If not now, when?

Now! Now! Now! Yes - it's finally out.. the long awaited 1st ever KMP produced Coffee Table Book.. also known as "If not now, when?". This perfectly titled perfect book was conceptualised eons ago.. by one of the dinosaurs of KMP, Andee, who typed out Rinpoche's smses with two fingers. Jamie, Joe and i attempted to bring this one step further by compiling these quotes into a book of digital Dharma.. but as the smses went to his students, they were quite deep and we were not sure other people would understand them. The idea then evolved into getting quotes from Rinpoche's Dharma teachings, which had been published.

Then Shirley came up with a proposal to do a coffee table book of Rinpoche's quotes, which made Jamie and I scream Eureka! Shirley contributed a huge pile of lengthy quotes which Jamie and I added to our previous list of quotes. We then systematically went through and edited them down to bite-size morsels. Then we had the gargantuan task of choosing which quotes would be more easily illustrated. And which quotes to include! We loved every one of them, which made the whittling process even more difficult. We also fretted about an appropriate title, then Shirley came up with 'If not now, when?' which we all loved, loved, loved! And i still do. What better question should we all ask ourselves? And Joy and Justin's interpretation of the title on the cover design is fab.

Joy and Justin, our graphic designers extraordinaire, also came up with the wonderful graphics within. JJ, our 23 year old chicken, was the production manager and aged visibly by the end of the production phase.

Final artwork became not-really-final as we kept finding mistakes at each proofreading session. Were we blind?? Why didn't we see them the last round. And this was just the editors beating ourselves us! We won't even mention what the long suffering designers thought of us. Finally, JJ decided to take it off our grubby little hands and sent it off to the printers.

Anyway, finally, finally, finally - it's out! It's great! Rinpoche loves it! Andee, who is extremely critical about books, loves it! We love it! And we hope the whole world will too! If not now, when?????!

Manjushri graces Sean's altar

Doesn't Sean's altar look fabulous... Rinpoche blessed the Manjushri thangka we bought at the exhibition and I promptly rearranged Sean's room so his altar went against the wall and Andee helped hang the thangka up.

Another blast from the past

Today, I met up with Catherine Durham - someone I hadn't seen for about 20 years.. another old Queenswoodian, who's been living in the South of France and working as a yoga teacher and massage therapists for billionaires on their yachts in the Mediterranean. In her other life, she travels the world and is about to go to Cambodia to teach English for a couple of months.

It was lovely to catch up and I brought Karen along since she was also an old Q. We had a splendid tapas lunch with a bottle of white... I discovered how many of our friends were divorced - and updated her on my state of things to which she just nodded, unfazed. Maybe Queenswood does that to you - nothing shocks us! Catherine was very sweet and treated us to lunch so I invited her to stay when she next passes through on her way back to Europe.

After lunch, I took Karen to pick up something in Bangsar and dropped by at Eric Choong's. It was lovely to see Ee Ling and her gorgeous little baby there. Unfortunately, Eric was ill so he wasn't around. Karen tried on a beautiful purple dress and Catherine said it was a looooong time before she could wear purple (purple was the colour of our school uniform)!



Catherine, Karen and I


Catherine and I

Sean gets a gift from Tsem Rinpoche

Ever caring, ever generous Tsem Rinpoche gave Sean a DVD today. His personal assistant, Beng Kooi, played Santa Claus today and dropped over the gift. Sean is his usual serious self?! Watch the video! hahaha...

Others are many while I am only one

On Friday, Rinpoche gave a fantastic Dharma talk. Even though the essence was not new, it was a much needed reminder for me to always focus on others, for others are many while I am only one. Rinpoche said that everything we do must be motivated by compassion; compassion for others, to take on burdens for others. To be happy to be sick, to shorten our lives, to lose money for others. This is the thunder-like proclamation of the Dharma. And how much we do that is how much success we'll have.

We all have fears and we are often debilitated by them. Don't hide behind your fears, Rinpoche said, focus on what's more important than your fears - think of others. Inspirational people and heroes all have fears. The difference is that they push themselves because it will benefit others.

He also taught us how to cut attachments to material things. Having or not having material things is not the issue - the attitude towards having or not having is the crux. If we lose everything, how do we feel. This is one way of assessing our attachments. How can we cut our attachments? Material items can be used as a powerful practice to exhaust attachment. When we buy things for ourselves, especially things we like, we increase attachment. However, by changing our attitude - that whatever we have, is not for ourselves, then it changes our motivation and thus our attachment.

Rinpoche then taught us some simple but powerful visualisation of having one's yidam on top of one's head and how we can transform everything we have into the eight auspicious signs and by focusing and believing strongly, we offer everything up to our Yidam or any Buddha we choose. And because everything now belongs to the Buddha, we have to take great care of our things. We have to keep them clean and in good condition.

We should do it not just as an exercise but as a daily practice. Even the scented soaps we use can be offered up. Beautiful sights we see. Nice textures we touch. We dress ourselves to look good for the Dharma. Everything we do becomes Dharmic practice.

So Susan and i promptly went to buy some new clothes - after all, Chinese New Year's coming, the shops were on Sale, we need to represent Dharma well and we get to make offerings to the Buddhas.

Isn't that fabulous?