Fang seng activity

The day that was : 14 November 2010

On a Sunday in November and after breakfast, we went to the outskirt of town to purchase crabs and kepah/lala for fang seng. We paid about RM200, but not before much haggling and persuading with the vendors, hoping with the same amount of money, more lives could be freed.

With the purchases, my brother then drove us to Tanjung Lipat and seeked a section of the beach that was not occupied by weekend picnickers. After reciting prayers and mantras, the ropes used to hold the crabs tight were slowly cut loose, allowing the animals to hurriedly crawl back to the salt water to welcome freedom. Cutting the ropes required some patience and skill for if you were not attentive enough the crabs after struggling itself loose and mistaking you as an intimitading invader, would raise its craws against you. As if to vent out its anger and frustration against humans for their betrayal.

My brother once had fallen prey to its aggressive attack.

Seeing the kepah/lala were still wandering on the shallow water which I have earlier released them to, I had to go down the rocky shore and waded myself knee-high in the water to scoup them up one by one and throw each of them into a deeper part of the water, in a bid to prevent the creatures from being recaptured by some immigrant kids prying at the other part of the beach who were seen wading into the water to hunt for sea products.

As the waves travelled and beat against the shore, my jeans became soaking wet due to the salt water and I have had a taste of saltiness in my mouth as the splashing water landed on my face and lips.

Releasing life is such a meaningful activity which I have made an obligation on my part to undertake. Not only does it help to accumulate merits but we derive a sense of spiritual fulfillment knowing that we have helped to save the life of beings facing imminent deaths. Buddhist teachings value the sanctity of life and espouse that we should be kind to all creatures that have life and endeavour to give protection to all life forms. Even the life of an intruding ant should be mercifully and compassionately spared in this regard, for all creatures from higher groups such as humans to the lowliest such as insects strive for protection against dangers which would threaten its life.

Some fang seng photos:

Little notes

It warms the cockles of my heart:

A little note and a packet of biscuits left by two Venerable tzefus before they left for Taiwan in the wee hours of the morning while I was still soundly asleep, after spending a few days at my place, sometime in August 2010. They kindly and thoughtfully turned down my offer to send them to the air port lest in my sleep-deprived state as a result of having to rise up early I would not be able to concentrate at work the next day. The parents of one of the tzefus came to fetch them instead.

One of the tzefus gave me a small diary with notes of encouragement, which I very much treasure:

A blind fish

The day after Christmas 26 December 2010.

Fang Seng on a Sunday

We took a picture of this ikan galak which suffered some bruises and a blind eye probably due to heavy struggle while being kept with other fishes in a small basin for sale, after being cruelly and forcefully robed from their natural habitat. It’s heartbreaking for me to see an innocent life being subject to unnecessary torture like that. After being released the fish refused to escape instead swam to the bank of the small swampy area and stayed unmoved for a long time. I tried to sooth this little creature by placing my hand on its body and uttered a little prayer, but it remained still seemingly oblivious to my touch. I was in fact fearing for its safety for being in such fragile condition it might easily fall prey to other predators like biawak.

I was relieved to find that the fish was no longer there when I returned sometime later. It must have recovered from its wound that it managed to navigate back to the deeper water, to where it belonged.

Or perhaps it had indeed felt, hence responded to my concern..

Dear little creature, I pray for your safety and may suffering evade you.

And you are now safe from harm..

Just this thought

Without us realising, we more than a week into the new year already.

I am simply amazed, at time in awe at how just time can really just zoom past us like that.

Time does not want to compromise with us even if we plead with all our heart wishing it can stop a little, when we are standing indecisively in the middle of nowhere and we don’t know where to go and we need some grace period while we sort out our direction in life.

And time’s intransigent when some of us are drudging through the muddles and stresses of our daily lives, thus are inevitably and unwillingly thrown into the darkness of deep abyss, while we hope and pray for time to wait till we come to the light of day but no, time’s an arrogant machine which will just speed through the dark tunnel of rail track without even turning back to check on us..

Neither does time want to compromise when we are savouring some precious moments in our life, a moment in time which will never come again. Where we feel like we want to freeze time right there and then, and to capture and slide those precious moments into a little pocket between the fabric of time itself.

Like our childhood. Our youth.

But reality is that snarky little jerk that’s staring you right in the face and say “wake up, you have no time for silly reverie like this.”

Yet reality is also that kind little thing that helped plant our feet firmly on the ground, for without which we might be like a lost child wandering too far away from the very spot we have embarked our journey on.

Sometimes, fear of what lying ahead of us presses against us like cold wind blowing in the street which we have no power to shield ourselves from.

But we must press on, in spite of our anxiety, our fear.

For the new year for most of us, there’s also going to be more plans and resolutions to stay ahead...

But just for these few minutes…

I just want to remind myself to breath, someone wrote about how it’s an easy thing to forget, and I must agree, sometimes we get so carried away with life’s seemingly trivial issues so much so we are distracted from what really matters, like the breaths under our nostrils.

That’s the most important thing that we tend to neglect.

To think that I have witnessed with my own eyes how a close relative breathed his last sometime this year make this realization a poignant reminder for me.

So as I am writing this, I just want to allow myself this opportunity to simply close my eyes for these few brief minutes, to really feel the inflow and outflow of breaths coursing through my system.

This very much neglected life-giving activity, so ever precious yet often times fragile, is what really matters, and the reason for my being here…

For that, I am grateful.

And I pray for a good year ahead..

Birthday & fang seng

The day that was : 19 November 2010

Friday, I was home nursing a fever.
after some rest and deliberately avoiding medicine,
I drove to the Tamu in Penampang,
along with my sister,
to purchase fishes for fang seng .

It was my birthday,
and I would like to release lives to celebrate this day,
a spiritual activity that I embrace in the calendar of my life.

We bought about 19 small plastic bags of ikan karuk ,
and a bag of ikan keli,
it’s ironic that the Kadazan lady selling the fishes would later offer an additional plastic bag of ikan karuk,
saying ` tolong saya lepaskan’. Even though I did not mention that we were going for fang seng.
Guess she just knew.
If I had my will, I would ask her not to capture them again,
but who am I to ask a non-believer to stop their trade,
probably the very source to their livelihood?

We then drove to a nearby river,
in the stiffling afternoon ,
I felt realy sick and tired .
But it did not deter my resolve to carry bags of fishes down to the river bank,
where a little prayers were said,
before releasing them to the cool and soothing river,
then witnessing the small creatures slowly and graciously swim to the deeper part of the dark flowing water
back to where they belong.

Later my sister said `let’s go buy some cupcakes for your birthday ,I belanja .’
Then stopped by a kopitiam for teh-c , teh-c ping and some bread,
before heading home for a rest.

It’s been a quiet birthday, despite a little emotional turmoil etched inside my heart.

But time is always a reliable healer, this soon will pass.

I pray on this day for the renewal and rejuvenation of the mind, body and spirit, to enable me to bravely embrace yet another chapter in this life journey..


Some fang seng pictures:
Bags of ikan karuk
Reciting prayers

I like how the sun was shining down its glistening rays of light onto the water, and when it touched the river surface a mirage was formed its presence immediately brought forth a sense of peace and tranquility to its surroundings, while my sister stood unfazed by the blistering heat reciting verses of prayer to the tiny lives being released into the water.

It is to me a heart-warming and endearing sight.

Muddled stream of consciousness

The day that was : 10 November 2010 Wednesday

It’s just the second day of the week.
And I need a moment of quiet introspection.
For the past two days I have been under the weather,
having slight if not terrible mood swings.

Thing like this happens to us.
Some days we are feeling upbeat and all is fine and rosy,
While other days we let feeling of dejection and hopelessness silently crawl within us,
Just a little thing will provoke your irritation and anger
But you never allow yourself moments to reflect your emotional states.
You let it pass hoping thing will get better a while later
But most of the times it won’t.

So this morning, while my younger sister drove me to work and noticing my low-spiritedness, she calmly turned to me and asked `would you want to `kuan cha’ (examine) yourself and see what it is inside of you that made you become so impatient and easily irritated these two days?’

Her statement immediately brought me to my senses .

Yes there are things that irritated me, may be it was initially triggered by the bodily discomfort as a result of PMS, then compounded by some other very minor personal issues which could easily be fixed if only I have not dragged myself too far from reaching within the core of my inner self and called for a little composure and rationale.

Sometimes addressing the root causes of our problem is actually the first step towards acknowledging the fact that most of which that we are feeling or experiencing has nothing much to do with others, but rather the way we response and handle each arising situation. One small issue if left unattended would together with others snowball into a messy woven web you sometimes find yourself having difficulties to disentangle yourself from.

I then reflected how days earlier on my way driving back to KK from the village I have noticed a stray dog, standing forlornly at an deserted petrol station, its furs have all fallen out exposing off its crumbled skin badly afflicted by serious skin desease (kurap), its extremely emaciated frame suggested the animal’s severely malnourished and has been deprived of food for days, or even weeks. I was driving and the traffic was heavy and it was raining and there was no food in my car, not even shops and food stalls selling food in the vicinity which I could offer to the dog to relief its hunger. But the image of this dog has since embedded in my mind. I have helplessly let myself attached to this sight and it has somehow affected my emotional state. In retrospect, I think I was at some point feeling a sense of remorse for reason that I haven’t tried hard enough to provide help to the poor animal.

I feel slightly better after much reflection and analysis on my situation. All of the frustration and irritation are actually nothing but my own making.


If only I have been rationale enough.

It’s raining on my way back from work and while driving I notice a physically-impaired elderly walking along the side of the road with perhaps his wife, slowly and painstakingly taking one small step at a time with the aid of a crutch, again this scene is quickly embedded in my mind, and a tiny bubble of tear forms and floats on the edge of my eye lid.

I don’t know what the tear was for. Maybe I empathized with the predicament of this old man having to deal with one of life challenges which is his physical disabilities, but it could also perhaps due to my own sense of realization of the fact that, nothing impairs you much more than your own mind which would sometimes, more than the physical impairment itself, blight your sense of perspective in life.

And my stream of thoughts has indeed muddled my own perspective for the past two days, ironically it took a tear to finally bring it to closure...

But now, the stream of consciousness flows like the calm water in the tranquil river of hope…

A little spritual food for thought : Master Venerable Hsing Yun

Impermanence and an auspicious date

The day that was : 10.10.10

I snapped this photo of papa in his daily devotional practice of praying in front of the shrine of The Buddha and Boddhisatvas. He has never missed this daily rituals in the later part of his life, waking up in the early hours of the morning and with his prayer beads in hand chanting the mantras which kept his mind agile, his body and soul spiritually nourished.

When I see him sitting cross legged engaging in his daily prayers like this it always brings forth a sense of comfort and serenity within myself, knowing that in his old age my father has somehow found his pillar of strength and spiritual solace through religious devotion. Papa used to be a very healthy and strong man for his age before an accident years ago which almost claimed his life. In his younger days he earned a living as a rubber tapper and hunter, scouring the jungle to hunt for wild boars, tending the kebun of his bosses and paddling the sampan in rivers to catch fishes had been his strong suits. But now he is easily tired and a little fragile in his movement, sometimes needing a walking stick to steady himself. After the accident, I watched with pain as my father wrought with quite heart wrenching frustration coming to term with the gradual decline in his once robust energy and vitality. But I guess he has since learned to cope and accepted his condition.

Through my father I have a glimpse of the snarky little face of impermanence. It gets closer each day as I scurry past, occasionally stop in my tracks and experience the lives around me, and within me.

But I’ve also learned to get used to it. Even though at times it has not been easy.

Later that morning we made a trip to Beaufort town for Breakfast. In the car papa related to us about a son of his friend who has a day before been whisked to a jail for fatally shooting down an indigenous man for carelessly mistaken him as his targeted prey - a wild boar. Accidents like this happen pretty frequently in the village. The young and old retreat to the jungle in their spare times to hunt for wild boars and other animals, and sometimes in their excitement and haste in capturing their prey, releasing the bullets far too soon before their mind could thoroughly process of the supposedly desirable targets, hence gunning down their fellow villagers who happen to frequent the place with the same purpose. Being the hunters, they end up to become the ones being hunted by the authorities instead. The son had borrowed a senapang bekakuk from a friend and if found guilty, he would need to spend a good 25 years behind bar, while his young wife has to carry the responsibility of taking care of their young children during the impending long gap of separation.

Papa was sympathetic towards the situation faced by his friend’s son, but with this piece of news, his mind was clearly transported back to a period of his life where he almost committed the same erroneous observation on several occasions, and should fate not favour him, he would have met with the same consequence as well.

Sometimes, life has a tendency to strike a bitter blow just when we least expect it. Like how it struck the young man and his family.

After breakfast in town, we bought a few kilos of ikan keli and brought it back to the village for fang seng.

Later in the evening I switched on the TVs and there was a local news report and images of men and women tying the knots in a group ceremony in conjunction with the date 10.10.10. People like to take advantage of a date deemed unique and auspicious to finally seal their union in the form of a marriage. Because at the core of their being people like to associate themselves with something special and symbolic, even if its amount to nothing significant when compared to the grand scheme of things.

For true love and a pledge of lifelong devotion to each other come from two loving hearts determined to make their union last, in spite of a special number. But once the love is gone, that special date will only be another number slowly burn into inconsequence in the four-walled prisons of their memories..

Some fang seng photos: