Mind is a place where thoughts are created. Let my mind say in its own way....

There's a sweet story that I heard from my mother. During my mother's birthday last November, she ordered some food from a restaurant to have a little celebration at home. It is a tradition in my family to eat noodles whenever one of the members celebrates his or her birthday. The noodle symbolises a long life for someone who celebrates birthday since the size of the noodle is long So among all other types of food, she ordered noodles.

My mother as always, would like to share the joy with the relatives. So she packed some of the food for our relatives in my hometown and asked them to pick up from my house. One of the relative is her sister who has 2 young boys. The youngest one, 9-year old, happened to come to my house to pick the package from my mother. As a child who is full of curiosity, asking my mother why we all have to eat noodle on our birthday. My mother answered him that if we eat noodle during our birthday, we will be blessed with long life. This answer seems satisfy my young cousin, but he didn't say anything for some time. For the next few minutes, he seemed thinking about something, and finally when it was about time for him to go, he asked my mother one more time. "Aunt, is it really true if we eat the noodles we will be blessed with long life?" My mother said "yes" and thought that he wanted to get more noodle for him. Yes, it's true... my cousin asked my mother whether he can get extra package of noodle. However, what he told my mother really touched us. He said "if it is really true, can I get extra package so that my mother can eat more noodles, so she will be blessed with long life".

Wow, that's really sweet and touching. A 9 year old boy can think of getting extra noodle for the sake of his mother. He wants his mother to be blessed with long life. We may find it funny that he asked for such "illogical" request. Like my brother commented, "I thought the one who will be blessed long life is the birthday person? Not other people". However, the logic is registered very well in the mind of this boy. This action really show how he cares and loves his mother, and regardless whether the noodle will make the mother have the blessing is no longer important. I'm sure when his mother knows about this, she will be happily eating extra noodles because what she receives is not the conception that she will get the blessing, but what she receives is the love and care from his son, symbolised by the extra package of noodle.

In life, quite often we interact through symbols to express the intention in our mind. By symbolising certain acts, somehow the actions themselves will become more "real" to us, we can have better "feel" of it. For example, Valentine's day. To me personally, Valentine's day is just a normal day, no different from any other days, and in fact everyday is equally important to us. However, by focusing on the meaning behind this symbol, I could feel that hey this day is a good day to remind me that I love my girlfriend, that I am fortunate to have someone to love, and being loved by someone. By spending a special quality time with her, I realise that not all time we could spend time like this. And this is really important for our relationship. So, not the Valentine's day itself that is important, it is the same as any other day, but the meaning behind it gives the difference, and in fact not everybody feels the same way. It's all up to us how we're going to reflect on this meaning and translate it to make the quality of our relationship become better and better.

However, ironically that many people tend to focus on the symbols themselves, rather than knowing that the symbols are only symbols, nothing more than that borrowing terms from Ajahn Brahm, this is what is called focusing on the "container" rather than the "content". At the end of the day, container will remain container. What we drink and benefit from a water is the water element itself, not the bottle that carries it. The bottle will remain the bottle, nothing more than that. It is a fact that sometimes we force people to practice a certain tradition, even having fight with family members over whether or not the tradition should be practiced, but we don't know the significance of the tradition itself what it is that symbolises the form in the tradition. Or sometimes we could judge people that they practice "wrong" things, like for example I have a friend who criticises Buddhist practice of "worshiping" Buddha statue. To my friend, it is wrong to worship something that is not alive. However, I told my friend, what we do is not a worshiping. Again, statue will always be a statue, one day it will turn into ashes as well. Nothing is permanent.  But that statue is a symbol for us to better visualise and remember the quality of Buddha as our teacher. We have better feel when we see the statue. Even Buddha himself has passed away and there is no way for him to literally teach us, but the quality is still there for us to be remembered and to inspire us to develop such qualities so that we can be better human beings.

So, often we need symbols to help us communicate to each other, but we have to be mindful that symbols are basically tools, nothing more than that. By using these symbols, we can see more 'real' and communicate our intentions better. Like my sweet 9 year old cousin, with noodles he could communicate his great love and care to his mother can his love and care be measured? Of course no, but it will be hard for us to understand how deep they are, if there's no that noodle as a symbol cheers!