Author: Rebecca Toh

more than words

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Haven’t written here for awhile because I just went through a season where I didn’t feel like words were necessary. But of course they are, just not all the time.

I’ve been saved by words. I’ve also found words to be entirely useless. It’s a paradox.

Two days ago I came back to words again. I felt a thirst in me to read fiction again. I’m back to reading 1Q84 – started a few years ago and stopped a couple of chapters in. And I’m writing again and blogging for the first time in a month.

Feels good to be back!

The power of cutting off and letting go

blog, mindfulness

Really enjoyed this one!

Some notes from the talk worth sharing:

  • Clean dishes mindfully – ordinarily but mindfully. Try not to see it as something to be quickly finished so we can quickly move on to the “real thing”.
  • Spiritual practice is about releasing and eliminating, not accumulating.
  • The more you crave, the more you lose your freedom.
  • Society doesn’t teach the danger of hooks like wealth, power, desire etc, but instead put them on high ground. Mindfulness helps us to stop and look at what these are doing to us and how’re they’re making us lose our freedom.
  • Look at the things you don’t want to look at. Cultivate a kind of fearlessness in front of suffering and obstacles.
  • Our views about other people become an obstacle to us because we’re not able to let them go.
  • To cut off is to practise recognising things as they are, looking deeply and calmly, and letting go. Do it with a quality of love, a feeling of equanimity.
  • Identity is very interesting – we identify so much with ourselves, that when people say something about us we don’t like, we get hurt.
  • When you’re on the path, everything is fun. Don’t make it too serious.
  • Train yourself to breathe and watch in front of a craving or habit.
  • Be mindful of both the input from the world and our output to the world.
  • The only thing that continues after we die is the energy we give out.
  • Thought is an energy too.
  • If something feels restless inside your body, examine your thoughts.
  • A tree just needs to be a tree. A human can also just be a human. But society always asks more of us.
  • Most important thing to do: Transform ourselves and then gather others, so you can create a positive environment where other people can transform themselves in.
  • Sit with your suffering but also nourish yourself with joy. It’s not all about suffering. Suffering is not enough.
  • Train yourself to reset your habit of looking for big happiness, but simply acknowledge – my eyes are in good conditions, I have the time to wash dishes, to take a walk slowly. Look at the ordinary, simple things that you’d forgotten.
  • “We have a diamond in our pocket but we don’t know it. We think we’re very poor and we’re always running, always in need. But we’re the richest person on earth and we don’t know it.”
  • Nourish yourself with nature, your breath, with stillness, with quiet. This will give you the energy to be with your pain and challenges.
  • Put your heart into the practice.

RSS reader

blog, technology

Annoyed that I spent $$$ paying for Reeder 5 and the iCloud syncing between Mac and iOS simply doesn’t work. Does anyone know of a good RSS/news reader app that allows for iCloud syncing and that doesn’t cost a leg and an arm in subscription fees?

In other news… I just bought an 11” iPad Pro because I have fantasies of using it to read (with Kindle and Libby), to write all my French language notes and learn how to urban-sketch (the Apple Pencil is very attractive to me), and use it as a separate screen for when I want to type up notes from Youtube videos or online courses. And also because I’m an incorrigible Apple (hardware) fangirl.

what do you care about?

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“In life we don’t have to strive to be hardworking. We just have to strive to care. Because it is only when we care about something that we are driven and motivated to put in the work needed to make it amazing… If you don’t care, you will feel very pressured and stressed, like you have to work hard but you don’t even know why, you just feel like you have to… George Bernard Shaw said, “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live.” It is not about being hardworking, but that the true joy in life is when we are being thoroughly used for a purpose we believe in and care about.”
– Xandria Ooi

special

blog

I don’t know myself well enough. And I have hidden thoughts that I don’t always articulate or bring to the surface.

For example, I only recently realised I have this thought that I should be special.

But why should I be?

I know, because if I am special (if I am especially talented or especially brave, for example) then I can justify my self-worth. Because I somehow believe that my self-worth is tied up with being more successful or being more talented than other people. But of course, this is a terribly weak and flawed idea, because there will always be other people who are smarter and more talented and more successful than me.

The thing is, I’m really not more special than other people. And that’s perfectly fine and natural. No human being is more special than another human being. And no human being needs to be special in order to be loved.

This is part of my ongoing effort to rewrite the flawed scripts – such as this one – in my head.