会一直给你鼓励，支持，我们的心是一块儿的，我们的精神也是融合的！

我出国后也会一直为你祈福，你有我们，不要害怕，也不要彷徨，我们虽然天涯各一方，可是我们的灵魂早已紧紧地联系在一起了。加油！

Thousands of Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) students stormed to the Selangor State Chief Executive Office Building yesterday, protested on the Chief Executive’s proposal to open 10% of the university admission to ‘non-Bumiputera’-the Chinese and Indians Malaysian.

I was devastated when I saw the scenes captured by the news last night, thousands of emotional Bumiputera students holding banners, shouting to their lungs, urging the Opposition-led state government not to “CHALLENGE THE MALAY PRIVILEGES” , “DO NOT BECOME THE TRAITOR OF MALAY”…etc

Not only am I indignant with this particular incident, I was completely upset with the current political scenario in Malaysia (Recently we have one UMNO politicians who said that ‘all Chinese and Indians Malaysians must go to hell’). Is this what we called ‘one country one nation’? After 51 years of independence, it is very disappointing that some close-minded people who are so obsess with their special rights and privileges, still fail to see that all Malaysians are one irrespective of race and religion, and only with an open, fair and just system can our country thrive and advance economically.

I used to oppose to the idea of migrating overseas, but now I can understand why more and more non-Bumiputera Malaysians had chosen to reside overseas, and never want to come back to serve the country, even though they miss this country so much.

I weep for Malaysia. I weep for the ignorance and stupidity of our ruling politicians. I weep for the great human capital loss and brain-drain of our country.

I continue to be inspired by Ajahn Chah’s teachings ever since the monastery stay. His disciples and lay people who ever had the opportunity to approach Ajahn Chah before when he was still alive used to comment that, when you talk to Ajahn Chah, you realized that how unwise you are in life. Below are excerpts adapted from Ajahn Chah’s writing- "In Simple Terms"
1. The King of Death
          We live like a chicken who doesn’t know what’s going on. In the morning it takes its baby chicks out to scratch for food. In the evening, it goes back to sleep in the coop. The next morning it goes out to look for food again. Its owner scatters rice for it to eat every day, but it doesn’t know why its owner is feeding it. The chicken and its owner are thinking in very different ways.
          The owner is thinking,"How much does the chicken weigh?" The chicken, though, is engrossed in the food. When the owner picks it up to heft its weigh, it thinks the owner is showing affection.
          We too don’t know what’s going on: where we come from, how many more years we’ll live, where we’ll go, who will take us there. We don’t know this at all.
          The King of Death is like the owner of the chicken. We don’t know when he’ll catch up with us, for we’re engrossed-engrossed in sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and ideas. We have no sense that we’re growing older. We have no sense of enough.

2. The Beginning is The End
          When we’re born we’re already dead, you know. Aging and death are the same thing. It’s like a tree. Part of it’s the base; part of it’s the end at the tip. When there’s a base, there’s an end. When there’s an end, there’s a base. When there’s no base, there’s no end. When there’s and end. there has to be a base. An end without a base: That can’t be. That’s how it is.
          So it’s kind of amusing. When a person dies, we’re sad and upset. We sit and cry, grieving-all kinds of things. That’s delusion. It’s delusion, you know. When a person dies we sob and cry. That’s they way it’s been since who knows when. We don’t stop to examine this carefully. Actually-and excuse me for saying this- it appears to me that if you’re going to cry when a person dies, it’d be better to cry when a person is born. But we have it all backwards. When a child is born, people beam and laugh from happiness. But actually birth is death. Death is birth. The beginning is the end; the end is the beginning.

3.Why It’s Heavy
          When suffering arises, you have to see that it’s suffering, and the see what this suffering arises from. Will you see anything? If we look at things in an ordinary way, there’s no suffering. For example, while we’re sitting here, we’re at ease. But at another moment we want this spittoon, so we lift it up. Now things are different. They’re different from when we hadn’t yet lifted up the spittoon. When we lift the spittoon, we sense that we’re more weighed down. There’s a reason for it. Why do we feel weighed down if it’s not from having lifted the spittoon? If we don’t lift it, there’s nothing. If we don’t lift it, we feel light.
          So what’s the cause and what’s the result? All you have to do is observe just this much and you know. You don’t have to go off studying anywhere else. When we grasp onto something, that’s the cause of suffering. When we let go there’s no suffering.

结束了我两个多月的澳纽之行，回家的感觉真好。踏在自己的国土上，觉得这就是自己的地方，生于斯，长于斯，我二十几年人生的重要回忆都蕴藏在这里，又怎能轻易地就遗忘呢？

不错，往现实的角度看，外国月亮比较圆是不争的事实，从经济发展，社会福利，人均收入，乃至公民意识甚至是公民的快乐指数，绝不是大马所能并驾齐驱的。但是，我还是觉得这始终不是生命中的一切，到最后还是回到我一直在问自己的那个问题：‘什么东西才是你生命中最重要的东西？what’s the utmost priority in life?’是金钱吗？是地位吗？是房地产吗？还是找到活在世上的意义？

当然，这一切没有绝对的标准，这完全是个人的价值观。

我始终认为如果自身国家的先决条件都非常好，我们更能俯瞰世界，我们能拥有更宏大的世界观。

我衷心的希望有朝一日马来西亚能够崛起成为找到方向的国度，大马人有朝一日可以成为有魄力，有取向的民族。

It feels great to meet up with Charis again (Charis is my long lost high school friend, we used to play in the string ensembles, and performed in numerous ‘mini-concerts’ during our teenage years, she is my best pianist ever!!!), my depression vanished soon as I see her in front of Queen St’s ‘Hungry Jack’ on a rainy and gloomy morning in Brisbane. She has certainly uplifted my mood!

She’s pursuing her dream course-majoring in Jazz Piano in Griffith University, and has now graduated and become a teacher. Well, I really admire her for this, for the courage to do what she wanted most in her life (well, music was my dream ‘once upon a time’…haha)

We catch up with each other, and visited several places in Brisbane together, namely the Griffith University Conservatory of Music and South Bank. When she’s off to work, I spent the rest of the time wandering alone in the Museum and libraries. Well, Brisbane is unique in the sense that it doesn’t give me a feeling of being in Australia, the entire feeling of it is as if I’m in Singapore! I found that a lot of the city structure and town plan share similarities with Singapore city. (well, this is my personal opinion anyway)…

I waved goodbye to NZ and OZ on early morning day 69 of my trip, when I finally flew back to Kuala Lumpur. Needless to say, from so many postings previously, all I can conclude about my trip is AWESOME and MARVELOUS! Really, this is one of my most memorable trip ever…

Sydney is beautiful and happening, it’s just that I wasn’t in the right mood to enjoy it……I was sitting in front of Sydney harbour, staring deadpan at the Opera House, with my soul and my mind flying back across the Tasman Sea, still strangling in Christchurch….

Loneliness surged, after travelling alone for more than 2 months and with the trip coming to an end pretty soon, this is the first time I ever feel that I’m a hermit, roaming in this big city aimlessly…

I’m looking forward to meet up with Charis (a high school friend of mine)in Brisbane soon…really…I need to get rid of this self-pitiness and this depressed mood fast!