Good Karma Music Stories

I travel on the highway to work and often see trucks of chicken stacked in plastic cages in transit, I assume, on their way to slaughter. For many times I just prayed for them, may they leave the chicken body and reborn in better place. One day while driving behind the chicken truck, looking at them cramped together, I feel that it resembles the living conditions in Hong Kong, where the property price is so high that many people can’t afford a bigger space, they had to cook in the toilet or rent a sleeping place in small cages. Just like the chickens in front of me!

So I made a promise to the chickens, that if I had the choice, I will not order and eat chicken meat. I am not a vegetarian yet, my family and colleagues still eat meat so I follow them but I try to eat less meat. I hope that one day I can remove all meat from my diet, to avoid killing karma and truly walk the path of compassion.

Last Sunday I spent the day with a small organization that goes by Renegade Feedings. Their mission is to not only help those experiencing homelessness by providing them with items like clothing, personal care, and snacks, but more importantly to spend time with them; listen to them; see them as human beings. And that is exactly what we did. We spend about two hours at what many would call a homeless encampment. I saw it more as a community. There were about 20 living there in tents, but only half a dozen or so were around at the time. I got to meet Irene, Ellie, Lolita, Alex, Ben, and David to name a few. As well as two fo their dogs and a few cats! Irene seemed to run the show, so to speak. We, along with another organization, had brought lots of winter clothes. Irene went through each item, keeping nothing for herself, but asking the others who wanted what jacket or sweater. And then I saw her put aside items for others who weren’t around. She selflessly did this as the others ate. I heard her say she was hungry and encouraged her to eat, but she saw it has her duty to serve the others first. Finally, after everyone else had eaten and had a new blanket or jacket given to them, Irene finally ate. I didn’t want to pry, but was interested in her story. She had lived there, left for a year, and then returned. Some living in these camps had jobs. Most had portable generators to help operate things like their microwave…which I’d never seen outside of a tent before!
While there were a dozen or more tents in the community, it seemed most people flocked to Irene’s tent. She maintained her area clean and tidy, while allowing others a place to be respected and seen. Irene told us about her cat, which has a nasal problem, making it hard for her to breath. Irene said she would cry at night, as she listened to her cat struggle to take a breath; she promises to get her cat the necessary surgery when she has the money.
The day began with the idea that I would do some good for others…and I imagine I did do some. But in the end, as is often the case, I was given so much more. I hope to continue to pay forward the lessons that Irene taught me; no matter what I have, I can always serve others selflessly and with compassion.

I’ve been trying my best to be a fair dentist and to provide dental work at an inexpensive price for those in need. However, sometimes it can be frustrating when people states they are on MediCal and claim to have financial strain, but in mind, I don’t feel like they are. Or when patients first reaction is to haggle. So perhaps, I’ll have to try harder to give and to understand money – a work in progress.

I spent most of my time living in a mood thinking that the world doesn’t treat me well. It’s either people surrounding me are indifferent, or people are language abusing me. No matter what I do, the process is just not smooth. I don’t actually blame the world but sometimes I take aggressive action toward myself and can’t get rid of the thinking that I am miserable. Recently I am becoming more and more calm and I feel that it’s a positive sign that I am ready to take responsibility for myself as my destiny is defined by my past lives and what I do in this life. Also I am truly inspired by Rev. Heng Sure’s pilgrimage and the book. It was written long time ago but when I read it, I feel like it’s so vivid and so close to me. It helped me out when I was the most depressed. Thank you.

-Friend request to get this material and hoping to be ‘enlighten’ by new translation on ‘Song of enlightenment’. I can read Chinese and found this tune suit me too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IEekHBbTuI&t=887s. Friend can’t read/ understand much Chinese.
-Friend ask to buy stuff and deliver to my house on his behalf
-Temple ask to do Zoom …
-… I don’t like to list because I never felt enough and never ask for it. When time come, just do what you can.
-View from the social media are generally bad, friend shared fb view and I wish many know that such influence is polluting the mind if one does not has constant dharma practice/ cultivation. Even that might not be enough…

Had the opportunity to bring soup and blankets to some of the elderly members of our community as the weather has cooled down here in NorCal. Providing for them when they have limited access to the outside especially with the pandemic precautions being taken by the US

My husband’s closest friend in Madison, who is 84, just suffered a terrible loss. Back in the 2008 recession, his son had lost his good-paying job and ever since then had just worked whatever minor jobs he could find, hourly, not the salaried work his family of four was accustomed to him doing. Eventually his wife divorced him and he moved in with his widowed father, back in his childhood home, into a room in the basement since his father was a morning bird and he was a night owl who played video games and watched tv late into the nights. During this pandemic time, the son had taken over all the grocery shopping and had taken up most of the cooking as well. They would eat dinner together most nights. One night a week ago the son asked the father if the father could clean up the dishes after the dinner because he wasn’t feeling so well. The next day it was quiet in the house and the son didn’t come up for dinner and the father had some charity work to attend to outside the home. The day after that the father decided to go down and check on the son and found him dead, some problem with his heart. The autopsy found him Covid negative but his heart had been greatly enlarged and swollen.
Yesterday I cooked poppyseed kheer (an earthy warming milk drink) and dhokla (rice and dals that are soaked, then ground, then fermented, then steamed, then sliced into small diamond shapes, then fried in ghee after popping mustard seeds and adding curry leaves and green chilli cut in paper thin rounds): a savory snack that is eaten while drinking the hot kheer. And I wrote a card from our family for the bereaved father and I put it in a new cotton shopping bag with bright beautiful colors that I had bought years ago but had always found too pretty to use. And added in 2 beautiful new kitchen towels, that I had also bought years ago with the idea to gift sometime. And then also a toffee-crunch chocolate bar and a peppermint chocolate bar that my husband had brought home with the groceries earlier that day. Then asked my husband if he would deliver the food and drink and pretty bag with the card and towels and chocolates to his friend. As we were packing it into his car, my husband said to me, “In India we may certainly give nourishing food, but we don’t give gifts or sweets when someone dies. I told him that in America we also don’t do this. But that I was remembering when our younger son was three years old and the only time I ever remember him stubbing his toe and how he immediately ran and climbed up onto our futon couch and proceeded to vigorously jam his stubbed toe into a throw pillow stuffed with semal. Pillows stuffed with semal (kapok) are unimaginably soft. “Did that help?” I had asked him after a bit. “Yes,” he had said, relieved. “All the softness took away all the bang.”
In this situation here the hurt seemed a critical wound, and I badly wanted to take away some tiny part of the sting, of the bitter, of the horror.
The funeral (burial of the son’s cremated ashes) was today, because of Covid restrictions, just family, all of the deceased’s immediate relatives, father, sister, former wife, two teenage daughters.
I know that my small gesture is not enough, that it is practically nothing. May it just be the start.