The Dark Dragons

When a nation grows, it grows in all directions: good and bad. And the fastest growing nation is China.

No doubt Chinese has made significant progress in its economy, sports, etc, but its dark sides show an equal amount of progress as well.

Now Chinese accounts for 67% of the web sites in the world that have malicious software, those that try to steal your personal data (details here). These 'malwares' put a small piece of software into your computer (through your internet downloads), collect as much information from your computer, and send back to the site owner. Then the information is used for fraud purposes. People who put malwares in your computer are robbers and thieves - period.

If we translate this virtual crime into real-world one, we can say that 2/3 of the thefts are committed by Chinese - this is something that shames the Chinese. Or put it another way, China has 1/6 of the world population, but 4/6 of the thieves are Chinese.

This is not something that we can take lightly. Just because cyber crimes are not easily punishable, it doesn't mean that it is OK to commit those crimes.

Chinese has one big problem: its absolute admiration of secular values. Everything is measured by how much wealth you have. Everything else is secondary.

Someone, be it government leaders, or NGOs, or concerned social reformers, have to do something to halt this trend. How? I don't have an answer. May be you do.

Holding on and Uniting for Life

Just before I took a sip of water from my glass, I observed that there is a piece of black 'dirt' in my glass, floating on the water. Driven by curiosity, I looked more closely.

It looks like a few dots of dust, not moving. Then I realized that the dots are actually small ants, holding on to each other, keeping each other afloat.

This reminds me of the scene in which people are struggling to survive after their ship sank, where they hold on to each other, hoping that the rescue team will arrive soon.

With the hope that these ants are still alive, I quickly took a piece of tissue paper, and scooped them up. They immediately start crawling on the paper. I then put them into a dry place, and wish them all the best.

The Key to Spiritual Growth - Take Up Some Practices

Religion means different things to different people. Regardless of what religion you believe in, there is one thing in common: you benefit from it the most if you seriously pick up some practices.

A lot of my Muslim friends, who take fasting seriously during Ramadan month, have strong realization about life through the practice of fasting. During fasting, they really feel the spiritual uplifting at the 'gut' level literary - instead of just intellectual understanding about their religion.

With the liberalization of our society, many people take a casual attitude towards their religions, therefore we have many "Christmas" Christians, "Wesak Day" Buddhists, "Thaipusam" Hindus, etc. If we see our religion just as rituals, or seeing them as mere intellectual philosophies, then we won't benefit from them much. Without personal experience at the 'gut' level of our religion, there is no spiritual gain. Therefore, I would say that taking up religious practices is the key to spiritual growth.

But we have to understand that the practices are not the end itself, they are merely path to spiritual growth. I took up a few practices some 20 years ago: vegetarianism. abstain from killing - including mosquitos and ends, and not taking liquor. I knew at that time that these practices themselves will not make me wise, but their side effects will. Such practices demand strong mindfulness of my physical and mental states. When I stop taking meat, I need to be mindful of what I eat. When I stop killing, I need to be mindful of my spontaneous response to events like mosquito bites - which usually is giving the mosquitos a slap and kill them. A stronger mindfulness has helped me tremendously in my life for the past many years.

Other people who took on practices like daily prayer, meditation, long term commitment to charity and disaster relief works, chanting, celibacy, etc, usually has a lot of great personal experiences to share.

You may ask: is giving donation a good practice? My view is that it is definitely a good practice. Just that we need to do it regular enough and do it with compassion rather than with intention of getting name and fame. Practices are not one-off action, but a repeated and conscious and habitual action.

So, the key to spiritual growth is taking up serious religious practices.