Eight items for one life

1. You will receive a body.
You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for as long as you live. How you take care of it or fail to take care of it can make an enormous difference in the quality of your life.

2. You will learn lessons.

You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called Life. Each day, you will be presented with opportunities to learn what you need to know. The lessons presented are often completely different from those you need.

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons.

Growth is a process of trial, error and experimentation. You can learn as much from failure as you can from success. Maybe more.

4. A lesson is repeated until it is Learned.
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it (as evidenced by a change in your attitude and ultimately your behavior) then you can go on to the next lesson.

5. Learning lessons does not end.

There is no stage of life that does not contain some lessons. As long as you live there will be somthing more to learn.

6. The answer lie inside of you.

The solutions to all of life problems lie within your grasp. All you need to do is ask, look, listen and trust yourself.

7. What you make of your life is up to you.

You have all the tools and resources you need. What you create with those tools and resources is up to you. Remember that through desire, goal setting and unflagging effort you can have anything you want. Persistence is the key to success.

8.Others are merely mirrors of you.

You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself. When tempted to criticize others, ask yourself why you feel so strongly.

Eight items for one life

1. You will receive a body.
You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for as long as you live. How you take care of it or fail to take care of it can make an enormous difference in the quality of your life.

2. You will learn lessons.

You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called Life. Each day, you will be presented with opportunities to learn what you need to know. The lessons presented are often completely different from those you need.

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons.

Growth is a process of trial, error and experimentation. You can learn as much from failure as you can from success. Maybe more.

4. A lesson is repeated until it is Learned.
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it (as evidenced by a change in your attitude and ultimately your behavior) then you can go on to the next lesson.

5. Learning lessons does not end.

There is no stage of life that does not contain some lessons. As long as you live there will be somthing more to learn.

6. The answer lie inside of you.

The solutions to all of life problems lie within your grasp. All you need to do is ask, look, listen and trust yourself.

7. What you make of your life is up to you.

You have all the tools and resources you need. What you create with those tools and resources is up to you. Remember that through desire, goal setting and unflagging effort you can have anything you want. Persistence is the key to success.

8.Others are merely mirrors of you.

You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself. When tempted to criticize others, ask yourself why you feel so strongly.

Eight items for one life

1. You will receive a body.
You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for as long as you live. How you take care of it or fail to take care of it can make an enormous difference in the quality of your life.

2. You will learn lessons.

You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called Life. Each day, you will be presented with opportunities to learn what you need to know. The lessons presented are often completely different from those you need.

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons.

Growth is a process of trial, error and experimentation. You can learn as much from failure as you can from success. Maybe more.

4. A lesson is repeated until it is Learned.
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it (as evidenced by a change in your attitude and ultimately your behavior) then you can go on to the next lesson.

5. Learning lessons does not end.

There is no stage of life that does not contain some lessons. As long as you live there will be somthing more to learn.

6. The answer lie inside of you.

The solutions to all of life problems lie within your grasp. All you need to do is ask, look, listen and trust yourself.

7. What you make of your life is up to you.

You have all the tools and resources you need. What you create with those tools and resources is up to you. Remember that through desire, goal setting and unflagging effort you can have anything you want. Persistence is the key to success.

8.Others are merely mirrors of you.

You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself. When tempted to criticize others, ask yourself why you feel so strongly.

Edit Your Life, Part 1: Commitments

Today’s edit: All the commitments in your life.

Take an inventory of the commitments in your life. Here are some common ones :

Work - we have multiple commitments at our jobs. List them all.
Side work - some of us free-lance, or do odd jobs to take in money. More commitments.
Family - we may play a role as husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter. These roles come with many commitments.
Kids - my kids have soccer, choir, Academic Challenge Bowl, National Junior Honor Society, basketball, spelling bee, and more. Each of their commitments is mine too.
Civic - we may volunteer for different organizations, or be a board member or officer on a non-profit organization.
Religious - many of us are very involved with our churches, or are part of a church organization. or perhaps we are committed to going to service once a week.
Hobbies - perhaps you are a runner or a cyclist, or you build models, or are part of a secret underground comic book organization. These come with - surprise! - commitments.
Home - aside from regular family stuff, there’s the stuff you have to do at home.
Online - we may be a regular on a forum or mailing list or Google group. These are online communities that come with commitments too.
You might have other categories. List everything.

Now take a close look at each thing on the list, and consider: How does this give my life value? How important is it to me? Is it in line with my life priorities and values? How would it affect my life if I dropped out? Does this further my life goals?

These are tough questions, but I suggest seeing if you can eliminate just one thing — the thing that gives you the least return for your invested time and effort. The thing that’s least in line with your life values and priorities and goals. Cut it out, at least for a couple weeks, and see if you can get along without it. Revisit this list at that time and see if you can cut something else out. Edit mercilessly, keeping only those that really mean something to you.

Each time you cut a commitment, it may give you a feeling of guilt, because others want you to keep that commitment. But it’s also a huge relief, not having to do that commitment each day or week or month. It frees up a lot of your time, and while others may be disappointed, you have to keep what’s important to you in mind, not everyone else. If we committed to what everyone else wanted all the time, we would never have any time left for ourselves.

Take the time to edit your commitments, and your life will be greatly simplified. You will thank yourself for it.

Dunhuang Mogao Caves

a. Brief Introduction

The grottoes in the Mogao Caves are the world’s largest and oldest treasure house of Buddhist art.

The Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, also known as the One-Thousand-Buddha Grottoes, are located on the eastern, rocky side of Singing Sand Mountain, near Dunhang City, Gansu Province. According to historical records, the carving of them was started in 366 AD and continued for about 1,000 years. Now, there are 492 grottoes in existence, with some 45,000 square m of murals and 2,400-odd painted clay figures. The painted clay figures vary greatly in size, with the largest one being 33 m high and the smallest only 10 cm.

Painted clay sculptures and murals in the Mogao Grottoes have mainly Buddhist themes, but they also include human figures, reflecting various societies and cultures of different times. Besides, they also demonstrate painting styles of different times in layout, figure design, delineation and coloring, as well as the integration of Chinese and Western arts.

In 1900, a total of 4,500 valuable cultural relics dating from 256 AD to 1002 were found in the Buddhist Sutra Cave here, including silk paintings, embroidery and documents in rare languages such as ancient Tibetan and Sanskrit. This is regarded as one of the world’s greatest oriental cultural discoveries.

b. Cultural Heritage

The Mogao Grottoes show examples of various types of art, such as architecture, painting and statuary. By inheriting the artistic traditions of the central and western regions of China and absorbing the merits of ancient arts from India, Greece and Iran, ancient Chinese artists created Buddhist art works with strong local features. These art works are treasures of human civilization, providing valuable material for studies of the politics, economy, culture, religion, ethnic relations and foreign exchanges of China in olden times. Besides, there are also about 50,000 items of scriptures, documents, paintings and weavings written in several languages spanning the period from the Three Kingdoms Period to Northern Song Dynasty.

Grottoes

So far there are 492 grottoes, with murals and painted clay figures. There are meditation grottoes, Buddha hall grottoes, temple grottoes, vault-roofed grottoes and shadow grottoes. The largest grotto is 40 m high and 30 m wide, whereas the smallest is less than one foot high.

Painted Clay Figures

These are the main treasures of the Dunhuang Grottoes. The figures are in different forms, including round figures and relief figures. The tallest is 34.5 m high, while the smallest is only 2 cm. These painted clay figures show such a great variety of themes and subject matter, as well as advanced techniques, that the Mogao Grottoes are generally regarded as the world’s leading museum of Buddhist painted clay figures.

Murals

The murals in the Mogao Grottoes display Buddhist sutras, natural scenery, buildings, mountain and water paintings, flower patterns, flying Apsaras (Buddhist fairies) and ancient farming and production scenes. There are 1,045 murals extant, with a total area of 45,000 sq. m. They are artistic records of historical changes and customs and traditions from the 4th to the 18th centuries.

Excavated Articles

In 1900, about 50,000 cultural relics were found in a sanctum sealed behind the northern wall of Grotto No. 16. These articles included Buddhist sutras, documents, embroidery works and paintings from the 4th to the 12th centuries. Apart from ancient Chinese documents, there were also documents in other ancient languages, including Tibetan, Sanskrit and Uygur. The subjects of these documents include religion, literature, contracts, ledgers and official files. This discovery, which attracted world attention, is of great research value for supplementing and emending ancient Chinese documents.

Buddhist Culture

The Sui Dynasty (518-618) was a golden age for Buddhism in Chinese history. And the Mogao Grottoes experienced their heyday of construction during this dynasty.

Born and brought up in a Buddhist nunnery, Emperor Yang Jian, founder of the Sui Dynasty, was an enthusiastic Buddhist. After he united the whole country, he made Buddhism the national religion. About 5,000 temples were built, thousands of Buddhist sculptures were carved, and there were some 500,000 Buddhist monks and nuns. His son Emperor Yang Guang was also keen on Buddhism. He had 1,000 copies of the Fahua Sutra published and established a school of Buddhism.

In this period, a large number of grottoes were carved at Mogao. The most common form of grotto dating from this dynasty is the inverted conical grotto. A typical example is the seven-layer conical tower in Grotto No. 303, converted from a central tower pillar. Murals in this period were freed from the limit of foreign arts and demonstrated a liberated dynamic creativity. Generally, they show three major features.

First, murals depicting how Buddhists underwent arduous training and endured humiliation for progress in this life receded, and murals depicting easy ways to become a Buddha and attain Paradise began to occupy prominent positions in the grottoes. Second, Avalokitesvara was no longer an accompanying figure for Sakyamuni Buddha. Instead, she was depicted separately and with more grandeur. The appearance of the separate Avalokitesvara marked progress in China’s Buddhism. Third, as secularization of Buddhist art began to emerge , figures in murals in this period were more lifelike.

drink like a fish

A guy hosted a dinner party for people from work, including his boss.

All during the sit-down dinner, the host’s three-year-old girl stared at her father’s boss sitting across from her. The girl could hardly eat her food for staring.

The man checked his tie, felt his face for food, patted his hair in place, but nothing stopped her from staring at him. He tried his best to ignore her but, finally it was too much for him.

He asked her, “Why are you staring at me.?”

Everyone at the table had noticed her behaviour and the table went quiet for her response.

The little girl said, “My Daddy said you drink like a fish and I don’t want to miss it!”

Dragon and Tiger in folk art

The tiger is a popular theme in chinese folk art.One may encounter numerous images of tigers in almost all forms of folk art:paper-cuts, embroidery sculptre, new year prnts and others.

The earliest image of the tiger was discovered iv an ancient tomb unearthed in central China’sHenan Province iv 1987. A tiger made of shells was found lying on the left side of a body buried there. On the right side was the earliest image of a dragon ever found, also made of shells. These images are believed to be some 6,000 years old. Experts say that both tiger and dragon were totems in ancient times.

The Han people ps actually a mixture of may ancient tribes from all oner China. Tribes from the west,including the tribe of the Yellow Emperor, worshipped the tiger, while those along the eastern seashore worshipped the dragon.Of course, there were many other tribes with different totems. After many wars of Expansion, These tribes gradually mixed to form the Han nationality. Because tribes worshipping the tiger and dragon were more powerful, other totems disappeared while these two continued to exist.

Worship of the tiger came from the nomadic and hunting life style of our ancestors. On the grassland, a tiger was a powerful animal. People held a contradictory attitude towards it. They both respected and feared it. They took it as a symbol which could protect their descendants.

With the development of agriculture,people began to rely more on the climate and were concerned with its changes. Since the dragon is said to be in charge of weather, it replaced the tiger. Gradually, the dragon came to hold the dominant powition in the heavens and the tiger became one of his subordinates, the king of mountains.
Ever since the Qin Dynasty in the third centur bC,emperors have monopolized the right of using the dragon symbol.Qinshihuang proclaimed himself the son of the dragon and said his power to rule was given by Heaven. Later on, all the emperors in Chinese history followed wuit.The Emperor’s chair was called the dragon chair, his dress the dragon robe.Dragons appear everywhere in the imperial palace. Anyone else who dared to connect himself with the dragon symbol would be sentenced to death for a crime against the emperor.

The tiger,on the other hand, has always belonged to the people. It is loved
not merely as a totem, but has been secularized through the years. People love its
beauty and strength,find spiritual sustenance in it,and use it as a protector and symbol of good luck. For example, in new year prints, we can often see a picture called “The Tiger guards the House”.People will put it on the front door at the beginning of the year,so that the tiger will protect the family and let it have a peaceful life during the rest of the year.

A legend has it that on a mountain,there was a peach tree and under the tree stood two brothers.Whenever the two found any evil spirits,they fed them to a tiger.
Thus, the two found any evil spirits, they fed them to a tiger.Thus, the tiger has the power to expelevils. According to some researchers, the tiger also symbolizes marriage and reproduction. However, customs differ from one place to another.

In shaanxi Province,the bride will receive two dough tigers when she arrives at the gate of the bridegroom’s home.There is a custom of hanging tiger ornaments on the bed of a newly wed couple. In Henan Province, a temple fair is held at fuxi in the third lunar month and tger toys made of various materials are sold. Many people go there to pray for a child and then bring a tiger toy home with them. One such toy is usually made op of two tigers to symbolize a man and a woman.

In Chinese legends,there are quite a few tales about how tigers saved human lives. One story says in the ancient state of Chu,a man had an illegitimate child which he abandoned in a desolate field. Afemale tiger found the child and fed him with her own milk .Later, the child grew up to become the prime minister of the state of Chu.
Maybe,the most famous man supposedly saved by a tiger is the great phi-losopher, Confucius. It is said that Confucius was so ugly when he was born that his parents decided to leave him on a mountain. Again, it was a tiger who saved his life. The theme of “tiger-feeding man” is, therefore, also popular in paper-cuts and embroidery.
Tigers were worshipped not only by the majority Han people,but also by more than a dozen minority etynic groups.One example is the Yi Nationality.Yi people have a tiger festival every year. On that day, all people dress up to look like tigers and hold all kinds of celebrations.

The worship of the tiger can be found in most pwrts of China.The tiger theme used to be so popular that you could find many kinds of tiger objects in one household.You might see a tiger head made of cloth hanging on the gate,tiger paper-cuts on the window, tiger pillows and quilts on the bed, a tiger cake on the table and tiger caps, shoes and toys for children.

In the past, folk art works of tigers were usually made by women in the coun-tryside. They made these for practical as well as aesthetic purposes. The skill was passed down from mother to daughter and a woman of talent would spread her skill to another village when she married to a man from that place. Most of these women were illiterate and spent their entire lives in one small area in the countryside. So it is a wonder how the original patterns could have been passed down for generations and spread from the isolated villages to all over China.

Don’t lose your temper

When someone disagrees with you or offends you, don’t lose your temper. Why? Because it is of no use to do so. You ought to (should) be patient and keep calm lest you should quarrel with him. You must know that patience is not cowardice, but a virtue. I hope that everybody practices it.

In addition, patience will also bring us success. When you meet with difficulties in your work, it is no use losing heart. You must keep on fighting until (till) the final victory belongs to you.

We always convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, than another. Then we are frustrated that the kids aren’t old enough and we’ll be more contet when they are. After that we’re frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. we will certainly be happy when they are out of that stage.   We always tell ourselves that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act together. when we get a nice a car, and are able to go on a nice vocation. when we retire. the truth is, there’s no better time than right now. if not now, when? our life will always be filled with challenges. It’s best to admit this to ourselves and decide to be happy anyway.   One of my favorite quotes comes from Alfred Souza. He said.”for a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin-real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, someting to be gotten through firest, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”   This perspective has helped me to see that there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So treasure every moment that you have. And remember that time waits for no one. So stop wailting until you finish school, until you go back to school; until you get married, until you get divorced; until you have kids; until you retire; until you get a new car or home; until spring; until you are born again to decide that there is no better time than right now to be happy….   Happiness is a journey, not a destination.so, work like you don’t need money, love like you’ve never been hurt, And dance like no one’s watching.

Don’t You Like Any of Our Colours Today?

Mrs. Green was eighty, but she had a small car, and she always drove to the shops in it on Saturday and bought her food .

She did not drive fast, because she was old, but she drove well and never hit anything. Sometimes her grandchildren said to her, “Please don’t drive your car, Gfandmother. We can take you to the shops.”

But she always said, “No, I like driving. I’ve driven for fifty years, and I’m not going to stop now.”

Last Saturday she stopped her car at some traffic-lights because they were red, and then it did not start again. The lights were green, then yellow, then red, then green again, but her car did not start.

“What am I going to do now?” She said.

But then a policeman came and said to her kindly, “Good morning. Don’t you like any of our colours today?”