I just fin­ished watch­ing Shaolin Temple with Pita. It had a good sto­ry and amaz­ing fight scenes, but the dub­bing just killed any act­ing or tak­ing the movie seri­ous­ly. The mas­ter was a very for­giv­ing man though, as all Buddhist peo­ple should be, I’m assum­ing. It changed my per­cep­tion of Buddhism in gen­er­al. I always believed that it was an extreme­ly strict belief sys­tem. And, I believe, it should be. After all, if you break one rule, why not break them all? However, I do believe that there is a bal­ance that must be tak­en into account. If you are aware that you sin, and you sel­dom do it, then it should be alright.

I dab­bled in Buddhism once in first year. It was enlight­en­ing, but incom­plete. It just did­n’t fit in with my life well at the time. Of course, the belief that suf­fer­ing is inher­ent in life fit com­plete­ly, but I was still a child (well, I still am, actu­al­ly), try­ing to under­stand myself and the things around me. I think that I am bet­ter adjust­ed to some­thing like Buddhism right now. I’m just not sure how close­ly I should fol­low its’ teach­ings.

I mean, I think I could live on rice. But celiba­cy?! I mean…I’m human. And to make things worse, I’m male. I think it’s some­thing that I would real­ly have to work on. Practicing Buddhism would def­i­nite­ly stop me from being such a good hater. I’m always wor­ried that peo­ple will think that I’m con­ceit­ed from the way I hate peo­ple. I know I’m no bet­ter than the rest, but do oth­er peo­ple? It just wor­ries me.

But it would­n’t wor­ry a Buddhist.