Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

For reasons only known to the RSPB IT team i cannot get onto the RSPB website. It shares this distinction with the Singapore Government Directory. Very koyak one. All thougrh the floods that devastated the south and midlands this summer i tried to find out what was going on. Nothing with www.rspb.org.uk managed to come up. There can't be THAT many pple logging in, come on. I know we have a million members, some of which are stationed outside Heathrow, but look, this is getting ridiculous. Yesterday i chatted with our neighbour in front. She's an MFA officer and she knows a few people i was once really, really, REALLY close to when i used to live here. When we worked in the civil service, MFA stood for Mother - effing assholes. Teachnically it stands for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Of course there was nothing mothereffing about her, she was lovely - as were all those people who worked in the Ministry then and now. I sort of went through a list of pple i knew, and she was am...

Ghin cut his first teeth yesterday. It was 6 am and i was a little tired, so i put my finger into his mouth to sooth him and viola! teeth!!! Here he is trying them out on Optimus Prime's leg. He is hilarious - even more now - than he has ever been. He loves my dad and comes running in his walker when he sees him, squealing with excitement that rapidly fizzles out when my dad lifts him. He loves grabbing things - everything's fair game - and putting it into his mouth. I wonder how we ver manage to contain ourselves as we get older. This so called oral phase lasts an entire life for Singaporeans of course, who love to eat constantly, at all hours. I see that it begins as soo as you can hold something in your hand and direct it towards your mouth. This applies, as i said, to everything except the horrible teething tack biscuits which i got from a health food store. It said Maple biscuits. Maple my arse. Garbage would be more like it.

At Marina Pier Ghin and Oisin Flats - a familiar sight from the car Some random shots of us around Singapore. The traffic in Singapore is shockingly bad this time round. I do not remember it like this last year. We were always certain of the roads being clear past 9 am - and i always went for my run around then at MacRitchie because i knew that the sun wasn't too hot and the traffic had eased up. I think the reasons for the sudden increase of traffic are complex - from the cheapness of cars now - when i say cheap, it's still expensive compared to cars in Belfast - and the ease with which banks have enabled people to take out loans. Also it's boom time here, so more people can afford cars, resulting in greater misery for those who used to own cars when it was a more exclusive activity. My mother has practically put herself under house arrest because of the traffic. I can see her point of view. With temperatures near 40 deg Cel, and tempers boiling, coupled with the horrendou...

With Lianne at Marine Parade At Seletar Club watching the sunset and having dinner Today we went to the beach - after about an hour's walk, Oisin, myself, Ghin and Lianne stopped for a drink. I got 100 Plus, Lianne got a Milo and Oisin and soyabean drink. It was a really hot day and when the drinks came out of the dispenser, they were so cold. We popped each can open and then after the first sip, Oisin went Ah, this is the life! A six year old savouring the moment - my little baby is growing up.

Sinca i'm still feeling awake...read a bit more about Psychoanalysis and Bhuddism - and have found that what i've described - the embrace of shadow - is also talked about - but they speak about it in more negative terms - the repressed. That Western practioners tend to have lots of this and this interferes in their meditation work. In fact, very often, the 'detatchment' which is extolled in Bhuddhism, is used to avoid dealing with 'issues' that they have repressed. The result is that once they leave the environment which enables them to ironically repress their pain, they are no better - in fact they may even be worse. The repression would have become even toxic and begun to wound the sangha. Hence you get so called gurus sleeping with followers, commiting fraud, exploiting others financially and sexually. This is pretty common in the East and cautionary tales are a dime a dozen about entering these sects. In a way, they are little better tahn tyrannical or judg...

Sorry i've taken such a long time out since the last post. I've contiunously said to myself that i MUST blog after i put the kids to sleep. I'm now telling Oisin a story based on the Da Danaan as protectors of the land, which is tied into the over development of the countryside and the pollution of the environment linked to this. Fergal, a seven year old boy is forced to spend summer with his granny who leads a very rural life. She has no running water, electricity and runs a small farm. On the farm is a faery well. Fergal discovers that he has a connection with Brigid, the goddess of creation and fire - because his people have some faery blood in them. But Mr O'Connor and Farmer Kernan want to buy is granny's land because they think that there is oil on it - just under the fairy well in fact. However, granny knows that they're up to no good and now must appeal to the Da Dannan to save the farm. Also if the well is destroyed, the Da Danaan will die because they ...

What is the most difficult part of practising mindfulness and compassion - doing so with humility. I'm at the stage now where i am calmer when confronted with difficult situations. I'm not perfect at all, by no means, but when i do react to situations in a skilled fashion, i feel the horrible smugness of pride creeping in. If i can keep a lid on that, learn that what i have done is done everyday by millions who didn't have to struggle half as hard as i had to to arrive at this point, i'd be cured. I'm reading Psychoanalysis and Bhuddism . It's fascinating. It talks about how the Western mind finds it far more difficult to reach the mindful practise which Bhuddist aspire to because of the greater investment in the sense of 'self'. That there are limits to traditional Bhuddist practise because of this and that instead of attempting to free the practioner, the meditations tend to paper over the deep cracks. Of course, Bhudda's encounters with Mara are h...

Ghin contemplates nirvana from his carseat. At Ananda Bhavans for Sunday morning breakfast of appum and roti prata. At Tekka shopping for the gu bak kuay teow. Us with Carol and Emily - Leon's wife and kid at the club.

My mom celebrated her 61st birthday yesterday (which incidentally is also Indonesia's Hari Kebangsaan - or Independance Day.) My dad after remembering it for a week, forgot it on the morning, prompting some teenaged pouting from my mom. It's all very hurtful, she said. This in turn got my dad to be upset and i had to laugh at their seet childlikeness. My mom is spoilt rotten by dad who set an impossibly high standard for any life partner. This omission though was more than made up when he returned home after cancelling a lunchtime appointment with a dozen red roses and later in the evening he bought her a cake; both things he which hadn't done for years. It is impossible to get my mom a present. What do a give a woman who doesn't want anything. Jacq and i discussed it and every suggestion was met with a 'nah!'. Cookery course - it had to be a local one and which place would hold it? A gardening course - Jacq looked at me as if i had two heads. Doesn't she kn...

How quickly the summer has passed. If we were in Belfast, we'd be getting ready for school now. Here i'm trying to teach Oisin the alphabet. We start with small things. Like patterns. Things which i had taken forgranted. Like when you write, you go down to up when tracing verticals. We write right to left, not the otherway round, which is what Oisin seems to prefer. Shaky, trembling lines form spidery figures. Like the standing of a newly birthed fawn. How strange writing is to us. Thousands of years of cultivation, he now enters the world of the word. I will not hasten this. I've been running for two weeks now. The weight is finally beginning to come off me. I must admit that when i first began it felt awful. I was horrified to find out how unfit i was. I could braely do twenty minutes and i thought my uterus would fall out. Now after a couple of weeks, i felt just about human and am actually beginning to ENJOY the bloody thing. It was also very humbling to get into the jo...

Oisin's Halloween costume - Dr Who! Sushi kids Mr Bean's teddy bar and mine Me and Ghin

You know, i quite forgot about the meaning of naga, and how much work i had done with naga only a year ago. I tend to do this though. I forget the details and end up with the essence of the learning. Naga - nagas are protectors in Asian culture. They are highly revered spirits who generosity and power is unlimited. They are guardians of water bodies, particularly clean water bodies, sacred spaces - and they are closely aligned with the divine. Snakes are not simply wisdom, they are ancient wisdom - and they are also associated with eternal life. They are also extremely feminine in nature - many female deities are associated with snake or serpent - and many misogynistic religions have the slaying of serpents, which symbolises the repression and suppression, or even destruction of feminine spirituality. Whenever snakes are persecuted, so too are women. This goes back to Babylonian mythology and has persisted in the main Middle Eastern faiths - namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The ...

My bedtime stories are shameless tales of environmental propaganda. The night before last, i told Oisin and story about unsustainable development. The previous one, about getting work-life balances right. Tonight, i've begun with a story about two children finding a dinosaur egg. The dinosaur hatches from it and then tells them that the earth was an ark created by aliens and the dinosaurs are now coming back to rescue the planet because it's in danger. It has alien abduction, prehistoric life, jeeps, talking eggs and children. Steven Speilberg, eat your heart out. Ghin got a balance from Lianne, a friend of mine, who is also a kinesilogist. It happened today. Lianne also treated Jacq two weeks ago for her allergies. It was also accompanied by the prognosis that she has too much yeast in her which is causing what is called a 'leaky gut', resulting in allergies to the most innocuous of food - like rice. By following Lianne's instructions, Jacq has recovering amazingly...

I lie in bed on my side, the great sow that i am, feeding. Quite often i fall asleep. Sometimes i read. At others, i think. Sometimes, i feel parts of my body. My belly, once hard like a green fruit, is now soft and pliable again. Across it, like waves on some ocean, the silvery marks of birth ripple. They undulate these serpants and dancing fish, tattoos of two battles fought at the gates of Life and Death, my trophies the smiling brown eyes of my sons. I love these marks. These marks which operations advertise should be erased, which creams promise to efface, as if these wonderful events never took place, are my most prized possessions. They are the marks of my membership into the tribe of motherhood. They are the most precious offering i can give to my ancestors in blood. In birth i became someone greater than myself, - something more. It is the mysticism of motherhood that no one prepared me for. Mystics are always off away in their own cave, or alone experiencing epiphanies. No on...

Ghin woke me at 11.30 for a drink and then took an hour to go back to bed. Outside rain falls. It falls in large loud drops, heavily, pregnant splashings on stones and leaves, the flat handed open slapping of water on surfaces. Thunder crashing above us, lightning visitations, cracking whips, we are the epicentre of a storm and the lights go out. I love lightning when it does that. The safety of a roof over my head becomes apparent then. A natural phenomena rages above my head and nothing but a thin covering protects me. Me and my children. His heart is galloping, beneath the impounding flesh and bone it drums. It is real. My son, my little warm son. We huddle. Oisin sleeps the sleep of a child after a day's play. My sons. My beautiful sons. Pa cooked fried rice yesterday at Jacq's. It has been a long time since he cooked. Memories of childhood are of weekends and my dad walking in and out of the kitchen, between the sink and the outdoor stove. My dad cutting and chopping. Peel...

Is there a more annoying brown noser than Warren Fernandez? God give me strength when i read the Straits Times. I never EVER have this problem in Ireland because i read The Independent and can choose not to read something like the Telegraph, which, by the way can take lessons for right-winged idocy from ST. But here...the insufferable condescension of the man. His superior tone. His laughing at Al Gore's optimism - or desperation - at trying to stem the tide of climate change, and the complementing of Lee Kuan Yew for being realistic about tackling the challenges that climate change poses. Lee Kuan Yes, our own green pioneer? THe man who said that airconditioning was the world's best invention EVER? The whole of Singapore is now airconditioned - adding considerably to our carbon footprint...oh my spleen, my spleen, i known i promised i wouldn't blog about politics...and i promise, i won't. But would an asteroid hit Mr Fernandez? Please, and put us out of our misery? And...

After thinking about blogs and their possible contribution to political or any kind of thoughtful commentary on Singapore i logged on to see what i could see. It was a bit scary. First, most blogs on Singapore were either gone or impossible to get through. It may be my faulty connection, but i don't think so. Then i did find one good blog - but it's mostly inspired by Western thinkers. My gripe? I don't think Western thinkers are qualified to say what happens here. Mostly because they're from a completely different system and their system hasn't worked out. Or it may have worked out, but it was just never given the chance by the governments who were installed. But here's one Singaporean blog i did find which was quite good. http://xenoboysg.blogspot.com/ Let's face it. The West hasn't an awful lot to offer the east - what works there works there. But it just doesn't transfer. I also think that ironically we have succeeded at playing the game of capit...

It has taken me this long to finally put my finger on it - what has been weird about Singapore this time round. The sheer activity with which is buzzes reminds me less of mammals and more of insects. First it is so terribly crowded. I have never ever seen it like that before. The numbers of people everywhere - in shopping centres, offices, buildings, etc. It seems more of a colony - oh the irony!!! - than a country. Then there is the frantic activity. People just seems to be swarming all over the place in a drone like fashion. There doesn't seem - on the surface of it - to be any contemplation and thought. Even the newspapers are filled with articles exhorting people to aim higher, do faster, play harder, acquire more. There are no alternatives, no one calling for, or pausing for breath. It is strange that after thirty years, we are still riddled with the same articles which are about two things - one, how correct we are to eb doing things - and two, how others think we are utterly...

Narratives are powerful things. They are how we live our lives. They get us up in the morning, or keep us in bed. They allow us to make breakthroughs, or follow the furrows we've ploughed. They are both enslaving and liberating. Narratives are how we live our lives. When i began comparing myths, i thought, there is nothing in common between say, a Chinese myth of creation or a Native American one. There is nothing similar about the Indian version of the after life or the Innuit's idea of what lies beyond death. The only thing that is similar is that we human beings need to tell stories. We need to have explainations and stories. Science is the story we have today. It is interwoven with other stories we tell ourselves. Stories about individualism. About personal happinesses. About losses and gains. About what keeps us happy or drives us to the brink of insanity. They are stories which we tell ourselves and each other - and they are as real or as false as we make them to be. Whic...

It takes forever to get stuff on this computer, so apologies if anyone has checked regularly. I've worked a semi-routine with Ghin as well now. He goes to sleep around 9 - 10 am - i then go for a run. Any remaining time should be spent blogging. but there are no garuntees, of course. Oisin is now enrolled into a swimming class and a wushu class, as of this afternoon. And myself? Just enjoying what Singapore has to offer. Last night i tried blogging, but was prevented by an unspeakably slow connection on the other computer. It seems a bit ironic that this is probably one of the first homes in the whole of Serangoon Gardens to have a modem and today the connection time is SLOWER than it used to be. Ghin has also gotten used to my dad, which is fantastic. That's the only reason why i'm able to blog right now. He's being entertained by my dad. I would love to put down a few thoughts about Singapore...perhaps i'll try this... Having had such a fractious attitude to the p...