An Amazing weekend (Saturday)

What an amazing weekend. Actually, it's always pretty amazing in Kechara land. Never a dull moment. I woke up early on Saturday morning to send Sean to school for his compulsory orientation camp, then picked up Susan at KL Sentral as we were going to attend Suzan and Simon's wedding blessing by H.E. Tsem Tulku Rinpoche at Kechara House.

Rinpoche gave an absolutely fantastic speech about marriage. He listed the following key ingredients to a successful marriage:

1. Be faithful. We should be faithful because we chose our partners ourselves. In most cases, we chose them freely ourselves. No one forced us to choose this particular partner to have a relationship with or marry. At the beginning of the relationship, there were certain qualities about our partners which we were attracted to. We should always think about these qualities, and especially in difficult times; thinking on these qualities will help us overcome the difficult times.

If we are not faithful, we create mistrust. If we have mistrust in our relationship, it will affect our children.

2. Defend and support our partners. When our partners have difficulties, we should always support them. We should never feel tired and let them feel abandoned or alone. We should be the first to step up and listen to them and support them. Sometimes we cannot solve the problem but just being there will make a big difference to them.

Always let people see the good side of our partners and never talk negatively about our partners to outsiders. Don't air our dirty laundry outside. This really made sense to me - why would we want people to think negatively about our partners - because that would be the effect of our negative talk. After you vent, then you make up with your partner, the impression you leave with the person you bitched to remains. Rinpoche said - instead of saying negative things, say positive things about your partner. Tell people their good qualities. This is good training to see the positive side of partners and people in general.

We should never mentally hurt our partners - never use our body, speech and mind to hurt them and we should never go to sleep with a problem lingering.

3. Improve on the weaknesses in ourselves for our partners. I loved this point too. We shouldn't expect our partners to change for us. WE change for our partners. This turns on its head the usual expectation for our partners to be better people - if only he/she did this... if only he/she didn't do this... why not WE do it :) i love it!

We should always improve ourselves so we can be the best person for our partners. And the best thing is that, usually, our partners will reciprocate.

4. Respect each other's beliefs and culture. Rinpoche said that we all come from different beliefs and cultural backgrounds. Even people in the same family find it difficult to get along, let alone two people from different families and backgrounds. If your partner finds something fulfilling to do, let them do it. If you stop them from doing something they like, it's selfish. Of course it's on the basis that what they want to do is a positive activity, e.g. if they like to play golf everyday and neglect work or family, that is not something to be encouraged! However, if they like to do community service, or pursue spiritual development, we should encourage them and not stop them because we feel neglected. Examine if our motivation is selfish.

5. Share. We should share everything with our partners. Finance, food, whatever we have and we should never take advantage.

6. Keep promises. Whatever we have promised, we should do. This will give confidence to our partners. And if we are unable to fulfil a certain promise, we should sit our partners down to explain why we were unable to do them and perhaps even seek support to be able to do it.

After the blessing ceremony, we had a reception at KH2, catered by Kechara Oasis (of course)! The decor and the reception was all sponsored by Tsem Ladrang. Rinpoche is always so incredibly generous and kind to his students. Rinpoche, through his consistent compassion, integrity and tremendous hard work, has also gained incredible sponsors who understand and support Rinpoche's actions.

Around 4pm, I had to rush off to pick Sean up from school. The traffic jam was terrible and I wondered again whether to get a scooter to take Sean to school. There is no school bus available and I'm torn whether to hire a driver (can't really afford it), hire a taxi (I'm not sure if it's trustworthy) or buy a scooter to take him back and forth. The latter is the least attractive because as I am now working full-time, it is going to be inconvenient to take off in the mid-afternoon to fetch the monster.

Anyway, I'll continue to ruminate.

That evening, Sean, Susan and I were at PJLA to man the KMP stand at the Legend of the Conch Shell. I had made a huge oversight. Su had invited Sean and I over for Christmas dinner and I had accepted a few weeks ago. For some odd reason, I forgot to put it in my diary and on Saturday itself, she smsed to ask if I needed directions. I had that 'Psycho' moment with the 'shower scene' music flashing in my head. Sh*t!!! I was on duty at PJLA that evening so I couldn't go - and she had specially cooked vegetarian dish for us. I felt horrendous. How irresponsible. She was very gracious and asked us to come over after the show.

It was the finale of the Tsongkhapa show and it was a full house. I peeped in and out but Sean watched it again and said it was better than the Premiere night. It is still pretty mind-blowing that Kechara could organise a show like that.

By the time we got to Su's party, it was around 11pm and the party was wrapping up. We helped ourselves to the lovely food and drink though (and wore the antlers!) and stayed until around 12.30am by which time I was pretty knackered so we excused ourselves, went home and knocked out.