School, Ghostbusting and Setrap

The day started bright and early with a visit to Sean's school to see his form teacher about his report card. It wasn't as bad as I thought though of course he has tremendous room for improvement. He dropped in his class ranking and came 38/47, which I was a bit disappointed at. GL kindly came to translate since my Mandarin was so rusty. Susan came along too but she was saying that my methods were not working, which of course upset me - Sean being my achilles heel and my feeling that I don't do enough for him already. So when we got home, we talked about Sean's progress (or lack of) and discussed several issues which had been brought up and never resolved. After throwing what we thought of each other's parenting roles at each other, which is the usual case, I said I would be more supportive of her and would try to make joint decisions.

I reminded myself NOT to have expectations. Although I am now wondering whether if I do not have expectations of someone, I then take full responsibility which means I am pretty much a solo act. Hmmm.

Anyway, we decided to check out Sri KDU as an alternative for his schooling.

Ghostbusting
In the afternoon, Susan and I went to Tania's house for a bit of ghostbusting. Funnily enough, I wasn't scared at all, though usually I am! We chatted for awhile then performed the ceremony before Tania's kids came home. The actual process was quite fast. We said 10 rounds of 'Om Dhrum Soha', made some offerings to the spirit, burned Rinpoche's hair and the whole thing was done in about half an hour. We left around 5, dropped by Burgerking for a burger (for me!) because I was ravenous by then. Dropped off the citibank visa payment, then went home to rest before the Setrap teaching at 8.

Dinner
My second cousin, Cheng, called and we agreed to have dinner so we had to leave at 6.45pm to eat near KH. We met his friend Belinda and then took at table for 5. Then Jenny, JJ and Shin joined us, so we changed to a bigger table. Then May Woo and friend joined in and we had a full table! The food was ok - and very reasonably priced.

Setrap Teaching

When we got back to KH, I was told that I was to make Body, Speech and Mind offerings to Rinpoche! I think I broke out in cold sweat! I hadn't done it before and I wasn't sure what to do. Maple gave me a quick run down but I was still nervous as hell.

Then Rinpoche arrived and I made the three prostrations but Rinpoche then took my hand and said there was no need to make those offerings but he would touch foreheads with me. Wow.. I was so happy! No need to worry about not turning around the objects properly and I get a blessing!!

As usual, he gave a Dharma talk about making priorities for the Dharma. Nothing new but a timely reminder to all of us about the inevitability of death, and the inconsequence of our indulgences.

Then he talked about Setrap - plenty of useful info for me for my book though I think I need another session with him to elaborate on certain things. At the end of the teaching, around 12.30 am, he then said that Setrap's practice was not as important as Dharma practice. He said that Setrap supports Dharma practice but he is not the main practice, which is why his chapel is always on the side. So we should focus on Dharma and propitiate Setrap for help to do more Dharma.

After question time, we finally finished around 2am - quite an early night really!