My Small-kind-of-Project is Completed

Fiuh...finally it's over.

Okay. You guys might wondering (or just don't care) why I didn't post as daily as I did last week. It's because of my small-kind-of-project called KKDI.

KKDI stands for 'Kumpul-Kumpul Dhamma Indo', a gathering for Indo Buddhist youth in my temple. But we presumed this activity to be outside of regular activities in temple. To make it clear, our activities are actually the same like other religious organisations. We have regular 'mass' or called chanting, lunch together, celebration of religious or some cultural events, etc. Then, we thought, as Buddhist youth, why don't we have a kind-of-gathering while learning Buddhism at the same time. Let's say, when Christians have kind of Bible Study or Cell Group, this will be similar but in different content.

Usually, the KKDI will be presented with some slides by one of our Buddhist friends. So, you can imagine the lecture situation with a particular Buddhism 'subject' (e.g: BUD101, KARM203, etc), followed by Q&A session and discussion/sharing at the end (and if people are staying back). Then I thought it might be boring and not interesting. So, once my boyfriend got his turn to host the KKDI, I said to him, 'Let's make it fun!' and he couldn't say NO once I said YES. Haha.

At the same time, I was reading, well actually both of us, were reading a book titled 'Opening the Door of Your Heart' written by Ajahn Brahm. The book is very interesting for both of us. It contains general stories that have given us wisdom and different perspectives about our daily lives. It's not a heavy-read book yet the moral stories are almost 'overloaded' there, means it's a really really good book to read and reflect about our lives.To make the story short, once I finished reading this book, I thought 'D*mn! This book is really good. I really want to share the stories to everyone, but how could I do that?'

Firstly I shared the stories by sending emails to some of my friends. Then my boyfriend told me that he had to host KKDI this month, so I asked him, 'Do you think it's a good idea if we shared Ajahn Brahm's stories in KKDI?' And he said we might be able to make it, but we need to ask approval from our reverend (i.e.: Buddhist monk or nun). I think it's because Ajahn Brahm is a Buddhist monk from Theravada while our temple is following the Mahayana tradition (so I thought there might be a bit of 'conflict-of-interest'). Unexpectedly, our reverend just simply agreed what we were going to do. No questions, no suggestions, no restrictions, etc. And it's a really good news. Thank you Rev. Ru Yi, we really appreciate your open-mindedness and your open heart to accept whatever we want to do :)

Then we need to think about the format, so the question was, how are we suppose to tell these stories to everyone? And I thought, well, why don't we have some group discussions. Perhaps, if we make several small groups, people will not be really embarrassed to speak up or even sharing their own stories. Anyway, not everyone really knows each other. It might be good to have a good talk to each other.  Then the ideas were rolling over and over, different point-of-views appeared, some quarrels happened even up to the last minutes.

And it all happened today.

As usual, the expected things did not happen and the unexpected just happened. So, we can just try our best to make it happened and I could say that, at least, what we've done was quite a good job. People were divided into four groups, different stories were given to each group with a question about themselves that needs to be answered and finally, a group discussion about the story. I didn't know what they were thinking, but I could see that they were really talking to each other. Some of them really poured out their opinions, their problems, their own life-stories and some of them who we considered to be our 'seniors' were helping their groups to lead the talk and grasp the moral stories.

 

So we did it. And don't forget we've also got heaps and heaps of food and drinks. Thank you so much for everyone who have considered to bring along all these food. We even got some 'es buah' from our lovely friends that couldn't join us. I really appreciate all your kindness :)

'Our Sponsor' - Baby Milo and Mooks

Well, it might not be perfect. And it's not. We just can try our best and wish that all of them have some fun while also learn something for their lives.

The problem is, I am an 'over-thinker'. So I couldn't stop thinking of what has happened, reviewing what we did right and wrong, perceiving of what the others thinking about it.

Well, what's done is finished. I guess, I should come back to learn and grasp the meaning of that.