Life and Death

On Tuesday, on the way back from a shoot in Shah Alam, I remembered that Sim and See Ming were having a baby in SJMC. I dropped by to see the new boy, Max. When I got to SJMC, it was almost impossible to find parking. I had to park at the housing estate and walk over.

When I got to the operating theatre, everyone was waiting for See Ming to come out. The nurses had already taken Max to the nursery. Since I just came back from a shoot, I brought along my video camera to the hospital. Good thing it was my own camera. Was quite fun shooting the eager parents and the baby.

When I finally got home in the afternoon, my mother had some bad news for me. My uncle in Ipoh who had been sick for a long time finally passed away. I thought, "wow... life and death". I thought about what Buddha said about how this is what life is about. There is birth, and there is death. My mother didn't let me attend the funeral in Ipoh because I was going to get married so that's a big no-no.

So I made a copy of this Buddhist chants on CD for my mother to bring to the funeral. It's in Pali language. It's basically a Buddhist sermon given by Buddha to help us overcome sorrow and lamentation. I had to look the English translation of the chant up in wikipedia.

Some thing I'm pretty morbid because I always talk about death... or may be to practical about it. I believe in the Buddha's teaching... except maybe the part about reincarnation. That's one still a bit strange to me. I believe that we can't avoid death. We just have to accept it. Death will come. The more we accept we are going to die, the easier it is to let go of things. Does that make us lazier? No, I don't think so. Life is about purpose, I believe we have to make things better for the next generation.