A Random Coincidence

I went to a Buddhist banquet on Chinese New Year Eve earlier this year on 2/14. Many enjoyed the V day with their love ones while I engaged in conversion with friends. I filled the conversation gap with browsing the Winter Olympics. I noticed Mikaela Shiffrin's success and texted my ski friend. After that, I began to hum a tune out of nowhere. I must have persistently humming it for an hour and felt quite strange. After the banquet, while I was walking to the parking lot, I suddenly realized that the tune was "The Girl with Flaxen Hair" by Claude Debussy. My ski friend do have flaxen hair and is a half-French. I was impressed by my mind's pick (if not so random) which fits the event.

Last night, 4/25, I met my ski friend again in a gathering. When I chose my playlist in my car when going home, I was so sure that I clicked the Caprice by Rachmaninoff but must have accidentally clicked one below it, which is "The Girl with Flaxen Hair", didn't even know it was in the list at all. I was all giggling about the coincidence while waving my ski friend goodbye.

I wrote the event in here since as I grow, I begin to wonder the cause and effect in a Buddhist term is more about events that appear in concordant rather than direct reason that we attribute by our logical mind. I must have read too many Madhyamaka book since I tend to not to believe in coincidence as much as I did because God doesn't roll a dice? My journey into Green Tara practice and Kagyu school are also more like pre-set events, about which I should write later, than by a dice-rolling.

They said: "Once is a fluke. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a trend." Let's see if it is a trend.

Some Soundtracks that I Love

Cinema Paradiso

Local Hero

Montaigne

The great French writer Montaigne is probably the model life that many people yearn for in his little castle in France. I came across some of his quotes recently:

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/michel_de_montaigne