“That’s what learning is, after all;
not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it
and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games.
Losing, in a curious way, is winning.”
- Richard Bach

It was a national passion that raised all dreams and hopes, and then closed with a bitter ending. This year, the Vancouver Canucks, a professional ice hockey team based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada made it to the Stanley Cup Finals – after waiting for 18 long years.

As the best-of-seven championship series of the National Hockey League (NHL), the Stanley Cup Finals is highly coveted by hockey teams in the US and Canada. I honestly admit I’m not a hard core hockey fan because I find the game too physical and violent at times. But when I heard that the Canucks made It to the Stanley Cup finals I can’t help but tune in. Up against the Boston Bruins, it was a fight of both teams resurging from years of waiting to enter the championships.

It seems like the teams were sharing equal slices of the pie, until Game 7 decided who gets the bigger share. Games 1 and 2 were won by the Canucks, while 3 and 4 by the Bruins. Game 5 by the Canucks, 6 by the Bruins.

As Game 7 began, we hopeful Canucks fans were filled with excitement – the team is playing a home game. It was like a national holiday, all are wearing Canucks shirts, cars carry team flags, hundreds of thousands of people gather in viewing places to show their support.

Read the rest of this entry »

While on a trip to Colombia, my websites went down due to an attack. It took two weeks before my precious sites were fixed. In the past, I sure would have gone ballistic but this time it was different, I was able to center myself and stay calm. “Everything is temporary, everything happens for a reason.”

At the height of waiting for my websites to be restored, I was given a one-day sitting slot in Vipassana Meditation Center in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Thanks to this opportunity and what I learned from a 10 Day Silence Retreat two months ago, I found the tools to tame my emotions and skip the stress.

Vipassana Meditation Guru S.N. Goenka said, “It is this simple truth: before you harm others, you first harm yourself by generating mental negativity; and by removing the negativity, you can find peace within and strengthen peace in the world.”

10 days of silence?

Yes, I immersed myself for 10 days of no speech. During the retreat, a Code of Noble silence for the body, mind and speech is required: absolutely zero speaking, glancing at other students, gestures, and written notes.

Day in and day out we are to sit still, merely observing respiration and sensations, and how our mind and body react to them. As easy as it may sound, doing these are certainly never easy. To purify the mind at its deepest level is self purification itself. S.N. Goenka is right when he said that we can delegate a lot of things but self-purification can only be done if one will work hard on it. As in everything else, no one can help us be successful on anything. It must come from within us through self-discipline and the power of strong determination.

Read the rest of this entry »