After a hiatus

After a long hiatus, i decided to publish another post on this blog.

I assisted in 2 safety events, 19th LTA Annual Safety Awards Convention and LTA's booth at World Safety Congress, this week and I would like to express my appreciation towards everyone who played a part in making them a success. It requires a team to run the whole show smoothly, taking care of each other's back.

I am also grateful to gain so much insights through these processes, especially about our Total Safety Management Framework and event management. I know I am still lacking but I will continue to be a better person than yesterday.

After the event tear down, I went for Buddhism class and the topic that Venerable brought up intrigued me to write the following post on FB:

"Venerable shared about Buddhist's perspective of writing a will to remove life support (part of passive euthanasia). He said it is actually understandable (he said 合情合理) for people to do so since they have lost the ability to live on their own and they made that choice in order to free their loved ones from emotional and financial burdens.

However, as Buddhism believes in Karma (业) and all the bad happenings are the results of previously committed bad Karma, termination of life support half way is as good as not fully relinquishing the bad Karma. Hence, one has to recognise it, willing to sacrifice and bear the (by that point of time, it would be a little left for this life) "unredeemed" Karma to next life for his/her loved ones and oneself in this life.

So overall, it is understandable for one to make such decision.

I further asked about active euthanasia and Venerable gave a clear answer, "Not acceptable". He went on and cited only a handful of countries in this world legalise euthanasia because of ethical concerns and pressures by various religions. In Buddhist's perspective, it is killing of a life (similar to suicide) and one has yet to relinquish the bad Karma, so it doesn't make a difference as the bad karma will continue to follow you to your next life. I guess the idea is to face our consequences instead of escaping from them.

Well, this is a controversial topic and there are strong arguments on both sides of the debates.  Ultimately, the choice is yours."

And I also asked CH a hypothetical question, "If you are on life support, what will your decision be?" It seemed like a morbid question but I thought it is neccessary for us to be prepared for the unforeseeable circumstance and to better understand our values of life-and-death. Our answers are the same - agreeable to passive euthanasia but not active euthanasia.