a good soul

I wonder what is the root of evil.

Back when I was still in school and first learn the concept of doing good and being a good person and being mindful - it wasn't in the school classroom doing the Pendidikan Moral paper.  It was when my family and I attended our weekly lecture at the Tao centre.

The lectures given by senior Tao practitioners were mostly in Tawainese Hokkien with thick accent, and some were in Mandarin which I could follow better.  Doing good, being good, all seem to be a rather tedious and highly intellectual thing through my half-cooked understanding of these lectures.

And then I became a vegetarian.

Years later now, when almost all of the content of what I learned back then is a blurry page in my mind - I feel that I finally understand what being good is about.  I learned about being good all over again after I left school.  The society is really the best place to study, the working place, in a family, on a bus, in an office, over the post office counter, at a public toilet queue, over the cyberspace, between two best friends, from a book, over two paragraphs of written wisdom...etc.

The more I build my relationship with my work and understand the role I play at work, the more I see that being good, doing good, and being happy, and spreading love, are all inter-related.

I have a sense of having-arrived at a good place in my life now, without having to be a high flying achiever.  Answers for my questions are always found easily when I stick to my fundamentals of what is intrinsically good.  On a day when being right or wrong gets blurred, I go back to the foundation of being loving and kind.

I guess this is the point in life where the strong thinker in me (proven a Myers-Briggs 'ENTP' type) is starting to mould into a balanced person, merging the character of a thinker and feeler.

Whenever anger comes, pause and take the journey forward with love in my heart and anger leaves me.

Whenever frustration enters, pause and walk the gratitude road and I will find my way out.

Whenever a self-doubt hits home, I measure all that I have to be grateful for and I see clearly that hard work and diligence is the answer to self-doubt.

Whenever am feeling stuck and confused, I retreat to a good book, either fiction or non-fiction...

This brings back to the childhood study of being good and doing good - maybe I had a hard time understanding what it meant in those lectures back then because I was too young and had little life experience to appreciate what it meant.

In a world that spins increasingly faster and crazy as ever, I know we can change things around if everyone can just look inward and just do your part of goodness - that would do a lot of good already.

Even that means just to spay your home pet, and keeps it well cared for and loved.

And love your neighbor.

Live in the moment, put on the signal before turning.

Register to vote.

...maybe this is a very poor illustration of what I understand lately, I shall leave the painting to someone who is better, I close here with a quote from my friend's (Cher Siang) blog - Thank you Cher Siang.


一直都在想，我们不是要改变世界，最主要的是充实自己，从而期望可以影响身边的人，进而广之。人要有理想，进而尽全力追求这理想，在努力的过程学习，看到自我的价值，有自信的增值，对尊严的肯定，进而领悟生命中的意义，自然会致力于世界的平衡，进而影响世界。

我一直都相信国人的素质的提升是高于一切政治改革的。国人素质低落而有了政治变异，得到的就只有混乱和渺茫。（并不代表我们就不改变政治，因为如此的政治，确实也是国人素质低落的罪魁祸首）
“自我提升”，虽然已经被直销公司骑劫多年而老生常谈，却还是我们看到希望的一个重点。

有素质的人，他不会乞讨小惠小利，他不会埋怨上天的不公平。他会默默耕耘，去创造，去以自己的能力来改善自己的条件；更有能力的会因此影响其他人。他不会遇到问题就逃离，而是运用智慧与环境周旋。