HOL Aug: Avoiding 'unsmooth' deaths
Explore death, meditation, and natural drift with HOL's August roundup. Discover one-day retreats, grief coping strategies, and how to align with your authentic path for a purposeful life.
Hello supporters & readers,
There are less than 100 days left in the year 2024. For some of our loved ones, there are zero days left. I found myself reflecting more on death this month. Maybe it was the burning joss papers or hearing of friends who lost their loved ones this month.
Silent mentors & talking about death with our parents
Interestingly, among Dhamma friends, we chatted about donating our bodies to science under the silent mentor programme. On our podcast, Buddhist scholar Sis Sylvia Bay talked about navigating death conversations with our parents.
36% of our readers mentioned that they don’t know how to bring up that conversation while 9% shared that it is too painful to even think about it. We hope that the podcast is useful for you all!
Speaking of podcasts, we are recruiting more volunteers to support us in advancing our short 20-minute videos across the internet! If you can’t support us by volunteering, do give us a subscribe (it really helps us beat the algos).
Quiet Spaces in Singapore
In August, we explored good one-day meditation sessions across the island. Talking to my non-Dhamma friends, I found that quite a number would like to try a retreat but are intimidated by the commitment of like 5 or even 10 days! So our directory volunteer Nigel kindly volunteered to compile all the one-day retreats!
Switching gears, we looked at how we can move on from grief without spiritual bypassing. In other types of loss, Zeb talked about losing his job and how the Dhamma helped him.
When things get TOO quiet, then our mind starts to fear ghosts. So we wrote one on ghosts in the spirit of Ghost Month.
Suttas vs Dhamma
I always enjoy my Dhamma friend PJ’s reflections on his retreats. Sharing his thoughts with the Dhamma community is even better! In August he writes about why Suttas don’t equal to Dhamma and also what bushfires can reveal about our underlying character.
More ways to get your HOL
We have launched our LinkedIn page to hopefully reach out to more white-collar people on that platform. Do drop us a follow and who knows… you might learn something new!
We have also made our directory available on telegram so that you never miss a cool Buddhist event happening in either Singapore or Malaysia.
We are also hiring a content editor in Malaysia for a paid role with HOL! Thanks to supporters who support us financially, we can finally have a full-time person on board with us!
If you haven’t heard of our sponsorship programme, click here and join the growing community of supporters for as little as 10 SGD a month!
Detour: Following your natural drift
Natural drift guides us to authentic paths. Charlie Munger credits this for his success. Like birds thriving on innate traits, humans flourish when aligning with passions.
This means embracing curiosity, challenging comfort zones, and resisting societal pressures.
Munger advocates relentless engagement with interests and multidisciplinary learning. By following our nature's drift, we unlock the potential for success, happiness, and purposeful living. Read here (5 mins)
Upcoming topics we’d love content on!
Chinese New Year
Christmas Day
End of year reflections
Valentine's Day
Submit your awesome piece here.
Meanwhile, stay happy and wise :D
Metta,
Heng Xuan