Living Dharma

Healing Meditation #6: Mindfulness in the form of Remembering

Wai cheong Kok — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 00:03:26 +0000

To continue our exploration of healing meditations, I want to touch on the art of remembering as another aspect of mindfulness. Here, we train ourselves to be mindful of some basic facts of life. This, in Buddhism, comes under the cultivation of the correct view. The point is that if we can remember and stay [...]

Healing Meditation #5: Let in Some Joy

Wai cheong Kok — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 00:05:41 +0000

The Dalai Lama once said, “If I am only happy for myself, many fewer chances for happiness. If I am happy when good things happen to other people, billions more chances to be happy!”

Rejoicing is the act of letting joy back into our life. It creates the favourable environment for healing by lightening [...]

A Buddhist tale: Cover the Shrine with Ash

Wai cheong Kok — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 23:50:39 +0000

Dusting can be said to be an endless and, probably, thankless job, in my opinion. I think that’s why it is considered to be a good spiritual practice to keep one’s shrine with all its Buddha statues, pictures and offerings dust-free at all times. Yet, in the history of Tibetan Buddhism, there was one [...]

Emotional Balance, not Emotional Flatline

Wai cheong Kok — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:03:17 +0000

What does it mean to achieve emotional balance? Does it mean to not feel strong emotions ever after? Or is one’s emotional life so well-lubricated that one can slide effortlessly in and out of a feeling state without ever being tripped over? Is that what we want, in the first place?

When Ven. Chokyi, [...]

Healing Meditation #4: The Inner Shower of Purification

Wai cheong Kok — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 01:00:04 +0000

When we are afflicted with pain and suffering, physical and mental, we naturally look for their causes or some explanations as to why this is happening to us. The standard Buddhist answer is, of course, karma. Not wishing to enter into the complexities and intricacies of the karma teaching, I nonetheless like to share [...]

A Buddhist Tale: Have Faith and Recite

Wai cheong Kok — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 02:34:48 +0000

Years ago when I was studying Buddhism in Italy and, yes, in the heartland of Roman Catholicism, my late teacher Geshe Jampa Gyatso would tell many stories during his teachings. I suspected that it could be because a number of us, including myself, was dozing off under the weight of the philosophical discussion. I [...]