Hello 2011!!!

Happy New Year!

I actually do not like to make new year resolutions. And I normally do not look back at the trials and jubilations of the past year. It's time to move on.  And to me, the new year starts only when the lunar chinese new year arrives in a few weeks time.  Anyway, I only like to remind myself, at the start of each new year, of these few goals, not just for 2011 but in this lifetime (in random order):

- To have a good job, a good boss, and good subordinates

- To buy my second property

- To make new and sincere friends

- To treasure old friends

- To find soulmate/s

- To repay my parents' kindness in this lifetime

- To repay my benefactors' kindness in this lifetime

- To meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Choden Rinpoche
- To save money
- To travel to places I have not yet visited

- To help and to benefit others (read below)
- To be happy.

As the new year begins, reading the newsletter I just received from ABC, I am reminded yet again that it is most beneficial to set our motivation and resolutions right. The result that we get depends on us creating the right causes. Putting into practice the Dharma teachings we have heard and learned and benefiting as many beings as possible would truly make our lives meaningful this year and in this lifetime.

As my guru Lama Zopa Rinpoche said, "If one finds out how much life is spent on wasted actions that did not become Dharma, one regrets and then make a strong determination in the new year that as much as possible in one's daily life, to have a Dharma motivation so that all actions become Dharma. In this way, our new year, lived with the thought of benefiting others with compassion becomes the cause for our own happiness, of world peace, and peace in the family and oneself and ultimately, it becomes the cause for us to bring all sentient beings to enlightenment."

On a lighter note, here are hilarious 2011 resolutions by Twitter, Microsoft, Facebook and the  other  big boys of the internet (courtesy of @ladyxtel ):

Have a great start, ya'all !