Why become a monk? By Kong Siew Yu

Mr.Yu is a 34-year-old computer engineer from Singapore. He describes working as a “typical corporate slave.” He states, “things that corporate perceives as great values I have them. But things that humanity perceives as great values do I have that? These are the sort of questions I ask myself.”

During covid his career actually took off and he became more successful. He describes a “so what” moment after having climbed up the corporate ladder. “Is it worth it for me to burn my time and life for all this stuff? I had my conclusion. I don’t really want to trade my next twenty years in corporate life just to get that bit of financial comfort or luxury. The tradeoff is not worth it.

For someone who believes in spirituality it’s much more worthy to learn about Buddhism, meditation and to fill myself with stuff that I can bring with me, not just now. That’s my impression. Money is good but there are better things.”

“I used to not believe one bit about the spiritual side of things when I was younger. During my first meditation experience at 23 I experienced something and maybe believed a little bit. As I progressed through my life things started to come in and hit me one by one. Oh wow, it’s really there. Even though I don’t see it. I don’t hear it. It’s there. By learning Buddhism and changing myself I fixed all the not so good to bad relationships with everyone around me. That is the biggest impact and biggest motivation.”

“A really rich message I want to tell a lot of people is that Buddhism is not a religion. It’s a set of life solutions. Someone can be a free thinker and be a Buddhist at the same time. Because Buddhism is not a religion. It’s like physics. It’s there. Someone from engineering I would always tell my friends that karma is like Newton’s third law. Every force you impose there is an opposing force back to you. That’s Newton’s third law. Action and reaction, that’s basically karma. You do good, you get good.”

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