“I believed that I am born to be good. I have a vision which keeps nourishing the next step of mine while I peacefully walk forward. Virtues accompany me; joyfully, I live for every day.”
I am Boo, Yan Jiong, came to this world on the date 22 November 1983. I did remember neither how I was born nor how I felt when I was born. However, whenever I think about the origin of my life, my heart will always be swollen with gratitude and thankfulness. I did remember the time when I was small, and eventually grow up, living healthily until now. There are unlimited cause and condition that nourish my growth, yet I could only manage to list some of them with limited words.
I am gratitude to my parents who bring me up to this world. They provided me a comfortable environment to grow and learn during my childhood as well as adolescence, yet I started to spend much less time with them when I was 19, as I started my undergraduate study in University Technology of Malaysia (UTM), which located quite far from my hometown. Furthermore, after my graduation, I worked in electrical company which is located much further from my house in contrast to my university. Although I will try to go back to my hometown whenever I have time, yet I feel sorry due to I am unable to accompany them when they start to grow old. My parents had cultivated many virtues in within me, including responsibility, caring, reading, discipline, etc. Besides, my childhood friends were very friendly, and we often joke and laugh together, probably this is one of the reasons that I am humorous nowadays. In a nutshell, I have a delighting childhood, and a happy family background.
After I finished my study in secondary school, I further my study in Electronic Engineering in UTM for 5 years. During the life in university, I was much influenced by many of the people, including my course mates, hostel friends, housemates, society friends, etc. Most of them come from different background, yet we managed to mix together in harmony. Frankly, I was amazed by some of my talented friends in my university, and I learnt much from them either consciously or unconsciously. Besides, I felt very lucky and gratitude because there are few Tzu-Chi society seniors willing to mentor my growth; they encouraged, advised, and accompanied me throughout my campus live. Under their guidance, the capacity of my heart kept increasing, I learnt to accept, trust, love, and forgive upon everything. Furthermore, I was moved to participate in plenty of the social works, such as clean the old-folks home, help those helpless aged people, visit to mental-retarded care centre, organize recycling activities, etc. Through those participation in the social works, I were able to listen to wide spectrum of opinions and advices, ranged from the homeless old-folks to the rich and prosperous people, in addition those people were different in the culture, religion, race, etc. It is very possible that some of the old-folks who gave advices to me may have passed away, yet their blessings will never be faded away from my heart, as long as I stay alive. Through interactions with friends and society, I broadened my mind, and compassion started to bloom in within my heart. Besides, since Tzu-Chi is a world-wide organization, I was exposed to the natural disasters, military conflicts, humanity aids, etc that happened around the globe. Contemplating upon this point, it is very likely that my concerns towards global-scale-incidents developed at this stage. Moreover, I am taught to not waste any foods, etc, and I have maintained this habit until now.
In addition, I am pleased and thankful towards few of my friends who introduced Buddhism to me. Before that, I was a named ‘Buddhist’ without much knowledge in Buddhism. However, after being introduced Buddhism by my friends, I was attracted to the teachings of Buddha, which particularly emphasis on the cultivation of wisdoms and compassions. I started to read plenty of Buddhism related books after I found out that Buddha teachings are actually wisdom and compassion oriented, which I had misperceived for a long time since I was young. I read books written by Ven. Yin-Shun, Ven. Cheng-Yen, Ven. Xing-Yun, Ven. Ji-Chen, etc. Their teachings had guided me to solve many problems throughout my life. Besides reading, I liked to participate in meditation retreats, which I would learn the ways to look deeply into my heart in order to cultivate the wisdoms, compassions and as well as increasing the capacity to non-discriminate, trust, love and forgive in within me. However, I consider myself as the worst student in learning meditation, probably due to the extremely agitated mind that I possessed; yet this never stop me from practicing meditation, instead I still continue to learn nowadays. From the Buddha teachings, I learn and practice to reason with unbiased rationality, to serve the humanity in selfless ways, to understand others compassionately, to do things mindfully, and to live meaningfully.
I did remember that I once studied in FGS Taiwan Buddhism Institute for 2 months while having UTM semester break. During the period, I tried my best to write diary on daily basis. Besides, I was taught and encouraged to retrospect my mind and behaviours frequently, and eventually the congruence between my mind and behaviours improved. The period in the institute was very memorable, and it maybe one of the most intense self-monitoring periods that I ever performed. Moreover, one of the reasons that I write blogs frequently may originate from this period of habitual daily dairy writing.
On the other hand, I participated in some of the direct sales activities during my campus life. Subsequently, I attended many of the motivation talks, and my perception towards diligence was reinforced. Besides, most of my friends in the campus were very hardworking, e.g. diligent in their study, participating in social works, selling health care products, joining religious activities, etc.; and these consciously or unconsciously cultivated my diligence, as well as the spirit of keep walking forward.
After my graduation, I worked as an electrical engineer in a multi-national company. The working environment in the company was extremely systematic, and functional. Besides, schedules were followed strictly, and works need to be finished on time. However, employees were given freedom to do anything, provided that they can able to fulfil those requirements in time. I learnt many virtues from these working environments. Moreover, I had few good bosses at that time, which I learnt much from them too. In short, my leadership, creativity, confident, strategic planning skill, resources planning skill, presentation skill, etc were being polished during that period. Besides, I learnt to be independent as I started to earn my living with my salary as an engineer. I resigned from my post after 3.8 years working there, due to my intention to further my study in clinical psychology, yet those virtues and skills that were cultivated during that time are very beneficial and useful in my daily life.
I kept seeking the meaning of my life seriously when I started to work. Of course currently I do not have any clear answer, yet it seems that I am able to raise the order of the question to another higher level. I continue to seek the truths from books, participating in discussion groups, searching for enlightened ideas from the internet, participating in meditation classes, deepening my observations on this world, questioning towards any things, looking deeply into self-emotions, monitoring deeply into self-mind, etc during this period. I broaden my world-view through the internet, particularly interest in Youtube, Google, National Geographic, Discovery, CNN, Aljazeera, TEDtalks, Berkeley Webcast, etc. Besides documentaries, I enjoy listening to fascinating news around the world, as well as listening speeches talked by those great people. Within this period, I read about politics, economics, human anatomy, human health, western and eastern medicine, psychology, technology, science, ancient history, philosophy, myths, etc; however I am none of these field experts as I managed to learn on the surface only. In addition, I am inspired by many of the great people, such as Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, etc. The translator of ‘Tibetan Book of Living and Dead’, Prof. Zheng Zhen-Huang, who I meet few years ago had mentor my spiritual growth greatly, I gained much knowledge from him and eventually my perceptions are transformed, leading me to live joyfully, happily, and meaningfully, ever since.
I do write blogs whenever I have inspirations. I write dairies in orders to kept historical records of my life. Through writings, tremendous thinking and reasoning process involved, subsequently I managed to recursively correct any misconceptions in my mind. Besides, I become more self-monitoring for every dairy that I wrote, I learnt to observe deeply into my mind, attitudes, emotions, and behaviours whenever I translate them into words. Through self-monitoring, driven by wisdom, I correct any faults in within me. Purification of oneself is neither to be a great nor famous people, instead happiness and meaning bloom with every forward step in the purification path.
Currently, I enrolled myself in the psychology field. Of course I wish to graduate as a clinical psychologist, yet I know none of the people can guarantee my wish; at least I know my heart is unable to guarantee that. Instead, even if I able to get a psychologist certificate, yet it does not mean that I will become a psychologist in the future, since I don’t even know what will happen at the next moment. However, I told myself that if my heart is still beating, and I am still breathing, then I shall walk forwards, joyfully serve the humanity as the humanity has served me.
I am just an ordinary people with ordinary visions. Even though there are any virtues or capabilities that shine in within me, I gave all the credits to the causes and conditions that nourish my life, as well as my mind. Without those causes and conditions, any establishment of values in within me is impossible. Finally, I am thankful and gratitude to all those causes and conditions that nourish me, and I bless them, for both of the known and unknown that exists in this universe, hoping that we can transform the Earth into a humanism-significant pure land together.
“Wise Dwelling in the Heart”
Boo, Yan Jiong
8 October 2010
