Hello Readers,
I hope you all are doing well. I’m currently sitting in the Kuala Lumpur airport waiting to board a flight to Colombo in Sri Lanka. How fast time flies does it not? It feels as though I just arrived here and yet, it’s already been a month!
Why Malaysia?
Why Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia? Well a few months back I was in Hong Kong and I was fortunate to meet another Dhamma friend who I stayed with for a couple weeks. Although she lives in Hong Kong, her and her husband are originally from Malaysia. (As a random side note, Malaysians are like Europeans…most of them know at least 3 languages – Malay, Chinese – Mando or Canto and English.) Alas, I digress…Eunice and I had heard wonderful things about the Dhamma Centre in Malaysia so we decided to meet up there to serve one course and then to sit another as students.
Dhamma Malaya:
Not many pictures of the centre because we give up our phones for the time we were there, but we managed to squeeze in a couple at the beginning and end.
I have to say that this serving taught me a lot – the main one being that “wow! Is it ever hard to control our reactions”. One of the reasons it’s important to serve as a volunteer after being a student is that it’s an excellent training ground to life. As a student, the atmosphere is pretty much perfect – all you have to do is eat, meditate and keep yourself clean. Everything else is taken care of by servers from the cleaning to the cooking. Going from a student to the world can be a bit of a challenging experience. You’re like “look at me! I’m so zen and calm! And then boom…life hits”. Hahahaha!
Serving is a little bit of a middle ground as we are challenged from the early mornings of 4am wake ups and cooking/cleaning for others, but we’re also all meditating regularly so we’re a pretty peaceful and happy bunch. That said though, we do have our moments…
The practice is about observing body sensations objectively. If we can observe them objectively, the reaction – whether it be anger, sadness, anxiety etc. – goes away and we’re lighter and happier as a result. So easy to understand, yet so challenging to put into practice. It was something like day 9 of 11 and by this point, all of us servers are feeling pretty tired so of course, we’re a bit shorter on our tempers. Someone asked me to make the jello for day 10 and I was okay with it. I got to work as the main chef was in conversation with another and once she finished she came out and said “why you do like that? I told you to use this pan. This is the wrong pot!”.
Boom! …Queue anger.
I felt the anger arise in me like a little bomb, but thankfully I was able to not voice my anger and walked away back to my room. This practice has been pretty good to me. While I used to boil in anger for days and keep resentment, it tends to fade away much easier now. 7 hours later I was more balanced so I asked the teacher. This is another reason I love serving – it’s such a wonderful training ground for life and I can ask the teachers when these types of life situations arise. 🙂
She told me that next time I should try to observe my anger objectively and calmly ask why. By walking away, I suppressed my anger which will cause it to arise at another time in life. Ah…practice practice practice. Either way it was an excellent experience because there’s always some minimal conflict between servers in the kitchen, but Goenka (the head teacher) wrote that we always need to speak to the person directly before talking to another otherwise we’re backbiting.
Arg. So tough la! So many fears of being yelled at or condescending speech. Alas, all fears are just in my mind because when I spoke to the chef, she was so kind to me and we solved it. No big deal (can all of our life conversations be like this?). Also, I learned that most of life’s challenges with others are simply due to a misunderstanding. Hahaha, for those who find Chinese people speaking English to be terribly rude *coughMeInThePastandStillNowAtTimescough*, it’s actually just a translation issue. I didn’t realize until this trip away from home why I found Chinese people to be so rude. It’s because the Chinese language is very direct. There’s no pleasantries of “oh excuse me, could you please take the water outside”. It’s more like “take water outside now”. That’s just how they speak and it’s not considered rude. They’re just directly translating their language into English and as a result, it sounds hilariously rude to English speakers.
Anyway, that wonderful serving experience came to a close. A tiny bit more wisdom and a whole lot of sleep to catch up on.
Ipoh:
Hellloooooo Ipoh! Ipoh is located North of Kuala Lumpur. I was invited to Poh Cheng’s house after we served together for the past 10 days. Hahaha can you say I’m always surrounded by foodies? Well, Ipoh is definitely known for their food and now I know why.
I stayed with Poh Cheng and Siew Lan for like…4 days and each day was a foodie’s heaven:
Thanks Poh Cheng! Can’t wait to come back to Malaysia to do more fooding with you and Siew Lan!
Kuantan:
Eunice and I were preparing to go sit as students in the next course and we were pretty tired from serving a week previously. We met up in Kuantan a few days before we were to be students and pretty much just stayed in the hotel, slept and ate. It was absolute heaven. Oh, and I made a Youtube video of how to get to Dhamma Malaya – you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS0m4tNLbQM&t=7s
Dhamma Malaya – Student time!
What can I say? It was an excellent and also hard time. Each time I sit as a student, I end up learning more about myself, but to do so we all must face our past. It’s 10 hours of meditation per day and when the mind calms down, the past reactions, traumas etc. come to the surface – sometimes as a painful sensation, sometimes as thoughts, sometimes as pleasant sensations. We never know what’ll happen, but as a teacher told me: “you just accept everything that happens”. For me this time, all I could think about was the next Youtube videos I wanted to make! I was frustrated with it at times, but my teacher helped me realize that even thoughts are impermanent. It doesn’t matter that they keep repeating, they will eventually fade away. This was a huge turning point for me in life because my anxieties tended to spiral because I got caught in my thoughts – now I know with experience that even they are not permanent. It’s given me a lot more happiness and freedom as a result.
Kuala Lumpur:
Back to KL! Eunice and I travel pretty well together – we’re both foodies and we also enjoy the peace and quiet. We’re not ones to go to tourist destinations. We chill in the apartment, relax, eat and meditate. Hahaha! Perhaps boring to others, but we love it. Ah! And Eunice’s husband Kelvin joined us. Sweet guy and also…a complete foodie!
With Kelvin around, we were a little more adventurous and didn’t stay in the apartment for days on end…we went out to find food!
Kelvin and I were on the hunt for durian and we found it! We ended up at a place called Durian BB which had a durian tasting platter. Durian is quite polarizing for people – it’s a love or hate relationship. I don’t notice a bad smell, but others find that it smells like a washroom after someone did a number 2. Alas, we loved it. This tasting went from mild to richer and creamier. Our favourite was Musang King – not too sweet or overly creamy, but also with a slight bitter taste. Very balancing. Also snakeskin fruit is pictured above. I’ve never seen it before, but Eunice says it’s from Indonesia. White flesh on the inside and slightly crunchy with a brown seed inside.
I wish I knew the names of the above dishes (Malaysian food), but this restaurant was to die for. Michelin guide for the win!
Off to Malacca
We were only with Kelvin for a few short days, but then he had to head back to HK for work. Life of a cardiologist la! Thanks for saving lives Kelvin! While he headed back to HK, Eunice and I headed South to Malacca where we were going to meet our fellow meditator Jerry!
I swear…are all meditators foodies? Jerry certainly knew his food and played as a wonderful tour guide to us. We also had a fancy dinner in Malacca when we stumbled across a private dining experience on Google Maps. Not the plan, but sometimes it happens. Super cute and the cooking is done by an artist! Lol…you can totally tell from the pictures and colours – holy cow! The Green Reaper – https://maps.app.goo.gl/USpJ1vGZEeiq6XFJ9. Tell Dani and Christian I say hi!
…Oh..and get the “Middle Eastern” Menu. Those falafels are to die for.
That’s pretty much a wrap for Malaysia except…I also got a haircut. #secretskillsofJerry
Summary:
If you haven’t hit up Malaysia yet, I would definitely say it’s a must-go. After 17ish countries (I can’t remember the total now…too many to count), it’s probably #1 for food and has some crazy culture with Malays, Indians and Chinese also in one cute little mixing pot.
That’s it for this chapter! Next stop…Sri Lanka.
Wishing you well,
Tracy
World of Wandering Minds 