Tet Thuong nguyen

With sister at Conrad' staff party.

Yesterday, I went to the pagoda because it was a big festival. Normally, in a year, there are a couple of Buddhism festivals for Vietnamese: a first full moon after Tet (or 15 january on lunar calendar), the hungry Ghost festival in July, the full moon in December, and the festival to celebrate the birth of Buddha, in May (if I remember correctly. Of them all, the one in January in the biggest for us. In VN, old people say no matter how often we go to the pagoda, it means nothing if we miss out the one in January after Tet. Normally, on this day, we have to pray for the livings, like our family members to be in good health, get lukcy...and for the death, their souls can be freed, they can move on with their next life, and not being a hungry ghost flying around, having no place to go or exist.

So, of course, I wrote a list of names of my family, gave it to the monks, and after a general prayer, they will pray and read out all the names that we gave (Strange to hear a Vnese monks reading out some Belgians names, too). I really like to attend the prayer section because I find it very emotional, and afterwards, I always feel I have to be a better person. Yesterday, there was also a ceremony where each of us (if we want to) go to each monks, nuns and give them foods. We have to pray for the victims of all the natural disasters because even though we don't know them, we don't hold the same nationality, we should pray that their souls are freed because they could have been our great ancestors (according to the reincarnation).

After praying, we have always been invited to have a meal at the pagoda (FOR FREE), and the foods are the only good vegetarian foods that I find here in Brussels, a lot of super delicious dishes.

I only have a small problem ;-), that is during the pray, I realise one of the prayer says for women who had been bad treated, unhappy....and who want to become Buddhist, and work hard in their monastery, the next life, they will become men ;-). So, basically, no matter which world you are, being a woman is no good. I have always been conscious that there is sexism in Buddhist (after all, the root is Hindu) but I was still shock that the prayer says so, and I prayed ;-). That is to say, there is no perfect world, so are people.

Anyway, last week was a crazy week at work (FYI, I got to shake hands with Lionel Richie, my first celebrity encounter heheheh), but it was interesting. So that was cool.