The camp I enjoyed the most!
活动：2018法青生活营【致我们当下的美好】 学员心得分享
撰文：黄立光
I participated in last year 《和心在一起，做自己的主人》camp and gained a lot of useful insights from that camp.Therefore, when my wife shared with me about this year 《致我们当下的美好》camp, I know that I should join again.
During the registration day, I saw a lot of young generation participants and also noticed that there were very few male participants. I suddenly felt very uneasy and worried since I assumed that I would be the eldest participant and to be honest, I think of myself as an introvert person, considering that I am not good in meeting new people (especially people from different generations and interests) and very hard to socialize. I have always refrain to express my real self and live in my own thinking because I am afraid that people will not like the real me. Thus, as my self-defense, I have always chosen not to let myself to be too close to new people.
However, for this time, I decided to choose a different approach (which my wife and I have discussed a few days back). From what I had learnt from last year 《和心在一起，做自己的主人》, our emotions (positive/negative) arise due to our own interpretation or assumption (may not be the truth) on what is happening in our surrounding. In this case, my negative feeling of nervous and worried came from my assumptions that I was being judged by other people. Thus, what I tried to do to address these negative feelings was, I kept reminding myself that:
- “No one actually care about you. You are not that important, and nobody is thinking about you at all times as what everyone is doing is thinking about themselves.”
- “You got nothing to prove, just everything to improve.”
- “Lower your expectation.”
- “Good? Bad? Who know.”
All these mindsets (which I learnt most of them from listening to Ajahn Brahm) tend to make me more relax and change my attitude which finally did result in different actions than I usually react to during the same situation – don’t think too much, be myself and 100% immerse into all the activities. With that change of mindset and attitude, I am happy to say that this 《致我们当下的美好》is the camp where I enjoyed the most!
During the 3D2N camp, the most meaningful thing that I would like to always remember was the lessons from常藻法师’s class. Some of the great lessons that I managed to take note on and trying my best to practice are:
- “work with intention without expecting any results (为因尽力, 不为果期待)”
- “Don’t let one’s happiness depend on a few specific things in life.”
- “Happiness is not about getting what you want, it is about discovering and appreciating what you already have.”
- “Not everything that you have in life is a matter of course, thus never take for granted.”
- “Accumulate all tiny happiness and be grateful.”
- “Actually, happiness doesn’t require much conditions.”
- “Responsibility≠ Burden.”
- “Responsibility= Opportunity to serve and grow.”
- “Happiness =free from the pain of the past + fear of the future.”
- “Never link the PAST and the FUTURE together and relate to NOW.”
- “Be grateful for every life’s challenges, and let’s see what we can learn from them.”
- “Put aside your ego (自我) when helping others.”
- “Surrounding =mirror, Mind = teacher, if and only we accept as it is.”
- “Every event that is happening is innocent, if we don’t label it, describe it or compare it.”
The lesson of “为因尽力,不为果期待”，I believe, has really changed my attitude bit by bit and can motivate me to do a lot of meaningful things that I stop myself from doing before this. For example, the simple act of using less plastic material in our daily life. I am a very practical person and in everything I did, effectiveness is my concern.Before this, I didn’t really care on reducing the usage of the plastic materials at all since for me the action will not result in zero plastic wastage since everybody else is using it. This thinking of the end result (果) can’t justify the action, but it won’t be the same if we focus on the fact that what we really want is to reduce the plastic waste.Thus, the thinking of one less plastic waste at a time justify the action of not using the plastic material. This is only one of the example and I am sure that this lesson is applicable in all our daily activities. I sincerely hope that this lesson will always be my guidance for myself to have more meaningful and kind practices in my daily life. As a start, I will join and contribute in the workshop.
Lastly, I would like to express my outmost gratitude to fashi, all the committees and my awesome teammates for providing me the opportunity to participate in this camp and gain so much from it.
Many thanks and Amitabha.