" - Are you really gonna eat that?
- Yes, of course!
- Europeans don't usually eat that kind of food...
- If I wanted to eat western food, I would have stayed in Europe"
This is how a conversation of several hours with a strange Chinese man started in a not-so-touristy Chinese food market. He is some sort of doctor, traditional Chinese medicine, well over 40, with a barely understandable English accent. He started telling me that he just came back from a 10-day Buddhist meditation ritual in Sri Lanka. The conversation moved starting from being open to new experiences to the fundamental core teachings of Buddhism, as he understood them.
- Suffering is inevitable in life. It comes from many miseries, be it physical suffering, from illness, financial, social, emotional and so on. This is why no one can be happy in this life.
- But I am happy! I said.
- Noooo, you don't suffer now, but some misery will struck you and you will suffer and you will be unhappy. You know, I am a physician, and everyday people come to me, in terrible pain, and they ask me: "Why is this happening to me?" Did you not ever ask yourself that?
- As a matter of fact, I did not. When I fell ill, I did not go to the doctor to ask him why this had happened to me. Let's assume he can really answer me. He might be telling me that it happened because I ate some bad food, or because my karma is bad, or because I did something bad in a previous life, or whatever other explanation. Is this gonna make me feel better? No! I am still ill. Therefore, when I suffer, I do not ask myself why, but how can I deal with it: cure it, accept it, use the suffering or simply live through it.
- Oooh. That is good. But still, can you say you are completely happy now?
- Yes.
- There is nothing you crave for, nothing you need?
- There are, of course, things I need. But I can live very well without them. The only thing that I could say now it makes me suffer is falling in love with someone and not being able to be with her... But then, even this is a wonderful experience. I have friends who were not able to meet someone to make them fall in love for years, and haunt through life like empty emotional ghosts. As well, on a different tune, I know a writer who would be so happy to find such sweet sorrow, that would make him write an entire poetry book about it. You see, every experience is a good experience if you embrace it, not fight it. Even physical pain. Without it, we would not be able to appreciate health, and we would not value it at all. So I choose to enjoy every experience life gives me.
He then explained to me how you have to give up your self in order to rise above the mundane and the suffering. "In Buddhism there is no I, no self"

- You have to meditate to control your mind, your consciousness, and your emotions, your heart. The "Ï", in its various forms, body, mind, heart, craves for different things. Maybe it is a new shirt, maybe a new car, maybe a friend.. If you can't get them, you will be unhappy.
- But why control? Why fight with my emotions, with my mind? My heart is not the enemy, nor is my mind. The heart may hurt sometimes, but not because it hates me, or because it wants to make me suffer. It's just in its nature to love, and to hurt, to be happy, angry... My heart and mind are my best friends. I will not fight them!

Changi, Singapore, later that day