Welcome, May!

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The past few weeks have been stressful. Training new employees, dealing with difficult customers, not sleeping well, not exercising (I’ve gained 20 pounds in the last two years), getting through family drama (two life-threatening events in the same day, 2000 miles apart: my dad’s heart attack in NM and a 9 year grandchild starting the rest of his life with Type 1 Diabetes) . . .  My CrossFit lifestyle withered into oblivion when I lost my job at the University in 2020, as Covid got going. Deep depression brought me to a standstill as I took a few months to try to reset. Since then, my physical status has been on steady decline. Now my daily schedule looks something like this: Work 3-11 pm (on a good day), Go to bed at 4 am, get up between 10:30 am and noon, get booted up and go back to work. If I get one day off a week I’m fortunate. At least I don’t have to work all night for now. That was the worst.  So I haven’t had time or energy to do much, even read, much less write. And since my

Meak Bochea (Cambodia)

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"Māgha Pūjā,  Makha Bucha, or the  Full Moon of Tabaung  . . .  is an important  Buddhist festival  celebrated in  Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos on the full moon day of the third lunar month (this usually falls in February). The third lunar month is known in the Thai language as Makha (Pali: Māgha); Bucha is also a Thai word (Pali: Pūjā), meaning 'to venerate' or 'to honor'. As such, Makha Bucha Day is for the veneration of Buddha and his teachings on the full moon day of the third lunar month." (source: Wikipedia)

This is a day Buddhists strive not to sin, to do only good and purify the mind.

 This worldview is not understood with ease, being a kind of atheism that rejects the belief of a personal God yet is deeply concerned with maintaining purity with a non-personal Universe. Simply put (as much as one is able), the founder of Buddhism observed a world of suffering and evil under the watch-care of a personal God and he could not reconcile the two in his understanding. Instead, as the celebrants of this day will recall, Gautama Buddha held forth the concept that there is no personal God, that life is full of suffering, so cease craving and suffering will stop. Additionally, one must walk a path of righteousness demonstrated by "right" worldview, desire, speech, behavior, lifestyle, effort, mindset and meditation. The purpose of life is to break the cycle with death following a righteous life. There is nothing beyond the death of a righteous person.

 Buddhism is right to take suffering seriously but removing our Creator by preference does not repair the world nor does it repair men--suffering still exists. Men are evil and much suffering is instigated by man. Man cannot repair himself nor is he able to repair others.

 Consider at God's unchanging Word: “We fix our eyes not on what is seen [suffering], but on what is unseen [eternal life free of suffering]. For what is seen [suffering] is temporary, but what is unseen [future good life with Christ] is eternal” (2 Corinthians. 4:18, NIV).

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