12 April 2024 Back to very basic nature of life

Back to very basic nature of life in the hot summer:

Today, I shared with my Abhidhamma students about the difficulty of maintain the life in Myanmar, and this material body called rūpa in Abhidhamma.
There was total electricity blackout for 2 days, so I was busy trying to make sure all everyone (7 persons, more if the neighbour children come here) here have enough water. Because our water pumps need electricity to pump the water from the underground.

Without electricity, life is difficult. In addition, it is now summer, hot as 38 to 41 degree from 12 to 4pm.

Night time was about 31 degree. so everyone needed to take showers few times a day. This is contemplation of difficulty of maintaining the rūpa. Rūpa (material, body) was the previous topic in my Abhidhamma lesson.

We need to give food to the body (rūpa), make sure it has enough nutriment and stay with sufficient water. Need to give it coolness to maintain the body, by drinking water and taking shower, and also staying in shady place, if not the body will be overheated in this summer time. Few people in Yangon had died due to overheat and own medical condition.

If Malaysians are complaining the weather is hot in Malaysia, imagine my life here. - no electricity, lack of water, no aircon, not even aircooler when there was electricity failure - for the previous two days. And also internet/wifi is on and off depending on the state of battery.

I am fulfilling my khantiparami while studying in my university and doing good deeds in Aggācāra centre.
Thanks goodness the electricity was restored to quite normal condition today.

We have solar panel + battery + inverter for one fan + few light + wifi + refrigerator But because the usage was too much, so the battery was always low power, and the inverter connected to the battery was giving warning sign for previous two days.
Two days ago, I had to turn off all electrical equipment, only left the refrigerator turned on. This is also a good contemplation of nutriment. We need to preserve the food at the most optimum condition so that we can use food ingredient for the next day. We can live without light, wifi, internet, aircon/aircooler. But we cannot survive without any food or water.

Finally, at night, where no more electricity coming from solar panel, the inverter made a loud noise, informing of low battery. So, I had to switch it off. So we left without electricity from government already, and at that time also without electricity from the solar. There was no source of electricity at all. Even the refrigerator cannot run anyway.
Thanks goodness there were sufficient drinking purified water for everyone. This is really back to very basic life, living with very minimal needs.

This reminded me of the life of Aggācāra at the very starting time about 10 years ago. There was no electricity and only water coming from manual water pump pumping out water from underground. It was a very basic life condition at that time.

Now, the electricity came back. but there is always 5 or 6 hours blackout.
While teaching and sharing on the rūpa in the Abhidhamma class, I had an actual experience about maintaining rūpa (material/body) in these two days on how to survive in very hot weather in summer, without electricity.

As the Buddha said, let the body (Rūpa) suffer, not the mind (nāma) suffer. That means even though there is dukkha in the body, we have to accept it, not let the mind be affected by the dukkha. This is maintaining equanimity in the mind.

This also implies the suffering in the rūpa is unavoidable, the suffering in the mind is optional. By accepting the suffering of the body due to the extreme hot weather, then there is less disturbance in the mind.


Now summer -life is difficult for everyone. last from Mac, April, May. In June, it is raining season, so the weather will turn up to be nicer.