goddess i am

pujari

nine months and plenty of training, mentoring, shadowing and loads of practicing later i can now put myself together from head to toe. i know of pujaris who can do it in five minutes. what can i say? i am what i am. it takes me a lot longer than five minutes and i still have room for improvement especially pleating. but i hang in there and i am getting there. is it worth it? absolutely. it is such joy to perform arati, the ritual of waving a butter flame to express gratitude and the longing to become a blazing light which is none other than that inner light of our own innermost and highest self.

the jewelry and make up are, truly speaking, a glimpse of the awesome brilliance and grandeur of my own light. i don't need them to make me whole but it is certainly loads of fun figuring out ways to celebrate the inner beauty that is already there, to salute the arrival of the goddess.

dream. serve. vote for obama.

for the kid who dares to dream. for the kid who wants to serve. for them i vote for obama. first of all i have to say i don't agree with quite a few things with what the president has done and still doing. second, i actually volunteered for his campaign in 08, the first time i ever got that involved in politics. not this time around. so it has been kind of sad to realize that i couldn't bring myself to commit to vote for him again.

until 2 days ago i was still undecided. and i am typing this post as election results are beginning to come in. for some time i have been praying for guidance regarding the vote. i keep my mind open. so much noise. so much negativity tossing around. i keep my eye wide and clear, ear steeped in the stillness of the heart.

then a recent saturday afternoon i stumbled upon the news that bruce springsteen performed after bill clinton gave a speech at a rally. i kind of felt drawn to catch that. i did so. the little bit that i heard was exactly what i needed to hear.

2 things. first, student loan reform. graduates can repay their loan over 20 years at a fixed percentage of their income. it means if a young doctor wants to serve in a rural community as a primary physician he/she can do it without worrying about how to pay off $200k student loan. second, young people can be covered under their parents' coverage. it means time for the young one to dream, to search, to experiment, to fail and get up and try again.

how many kids who grow up would do that? i don't know. but one kid can change the world. one kid out there has the chance to become what he/she ought to be regardless of the birth circumstances. it takes fuel and oxygen to set a flame ablaze. and so i vote for obama for bestowing to the kids the conditions to become what they dream to be.

thousand more years to go. west side story

it's been nineteen glorious years. how fortunate hwubby and i have each other to travel life with.

the best marriage advice i ever received is this. hold your hands and see each other you will end in divorce, hold your hands and see god in each other then you'll be fine. i can't say i have totally imbibed this wisdom and totally live by it because in the heat of the moment i forget, and not infrequently. what do i forget, really? that i am deeply flawed and imperfect. sure, my innermost and highest self is pure and perfect. but there is a tangled ball of conditionings, preconceived notions, habitual tendencies covering it. the moment i can bring my attention back to that place of inner tranquility i can see what's at hand differently. the self of me sees the self of him.

i saw the movie 'west side story' when i was little. i loved the music. who created these gorgeous sounds that squeeze my heart and wring my gut? leonard bernstein. bernstein. i have loved that name ever since. and an inexplicable desire appeared. i would like to have that name. i never told anyone. what's the possibility of a chinese girl from a poor neighborhood in hong kong to become a 'bernstein?' well, here i am. as a matter of fact, it wasn't until years after i got married that i recalled this experience. now, with 21 years of spiritual efforts i can truly say that was the voice of my highest and innermost self. the voice of boundless potential. the voice of infinite possibility.

i am truly looking forward to the thousand more years with hwubby, hand in hand, heart in heart, seeing the self in each other.