Anatta - A shockingly little known but Important Buddhist Concept

Speaking to many lay followers of Buddhism, I am quite shocked to find that hardly anyone is aware of the teachings of Anatta, the concept of No Soul. Yes, no soul.....the impact is that this very concept will nullify the rationale of the ritualistic practices for the dead commonly practiced by contemporary lay Buddhists. So it is crucial to know about it.

You can read more from this free ebook (http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/noinnercore.pdf) but here are some extracts to start with:

• "Buddhism teaches that there is no such thing as a soul or true, permanent self."
•  "Buddha denied the àtman theory. According to Buddha, there is nothing we can call an inner core which is eternal and blissful. There is also nothing we can call upon to exercise authority over the nature of things."
• “The controversy over the anattà doctrine seems to be based on a deep fear of the denial of the existence of a soul. People are often very attached to their lives, so they like to believe that there exists something everlasting, eternal, and permanent inside them. When someone comes along and tells them that there is nothing permanent in them, nothing by which they will continue eternally, such as a soul, they may become frightened. They wonder what will become of them in the future –they have the fear of extinction. Buddha understood this, as we can see in the story of Vacchagotta, who, like many other people, was frightened and confused by the anattà doctrine.”
• “Buddha taught that there are only five aggregates (khandhas): (1) corporeality (material process, or form); (2) feelings; (3) perceptions; (4) mental formations; and (5) consciousness.”
• “We are a compound of five aggregates, and after we analyze and observe them one by one with the deep insight of meditation, we will realize that there remains nothing: no soul, no self, apart from the aggregates. The combination of the five aggregates is what we call a person, a being, a man, or a woman."
• “Buddha teaches that belief in atta is a wrong view which will lead to misery.”

Regards

Alvin Chua

The Truth about the Salt Water Cure

Since today is Li Chun (Start of Spring), there are many talks about curing the annual 5 Yellow Star and the most common fix is to use the salt water cure 安忍水. I remember some years ago seeing a client with one behind her main door, setup by her previous feng shui master to cure the 5 yellow of her house's natal chart. Anyway, the truth is this cure was first invented and recorded in the book Zhai Yun Xin An 宅运新案 written during China's early Republican period and was ACTUALLY meant for curing the 7 Robbery Star during Xuan Kong Period 3 and 4. This was explained in details by Hong Kong master, Chen Xuetao 陈雪涛 in one of his books. The excerpt below:

阴阳眼

I just watched a Hong Kong show (made in 2013) investigating about Yin Yang Eyes, meaning someone who has the ability to see dead people. A man and a lady were invited to the show as special guests as both of them claims to have Yin yang eyes. They were then brought around various parts of Hong Kong to observe the Lunar 7^th Month Ghost Festival celebration and here is what they actually “see”:

It was believed that the Chinese opera shows are normally meant for ghosts in such a month but in reality, both of them did not see any ghost audience watching the opera. Apparently, the ghosts are not interested to watch such performance. Instead, at another area of the celebration venue, there was a mini shrine being setup and Buddhist scriptures were being chanted and it was here that most of the ghosts have gathered. They wanted to listen to the Buddhist prayers and even kneeled down in a row facing the Buddha statue.

At such a celebration, one will find a paper effigy known as the Ghost King, who with his fierce looking presence, is supposed to control the ghosts in the vicinity to prevent them from disturbing the people who came to pray. However, both the clairvoyants were unable to see such an entity, thus most likely a mere folklore.

They also observed that that when people light candles and incense sticks along the streets to commence their prayers and offerings to wandering spirits, the spirits nearby will start to gather close by. However, they will just stand close enough to “enjoy” the smoke from the burning incense and joss papers. (This is similar to what Taiwanese clairvoyant, Sofia, observes as well, see my other post). The spirits will not attempt to take the joss “money” as commonly thought. The TV crew then asked the male clairvoyant, since they like the smell of smoke, are ghosts attracted to smokers? Apparently yes, as he have witnessed several times of spirits approaching people who are smoking.

There was a belief that claims that spirits like to lick the roasted meat that are hung up and displayed at all the stalls that sell such specialty. The male clairvoyant said that it is true that spirits are attracted to roasted meat, but they do not “lick” the meat. Instead, they will bend forward and sniff the meat. Most of the time, they will sniff on meat that have been taken outside of the restaurant / stall, since some owners like to hang their products outside to attract customers. It is seldom that spirits are bold enough to enter a shop to do so. Among all roasted meat, pork is the spirits most preferred choice (I believe they are attracted by the slight burnt smell of anything roasted, just like burning incense. Also, in Pranic Healing, pork are said to have the dirtiest energy and best avoided. Now we know why).

To test this fact, the TV crew bought a pack of roasted pork meat and brought it to a park. They leave it openly and waited, true enough, in a short while, the clairvoyant saw a small male spirit (looked like in his twenties) started to come near the meat. Spotting the TV crew, he moved away but a few seconds later seeing that it is safe, he went back to sniff the packet of roasted pork.

Both of the clairvoyants agreed that they do observed more spirits active during the Ghost month but that does not mean that there are no spirits around at other times. They said that spirits are usually looking like normal people on the streets, just that they appear translucent and has a whitish or grayish hue. The stronger ones will appear greenish while the vicious ones will appear purplish or even red. The spirits are usually expressionless on their face. Those who have died many years ago would be dressed in clothing of their particular era.

In an earlier episode, both of the clairvoyants were brought to an eye specialist and were found not to have any abnormalities in their eyes. Hence, we know that such ability does not originate from the eyes itself.
After that, both of them were being brought to visit a psychiatrist and after some assessment, both were verified as perfectly normal individuals not suffering from any mental illnesses.

Waverly Hills Sanatorium (Most Haunted Place in US)

The Waverly Hills Sanatorium is a hospital located in southwestern Louisville/Jefferson County, Kentucky. It was built in 1910 when the county had an outbreak of tuberculosis. It closed in 1962 when TB was no more a common disease and the place ceased to be important any more. It was subsequently featured in many reality-based ghost hunting shows, including the famous “Ghost Hunters” (one of my personal favourites) and it is now known as probably the most haunted place in United States. According to Wikipedia, “the worst time for deaths was at the end of the 2nd World War when troops were returning from overseas with very advanced tuberculosis cases. Some independent researchers suggest that since 162 people died at Waverly Hills in 1945, the highest total number of deaths possible over 50 years was approximately 8,212”. Today, visitors told of slamming doors, lights in the windows, apparitions, sounds of footsteps as well as a old wheelchair that seems to move about on its own.

It is classified as a Period 4 (Year 1924 – 1944) structure as the first original wooden building in 1910 was eventually replaced with the current concrete structure in 1926.

Do read up more of its ghostly history here: http://www.prairieghosts.com/waverly_tb.html

Here are the flying stars analyses of each part of the building. Note that I took the centre of the main building as my compass point since the L-shaped area is a later expansion from the main building which housed the library, kitchen and morgue:

SW sector (6-2): This area is the patients’ room. The Flying Stars combination here is known for spirit activities. In an old feng shui text, it was mentioned “When the Qian and Kun trigrams come together, the gods and ghosts too will gather”. The number 6 is Qian trigram while 2 is the Kun trigram. The Sitting Star 6 has a bigger influence here but since it is distance timely, it is too weak to bring any positive effect on the patients here.

NW sector (2-6): This is where the main entrance is located and the combination here is also the 2-6 combination known for spirit activities. The Facing Star here is 6 and as mentioned, it has little positive effects due to its distance timeliness.

 East sector (5-3): The Sitting Star 5 is timely while the 3 is a fading energy. Due to the Wood (represented by 3) clashing the Earth energy represented by 5, the effects are inauspicious. 3 represents wind while 5 represents diseases, so together, in the old text, it is mentioned the area will be plagued by an airborne epidemic. Hysteria can also be brought about by the energy.

Externally, there is nothing much except thick forest areas that surround the entire compound, which acted as a means to contain the TB outbreak.

 Regards

Alvin Chua

Palmistry Class with Master Chuan

Although I have picked up palmistry from one of my earlier teachers, my knowledge has not developed much as I hardly do readings for people. Opportunity to expand this field of knowledge only came when I know about Master Chuan from his website almost 2 years ago. Then last year I saw that he conducts palmistry classes under the Institute of Fengshui Bazi. Since it is conducted only once annually, I waited patiently for the day to come.

Master Chuan has had 20 years of palm reading experience, starting way back to his university days. Hence, if you are interested to learn palmistry, there’s no better option than to learn from him in this 1 full day workshop. It is important to note that there are probably less than a handful of palm reading experts in Singapore and even fewer actually teaches their knowledge. So this workshop is really rare. The main advantage of attending a class is that you will get the chance to see and feel the hands of all your classmates. This is an experience that books and videos can never give you.

Another advantage of the class is that any of your questions can straight away be answered by the expert. You save yourself from going through all the resources to find an answer.

Regards

Alvin Chua

Short Life Line doesn't mean short life span!

I worry when people ask me if they will die at a young age because they have a short Life Line on their palm. It is not true as this is not cast in stone, in fact, it only indicates the poor state of health and that can be improved as long as the person concerned makes extra effort to lead a healthy lifestyle. I have to re-emphasize this point many times to the person asking coz normally they are having very bad times and looking at the short and weak Life Line as a justification to end their suffering by doing the unthinkable. 一念天堂，一念地狱。

Regards

Alvin Chua

Book Review: Is Your Marriage Predestined? Written by Master Goh Guan Leong

Haven’t been writing book reviews for a long time but this one is definitely worth a mention. This is one of the best English books on Bazi out there. It is written in a simple to understand style and comes with many diagrams for a very clear explanation of the concepts. Of course, the readers must have a decent understanding of basic bazi as a prerequisite. Once you have this, reading and understanding the concepts in this book becomes a breeze. My favorite part about the book is the countless exercises which are provided with answers. Readers get to test out their knowledge as they go along. The summary of the concepts and the steps of analysis serve well as great cheat sheets. I can assure you that your ability to analyze marriage luck from a bazi will increase tremendously after reading this piece of work. The methods of analyzing a bazi are normally found scattered over many books but Master Goh has done a great job of consolidating them into one text. Despite being a bazi enthusiast who has read widely, I still gained some new knowledge after reading this book. It is highly recommended.

Regards

Alvin Chua

Feng Shui for the ancient Samurai

In the 1983 BBC documentary “The Way of the Warrior”, Sensei Risuke Ōtake, a Master of the Katori Shinto Ryu swordmanship, explained clearly that in ancient times, samurais and warlords placed heavy emphasis on feng shui concepts as part of their considerations when building a house or castle. These are the four criteria when looking for a castle site:

北高山 (High mountain in the North) Back

东流水 (Stream in the East) Left

南田野 (Fields in the South) Front

西大道 (Road in the West) Right

If you are familiar with the four sacred animals (四象 Si4 Xiang4) used in Form Feng shui to represent the four cardinal directions, you will see the close association with it. The four directions are namely Red Sparrow (Front), Black Warrior (combination of a Turtle and Snake) Back, Green Dragon (Left) and White Tiger (Right).

Regards
Alvin Chua

Trip to a Overseas Tianlu Shop

As those who have traveled to this particular Asian country under tour package would know, one item under the guided tour itinerary is to visit a shop selling Tianlu, what we commonly called Pixiu (the ancient creature known to symbolise wealth accumulation) locally. Many of my friends and relatives who came this country before have bought some of these Tianlu statues during their visit to the shop, two of them even spent a few thousand dollars. The shop's sales tactics are very good and the tour agencies will get some commission or something for bringing the tourists there.

Anyway, we sat down and the master went on to explain the 5 elements and the relation with the Chinese name as well as bazi. After explaining the importance of owning a Tianlu to boost our luck and prosperity, he handed over the presentation to another master (this time a lady). She asked us to write down our Chinese names and birth dates and then proceeded to analyse our names one at a time. Nothing really special about my name and my wife's name, since our parents did not consult any name selection master back in those days. I can tell that the master is quite good in name selection as she can know the number of strokes and elements of the Chinese characters almost immediately, at the tips of her fingers. When it came to my daughter's name, she asked: “You have consulted a master for your daughter's name?” No, I replied, pretending not to know anything about Chinese metaphysics. She continued: “But her name is really good, the strokes combination of the character, the elements, etc, are all auspicious. She is very fortunate to have such a name”. Of course, the dad have painstakingly selected the name for her. “Even though you have chosen the name yourselves, surely an expert must have taken a look at it before deciding on it.” I shook my head and assured her this is not the case.

The master then went to analyse our bazi, which she will then recommended some suitable Tianlu to improve our luck by alleviating the imbalance in our bazi. By the way, their products are not cheap. Prices can range from a ten of thousands to a hundred Singapore dollars (the small one to hang on the mobile phone). But to my surprise, she got the favorable and unfavorable elements of all three bazi wrong completely. I cannot imagine how many people have bought a Tianlu here, thinking that it complements their bazi when in the first place, it is not.

To cut the story short, I left without buying anything. The reason I gave them? “Sorry, but I'm a skeptic. I do not believe in such things.” Ironic but true. A great eye opening experience though.

Regards

Alvin Chua