Hubby and I had full activities on our weekend, from last weekend to this coming weekend.

Last Saturday we had our regular praying service at Vihara and to celebrate a farewell lunch for Brenda & Scott. They are moving back to Indo to care for Brenda's sick mom. So all of us chip in some money to get catering for the lunch & did a banner for them as parting gift.

We all had long chat with each other and meeting for the upcoming Vesak Day celebration for Dhammacakatra organisation in LA, which will be on Jun 6 2009. We later realised it was already 3pm when we left Vihara. We were there since 9.30am.

Hubby and I later went to Walmart to get my toiletries supply, we ate left over stuff that Hubby cooked for me on Saturday morning (thank you, my love), and ended the night by watching a good DVD movie.

On Sunday itself, we went to Tzu Chi HQ at San Dimas to join their Vesak Day celebration. Oh boy..the place is so near home (only 15mins) and it's up on the mountain and HUGE. I was so amazed at all the volunteers, who are willing to help out at any area of work.

Tzu Chi is basically one of the very famous Buddhist Organization that was founded by Master Cheng Yen (a lady monk) in Taiwan with the help of 5 housewives that set aside 50cents of their grocery money to help others, back in 1960s. It now has over 2.5million members/volunteers to help the organization all over the world.

It's a really amazing organisation and I'm really touched by their sincerity in helping others, no matter how big or small the help is, they are jst so sincere. I hope I could help out too one day.

Tzu Chi basically focus on reaching out...helping other people with sincerity. When there's disaster happening somewhere, e.g. earthquake in China, they'd personally go over there and bring helps. Like food, shelter, medicine, books, money...they'd bring all those to the place, hand to them personally, not through middle person/organisation.
Coz they want to make sure the helps really reach the needy people. You know how sometimes those 'middle organisation' cheat other people money mahh...

Before went to Tzu Chi, I often just heard about them from other people and I thought "what's the biggie about them?"...but now after witnessing it myself..I must say I was totally wrong and they are REALLY great! I would really love to get involve in their volunteering work one day.....

Talking about misconception...I, too, had that recently again. Our Indonesia Buddhist Organisation (Dhammacakatra) had just created a Dhamma Discussion Group, last year, lead by one of our friend. When it first started, I told hubby why would I join the discussion to only listen to the host telling me what Dhamma is? He is just a normal lay people just like me, he's not a Bhante (monk) at all.

But one day, I decided to join the discussion to see what are they all about. Once I joined the discussion, I realised how wrong I was. This Dhamma Discussion is not about listening to 1 person talk/tell me about Dhamma. But it's about DISCUSSION itself.

We'd talk about 1 topic and we'd discuss about it,sometimes more than 1 topic. Everyone can chip in their input, everyone can listen to it. If you don't agree with it, you can tell other people your opinion. But there's no force here. No one is forced to accept other person's opinion about that topic.

You are there to listen and discuss and share your opinion and feeling about Dhamma. If you are still confuse, don't agree, you can go back home, read more about it from Dhamma Book or even ask a monk. But remember, even the monk may not always be right about everything.

Just like what Buddha has taught "don't just believe me (your teacher/monk) blindly for what I say. You should listen to it, digest it, think for yourself, rationalise it, and prove it for yourself. If you agree with it, then you believe it. If not, you should find it yourself"

In short, we shouldn't just TRUST other people, even the monk, just because they said so. You should Come and prove it yourself. EHIPASIKO (pali word).

Another good thing about this Dhamma Discussion is that we could share our daily life to our friends and this will make all of us closer and stronger as a team/organisation. I think it's a very healthy thing to do and have, rather than just hang out at friend's house and do nothing, or to just gossip about other people.

Remember, Buddha also said "idle chatting (gossip) is consider a bad karma", that's one of the 10 sila that we should abide to. So I've made a promise to myself not to do anymore idle chatting/gossip with other people. I know it's hard to do, but I will try my best to avoid it. Besides, I can always count on my hubby to remind me when I slip away
Besides, I don't want to create any more of Bad Karma. Cultivating Good Karma is my aim ^^