Serving the Buddha

(Taken with my iPhone)

This photo was taken outside a very special place.

It was just one of those afternoons where I went straight from a very secular discussion, to the inner sanctum, the home of a Buddha. In between pizza he arranged for us, and a short audience, I spent the evening doing a stock take and checklist with Beng Kooi.

Under ordinary circumstances, this would be considered menial work, and something that is usually left to the less talented, the less busy, the less-everything. But these are not ordinary circumstances, and I don’t do an ordinary job.

And besides, such arrogance doesn’t work here.

So people might laugh and say, “A university graduate doing stock take?” but consider this – I get to go around a Buddha’s mandala, to see how else I can make his home a more pleasant place to live. I often wonder how many people in the world have the same privilege as I do.

I also often marvel at how absolutely trippy my ‘job’ is, to go from a sophisticated set-up, to the heart of Tibetan Buddhism and all of its age-old practices of guru devotion, compassion, wisdom, harmony and peace…and realising how those practices are never out of place, whatever setting I find myself in.

So I get to serve the Buddha, but I am not perfect yet. May I one day attain the same level of perfection and attainments as my lama for his lamas.

gratitude, humility, photo, selfishness, shakyamuni, teacher Reflections and Teachings