I look at the calendar today and it says 31st of January 2007... and my instant reaction was: it is the end of the month ALREADY?!

and now it is only 11 months left in 2007

So many things happened in the past 30 days that I seems to forgot to stop and just cherish the fact that I am alive. I got lost in my own thoughts and fantasies and just simply forget what it means to be alive HERE and NOW. I am preoccupied with uni, crocheting, and thinking about what do I want to do after I graduate (hopefully) in August. My thesis is going no where and I feel that I unconciously trying to avoid the anxiety directly related to my thesis and distract myself by crocheting, crocheting, and crocheting. Since last December I have made 1 shawl, 1 tissue holder, 1 sunglasses case, and now I am making another shawl. The crochet is fun and a useful skill to know but I don't think that it is actually helpful at this point in time.

My mother, on the other hand, is worrying about my social life... the lack of social life to be exact. I wonder why I don't get along with people here? Why did I start keeping to myself? When did I stopped having fun?

One thing that I am trying to understand is the three signata of Buddhism. "Anicca Dukkha Anatta". Annica means impermanence, Dukkha means unsatisfactoriness, and Anatta means insubstantiality. These are called by many as the Universal Laws.

I don't think I can explain to you what "Annica Dukkha Anatta" really means since I don't understand how it works myself so here is an excert from a website I found (while trying to find the correct english pronunciation for those words).

The Three Fundamental Laws of the Buddha

The three signata refer to the three essential marks or characteristics of all "compounded" things, animate or inanimate, microscopic or macroscopic. Because of the universality of their applicability they could be considered as having the force of universal laws. These characteristics are impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and insubstantiality (anatta). As these translations of the basic Pâli terms are only approximate, a further elaboration of these basic concepts of the Dhamma is necessary.

(1) Anicca. The law of impermanence asserts that all phenomena are subject to constant change, to rise and fall, and no permanent states, either physical or animate, exists. The dynamic nature of phenomena is today a commonplace of science. But until quite recently many physical features of the universe were considered immutable, and in the human plane the belief in enduring states or characteristics is still an article of faith in many religious systems. The law of anicca establishes impermanence as the basic universal law.

(2) Dukkha. The law of dukkha states that all complexes of phenomena, are in the final analysis unsatisfactory. It means that no compounded thing or state could be considered as a universal norm of goodness or beauty. It imparts the normative dimension into the consideration of objective reality which is the hallmark of the Dhamma. The law of dukkha is usually considered in relation to the human situation, and here unsatisfactoriness manifests itself as "suffering", which is the popular rendition of the term. It is in this sense that it constitutes the first of the four Noble Truths.

(3) Anatta. The third law states that there is no permanent essence, "self", ego, or soul in phenomena. The term originates as the negation of the concept of atta (âtman) which was the equivalent in the old Brahmanical religion of the Buddha's day to what other religions have called the "soul". The Buddha advanced psycho-physical explanation of the individual which leaves no room for a soul. The Buddha recognised that the delusion of self or ego was one of the most powerful of human instincts, and at the same time one of the most potent sources of ignorance and wrong action. In applying the anatta doctrine to the phenomena of the external world some care mush be exercised. Early Buddhism did not deny the reality of the external world. It argued that the phenomena of the external world could be broken down into its constituent components, and that nothing else other than these components existed. It was only in this sense that the phenomena of the external world were declared to be empty (suñña). Some schools of Mahayâna Buddhism have taken the doctrine of emptiness (suññâtâ) to imply a denial of the reality of the external world. This interpretation is foreign to early Buddhism. Early Buddhism only asserts that there is no fixed essence or being in phenomena, but only a process of becoming (bhâva).