Living in the Maelstrom of Existence: Happiness

Went to BBM for lecture again. Today, Marty was lecturing on the Avatamsaka Sutra, and it was an extremely interesting lecture. Other than explaining the sutra, he also told stories from the pilgrimage. (For those who don't know, back in the 70's, Marty and Rev Heng Sure did a 3 steps 1 bow pilgrimage from LA to Ukiah, a total of 800 over miles. Took them over 2 years and 9 months to complete the pilgrimage. They basically just left with their robes, a vehicle to sleep in, and the avatamsaka sutra. Thats all, and came back with tons of amazing stories!)

There were lots of wonderful quotes, too many to write here, but here's a good one. Marty was saying some of his students from Yale University were conducting a study on happiness and the results were that the source of happiness stems from 3 main things:
1. Having Good Relationship with Family and Friends
2. Having Something Creative in your Life - Music, Art, Dance, Spiritual Practice...
3. Doing Something Meaningful that Benefits the World
There you go.. your solution to finding happiness =)

The lecture was very interesting and all, but there was 1 moment where i spaced out and went along with my usual day dreaming habits and just that moment, Marty suddenly asked out of the blue "Jonathan... Where's the edge of the universe?" I was caught... 被發現了。。。

Anyway, here's some more pictures from last week's cooking adventures... (Thanks to Amanda & Kiki! I still don't really know how to distinguish you 2 from each other... =P)