So here we are at the end of all things (well, just the end of 2009, really).
Yesterday, I watched Avatar, and in short, it is a fantastic movie, and the best I've seen this year, and the best in a while. Many people would have seen it and I don't suppose I have to write much about it. It's very stylish, but it is also strong on substance and message.
When I returned home, I read The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy in practically one sitting. I only took my bath after finishing the book. It's a slim volume, just over a hundred pages, but it's a very powerful story. In short, the book is about the life of Ivan Ilyich and the process that he goes through as he lies dying from a mystery illness.
He is forced to take a cold, hard look at the life and relationships that he has formed, at the status in society that he has achieved, and whether or not his life was worth living.
Both Avatar and The Death of Ivan Ilyich confront us with the issue of what is important in life, and about how we should live our life and face our deaths. Ultimately, we can only die the way we have lived. And when we die, we die alone (physically). We came into the world alone, and we will leave it on our own as well.
Will we die having been a slave to money, power, position and the ephemeral things in life? Or will we leave behind wonderful memories, beautiful relationships and made this world a little better than when we came?
May all of you have a happy, fruitful and hopeful 2010.
Last weekend, while I was in Singapore, a couple of close friends and I managed to check out the AWESOME Body Worlds and The Cycle of Life exhibition at the Singapore Science Centre. The original Body Worlds exhibition is the brainchild of Dr. Gunther von Hagen, a scientist who invented the process of plastination. This technique halts the further decaying of animal tissue, and allows the parts to be flexed into various position.
You can see selected images of the exhibition from the images gallery tab from the website. Through this exhibition, we can see the amazing functions of the human body. In addition, the Cycle of Life, which is an addendum to the Body Worlds exhibition, shows in great detail how human life is formed, right from conception to birth.
You can also see videos related to plastination on Youtube, an example of which is shown here (from The Discovery Channel):
In different parts of the world, the original Body Worlds exhibition is shown with a different sub-exhibition. In Philadelphia in the USA, it's Body Worlds and the Brain, while it's Body Worlds and the Story of the Heart at the Ontario Science Centre in Canada. In other parts of the world, the original Body Worlds exhibition is still on show. When will this awesome show come to Malaysia.
This exhibition in Singapore, other than humans in "action", also featured the plastinated bodies of selected animals. The most awesome exhibit, I guess, will be that of the full body of a giraffe. A giraffe! Standing tall and erect, long after it has died. Visiting that exhibition really made my day, despite the SGD20 admission (just add another SGD1 to visit the Science Centre as well). Well worth the fee!
It is a great educational opportunity for everyone, especially children. For me, the greatest lesson I learnt from the exhibition is how precious life really is. A quote from Swiss philosopher Henri Frederic Amiel that says, To know how to grow old is the masterwork of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living." was displayed in the exhibition.
Yes, to grow old well and to live life without regrets is indeed a difficult and noble undertaking. In the goshoThe Gift of Rice, Nichiren Daishonin writes, "Life is the foremost of all treasures. It is expounded that even the treasures of the entire major world system cannot equal the value of one’s body and life. Even the treasures that fill the major world system are no substitute for life." (WND, 1125)
2009 is ending, and 2010 will soon be upon us. What kind of life do we want to lead in the coming new year, and for the rest of our lives? I had a great early Christmas with dearest friends last weekend in Singapore, and I hope that our friendship will last eternally. Indeed, eternal friendship is indeed one of life's greatest gifts.
The Body Worlds exhibition in Singapore will be on until March 2010.
I am currently reading The Road, Cormac McCarthy's latest novel (first published in 2006). Simply put, it is the best fiction I've read in the last few years.
It's about a father and son's journey through an extremely bleak post-apocalyptic America, where a catastrophe has destroyed nearly all life, and where its remnants are reduced to cannibalistic savagery. The father and son are making their way south along a particular road, presumably a former interstate road. Along the way, they meet with various atrocities, including a person who is kept alive while his limbs are cut off bit by bit to feed other people.
Father and son are "each the other's world entire." McCarthy's prose is such that you can feel the bleakness and hopelessness that he describes. You can feel the black rain beating down on you and chill your bones right down to the marrow, you can feel yourself trudging through the ash-covered snow, your boots sinking in the ground and wetting your feet.
About the warmest things in the book (so far) are the sparse conversation between father and son, never more than a few lines at a time, often terse, and sometimes filled with anger and despair. By not using the usual punctuation (he does not use quotation marks for the dialogues, and eschews apostrophes; doesn't becomes doesnt), he makes the prose seem even more stark and realistic.
The Road won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and the 2006 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. It's been adapted into a movie starring Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Duvall and Charlize Theron. It was released in the USA last month. There is buzz it could be an Oscar contender.
The official trailer for the movie can be viewed on Youtube (embedding disabled by request).
Sigh...what am I gonna do when I finish reading the book?
The United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 (or COP-15) will begin today, and end on 18 December, in Copenhagen, Denmark. This conference is seen to be the way to open a new path towards tackling climate change as the first commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol draws to a close in 2012 (wasn't the world supposed to end in 2012?). Top world leaders will be attending the summit, including US President Barack Obama, who has changed his schedule to time his arrival with the last day of the conference, in order to provide more punch to the commitments expected to be made.
What can we expect from this conference? Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) journalism student Gan Pei Ling wrote an excellent article about this event here. The Kyoto Protocol was blighted by the refusal of some powerful nations notably the US to ratify the treaty. However, more and more countries and people are seeing global warming and climate change as a real threat to human survival, and have pledged to step up efforts towards environmental protection on the road to Copenhagen.
COP-15 will prove to be a turning point in human history, for good or otherwise. In Fighting Climate Change, UN Secretary-General ban Ki Moon warned that "Yet, in the longer run, no one-rich or poor-can remain immune from the dangers brought by climate change." In his 2009 Peace Proposal, Soka Gakkai International (SGI) President Daisaku Ikeda wrote, "Global warming is having profound impacts on ecosystems everywhere. In addition to causing meteorological disasters, it has the potential to aggravate armed conflicts and the problems of poverty and hunger. It epitomizes the twenty-first-century crisis of human civilization...Climate change is both an ongoing multidimensional crisis and a threat to the future of
humankind, in that it burdens future generations with immense challenges of dire consequence." (p. 10)
SGI President Ikeda called for humanitarian competition to be at the heart of efforts to solve the environmental impasse that we are in. We must realise that it is not only up to the Presidents and Prime Ministers to solve this pressing issue, but ordinary citizens like us must play an important role.
The state of the environment is a mirror of our lives as human beings. A lasting solution towards the environmental crisis can only be found if we, as Nichiren Daishonin wrote, "quickly reform the tenets that you hold in your heart" (Writings of Nichiren Daishoni, p. 25). Mankind is racing towards the precipice of destruction as we have worshipped the wrong tenets. We have forgotten that the environment is a gift to humanity, to be cared for, to be cherished and to be loved, not to be raped and plundered as we please.
COP-15 is not just the business of the heads of states and governments. The world is not theirs alone. It is our business too.
On Saturday (5/12/2009), I attended a dialogue with the theme "Islam and Democracy in Malaysia", organised by the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies (IAIS) Malaysia and the International Institute Of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC), based in Petaling Jaya, Selangor. The purpose of this dialogue was to gather the views of a wide cross-section of Malaysian society on how to advance issues related to good governance, religious tolerance and the rights of women and minorities. These dialogues are part of a larger effort to advance efforts in promoting democracy and human rights in the areas mentioned above.
Participants were divided into tables of ten each. My table had among others, Rev. Sivin Kit, a pastor at the Bangsar Lutheran church. Sivin keeps his own website here. Earlier this year, Sivin was interviewed by Shanon Shah, whom I also met at the dialogue, and you can read it here. Shanon Shah is an editor with The Nut Graph, a site that I am liking more and more.
Helen Ang from the Centre for Policy Initiatives (CPI) was also at my table. Helen works for Dr. Lim Teck Ghee. Helen also actively contributes for CPI and her articles are archived here. There was Dr. John Gurusamy from the Malaysian Interfaith Network (MIN), whom I have seen at some Soka Gakkai Malaysia (SGM) events. Tuty Ashikin, who volunteers at the Islamic Information & Services Foundation came as an individual and there was Kak Long from Rumah Pengasih.
All of us talked passionately and candidly about the challenges facing Malaysian society where those issues are concerned. There were times when we disagreed, but we did so honourably, and without malice. But we agreed on so much more. The challenges facing our country can only be overcome if Malaysians work together without discriminating on the basis of race and religion. We must no longer see things through coloured lens. Our education system must be reformed to imbue a sense of love for all humanity in our children.
We are like the bed of flowers shown above. Flowers of different species and colours made up that picturesque scene. No single flower can fully express the beauty of the multiculturalism and diversity that can be found in our country, and the world. Only when all the flowers combine, then can we form that picture above.
Buddhism expounds the principle of cherry, plum, peach and damson, whereby each one of us contributes to society through our unique qualities and the role we play in society. We cannot be anyone else. We must acknowledge and appreciate the differences between us, and work together based on our commonalities instead of emphasizing the differences only. The Holy Books and Scriptures talk about the importance of accomodating different viewpoints and living together in harmony.
It was great knowing all those people there, and I came back feeling super refreshed! Our moderator managed the session really well, and really encouraged us to share us views. I really look forward to joining more of such discussions and meeting up with my new friends!
Went to the Big Bad Wolf Sales twice over the last week at Amcorp Mall. The organisers said that this sale had twice as many books as the previous sales in June. I thought that I would have an easy time buying on the first day (26 November), but what a shock I got! There were tons of people there, jostling for space and books.
But it was a good thing. It was good to see Malaysians braving all these for books, instead of lining up simply for cheap sushi and ice-cream. It's good to see that there are so many of my fellow Malaysians who are hungry for books, just like me. I would say that there was not a single bad deal, with prices of books mainly at RM 8-10. It's a steal. Purchased 10 books in total, for just RM 77. I got quite a few gems myself, among them:
1. A Global Guide to Interfaith - a great books on interfaith initiatives around the world.
2. Love, Life, Goethe - a biography of the great German literary master, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
3. AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories of India - a collection of writings on the AIDS phenomenon in India. Features works from some of India's most well-known writers like Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai and Vikram Seth. Foreword by Nobel laureate Amartya Sena and introduction by Bill and Melinda Gates.
4. The Wicked Wit of Benjamin Franklin
5. Beyond Mine and Me by Gurmit Singh
6. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Yayyy!!!)
The Road has been made into a film, and in terms of emotional strength, it will probably be much better than 2012.
Still, I have to watch my spending, and couldn't spend as much time, or buy as much as I would have loved to.
Yesterday, I watched Avatar, and in short, it is a fantastic movie, and the best I've seen this year, and the best in a while. Many people would have seen it and I don't suppose I have to write much about it. It's very stylish, but it is also strong on substance and message.
He is forced to take a cold, hard look at the life and relationships that he has formed, at the status in society that he has achieved, and whether or not his life was worth living.
