Personal Theology

STRONG Disclaimer: I do not identify as a Buddhist.
--------------------------------------------------------

On our trip back from Subang Jaya, my parents and I, together with a number of cousins went to a Buddhist temple to BUY a buddha statue. I think people would like to avoid the word "buy", because referring to what my parents called "inviting the buddha to our house" with the parlance of trade would be akin to loading the holiness of buddha with earthly mundaneness. (oh my english.) But as the saying goes, form is emptiness, emptiness is form; so let's not get trapped in semantics.

Ok where was I? So in the temple, I saw a book called "The Heart Sutra for Children". I　was pretty fond of it, because it explains the Sutra in simple words. From what I can remember and in my own words:

"Form is emptiness, emptiness is form does not mean nothing exists. What it means is emptiness and existence are inseparable, like space and time, electricity and magnetism, mass and energy. This is a bit difficult to explain, but let me give you an example. Imagine a lake with quiet water, and a sea with waves. Both lake and sea are made of water, so we say they are the same thing. When the wind blows, we can ripples on the lake surface like waves, but without water there is no waves. Or imagine a wood. A wood can burn when heated, but when we cut the wood, we cannot see fire inside the wood."

Haiya I dunno how to explain la. Just like we think we are concrete solid matter, but in fact (how you know is fact?) we are made of atoms with vast empty space within, all mass concentrated in a tiny nucleus. Life is not a discrete entity (closed system) but an open system which exchanges matter and energy with its surroundings. Life is but a concentration of many many chemical reactions. Dying is the diffusion of that collection of chemicals in the universe. When the chemicals meet, there is life. This is 缘起缘聚。(But I believe once you die you die, no such thing as karma.)

Hmm, like that la. Anyway, when the pihak bertanggungjawab knows that we came from a faraway land, he offered to bring us to see the big big Buddha statute on the upper floor. (爬楼梯爬到半死。）So you know, when you see the patung, you have to sembah. So most my family members sembah lo. So I quick quick walk away, cuz I don't want to sembah as a matter of trivial principle. Because I don't want to let people think I'm a Buddhist.

Why? Many many years ago, there's one 死尼姑 (sorry, I meant "nun", oh my english.), when she was interviewed on the "Buddhist view of homosexuality“, she said along the lines of "According to the buddhist view, all sexual relationships are not good. So just because two men like each other, why must they have sex. No, better just like each other. No need sex." Me being a narrow-minded person, I just can't stand her. Cuz she appeared quite a few times on the newspapers. So I decided to reject Buddhism. This is not a matter of whether the nun misintepreted the teachings of Buddha or not, but I just don't like religious institutions. It's just like when people talk about Islam and terrorism, some like to say "ohh...Islam is a religion of peace." Like who cares la. Who cares it is "actually" a peaceful religion if its followers appear so violent.

So that night, when I taking a bath, I tell myself, wah....all those religions better be wrong, if not I'm so going to hell, hahaha. I WISH all those things are not true.

Talking about the abrahamic religions here:
Then it hit me, what could be more devillish than wishing for the inexistence of God, in the eyes of its followers? To wish for the absence of God's grace, actively hope for the impossibility of salvation, is "worse" than the strongest form of atheism, which is the rejection of the belief that god exists. That is because strong atheists KNOW that god doesn't exist, while me, I WANT god not to exist while unsure of its existence.

Sin beyond salvation, hahahaha.

-----------------------------------------
Haiz my English. Irrelevant song: