The jewel in the lotus, a heart in the ocean sky

This is home, and these are our daily visions. Politicians (and washed out actors) think of a hundred ways to set this country backward, mystifying the electorate. Voters put these very politicians a hundred times into the monkey-house of Representatives, mystifying even the corrupt orangutans themselves. A pot of boiled rice gets stolen in a depressed area while a senator’s daughter shows off to a morning TV show host a hundred-pound lobster her dad will have for lunch. A hundred billboards show public officials side by side with Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio and Apolinario Mabini, when they should in fact be placed alongside Beelzebub. Voting patterns validate the premise that reason is a hundred times dead (and along with it the country’s future). A hundred cars vie for one inch of road space during rush hour, defying physics in the process. A hundred commuters cram themselves into an LRT coach designed for 30 people, defying physics yet again. Hundreds of taxi drivers steal from passengers via verbal "contracts" and science fiction meters. A hundred hours of really depressing reports on TV Patrol from really hyperactive anchormen. A hundred things to rage against, a hundred facts to make us lose faith in humanity, a hundred reasons to feel like catfish in a Chinese restaurant with lovely ovens that never malfunction, a hundred indications that modern life in the modern Babylon we call home is in fact famously rubbish.

Greed. Hunger. Materialism. Callousness. Apathy. Terrorism. Theft. Rape. Murder. War. Violence. Disillusion. Depression. Melancholy. Bombing. Torture. Inhumanity. Kidnapping. Betrayal. Corruption. Racism. Malevolence. Cruelty. Hate. Illusory love. Long, joyless lives. Everything that tells us all is not well in the world. This is home, and these are our daily visions.

Strangely, somebody is saying there is hope for us yet. That suffering can be transcended (not remedied since we are no messiahs but just ordinary blokes trying to dog-paddle our way in the existential waters), but we must first face what ails us. This is according to Abbot Master Jian Long, a Buddhist monk from Taiwan currently holding meditation classes in English at Ocean Sky Chan Monastery in Little Baguio.

Master Long says the diagnosis is that man has become too self-centered, too ensconced in the material world. Here he echoes a thousand years of Buddhist thought: "We must come down from the self, come down from our minds in order to make our minds more stable and be able to deal with our daily affairs. Sometimes we need to look at things from a different perspective, a fresh angle."

Our suffering stems from the usual suspect: our egos. When we meditate, shared Master Long, and prostrate ourselves before the Buddha, "it means we lower our arrogance, we forego the ego."

People he observes are always chasing after something. And whatever that something is, varies. (It may be riches, it may be fame, it may be power, it may be a fancy title, it may be a brand new car, it may be a beautiful woman/handsome man who can turn one’s world into dust, or it may be anything in this unbearably laughable cosmic rat race.)

"We want to earn, earn and earn. But the one thing we fail to do is settle their minds, to realize that what we have is already enough. Automobiles, money, all these are outside stimulation."

Instead of competitiveness, Master Long prescribes compassion. When all are one and one is all, the sage from Led Zeppelin once wrote. Usually a person sees another person as bad and another one as good. On one side stands an evil Bella Flores villain, on another stands a