Having "Me" Time

It's ten days until Christmas and I'm counting down even though I'm a buddhist.  I like the Christmas season because it brings with it joy, happiness and brings out all the good things in people.  It makes us think of others and not only of ourselves.  I suppose I also like it because I grew up in Europe where we had Christmas trees decorated along entire roads, Father Christmas roaming around giving out presents and of course we had the Christmas market at the Old town square.  Christmas songs played everywhere and television showed Christmas movies.  A favorite of mine is always "A Christmas Carol" for I think the lessons it teaches us are ones to remind us of what we have.  Thank you Charles Dickens. The story teaches us to not only think of ourselves but to also think of others.  At the beginning, Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserly old man who disregards Christmas and is so stingy he lives in a cold ...

Sundays are usually days I have to relax and contemplate a little. This past Sunday I watched a movie called "Never Let Me Go" and it is indeed an emotionally touching movie. I had tears in my eyes as I watched it on my computer screen, I suppose if I were watching it on a big screen it would be even emotional. It's a heartbreaking for it raises questions about the morality of cloning humans for organ donations. I remember debating the morality of all this in highschool.  Afterall, this was during the era when Dolly the Sheep became the first success story of a clone from an adult cell.  This was a scientific breakthrough, but was this moral?  Was this the right thing to do? To what extent is technology to be used for one's on good? "Never Let Me Go" addresses this question by showing us kids growing up in a seemingly normal English boarding school.  The only difference was that they were clones.  They took lessons, played rugby, and had emotions just l...

The other day I watched the movie "A Serious Man." Its a great but utterly strange movie that has twinkled my brain and sparkled my brain cells. The opening quote by Rashi (who is a renowned Rabbi) says: "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you." I love this quote. It captures exactly what happens in the movie and is a great reminder to us all, that no matter what happens, we should all receive (or take) things with simplicity for in the end, we all die. The movie takes place in the late 1960's and the main character is Larry Gopnik who is simply an ordinary Jewish professor trying to be a "serious man." He has a troubled family and is pressured by a series of unfortunate events that happen to him with his wife wanting divorce, his son secretly smoking marijuana, his daughter stealing money from his wallet to save up for a nose job, an unwanted brother sleeping on the couch, and a student who is trying to bribe him for a passing gr...