The newly elected member for Tangney is a former dolphin trainer, a one-time Buddhist monk, an award-winning police officer and a fan of that divisive fruit the durian.
Weird coincidence: he’s from Malaysia, where I lived as a monk, and he’s representing Tangney, which is where I grew up (Attadale). And I like durian, so. OMG, and my band’s first album totally had a dolphin on the cover! We’re basically the same person.
Asked what humans can learn from the smart and gregarious mammals, he answers emphatically: “empathy”. “They understand and respond to our emotions,” he says.
Perhaps, in another earth in multiverse, Bhante, you are the elected member of parliament and he is an Australian monk developing Suttacentral website #multiverseofmadness
Here is Sam Lim’s maiden speech to parliament. It’s a moving and personal account, which is a good reminder of how far we have come in Australia today.
It’s not often that I can say I’ve been moved by a politician’s speech, but he has something about him: a clarity and integrity. Anyhow, I wish him the best, it’s no easy job!
I think I blessed his house once too. I used to see him around the Cambodian temple next door when he was a diversity liaison officer with the WA police. Of course that is overshadowed by his accomplishments as a dolphin trainer.
" In early May, Albanese and Shadow Home Affairs Minister Kristina Keneally attended a function at the Hindu Council of Australia, and last week Morrison and Immigration Minister Alex Hawke attended an event hosted by the same organization. During these events all four allowed themselves to be draped in scarves of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), unaware that they were not simply wearing a religious symbol as a show of respect to their hosts, but instead wearing a highly political symbol of a group they should in no way be seen to implicitly endorse.
The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) are the religious wing of the Sangh Parivar, the umbrella name for a collection of Hindu nationalist organizations that includes its paramilitary wing, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s ruling party — all of which are organized around the ideology of Hindutva."—The Diplomat
That’s sad to see. I haven’t had much to do with them in recent years, but formerly they were never like that. They’ve always been pro-environment, and joined with Buddhists and progressive Jews in support of same sex marriage.
Attadale is appropriate as most untrained ordinary persons see self in its basic form as central.
"“What self do you posit, Potthapada?”
“I posit a gross self, possessed of form, made up of the four great existents [earth, water, fire, and wind], feeding on physical food.”—Digha Nikaya 9
The next level of self, these could still be domiciled in Attadale:
"“With his mind thus concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability, he directs and inclines it to creating a mind-made body. From this body he creates another body, endowed with form, made of the mind, complete in all its parts, not inferior in its faculties.”—Digha Nikaya 2
Between self and non-self there is a considerable path of practice, with self constantly being redefined:
“Or as if a man were to pull a snake out from its slough. The thought would occur to him: 'This is the snake, this is the slough. The snake is one thing, the slough another, but the snake has been pulled out from the slough.”—Digha Nikaya 2
It all ends there .