DONT PROTEST AH

1) By renewing myself with a fresh resolved to have this determination to want to work for the happiness for the people

2) By chanting everyday and to manifest the wisdom of encouraging the people in front of me

3) By reaching out to the people in front of me who is facing challenges now and writing words of encouragement to my friends to uplift their spirit just like how Ikeda Sensei write to his members

faced work challenges and frequently switched jobs as they were unhappy in their work environment. While I shared about how it is important for us to do our human revolution, we recognized that there is a distinct difference in perspective of struggles from a SGS member and non-SGS members.

As Ikeda Sensei shared on the determination never to leave behind those struggling with difficulties in the 2020 PP, I knew I could not let the discussion end with my friend thinking that “there’s nothing much I can do to help my non-SGS friends as they will not understand the Buddhist concepts that I am trying to share”.

I mustered up the courage to share with her that it is precisely because we believe that everyone has the Buddha potential and there are no distinctions among people in terms of our humanity, we can be the ones to encourage our non-SGS friends through listening to them and understanding their struggles, and sharing with them about this wonderful Buddhist philosophy that empowers one to break through the seemingly vicious cycle of work karma through the change in one's mindset – from “why do I keep getting bad jobs?” to “I have the power to change this situation right here right now, starting with myself!”

PS: Got some recommendations for canteen food from him, which helps my working life in ITE too 🤪

While he seems a bit tired due to his busy schedule for the past few weeks, I'm glad to see that he's still holding strong 💪

I'm also glad to get to see him again as he wasn't able to join the recent ITESD IM, and he was interested to know what the IM was about.

He also asked me if I knew any district that does discussion meeting in English, as he wanted to bring a friend of his who is interested in religions to join a discussion meeting. This was a bit of a surprise to me, but I was also struck by his compassion to want to share this Buddhism to another. ❤️ Will definitely help him out here, to respond to his compassion 💪

world peace is meaning have no free and everyone live happily and no war.

what is most important to you?

most impt be myself and challenge everyt

It’s important because we often neglect our impact

What is most important to me is hope.

Respecting the dignity of all human life and experiences of others is the most important thing for me.

Important to me that people continue engaging in continuous dialogue on all levels rather than shielding themselves and breeding mistrust.

In the course of it, I came to realize how we all practised active listening intently and really empathised with each other upon hearing our struggles and directions in life.

While I was initially saddened at the possibility of ‘losing’ a good friend from relocation, my friend shared about why such a thought arises and even remarked about how she might just bring Char Kway Teow to where she’s intending to go, bringing local connections along with her. I was immediately reminded of how myopic my views were and that we shouldn’t be limited by the so-called ‘geographical boundaries’ we’re very used to. After all, we should be citizens of ‘the World’, isn’t it?

We ended the meetup reminding ourselves about how grateful we are to still remember each other and truthfully care for our respective statuses and situations. Will continue to ‘treasure everyone’ and share my joyful struggles with them!

This started off as our first casual home-visit and just getting to know each other. We chatted with Yan Shao about his hobbies and just checking in on how he was doing.

He is currently having an internship and did not have much interactions with his school mates in NTU, and as we know it work can feel lonely at times.

At the end of the day, he thanked us for home-visiting him for having an interesting and deep dialogue

Summary for the day:

There are always people out there waiting for us to start a dialogue with them and in order unveil the beauty of each person's character we need that effort and dialogue.