Sunday 28 April 2013

The Travels Of Mingliaotse

Assalamualaikum wbt and peace be upon you,
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Today I'm still gonna talk about simple living. You know, many great people in the past have been wised enough to embrace this philosophy of living. Not just us. Not just in this century. Traditional Malays also embraced this type of living as reflected in the Malays' traditional houses.
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Our family is also slowly going in the same direction, spearheaded by my mom's desire to lead a simple life. And in order to achieve that, my mom has begun to reduce her book collection. From more than a thousand books, now she has only a couple of hundreds. And these will soon see new owners too. As our school has sent letters to ask for book donations for our library, my mom has decided to part with more of her books, which for me is very interesting read.
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One of those books is written by the Modern Chinese Philosopher, Lin Yu Tang, called "The Importance of Living". My mom has been packing and unpacking the book so many times, as if unable to part with it. It made me curious as to the content of the book, so I took a quick look and found it very interesting. The book was published in 1937 and surprisingly, it is still relevant today.
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One of the anecdotes which I find most interesting is the story about "The Travels Of Mingliaotse". Mingliaotse was a a court official who grew tired of his life and made the decision to find the truth about life by finding out about the principles of Tao. To do that, he left all the luxury in his life and started out as a vagabond.
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He said" Although I was at one time of my life an official, I had no property or wealth outside a few books. At first I travelled with these books, but fearing that they might be the cause of envy on the part of the water spirits, I threw them into the water. And now I haven't got a thing outside this body. Does not then, the charm of life remain for me long and lasting, when my burdens are gone, my surroundings are quiet, my body is free and my heart is leisurely? With a cassock and a gourd, I go wherever I like, stay wherever I choose and take whatever I get. Staying at a place, I do not inquire after its owner, and going away, I do not leave my name. I do not feel ill at ease when I am left in the cold, and do not become contaminated when I am in noisy company.
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...Thus for three years Mingliaotse continues in his travels, wandering almost over the entire world. Everything that he sees with his eyes or hears with his ears, or touches with his body, and all the different situations and meetings, are thus used for the benefit of training his mind. And so such vagabond travel is not entirely without its benefit.
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He then returns and builds himself a hut in the hills of Szeming and never leaves it again.
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Love and peace
Daniel Zaydi

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