Great thought from the Ghandhi of Cambodia in the Future of Peace...

During the discussion between Scott Hunt and Maha Ghosananda (known as The Ghandhi of Cambodia), Maha Ghosananda stated, “If you look down upon people, are very proud and haughty, your mind will become ignorant. If you are respect everybody, because the whole world is your house and all human beings are your mother. Then you will become very wise. You must have su, chi, po, li. Su means to listen, chi means to think, pu means to question, and li means to record. To listen, to think, to question, and to record, these make you become very wise. If you don’t have them you become ignorant. That is the law of dharma.” Page 175

Maha Ghasananda also stated about working together that, “If we want to work together better, we must have four feet to stand. The first one is loving kindness (metta). The second one is compassion (karuna). The third one is joy (mundita). The last one is equanimity (ubekkha.)”

Reflection on a good read--The Future of Peace by Scott A. Hunt

Great learning, understanding and acquiring new knowledge (in all subject matters), to me, come from unlimited and broad imagination. Without great imagination, children won’t be able to learn, to grow and to change. In the conversation between Scott and Jane Goodall, an internationally renowned primatologist and the world’s foremost authority on chimpanzees, they mentioned about suffering (dukkha in Buddhism) in two elements: one is that we want to escape things that make us unhappy, things that cause pain. The other one is our longing to be aligned with something greater than we are right now. This second thing is very important for us to recognize. Thus, the important thing is if we don’t strive to find it then life seems to lack meaning. Jane stated that our life is a series of attempts to get higher ad higher toward the goal, we can’t cope by ourselves. There is a real longing in people to reach up to this higher state of being. Yet, children these days seem to lack—connection with everyone else. Children in the West have so many things, from video games to cell phones, and yet they have a lot of loneliness and sense of anxiety. Children used to play and laugh and have fun and being creative, and they have a sense of connection with everyone else. We, as adults, seem to take all these things away from them. We are going to tell them they need a video game to be happy. Once children have grown up with the video games and the violent movies, it is very difficult to change their mind stream. Therefore, they need to be instilled the goodness or plant the seeds for goodness and peace—more meaningful and imaginative

Goodall talked about the state of togetherness and the tools for change that we needed to break down the artificial barriers we’ve created between the rich and the poor, between countries, between cultures, between religions, between ethnic groups, between countries, between old and young very often, and between humans and animals. If you imagine that I give you a seed and you take it to Tibet and you plant it, well, it will grow in Tibet only if it’s nurtured by the Tibetan people. And when the fruits come, they’ll be the Tibetans’ fruits. I can take a seed and plant it in Congo and the same will be true. When all these fruits and leaves blossom out there they will be something we all made together.” Page 325
Goodall also stated, “We have to stop obsessing on the negative. I keep telling people, get out into the air, do something positive, and live your life!” She also further mentioned, “doing something positive and living in communion with the goodness of life.”

President Obama to Visit Arcadia!!!!

As an alumni of Arcadia University, I am so thrilled to know that the President of the United States is going to pay a visit the university. I am truly proud of the university and myself as a former student there!

Resource from the univeristy's website http://www.arcadia.edu/news/default.aspx?id=30602:

President Obama to Visit the Philadelphia Area to Discuss Health Insurance Reform
WASHINGTON, DC - On the morning of Monday, March 8, 2010 President Obama will visit the Philadelphia area and deliver remarks on health insurance reform at Arcadia University. This event is free and open to the public, however, tickets are required.

Tickets will be distributed on a first come, first served basis on Saturday, March 6 at 3:30 PM in the Hospitality Room of the Kuch Recreation and Athletic Center at Arcadia University. ALL TICKETS FOR THIS EVENT HAVE BEEN DISTRIBUTED.

What it means by love--actually Love is...

Just wanted to share very good thought and contribution with others from Eknath's

Cheers!

March 7

Love, and do what you like.
– Saint Augustine


Learning to love in the way Saint Augustine is talking about is the most demanding, the most delightful, and the most daring of disciplines. It does not mean loving only two or three members of your family. It does not mean loving only those who share your views, read the same newspapers, or play the same sports. Love, as Jesus puts it, means blessing those that curse you, doing good to those that harm you.

Most of us do not begin by blessing those that curse us. That is graduate school. We start with first grade – being kind to people in our family when they get resentful. Eventually comes high school, where we learn to move closer to those who are trying to shut themselves off from us. College means returning good will for ill will. Finally we enter graduate school. There we learn to give our love to all – to people of different races, countries, and religions, different outlooks and strata of society, without any sense of distinction or difference.

A guest speaker at an orientation for the Thai students participating the cultural exchange in Soleftea, Sweden

Saturday 6 March 2010

It was such a great honor to be invited to help prepare and teach English and share my student exchange experience as an AFS exchange student (Year 1997 in New Zealand) with the very lucky 16 high schoolers from varous high schools in the Bangkok area. This project was initiated by the Foreign Affairs, Department of Education Bangkok Metropolitan Administration. The selected students are going to go visit their brother-sister schools in Sweden and Norway. In the frist group, students are leaving for Soleftea, Sweden March 15 and returning March 29, 2010. In the second group, students are going to Norway. One of the main purposes of this program is for the students to promote and exchange Thai culture and Swedish culture and become exposed to different cultures and peoples in other countries. The students are mostly good at traditional Thai dance and music and who are outgoing with great personality and of course English ability. With a little of my help and guidance, I hope they will be able to survive and have a great time there with the host families and things that they will be doing as once I had and did! Great memories indeed :-)