A Thousand Smiles

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Kryptonite

A quote from someone I continue to aspire towards


Which is stronger
having something to protect or having nothing to lose…




- Hok



守るべきものを持つ者と失うものが無い者では一体どちらが強いのだろうか。。。



-北斗

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Trials and Tribulations: Part 2

I have never been a patriot by any sense of the means and I've always played down my cultural heritage. I spent majority of my childhood in Indonesia and I gotta admit we had it pretty good while we lived there. We lived in the "priveleged" part of Jakarta along with all the other expatriots. We had a fountain in front of our house, maids, drivers, hell I even had my own maid. Travelling was pretty common for me even back then but even then we still lived in comfort. Before we moved to Australia we spent a year in Sri Lanka. I guess that was my first taste of the real world.

When your young you seem to just accept things for what they are, you never question them. Looking back on that year I had a hell of a childhood. We had a pretty shotty house compared to the one back in Indonesia. I remember one day going to the cupboard to grab a towel so I could have a bath. I stuck my little hand in the dark cupboard and pulled on something fleshy. Turns out it was a fat ass rat, rabies and all. It tried to bite me, but my ninja reflexes saved me hahaha. Amongst the rats, there were constant blackouts and floods. I remember looking out the window one day to see a cow floating down the street and yes I thought that was a normal sight.

There would be military at the entrance to every suburb, every store. They were bloody everywhere. Stories of bombs, death and corruption filled the newspapers everyday.


Yet I don't think anything has affected Sri Lanka more than the 2004 tsunami. There was no family that wasn't affected in some way. That photo was taken in 2008, on the same beach that the tsunami struck and to this day it remains unused and abandoned in light of what happened all those years ago.

I never, ever speak of my Sri Lankan heritage but I guess for anybody that can take the time to read my blog its only courtesy to share. I am from the mountainous region of Kandy, in central Sri Lanka as well as the Southern coastal region of Galle(where photo was taken). I come from a long line of hardworking farmers. There are sides to Sri Lanka I adore, yet most I abhor. I guess I just don't mix well with Sri Lankan culture. One thing I learnt from that beach and one thing I am proud to say is that Sri Lankan people will always wear a smile, even in the face of adversity and since that day I've done my best to do the same.

Later Days
Sukhi

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Trials and Tribulations: Part 1

The past months have been interesting ones. I'd like to think I have grown up enough to think rather than life simply being "shit" its all just a bunch of experiences to take us to a conclusion we should have arrived at so many years ago.

I can't help but feel blessed, having the chance to see and experience so many countries and as cliche as it sounds a picture paints a thousand words.  These next pictures are no work of art but gave me some sense of clarity and more importantly gave me some sense of purpose. I hope it will do the same for you.

My first view of Scandonavia, I never thought a place so untouched could exist. People describe Australia as barren, a land heavy hearted from its experiences. If that were true Sweeden is a land pristine and so so very different

apologies for not looking my best in this one, no amount of photoshop can mask how bloody hot it is in China. I must say China is an incredibly country the streets smell, road rules are a thing of the past, its always such a flurry of events. In spite of it all the people I met in China were of uncompromised honesty. On a 38 degree day, with 90% humidity my parents made plans for "sightseeing". Suffice to say the polluted streets of China aren't the most enjoyable. Lunch that day was an array of oily, fried meat. Any source of vegetables had to be fleshed out from those very very oily pieces of meat and like the miserly bastard he is all my dad could say to me was "son i payed bloody good money for this, your eating it all".

I guess we all agree that the worsed part of throwing up is waiting for it but that day it came as unexpectetedly as anything. Our tour group just arrived at the emporers summer palace, yet like I said the spew came out of nowhere. I huddled in a corner, I remeber the fleeting thought if this were a few thousand years ago they'd have my head. So as the fried chicken was about to make an encore the local Chinese huddled around me. I couldn't help but think its bad enough im about to chunder they didn't need to watch.

Out of nowhere i was thrusted with some vile smelling herbal medicine and farout it was like magic. After that they helped me up and made sure I was better. These are people who didn't know a word of english, let alone know who I was. It was a genuine compassion thats so foreign back home in Aus where everyone turns a blind eye to the guy walking their dog on the street, or the girl sleeping on the bus.

That photo I took was in a teashop in Beijin(took it after i chundered). The person standing next to me taught me all i know about tea. She was honest and a character in her own right just like everybody else in China. It was such a refreshing country, i'd love to go back.

Religion has given me some purpose in life. I'm certainly not the type to go about converting the masses, but when things were tough I always had the people in my temple. This was a photo from 2009, i'd come to the end of a long retreat at my temple in peats ridge. It was a week where every given moment was spent in meditation, strictly 2 meals a day, no talking, no heaters(the temperature was 3 degrees celcius on the "hottest" day) but it taught to appreciate the little things. I was the youngest person on that retreat, yet to this day every person in that photo remains a friend, an aunt, an uncle. They are people I can rely on each and every day and for that I am so thankful.

on a less important note I shaved my head for the first time 2 days after this photo was taken =0

I was meant to upload more photoes with relevent stories, but its late and sleep makes the world go round. Night all

Later Days
Sukhi

Monday, June 27, 2011

Toy Soldier

My splintered legs feel like breaking, a tired face though undeterred.
This paint, this mask, this uniform; for one's life led without reserve.
My name left in hallowed hearts, with a gun that etches stone.
This soldier will stand strongly for this guiding light is not alone

by
"Narallen Blackmore"

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Thusita

story I had to write for extension english. We had to create a utopia, enjoy!


Year unknown


Day 357



The world of the past saw “religion” so misconstrued, today, religion is life.



End.









Year unknown

Day 383



Every day is a new life and fresh beginning. Every morning is the world made anew. As light dawns upon this world, Thusita, we again resume our journey to goodness, a search for self fulfilling equilibrium. We cherish our life as humans, a divide between the heaven we aspire to and hell.



I have lost count of the years gone by since our saviour Maitriya sought the end to suffering. Creating a world free of burdensome suffering, free of “I” and “my” devoid of the poisons of greed, hatred and delusion. Destiny’s portentous eye was fooled. Fate was determined by the good of our “lives”.



End.













Year unknown

Day 401



My name is Samita Vajrya. I am human, just human in a plight to overcome the cycle rebirth. Yet I’ve come to detach myself from that title, diminishing any notion of self. As Maitriya said, “it is the “self” that gives rise to craving, craving which gives rise to suffering and As we experience suffering we will slip into the abyss of hell from which our past has clawed out.





Deemed by society as unfit as a source of spiritual purity, I strive to do further good in this life. To inch further to the heavens in my next birth. Many of my days are spent providing for those spiritually pure. Technology is said to have always been the same since Maitriya’s days, yet Thusita is void of instruments which stimulate the vast notion of self. We only produce what is necessary to sustain ourselves. I comply with any task as assigned to me by those spiritually pure, whose karma is said to be clean from the good of their past lives. They are left to lives of solitude so they may answer life’s questions. Finding enlightenment, they bathe in its wholesomeness; the impure like me must serve them enduringly. I must repay them for the good done in their past being…



End









Year unknown

Day 461



“We are products of nature, so we must all strive to do good and strive to serve the pure so that we may never return to it.”



Words claimed by our leader Nagasena, thoughts that lay deep in my mind not truly fathomed. Yet who could ascend to such greatness? Such a being translucent in the opaque husk of my perception. The leader of the temple, he is the purest of all beings, he is Maitriya on earth. I could never interpret Maitriya’s words, on how to escape the affliction we live in. It is only with the Nagasena’s wisdom that such thoughts can be construed, conveyed to us all.



End.











Year unknown

Day 508



As the days dwindle to glowing embers I make my visit to the temple. Sanctum to our suffering so tainted, it is the centre of our world. It is the temple who decides the course of our life, the clarity of our inner nature. Senior monks grade a child at birth on the standard of their purity and goodness of our past. To think a child having had no shape upon life could so easily be made the next Nagasena or classed impure, having to face a life of service.



I imagine such beauty of the temple would be misconstrued to those before our era. Their tale of torment is one often told, so that we may never walk a path of such anguish. Yet I often question how they could find such beauty in the bleak angles and aesthetic perfections of their lives, as if they could fool Nature’s superiority. Fool heaven and hell. The temple and all who inhabit it emulate Maitriya’s teachings, to find harmony with nature to find an empyrean and conquer suffering. The trees are akin with the buildings constantly yearning to be closer to one another. Concrete walls wear ashen faces as years have gone by, like old men with sullen faces. Here the Nagasena resides striving for further perfection, purifying of what little ill will remains dormant. Priests are in abundance, a sea of saffron coloured robes. Our great haven of Thusita does not discriminate to those who wish to join the order and follow Maitriya’s teachings. Yet we must all comply with the world’s order, the pure must be served by the impure. As such the temple is divided by kismet as well. We are a society that praises a simple lifestyle of unity and peace. Yet how can we stand when even the Temple - our chaste sanctuary - is so divided by the conflict of goodness. The pure must always walk ahead of those considered unworthy, sit closest to the Nagasena in chanting, wear the finest silk robes as opposed to the cloth rags worn by their underlings.





I wonder, am I really such a loathsome speck of society? Though it must be these thoughts that result in my current being, am I still running blind to suffering’s stifling embrace? I must strive harder, I must be born anew.



End









Year unknown

Day 543



This world, this life maybe it’s not truly meant for me. I am a hue of grey in life’s artwork; I am a shade, only to be forgotten. I am not an individual, worthy of note or name. Society merely views me as another cog in the machine. A life to merely be of service to those of a greater purpose, so that they may strive for a higher existence. Without the chance to contemplate life’s questions and my own suffering I shall never ascend to the heavens. For who am I really? To be judged impure from my birth quells all that can come of my life. We live in hope to find enlightenment upon life’s questions and ascend to heaven, yet this is a fate uncertain, none have climbed to its peak to have returned to tell of its tale.



Is Maitriya world really one so free of suffering? Oh how I wish for the world prior to Maitriya, where one’s worth was not determined by an uncontrollable past, a fate determined right from the outset. Rather one would live for the will of today, an individual could pave their own tomorrow.



No more shall I stand for my own futility. To find a path out of life’s incessant suffering not by the Maitriya’s, Nagasena’s or temples accord but of my own. What use is it to live life after life of such little worth only to inch closer to the inevitable passage to hell? I will pave my own path to this seemingly unattainable enlightenment; I will find my own inner sanctum.



As I conclude this final entry I shall begin life anew. To go beyond a life of mere service and to mark a new horizon.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

I like the feeling where your parents trudge off to bed at night. Your alone and everything is still, i think thats my favourite part of the day during the holidays.

Its when I can simply "be"

I spend my nights dnm'ing(its wat im good for haha) with all and sundry on msn. Or I play guitar for hours, eating gummi worms or dancing like a crazy mofo to songs on my iPod.

But there comes an end of the day where I have to make the long trudge back to my room. Now I have very asian parents and hell hath no fury like a Sri Lankan mother woken up at all hours of the night due to her son. Hence I have to ninja my way to my room in the dark.

Im not sure about you but I hate walking when I can't see. I had an experience at school where i was dressed up like sponge bob square pants(i looked pretty brutal). So here I was in my square pants and I had to walk across the hall. To all your coordinated folk, this would have been easy but I was a noob and stacked it like the cool kid I am.

But back to walking in the dark, I hate that feeling of uncertainty. As mundane as it may be I hate that inability to truely know where i'm going. In experiences of recent weeks I have learnt such ideality is ridden with a perception of "I". Gaining the ideal is not something we can accomplish by fierce tactics or thought out planning.

I think for us all the ideal is happiness, in the end happiness is something sought purely for what it is not as a means of achieving something else.

That said Ive learnt that ones happiness multiplies when its divided amongst others. When there is no fear of dark just a resolve of whats in front of you.

So for me my room's whats in front, no more flailing in the dark aye. We live the ideal

Later days kids, best of luck for the new year. May u aspire for a bigger and better 2011

Friday, December 3, 2010

Teenage Dreams my ass Katy Perry

Been goin out more the past 2 weeks than ive been at home., partying hard(in a straightedge sorta way) head feels like its kicked in, throat feels a chainsaw has gone through it, hair looks like a birdsnest.

Is teenage living just torturing your senses for a fleeting moment of fun?