Buddhism, my religion.

Having mixed with peers who are mostly comprised of Buddhist along the period I was raised in my hometown, I was surprised by the fact that majority of the Chinese in my college, especially those eastern friends embrace Christian values. Well, I'm a Buddhist, but not the devoted one. Religion is something profoundly abstract to me. I didn't visit temple as regularly as Muslim to mosque, or Christian to church. The incident that motivated me to touch something religious at this time is that there is now a freshly formed association namely Buddhist Society in my college. Although I don't own a great depth of knowledge regarding Buddhism, it doesn't simply mean I'm not interested to explore more about it.

For now I advocate the saying “多个香炉多个鬼，没有香炉没有鬼” which means "to have more censers will result in attracting more ghosts" in direct translation. (Sorry for the not-very-precise-translation as it could be done better) I would like to stress on how sceptic I'm towards some aspects of the religion despite of the actual underlying message of the proverb. Normally Buddhist worships Buddha statues to attain spiritual comfort, hoping he will get rid of disasters or ailments. Some of the believers would make wishes to bring themselves about wealth, and this is the group of people that is prone to superstition.

I'm now going to review several religious acts here, whether it is significant or not. Is burning joss sticks, paper money and incense significant? In my humble opinion it creates pollution rather than achieving what the believers intended. It consumes multitude amount of one of the most essential elements on our planet - paper and it would end up turning into greenhouse gases as well as other harmful byproducts. I'm not going to comment more about the disadvantage of "open burning", yet I often found it ridiculous to see the people burning some high-tech oblations to their ancestors. If they are to burn a paper handphone, I would recommend them to burn an extra Digi simcard too, since it provides the widest coverage :)

I'm not sure if ancestor worship is related to Buddhism since religion would have undergone diverse variation before spreading to every corner of the world. Buddhism I've been following may not share the same aspects with that from the place it originates. It could only come into contact with me when it was festive season such as Wesak Day or it came the traditional funeral. So I might have digressed in some points I've raised here to the extent where it sounds ignorant for me to be a Buddhist.

*This post did occupy a long time of mine, thanks for reading it and it is always welcoming for you to share your two cents about this :)

The day I had forgotten

"Hi Jin Xiang, are you free now?" she phoned me, "Can I have a chat with you?"

"Hi, sure, no problem." I was rather shocked about what brought her to make this sudden call.

"Do you know what day is today?" she asked, smiling. I knew that from her intonation.

"Err..." What a typical question, but it took me about ten seconds before I could only barely break the silence.

"Oh no! Please don't tell me you have forgotten it!" she uttered in dismay.

"Sorry, give me more time to think about that," I replied.

"Okay, now you try to recall, what had you done on the same day of today in last year?"

"Wait a minute, SPM trial examination?"

"No."

"We met each other in the tuition centre?"

"No! I'm kind of disappointed eh, I don't expect you to forget this important day. But obviously you do." She reiterated, "That day eh, you called me in the canteen after school. Then?"

I know she would be glad if I could complete the part she left for me. However I had a short-term memory loss. I kept contemplating.

"You gave me something..."

"Oh!" I cried, "Happy birthday!"

"Yup... how can you forget it?"

*The conversation above ended up with apologies and wishes*

Actually I did consider about her birthday since she asked the first question. But I thought it would be silly if it was not. Honestly, I'm very sensitive to numbers, however it is contradicting to say - I don't surprise to have myself forgetting about that, considering the fact that I don't always give every friend of mine a sincere wish whenever it is the moment they have grown older, not even to my closest friends.

Perhaps I should start writing them down.