My last night at Kuala Lumpur.....

My last night’s stay in Kuala Lumpur was really a memorable one. Members celebrated my birthday in advance since I can’t be there on my birthday next week. They did not inform me earlier but quietly did all the preparations as they wish to give me a surprise. And indeed I was pleasantly surprised.

The members prepared body, speech and mind offering with a gift of a big cup from Royal Selangor Pewter. Also everyone brought along his or her favorite dishes, resulting in somewhat like an international food fare.

You can also watch Youtube for Kuala Lumpur birthday celebration.

Everyone wished me longevity and to turn the wheel of dharma. But I feel that in life, we do not have much choice. Yet, aspirations are important. They work inevitably and eventually so I think they may have some effect and influence to our lives. Also, it is very important on how you live and the purpose that you live for. If you live for others, then it makes a lot of sense and you can contribute towards mankind. In this way, you can purify the mind by dispersing the craving for oneself and any related attachments.

During the dinner, I gave a short speech and its essence is as follows: I wish to thank everyone for giving me such a wonderful birthday celebration that expresses your love and care towards me. When I think over such events (birthday), I develop two different feelings simultaneously. One is joyful and another is not so joyful but of uneasy feeling. I will explain the reasons. Joyful - because our birth as a human precious body begins with so much potentiality and it is beneficial to everyone. It is even possible to attain enlightenment within such a human birth. So a great birth has taken place and it should really be worth celebrating.

Now the other uneasy feeling side is this - if we don’t treasure it to develop great qualities of enlightenment, then birth itself is nothing wonderful but in fact more sorrowful. The birth itself is a continuation of 12 interdependent links that start from ignorance and end with aging and death. In between these 12 interdependent links, we constantly experience tremendous suffering and confusions, which have no attributes. Not only that, we further create many more causes of sufferings in the future by doing lots of unwholesome deeds. So such a kind of birth is neither worth celebrating nor joyful. In fact, I feel sad that until now after so many lifetimes, I have still not managed to reverse the link of Samsara - how sad it is.

In general, I think my birth itself is nothing great but I feel the person who gave birth to me is in fact very important. And that is my mother. She has gone through so much physical suffering while she carried me in her womb and at the time of delivery. Nonetheless, she was mentally so happy and eager to see her child. That selflessness love and care is so great it seems unfathomable in our normal state of mind. So during this birthday, I remember the kindness and love from my mother and pay great respect to her. I am also suggesting to my disciple and reader of this blog that if your mother is still around, then consider it your golden period and try to cherish and treasure your mother by thinking of her selfless love towards you in many ways. So you should love her and give her your full care and gratitude especially when she is getting older and need more of your support. And you should not hesitate to give her your hand. It is an opportunity for you to pay the immense debt of kindness to her. If your mother is no more with you, then you should still think of her with good aspirations and when you see any old lady who needs help or assistance, just give her your helping hand regardless of who she is. When you give your love and care to her, I am sure you will start to see your mother’s love from her. Its great isn’t it? In fact every sentient being is our mother in general so we can show our love and compassionate act by assisting anyone. This is also paying the debt of kindness to mother.

So these are my thoughts during my birthday. I encourage people who are close to me to try to follow and engage in such acts. And to those who are already doing it, I salute you for you all are really wonderful people. In other words, you are indeed a great child of a great mother.

Before I end, I wish to express my thanks to Kuala Lumpur Karma Kagyu Dharma Society’s committee and members and especially to Venerable Lama Zotpa, the resident lama. Lama is well qualified to teach and guide followers. One special quality of his is that he is very humble and simple. I feel KKDC is very fortunate to have such a good lama in residence.

Right now, I am in Johor Bahru Saraha Buddhist Society and shortly after arrival I started to write this article, which I think, is good to share with readers of my blog.




I manage to put some photo which is taken by some of our Lamas and is not high resolution picture. All the photos are taken at KL cenre.