Buddhism & Democracy

"For the Dalai Lama, democracy was the rare, happy place where Buddhist principles and real-world political systems converged. Nothing could speak better to his sense that each of us has a power in ourselves and an equal right to put forward his opinion and then be challenged in turn. Nothing could better represent his idea of independent choices within an interdependent network, each person thinking of his role in the larger whole, and debating giving everyone a say. For many Tibetans, though, especially in exile, what democracy really meant was giving up the very system and line of power that had held them up in Tibet and was all they had to cling to now. 

During only his fourth year in exile, the Dalai Lama had drawn up a new constitution, both for exiled Tibet and for Tibet once it was free, taking care to write in a clause that allowed for his own impeachment. His Cabinet - almost inevitably - had taken it out, and he, in a rare exercise of executive power, had put it in again. 

More recently, in 1996, he had held a referendum, so that his exiled people could choose what form of government they would like to see. No doubt reluctantly, and perhaps in deference to others' wishes, he had added one final option - that power be left in the hands of the Dalai Lama. Almost inevitably again, the majority of Tibetans chose that the Dalai Lama be in charge of everything and, in honouring the principle of democracy, he was obliged to accept a nondemocratic system."  

The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Pico Iyer

A little more, a longer time

"Still his father said nothing, his eyes fixed on the outdoor scene like a soldier on guard duty, determined not to miss the next signal flare sent up by the savage tribe on the distant hill. Tengo tried looking out along his father's line of vision but found nothing resembling a flare. The only things out there were the pine trees tinted with the coming sunset." 

1Q84, Haruki Murakami, p. 424

A few pages of Murakami a day makes me rather contented as a reader. I am quite liking the fact that this is a thick book with a long, if bizzare (as always), story that will take me a while to finish, such that I am able to always look forward to new developments in the plot, a few pages each time. It's a bit like how sometimes I wish a bus journey will not end so quickly; that the route is longer so that the pleasure of enjoying the cozy journey will be prolonged and not terminate so soon.

Transcendent October

"We kiss and kiss, but transcend nothing, 
escape nothing, for the following night 
I shall be back at our first domain, wrecked 
and salt-sodden with the first man, on the night 
you skipped town forever. By the fourth dawn, 
the sky will have bathed the glum off the streets
while you and I will be writing across cities 
and oceans, dreaming of eternal sunshine and 
a golden city where all our debts will be paid."

October, Laksmi Pamuntjak, QLRS Vol. 11 No. 1 Jan 2012

Time

"We live in time - it holds us and moulds us -  but I've never felt I understood it very well. And I'm not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing - until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return." 

- The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes

the way, the truth, the life

"The Gospels, revealingly, tell us little of Jesus's spiritual formation and concentrate mostly on his words and actions. The Buddha story, by comparison, places most of its emphasis on how Sidhartha came to enlightenment - the process (which anyone can follow, even today, in principle) - while the particular details of his subsequent teachings and wanderings are often barely mentioned. Even non-Christians may know some of Jesus's words, while typical Buddhists may know hardly any of Buddha's specific discourses. Buddha is a precedent more than a prophet; and where Jesus came to earth as the way, the truth, and the life, the Buddha came to suggest that the way is up to us, the "truth" is often impermanent, and the light comes and goes, comes and goes, until we have found something changeless within." - p.101

The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Pico Iyer

the here and the now

"Buddhism, more than any philosophy I am aware of, has no interest in "dreamlands," or in the places in our head that stand in the way of our engagement with what is happening right now; the Buddha, after all, took his very name and meaning from the sense of being wide-awake in the middle of confusion and ignorance. The philosophy that arose out of his teaching affirms no absolute paradise of the kind hymned in Christian or Islamic texts; for those in the Dalai Lama's tradition, Nirvana itself is just a way station, a state of mind, really, that the true bodhisattva sees not as an endpoint but a viewpoint, to carry back with him into the clamour of the world." 

The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Pico Iyer, p. 40

hypnotic rain

"Maybe it was an illusion, i thought. I stood there a long time, gazing at the rainswept streets. Once again I was a twelve-year-old boy staring for hours at the rain. Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body falling lose, shaking free the world's reality. Rain has the power to hypnotize.

"But this had been no mirage. When I went back into the bar, a glass and an ashtray remained where she had been. A couple of lightly crushed cigarette butts lay in the ashtray, a faint trace of lipstick on each. I sat down and closed my eyes. Echoes of music faded away, leaving me alone. In what gentle darkness, the rain continued to fall without a sound."

South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami

All that remains is a desert

"I love the process of starting from scratch, creating something, seeing it through till it was absolutely perfect. It was my bar, my own little world. Could you find this kind of happiness proofreading school textbooks? No way." - p.61

"Our world's exactly the same. Rain falls and the flowers bloom. No rain, they wither up. Bugs are eaten by lizards, lizards are eaten by bird. But in the end everyone of them dies. They die and dry up. One generation dies and the next one takes over. That's how it goes. Lots of different ways to live. And lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a bit of a difference. All that remains is a desert. 

When I left the bar just before dawn, a light rain was falling on the main street in Aoyama. I was exhausted. Soundlessly, the rain soaked the rows of tall buildings, standing there like so many gravestones. I left my car in the bar's parking lot and walked home. On the way, I sat down on a handrail and watched a large crow that was cawing from the top of some traffic lights. The four a.m. streets looked shabby and filthy. The shadow of decay and disintegration lurked everywhere, and I was part of it. Like a shadow burned into a wall." - p.71

South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami

Emptiness

"So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us - that's snatched right out of our hands - even if we are left completely changed people with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness."

- Sputnik Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami

a foreigner's sense of wonder

"I walk across the park, on a narrow path at its edge, in the autumn sunlight, and feel a foreigner's sense of wonder: the convenience stores placed along the small, shiny road, as if they were just more vending machines; the two-story houses, tidily guarded by their walls, lined up along the narrow streets like salarymen in their business suits waiting in a receiving line for the future. Every trace of the old expunged as efficiently as once the trees and the rice paddies were, here in this place where hope means the West, and tomorrow."

- Grandmothers in Sun After Dark: Flights into the Foreign by Pico Iyer

Norwegian Wood

I was tempted to buy the latest paperback edition of Norwegian Wood despite having already read it and even owned a copy. This edition has the two Japanese leads from the movie adaption of the novel fronting the cover. It's taken from a scene where the characters Naoka and Watanabe stood in the midst of the vast wintry mountains and held each other.

I am usually not enamoured of book covers featuring movie stills. But I took an immediate liking to this one when I first saw it in the stores. Somehow, the soulful looks of the two actors struck a chord with me: they convey a melancholy appeal that is at once both fragile and captivating - very much capturing the emotional appeal of the characters in the famous Murakami novel.

Two weeks ago, I was extended a free movie pass to catch the preview of Norwegian Wood with two other friends. Of course, no screen adaptation is ever going to do justice to Murakami's work, whose beauty lies in the poetry of his words (albeit translated). I enjoyed reading Norwegian Wood not because it has an amazing plot, but because I found resonance with the wistful melancholy thoughts and the acute sense of loss and emotional searching that the characters drift through.

I knew the movie was never going to make the same level of connection, but it would be unfair to hold it to the same standard in the first place. As with any movie adaptations, it's the literary work that precedes the film. Nonetheless, I thought it was an admirable effort by Director Tran Anh Hung to try and capture the essence of the novel and its emotional depth. The cinematography was lovely, as was the setting of the period when student protests were prevalent. I enjoyed the stunning mountainous landscapes, and the details of the places and costumes which were ever so briefly touched on to evoke a subtle appeal. Unfortunately though, the music and pacing proved rather sombre and heavy, and that cast a depressing shadow over the movie. For this reason, I told my friends that this movie would be better appreciated if you had first read the book.

Meanwhile, I shall ponder about buying the book: perhaps not now but in the future when I feel it's time for a second reading.

take our cue from...

Take our cue from time, the master. Learn to weigh
everything equally: hope and grief, two sides
to a partner we should love unconditionally.

Learn to love a clean kitchen, as well as the ants
around the bin like the spoor of something
left unsaid, something important.

... ...

To love the smell of rain, the cold rain on our faces.

Love the thunder and the sleep it cracks open.

What we have now. And what will come after.

- extracted from Take Our Cue from Time by Cyril Wong

Read the full poem here: Take our Cue from Time

cosy yellow lights

"When we left the restaurant, the sky was a brilliant splash of colours. The kind of air that felt like if you breathed it in, your lungs would be dyed the same shade of blue. Tiny stars begain to twinkle. Barely able to wait for the long summer day to be over, the locals were out for an after-dinner stroll around the harbour. Families, couples, groups of friends. The gentle scent of the tide at the end of the day enveloped the streets. Miu and I walked through the town. The right side of the street was lined with shops, small hotels, and restaurants with tables set up on the pavement. Cosy yellow lights shone at small, wooden-shuttered windows, and Greek music filtered down from a radio. On the left side the sea spread out, dark waves placidly breaking on the wharves."

"As we made our way up, the lights of the harbour became smaller and further away. All the activities of the people who'd been right beside me were absorbed into that anonymous line of lights. It was an impressive sight, something I wanted to cut out with scissors and pin to the wall of my memory."

- Sputnik Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami

This is as I imagined what the atmosphere would be like if I am travelling during dusk in a small foreign town. The lights and music, the unhurried people and quaint, little shops: charming details of an unknown foreign town.

reclaiming romance

"At a time when opportunism is everything, when hope seems lost, when everything boils down to a cynical business deal, we must find the courage to dream. To reclaim romance. The romance of believing in justice, in freedom, and in dignity. For everybody. We have to make common cause, and to do this we need to understand how this big old machine works - who it works for and who it works against. Who pays, who profits."

- 'How Deep Shall We Dig', Listening to Grasshopers: Field Notes on Democracy, Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things is a profoundly stirring novel. She writes with a piercing sharpness and a strong sense of conviction. Because of that book, I was in awe and deeply fond of her writing. That led me to buying her latest book which is a compilation of her non-fiction writing. In the case of this book, the essays reflect her unflinching social and political beliefs.

The exceptional Vagrants

I finished reading The Vagrants by Li Yiyun about two weeks ago. It was one of those excellent storybooks that kept me turning the pages once I get started on it. I remembered staying up late one night just to finish the last few pages even though the end turned out to be more than a few pages.

The novel is written in the third-person and the language style is simple and straightforward. Yet it is this simplicity and third-person narrative that betrays an understated poignancy and suppressed tension that holds the plot tightly.

The story examines the impulses of and psychological effects on people living under communism in the 1970s. Through a singular event - the execution of a young woman who had lost faith in communism - the writer cast light on a host of particular characters and general townfolks: their attitudes under a communist regime; the way they live and perceive their lives and other people; and the forces that shape their private lives. As you read the novel, you feel almost furtively let in into a town hanging on suspense and permeated with unuttered fear.

In particular, I admire the writer's way of telling the story at times through the lenses of other characters or through narrating multiple events simultaneously. Her perceptiveness and adroit craft is demonstrated when she writes about separate but related events that are taking place at the same time, using this to great effect in heightening certain truths or episodes.

I've taken the liberty to extract the following paragraphs which I thought powerfully conveyed a significant episode. This was achieved mainly through the eyes and minds of the seemingly random and important people that appear in her novel.

"Disturbed too were other souls. A female prison guard, off duty for the next two days, claiming she had a minor cold, woke up from a fitful dream and gasped for air; her husband, half-asleep, asked her if she felt unwell. A ridiculous nightmare, she answered, knowing enough not to tell him that she had fainted at work earlier that morning, when the warden had ordered that Gu Shan's vocal cords be severed so that she could not shout counterrevolutionary slogans at the last minute. The woman had been among the four guards assigned to pin the prisoner down for the procedure, but it had not gone as smoothly as promised by the warden and the doctor; the prisoner had struggled with a vehemence that one would not have imagined could come from her skinny body, and the female guard, whose nerve was unusually up to her work, had fallen backward and bumped her head hard on the floor before the doctor finally finished the operation.

Unable to sleep, in another house, was an old orderly for the police station. I tell you, he said to his wife, who answered that she did not want to be reminded for another time about the bucket of blood he had washed off the police jeep that had transferred the prisoner. But it was unusual, he said; I tell you, it was a horrible thing, to clean up so much blood. What did they do to her? Why couldn't they wait until they got her onto the island to finish her off? He threw one question after another at his wife, who was no longer listening. He was getting old, after waiting for answers that his wife would not give him, the man thought sadly; he had fought in the war against the Japanese when he was a boy and he had seen plenty of bodies, but now he could not sleep because of a bucket of blood from a woman who was no longer alive. The story would make his old platoon friends laugh at the next reunion, the old man thought, and then he realised that he was the last one remaining who had not reported to the other side.

She had to die anyway, one of the two surgeons who had operated on Gu Shan told himself one more time - so it didn't matter, in the end, that they had changed the protocol because the patient did not believe in receiving something from a corpse and insisted that the prisoner be kept alive when the kidneys were removed. This was not the most challenging operation for him, but it would be the one to make him the chair of the surgery department, and put his wife into the position of the head nurse in internal medicine, though she was still unaware of her promotion and would be overjoyed when she found out about it. It would also help their twin daughters, fourteen and a half and blossoming into a pair of young beauties, to get a recommendation from the city government so that they could go to an elite hight school in the provincial capital. The man thought about his wife and his daughters - they were fast asleep in their innocent dreams, unplagued by death and blood; the burden was on his shoulders, the man of the household, and he found it hard not to ponder the day when he could no longer shelter them, the two daughters especially, from the ugliness of a world that they were in love with now, rosebudlike girls that they were. What then? he wondered, painfully aware of his limitations as a man trapped between practicality and conscience. In the end, he had to make himself believe that he had chosen the best for his family. The long-needed sleep rolled over him like a tide and washed him offshore.

In an army hospital a hundred miles away, medicine dripped into an old man's vein. He was surrounded by people congratulating themselves on the success of the transplant operation. And in Muddy River, in a hospital populated by many more patients and fewer doctors and nurses, sat Mrs Gu, who was dozing off at the drip-drip of the saline solution into her husband's arm. Now and then she woke up and watched her husband's face, shrunken and suddenly too old for her to recognize."

the CATCHER in the TRAIN

"Sorry...I can't help but notice you are reading Catcher in the Rye."

My concentration in reading was suddenly cut off by a youthful female voice from my side. I looked up and was greeted by the face of a young lady. She looks like she's around 20 years old. She spoke rather apologetically, as though conscious of and worried that her unexpected interruption would be met with rebuke and unfriendliness.

Having got my attention now, she continued in her timid but firm voice: "Did you get it from a local bookstore somewhere?"

I was a little thrown off the course but was able to grasp her question and give a reply.

"Oh, i got it from Kino."

And that was it. She promptly thanked me before turning to the other side. As quickly as she had stunned me with the question, she had disappeared back to her original position, probably embarrassed at having accosted a complete stranger in the train. I couldn't concentrate after that and was started to make some speculations.

Given the very English way that she spoke and her interest in a rather literary piece of work at her young age, I guessed she is probably a literature student. Yet I remained rather half convinced because I thought a literature student must surely be acquainted with local bookstores than to ask that question. She could even have asked her fellow lit friends or borrowed the book from the school library.

I reckoned she must have been looking for the book for a long time but to no avail. If not, what could have made her summon the courage to interrupt a stranger standing in the train? Her body was completely slanted to the side after she thanked me, such that there's no way we could have made any further eye contact. Two stations later, she alighted the train, and I quickly forgot about the incident and returned to my book.

She was clearly interested in the book only, not the reader.



I bought The Catcher in the Rye only a week ago. It's a classic and very entertaining read. Embarrassingly, it was the writer's recent death that provided the catalyst for me to start reading it. Like a few other books, Catcher in the Rye has always been around and featured in the bookstores as one of those literary classics. I tend to avoid these mass-publicised books, preferring to start on them later.

Then came news of the writer's passing on. I read the papers and for the first time got acquainted with the writer and the novel that brought him fame. I knew I had to read the book and would enjoy it. I was proven right. Reading the novel, I found myself smiling, if not laughing, often, as though I am reading part of myself in some of the situations described. It's quite a gem really. I only regret that I didn't get started on it earlier.

Excerpt:

"Anyway, it took me about half hour to find out where they all worked and all in Seattle. They all worked in the same insurance office. I asked them if they liked it, but do you think you could get an intelligent answer out of those three dopes? I thought the two ugly ones, Marty and Laverne, were sisters, but they got very insulted when I asked them. You could tell neither one of them wanted to look like the other one, and you couldn't blame them, but it was very amusing anyway.

"I danced with them all - the whole three of them - one at a time. The one ugly one, Laverne, wasn't too bad a dancer, but the other one, old Marty, was murder. Old Marty was like dragging the Statue of Liberty around the floor. The only way I could even half enjoy myself dragging her around was if I amused myself a little. So I told her I just saw Gary Cooper, the movie star, on the other side of the floor.

"Where?" she asked me - excited as hell. "Where?"

"Aw, you just missed him. He just went out. Why didn't you look when I told you?"

Incredible India

"The burly Maulana, whose beard reached down almost to his rotund belly, then asked if I wanted some refreshment. I said I would like a Nescafe, which is the only kind of coffee usually available in northern India outside of the cities. 'No, no,' he said sternly. 'We have issued a fatwa forbidding the faithful from buying any American or British products.' I tried in vain to convince them that Nescafe is owned by Nestle, which is a Swiss company, but they had either never heard of Switzerland or could not see the difference. No, they said, wagging their fingers, as if they had caught me pulling a fast one, Nescafe is Angrezi. (In much of India the word Angrezi - English - simply means foreign or western.) Then something ocurred to the Maulana, who was also a member of the committee that issues Deobandi fatwas. 'I have thought of a legitimate loophole,' he announced with a smile. 'The fatwa only applies to products bought after 11 September. Does anyone here possess Nescafe that is older?' A student raised his hand. The mildewed sachet of instant coffee that he fetched from his room certainly pre-dated 9/11. It was one of the most satisfying coffees I have had."

- In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India by Edward Luce

If you are interestd in India, politics or asian studies, or if you have always been fascinated or puzzled by India, then you should almost certainly read Edward Luce's In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Wise of Modern India. Luce provides a highly informative and thoughtful analysis of India in this book, which is peppered with anecdotes and careful selection of data. He writes lucidly and in a simple style. The result is a thoroughly informative piece of work that is also fun to read. All too often, books of this genre fall into the trap of either boring the reader with jargon and leaden analysis or with unexciting narratives. Not this book, however. I was never bored at any point of time reading it.

One reason why the book is such a delight has to be the subject matter itself - India. The largest democracy in the world is abound with contradictions and unique circumstances borne out of its history, its sheer diversity and the world view of Indians of their place in this world and in the larger Indian society. There are plenty of interesting facts revealed. After learning about them, you may concur with its tourism tagline 'Incredible India' with a renewed conviction.

The second reason has more to do with the writer and his craft. Luce is the Washington Bureau Chief of the Financial Times. Between 2001 and 2005 he was FT's South Asia bureau chief based in New Delhi. He therefore writes with some authority on the topic of India. More pertinently in my opinion, his journalistic background gives his writing much verve. His strength lies in his accessible writing and concise descriptions, which is a hallmark characteristic of a seasoned journalist. Devoid of dry, technical analyses, his is a book that can be enjoyed by anyone who is keen to have a broad fundamental understanding of India. It is for the same reason that I enjoy reading such type of non-fiction writing on politics and current affairs, written by those with a journalistic mind and hands-on insights. Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem comes to mind.

I happen to have both books, and I'm pretty sure I will be reading Edward Luce's book again. Here's another extract taken from the book:

"Quite by chance, my tour of Film City coincided with the presence of Amitabh Bachchan, India’s most revered film star, whose sixty-second birthday had just been celebrated in dozens of newspaper supplements. I was halfway through an interview with Sanjeevanee Kutty, the civil servant in charge of Film City, when her assistant rushed in. ‘Mr Bachchan is ready now,’ said the assistant. ‘Ready for what?’ I enquired. ‘Ready for his interview with you.’ This qualified as one of Bollywood’s more improbable little twists. Having no idea that Bachchan was in the vicinity, I had not requested an interview. Had I done so, it would have taken weeks of faxes and conversations with public relations agencies to secure even the ghost of a chance. Led by Kutty in her official white Ambassador, we piled into a cavalcade of cars and rushed to the set. Like most of Bachchan’s shoots, it was a commercial. Whenever you are in India, the chances are that if you close your eyes and throw a dart it will land on a billboard bearing Barchchan’s distinguished grey-bearded visage. Whether it is for Pepsi-Cola, Cadbury’s chocolate, Parker pens of Maruti cars, no amount of exposure seems to dilute his brand equity. On this occasion, he was staring in an advertisement for Dabur, a health-food chain."

a rare treat

I made an unexpected but pleasant discovery on Sunday. I chanced upon a quiet corner in the dazzling Ion mall, that current crème de la crème shopping haven that still oozes sass and luxurious appeal even though it's opened for some time already.

It is a small café that is hidden away at an inconspicuous location inside the tastefully styled bookstore Prologue. I have never visited the bookstore since it opened for business even though I very much wanted to. This trip was, however, a coincidental stopover: I was in town to run some errands and decided on a whim to drop by to check out if it sells any diary planners for 2010 (this was already 3 days into the new year).

I was looking for the stationery section when the floor space suddenly opens up to a more spacious area that is occupied by the snazzy cafe. The small space was clean and sleek in its design. Most important, it is devoid of the obnoxious crowds that have descended upon the other cafes in the lower floors of the popular mall. Dinner was not long away but it didn't take long for me to decide that I shall finish my errands quickly and visit the cafe.

short stories delight

It's not often that I finished reading a book and decided that I want to own a copy myself. Wena Poon's stories and her writing have a sparkle that charms and makes you smile a subtle relish smile that betrays delight.

My friends once remarked that they can't read short stories because they feel somewhat shortchanged or unsatisfied at the end, as compared to reading a novel which has a full, unfolding plot that requires time to ingest.

To that thought, Irene has a sound and genuine response: 'You can't read a short story like you do a novel.' She should know better, for she teaches literature.

"Edward marvelled again at the random connectivity of life, the enormous consequences of tiny blips of electronic mail pulsing, faster than the speed of light, through the wide world. For the past few weeks he had felt, intermittently, the terror of the void. And yet the void had sent him back something: her smell, her flesh. Out of eternity he had redeemed an hour; out of the unknown he had experienced a sudden consummation in which for a few seconds the universe contracted into the smallest possible ball of anguished joy, before expanding again and petering out into nonthingness. The void, consequently, became a little less terrifying. Even as he thought so, he found it impossible to tell her. He had already decided, earlier in the evening, that she had picked him up at random, that he was being used, perhaps even objectified. But now he didn’t mind. He smiled in the darkness. “You know what you are? You are a sex tourist.”"

"“Oh, God.” Buried in her words was a footnote about his love life. But she always stopped right there. She had a light touch with her boys. She believed that if she did not edit their existence, they would grow up sensible."

-The Proper Care of Foxes, Wena Poon

Young

"Yes. This was a young man only recently cast out into the adult world, which is full of uncertainties. However much he ran after girls, above all he was seeking a comforting, boundless, redeeming embrace, which would save him from the horrifying relativity of the freshly discovered world."

- Symposium, Laughable Loves