Cats who teach me to fly…

As my concentration gets better, I’m beginning to stop counting the minutes and hours. However, since I’ve made an aspiration to reach 3000 hours of meditation, I’d just stick to it and hope that I can reach the target while I’m alive.

Is 2023 a tough year? Every year is getting tougher for me as I age, both physically and mentally. Ajahn Thanissaro said as we get older and weaker, our practice in the Dhamma gets tougher. I guess it’s our daily obstacles that challenge our abilities to overcome our afflictions. But I’m all confident! And if it’s too tough, Ajahn Rahula said “it’s ok, this is nature. 吸气， 呼气(in cantonese), it’s okay.” Luang Por Viradhammo said to observe not ourselves but everything and all the things that is around us as object. It’s like this that causes and conditions work, anger arises and ceases. Pain arises and ceases. Happiness arises and ceases and etc… Luang Por Sucitto just said today when I was at the retreat, “Don’t let this human body go wasted. Make full use of it, practise the Dhamma”. And finally Ajahn Jutipanno reminds us that we’ve been to all six realms even in this life, that is when we experience anger, we’re in the hell realm. When we experience ill-will, we’re in the hungry ghost realm. When we’re greedy, we’re in the animal realm. When we practise loving-kindness and generosity, we’re in the heavenly realm and if we stablize the jhana meditation, we’re in much higher realms. A very good reminder to me and now I’m beginning to feel revulsion over anger.

There is so much that I’ve learnt from these spiritual teachers. The best of all is still Venerable Wuling’s patience. There is still so much to learn. These spiritual teachers are my inspiration. They never stop practising even though they get so old and suffer from physical conditions and I want to be like them.

Luang Por Sucitto’s 8 days meditation retreat just started today. It’s a good start of year 2024 to me. With the full day retreat and cats to take care of indoor and outdoor, it’s going to be tiring for me. However, attending all meditation retreat is definitely worthwhile to me!