It's the new year. It's normally the time when we make new resolutions or repeat unaccomplished resolutions from the past year.
I read about Sumiko Tan's new year article; her realised and unrealised dreams in retrospective mode. And I agree with her. Sumiko posed: "What if you have only one year left to live? When you focus your mind like this, the really important stuff comes to the forefront. You realised which are the goals worth striving for, which are a waste of time and you also learn to let go of fluffy dreams."
If I have one year to live, it certainly would not be wasted on office politics, smarting over an unkind word said to me ages ago, drooling over the latest mobile handset and the perennial worrying over my weight.
Rather my new year resolutions would be :
1. To make more time to practise Dharma and be able to contribute to Dharma projects. (Thanks to all the lamas and great masters and rinpoches who have come into my life).
2. Be able to provide well for my parents and our new house and to be able to bring them for tours.
3. To find a new job which I will love.
4. Catch up with old friends and make many new ones.
5. Straighten up my finances.
6. To find the true love of my life.
I don't want to make a longer list. No point making a long list if I can't acccomplish them. Yes I do wish to make myself a better life, rather than to live life like a "vegetable" (ie. a person with minimal brain functions) like in the past. My past has been really like living each day with no aim in life. I have found Buddha and I should do better than that. We should live each day as if it was the last day of our life. Only then can we appreciate the not-so-important things in our life which we often neglect. No more fluffy dreams.
I read about Sumiko Tan's new year article; her realised and unrealised dreams in retrospective mode. And I agree with her. Sumiko posed: "What if you have only one year left to live? When you focus your mind like this, the really important stuff comes to the forefront. You realised which are the goals worth striving for, which are a waste of time and you also learn to let go of fluffy dreams."
If I have one year to live, it certainly would not be wasted on office politics, smarting over an unkind word said to me ages ago, drooling over the latest mobile handset and the perennial worrying over my weight.
Rather my new year resolutions would be :
1. To make more time to practise Dharma and be able to contribute to Dharma projects. (Thanks to all the lamas and great masters and rinpoches who have come into my life).
2. Be able to provide well for my parents and our new house and to be able to bring them for tours.
3. To find a new job which I will love.
4. Catch up with old friends and make many new ones.
5. Straighten up my finances.
6. To find the true love of my life.
I don't want to make a longer list. No point making a long list if I can't acccomplish them. Yes I do wish to make myself a better life, rather than to live life like a "vegetable" (ie. a person with minimal brain functions) like in the past. My past has been really like living each day with no aim in life. I have found Buddha and I should do better than that. We should live each day as if it was the last day of our life. Only then can we appreciate the not-so-important things in our life which we often neglect. No more fluffy dreams.
I wish you all the best. It is said that the first step is the most difficult. I have found all of the steps following the first to be equally difficult--if not more so. Distractions abound. Stay focused. Peace.
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