once upon a time...

i could do this and that.

i achieved this and that.

i aspired to be this and that.

once upon a time, i sat around, reminiscing what i had done, achieved, and aspired to once upon a time.

when i'm alone

once in a while - there's the feeling that i am this random single entity in a nameless ocean.

i can't even put a finger on the feeling.

there's a bit of helplessness, i'm by myself in the world, and it really is only myself. absolutely no one cares what i do or think.

there's a bit of the fear of the unknown, i have no clue what the heck i'm going to do and how to survive the rest of my journey. the only thing i'm sure of is there's certain death at the end of the journey.

there's a bit of awe, i am no different from the rocks at my feet. after all, going back to the food chain, i'm only made up of sun, water and dirt, and i'm simply an interim phase for these trillions of atoms. and this particular combination i call "me" is attempting to contemplate such matters.

there's a bit of exhilaration, that i really am free for those moments. absolutely no one cares what i do or think.

perhaps, in those moments, i find out a little bit more about myself.

path of destruction

the earth is going to shit. we might not yet be at the point of no return where the vicious cycle of warming starts, but it can't be far. simply, we aren't going to change our habits, no matter how much the scientists and treehuggers scream and yell. sure, the bluefin tuna is going to be extinct soon, but before long it will just a memory, just like well, everything else that stands in the path of human consumption.

it strikes me that i'm involved in this every single day. maybe not to the same degree as certain people, but sure as hell i'm involved. BP seems to be some distant tragedy - and i'm doing my part to make sure the demand stays high for oil and energy. i have things to buy, and society needs to progress.

on a cosmic scale, this is nothing new. if greenhouse gases don't get us, some meteor will get us (and the rest of life on earth) eventually. and if not that, in about 5 billion years, the sun will consume us when it becomes to a red giant. so we can relax.

so the human race will die off anyway. arguably if we do destructive things to the earth, it doesn't matter! it might speed things up a tad, but we're not likely to see it in our lifetimes anyway.

the problem with zooming out so far nothing seems to matter at all. so why bother about anything? frankly, i can only be bothered about things that affect me right now, or in my foreseeable future.

there are two really large obstacles to the environment problem.

one, the effort we exert on an individual basis has essentially no discernible effect. it is difficult to care.

two, short term enjoyment almost always trumps long term considerations. it's so far off we can deal with it later (until it's too late).

whatever solution the environmentalists come up to solve this very human psychological pitfall will similarly apply to us.

path to where?

one of the key strengths of religion is to provide us with a pretty clear path, goal, and result.

- obey the commandments, the scriptures, the yamas and niyamas

- we'll be on our way to being saved, achieving enlightenment

- we'll be in good hands after we die, either in heaven, nirvana, or at least reborn as something nicer

what if there is no result? how does that change things? the "path" leads absolutely nowhere?

the result, i.e. the moment after death, is the one instance in our lives we aren't likely to be conscious of (at least in our present state). meanwhile, we can still tread the path and look at the flowers along the way.

so whichever path we're on - what happens when we find out that the goal is going to be taken away from us at the final moment?

does that still sound like the right path?

the right question

what is the right thing to do?

what is the compassionate thing to do?

to accept that the second question as the "correct" question, one has to accept that compassion takes precedence over personal gain. and to understand the basis of compassion, one needs to understand one's individual role in relation to the wider world. to understand each of our roles, we need to deeply consider and reflect on the nature of our existence.

seeing compassion as the backbone of our lives - this has personally been (and still is to a certain extent) counterintuitive. and if i want to do this with resolve, i have to fully convince myself about this, one step at a time.

what do other people think of me?

am i more concerned with what other people think of me, or what i think of myself?

or, what other people think of how i think of myself?

are the greater goals for myself simply an indirect attempt to improve what other people think of me?

strangely, most of the time, most people spend quite a bit of time wondering what other people think of ourselves. the remaining time, i seem to spend it on thinking of how other people compare to me.

too little time, way too little time, i spend thinking of how i think of myself.

walking away

is really hard. the usual choice is between something comfortable/long-lasting/boring, vs. something exciting/unpredictable/risky. we're forced to choose between what we know well, and something else that is no more than a bit of faith and hope. one of these will have to be sacrificed.

if only we knew how they'd turn out, our decision would be a lot easier.

what if you were in a situation to place a bet on a machine? this machine has two paths to take, and the pay offs you are concerned with is maximizing the value it has to mankind, over a span of fifty years. this machine is liable to break down any moment too, but you're not too concerned with the actual well-being/health/longevity of the machine, it's just a machine afterall. there are lots of other machines in the grand scheme of things.

how would you bet on this machine?

sometimes, there's isn't anything to understand

perhaps, there are somethings to be accepted, not to be understood.

but isn't the search for understanding where we learn to be wiser?

but when our intellect is not there yet, our life experiences insufficient, or the circumstances just not agreeable - there simply isn't much of a choice.

running in storms

before the age of treadmills, the great runners loved to run in the storms - while they were training hard and improving, their weaker opponents were skipping practice and going nowhere.

in real life we don't really have true opponents anymore - the only benchmark is ourselves and our ideals. and since we're so good at moving targets and rationalizing them, we do so, and we end up skipping practice. we first skip a couple sessions. then a couple months. then a couple years.

which is ok of course. until it's years later, and we are so far from our ideals, and we realize we haven't even really tried. and we wonder what the heck happened.

respect

sometimes, all we wish for is respect. sometimes, we live our lives trying to get other people's respect.

the nice thing about other people's respect (or disrespect) is fast and visible. if i'm being treated like a nobody, that's probably a sign of disrespect.

self-respect, however, is much harder to locate. there's no instruction manual. but if i think long and hard, i'll see the outlines of it. so it's the exact opposite: self-respect takes too much thinking to understand, and has the tendency to hide under the louder things in life.

but a lot of times, we seem to want to place our desire for other people's respect over our own self-respect.

running out of ideas, part 1

ok, i have one hour to write this entry. what do i write about? i have no idea. remember that article about good ideas coming to you when you're bored? there's probably some truth to that. i am too damn busy with absolutely nothing of importance, and i am totally out of any ideas. nothing. this is happening way too frequently. no one is emailing or facebooking me so don't even try. but isn't this being bored thing just an excuse? people push through things to get their shit done and "unable to be bored" seems to be worst excuse ever. yes, it's probably an excuse. but i still need to find something to write about. i could explore the big questions, but i don't have time to think and digest. that takes like half a day. i need to come up with something to fulfill my daily quota. doesn't this defeat the purpose? just writing something to fill a quota? anyone can write to fill a quota. well, no, the secret to success is constant practice right? so this is my daily practice. but i thought you already surrendered success. oh right. the secret to something is practice. that makes a ton of sense, thank you. i can't believe this, you're actually writing on how you're running out of ideas? that's possibly the worst idea ever. you're trying to be reasonably good, not filling a quota. sure, but what the heck am i supposed to do when i have nothing to write about? it happens, calm down. the more you're trying to think of something, the less these things will come. relax man. ok. if you chase too hard after the girl, she's going to run away. so, give chase sometimes, other times, let things be. sometimes, it's ok to let the mind take a random walk.

watching the highlights

some people wonder why anyone would sit through almost 2 hours of football, for a potentially 0-0 match. why not just watch the highlights, the best part? and save all that time and grief?

the fans shake their heads, saying that these people just don't get it - the nail-biting 90 minutes of anticipation is the experience that counts.

funnily, we like to judge everyone around us by their highlight reels too.

downward spins and upward spirals

bruce denton, a legendary runner in "once a runner", has a fascinating take on the extreme labors of training and progress. he remarks that some people think progress is a ladder, some others see plateaus, whereas he sees them as geometric spirals. each spin of the circle takes a different distance upward. and some spins even take us downward, just gathering momentum for the next upswing. sometimes we work and practice to the our limits and see no gain; other times we amaze ourselves with no idea as to what happened.

we never know how long the dark hours last, the ones when we are pushing ourselves to the edge yet nothing seems to be happening.

it indeed is likely that it's a momentum-gathering phase - to let our spirit soar higher and freer.

唐太宗百字箴

耕夫役役，多無隔宿之糧。織女波波，少有御寒之衣。日食三餐，當思農夫之苦。身穿一縷，每念織女之勞。寸絲千命，匙飯百鞭，無功受祿，寢食不安。交有德之朋，絕無益之友。取本分之財，戒無名之酒。常懷克己之心，閉卻是非之口。若能依上所言，富貴功名可久。

i was 11 years old when my school teacher made us memorize this. i only remembered the first two phrases, but glad to have rediscovered it.

all the nice gadgets we have - phones, laptops, high tech sportswear, i do forget someone actually made them. as the recent foxconn suicides have reminded me, things are not as nice, clean, mechanized as we might think. workers are treated like machines, in claustrophobic factories doing the exact same thing, every single day.

knowledge is always the first step - at the very least, find out what we can about the people who are making our new toys. it's not so easy, they aren't exactly having a lot of free time to go around blogging about their experiences.

career things

ignoring the problem of the illusion of freewill, and avoiding the "things will happen the way they're supposed to" for a moment...

frequently, i find myself at crossroads about which career path to take, or to work towards. have alluded to this enough times on this blog to bore even myself, but evidently it's something i still struggle mightily with.

so, i seem to try to make the most sensible move based a variety of criteria, ranging from current satisfaction, future satisfaction, money, lifestyle, etc. i try to peer about five years ahead, since beyond that time horizon, things get so fuzzy it's not worth spending too much time to ponder such. (i also contradict myself in every other entry by spending an inordinate amount of time contemplating things on a much, much longer timescale)

can i make the right move but the wrong overall direction? but my short term moves have presumably incorporated elements of the longer term direction? but my life directions so malleable anyway that i should just stop guessing and go with this mythical "feel"?

in figuring out my career, and since i'm not in school anymore, supposedly no longer bogged down by frivolity, do i:

- think of my dream job and work towards that?

- think of with whatever skillset i seem to have, what would i seem to be the most successful at?

- think of whatever i'd like to learn, go find a job somehow in that area to learn something new?

- think about what the world needs with someone with my kind of skillset?

- and how do i balance all this against monetary concerns? what is "enough" anyway, do i take into account all future liabilities that have a decent chance of occurring?

- stop questioning and appreciate that i apparently have the luxury of choice? it's not going to last anyway? but how does that help me make my choice?

no money no talk

my friend shared a line from a TV drama with me the other day: "you have no money, you have no power, but you have an opinion?", which is another version of "no money no talk".

some apparently true things in our world - when you have money, power, fame:

- you get more money, power, fame (and you won't get corrupted because? but well, it isn't so bad to be corrupted is it? to enjoy the good life?)

- people listen to you (usually because these people also want to have money, power, fame?)

- you have more leverage to save/change the world the way you would like to (and your way is the best way because - you have money, power, and fame?)

sleepless people

beggars in spain: a story about a group of genetically engineered children who did not have to sleep. not insomniacs, but people who genuinely just did not require sleeping.

this is one of the best science fiction stories i have ever read, and i remember thinking this was the coolest thing ever. i imagined what i'd do with all the extra time. it was probably early 1990s when i read it, and i really wonder what i thought i'd spend time on.

fast forward twenty years hence, we do have a lot of extra time. rather, things that took a long time to do before can be done in an instant. so, in theory, we have a lot of extra time. of course, we've managed to totally stuff our free time so we feel we have less time than ever.

the brief moments we have free time, what are we doing with it?

i mean, really, what exactly am i doing with it?

can we find a way to string a bunch of these little packets of free time to have something a bit more extended? and what would we do with this?

everyone has their story

i'm sometimes excited, angry, sad, happy, and everything in between. i have all these reasons i'm in one of these moods. i also have all these non-reasons i'm in one of these moods.

i have all these different stories about myself, all terribly banal, but all very exciting to me.

and pretty much the same for the almost 7 billion other people on this planet.

if we look hard enough, of course we'll have some kind of common ground.

for some, i don't need to try very hard and it turns out we have lots in common. or at least, we can both live with our differences and not go nuts over them (for the moment).

well, really thankful!

reexploring

the issue is how to keep thinking about these things that might never get resolved. why the effort?

how to keep exploring and reexploring when the temptation is that i understand it enough already?

the trouble with these concepts are they aren't built pyramid-up, they're all intimately intertwined.

well, if i really understand it, can i make the route simpler for others who might have similar questions?

clichés

it's astounding that pretty much all of the things i'm beginning to realize (and writing here), are in fact clichés that have been repeated a billion times over. you know, the usual. be kind, don't hurt anybody. be nice to your friends and family, and enemies too, if possible. live in the present, cherish the moment. money is not everything. there are probably a dozen others anyone could rattle off any moment.

when do clichés become "real", rather than just meaningless and overused sound bites? why do they sometimes elicit some deep realizations, and other times they sound overused and annoying?

the karmic explanation is, we'll be ready when we're ready. which is not very satisfying.

this "realness" seems to be a function of how deeply entrenched these things are in our daily lives, and like most things, is largely a sliding gray-scale. it seems to be a combination of understanding how these clichés apply to different aspects of our lives, together with the level of self-awareness of our daily actions.

so, part of it returns to how willing we are to put our own lives under our own personal microscope.

hard.

and then?

i was strangely told that i was a philosophizing person the other day. and, this was a friend of my parents, who has no knowledge of this current little blog. of course, i smiled politely, but i didn't take it as a compliment, even though it seemed well-intentioned. i didn't take one single philosophy class during school - to me, philosophy is arcane, full of recursive contradictions, and whatever conclusions, if any, has no bearing or application in real life. perhaps there is an argument somewhere that it advances culture, but other than writing books that no one understands, i mean, what do philosophers really do?

rejecting a label is one thing, but i decided to wiki it in any case. philosophy: "the study of problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind and language". this sounded a bit too close for comfort. well, i knew maybe a tenth of the names in the entry, and have not read any of the books it referred to (online excerpts at best), so as far as i can tell, i'm pretty sure i'm not a philosopher.

but still, suddenly, i found myself in a weird position, spending a bit of time on a subject i had disparaged for much of my life.

the intention has been to come to some understandings about the big questions in life. sure, many are probably inconclusive. but how inconclusive? where do we get stuck? what do the disagreements boil down to? i wanted to see what i might find out, armed with a little free time, access to a computer and some books.

but to refine things, the question i'm actually trying to answer is: and then? what happens when we take everything to extremes? and then what now?

somewhere along the journey of the and-thens, hopefully, we catch little fluttering bits of wisdom.

no excuse for ignorance

1. find an issue you either really support or really can't stand.

2. google the exact opposite viewpoint.

3. think from their perspectives.

in this day and age, we simply have no more excuses to be ignorant. subscribing to a viewpoint simply because we "believe" without contemplating the alternatives is unforgivable. information is, for the first time in the history of mankind, truly at our fingertips.

sure, there's practically infinite information out there and we don't know where to start. sure, we'd like to get to the real truth right now, but everyone has a different point of view. every week a new report comes out that asserts and debunks a well-known fact.

by and large, truth and wisdom is gained from a process, rather than something that is given to us in a nice package for our instant digestion.

what was i thinking?

whenever i look back on my younger self - via old diary entries, blogs, emails, letters, sure, there may be a few things i'm kind of proud of. but far more often, i cringe. seriously, what was i thinking?

can i take back these acts that are an incredible combination of idiocy and thoughtlessness? can i re-live certain parts of my life just to undo the hurt i caused some people? and what are the things i am doing today that will cause me to ask the same question, years from now?

looking back will always be painful. years from now, if this is still floating in cyberspace and i come across it, i will likely wonder to myself what kind of fool made these various kinds of assumptions, questions, statements.

hopefully, looking back is just a small way to remind myself the need to reflect at present, and, aim to do a little less damage in future.

food is for enjoyment?

how can you enjoy life when you can't enjoy food? yes, mass killing animals and eating corpses may not be the best thing in the world, but hey, these corpses sure taste good.

this is an issue that has vexed me for some time. am i giving up the right to pleasure? i mean, i'm not masochistic, am i? by turning vegetarian, am i missing out on some of the essential joys of life?

the exchange is this:

- a temporary moment of enjoyment of ingesting that juicy slab of meat

- a calm conscience that i'm not partaking in violence. i can look a cute puppy in the eye and not wonder why i had something more intelligent than him (i.e. a pig) for lunch. (most people are blissfully unaware of this, of course, lucky them.) it's difficult to describe, but it seems that i can now enjoy life a lot more on an overall basis.

the closest analogy i can think of is exercise. i mean, who likes to exercise? we're out of breath, our lungs are burning, our muscles are aching. the results are very nice, but in fact, exercising sucks for the most part - we feel really good when we stop. we're exchanging the temporary pain of exercising, for our overall sense of well-being. after a while, we even begin to possibly enjoy exercise. but, for a lot of us, it's difficult to classify exercise as a pure source of bliss in itself.

overpaid

in the rare occasions that you may possibly be overpaid (e.g. when compared to a great school teacher, who's shaping the lives of the younger generation, and yet who's struggling to meet bills), what do you do?

ask to be paid less?

improve your standard of living (nicer apartment, nicer car, etc)?

enjoy the good times while they last?

bank away enough to go through the hard times? (how does one estimate the length of time of the hard times?)

try to see what you can do for the ones already in hard times that last indefinitely? (how much? 2%? 10%? 50%?) (do you donate, volunteer, or set up something? how much time to put in?)

live frugally until we die, then we can decide what we want in our will anyway?

effort, luck, karma

when good things happen to us, is that our effort, just luck or good karma?

when bad things happen to us, is that our effort, luck or bad karma?

and when good things happen to deserving people? undeserving people?

and when bad things happen to deserving people? undeserving people?

should the answer (whether it's effort, luck, karma, or some kind of combination) be consistent across these questions?

the futility of individual effort

what could one person possibly do to "change the world"?

the standard motivational answer is: look at any of the significant events in the world - inventors, leaders, entrepreneurs, they are the same as us, just human beings.

sure, but look around. how many of us look like we are secretly great leaders in the making? and here we don't mean managing directors, CEOs - are there people who might be doing things of significance to the human race?

in essence, we are insignificant, our efforts are insignificant, that much we know, even though it may not be hugely helpful to dwell too long on that concept on a day-to-day basis.

to view it from another angle, well, nothing the human race will do will really move the dial. the universe is 13.7 billion years old. the human race has been around for 100,000 years in total (if that, depending when you start counting. civilization started only 10,000 years ago).

to put it bluntly, the efforts of the human race are insignificant, let alone an individual.

is this reason for nihilism then? when nothing matters anymore, is there anything left? perhaps peace of mind, or perhaps minimal pain, during our time left on earth?

so then - individual effort is thus maximizing the peace of mind? if that involves a larger cause, so be it, but that's simply a by-product?

random death thoughts

death...

...is what gives meaning to life, eternal time gets pretty meaningless after a while.

...the invention of death made possible the existence of our minds...

...really might not be so bad, as long as it happens to ourselves. (not so fun when it happens to our close friends and family)

...the fear thereof is possibly one of the keys to the fabric of society.

...allows us to truly ponder impermanence.

the inner voice

the inner voice is a very weird concept.

in cartoons, it's a little angel in us who beats up the devil and gets us to do the right thing.

in a religious context, it's frequently the god who is everywhere and also resides in all of us, so when we pray and ask him things, the god speaks to us via our inner voice. (unfortunately, it is difficult to judge authenticity - mental patients and criminals often refer to their inner voice for their actions)

in the latest brain research, our apparently individual mind are in fact a "society of minds", where we have a number of personalities each fighting over each other to decide. so the selfish mind and the generous mind are only two of the plethora of inner voices. there's no guarantee the nice one wins out.

via experience, i know the mind settles during meditation, and a clearer path seems to emerge. but how can i be sure? the mental patients are all very sure.

how do they keep the ego in check?

when you're loved by everyone? when everyone tells you how great you are? when your attempts to be humble are still somehow construed to be a reflection of your great virtue?

with the barrage of praise, how do the great souls, past and present, keep on the firm path? do they reach some kind of safety level, when they've truly lost their ego, and never fall back despite whatever temptation they encounter?

i'm good enough already

sometimes, we're just happy enough to reach a particular level, and it's far as we can conceivably push already. and, we'd like to stay there. no need to go further.

i can do a headstand - i don't need to do a handstand.

i have enough money to live comfortably - i don't need to earn more.

i've run a 100km race - i don't need to run 200km.

i'm vegetarian already - i don't have to be vegan.

i'm sufficiently spiritually fulfilled - i don't need further fulfillment.

in essence, i'm good enough - thank you very much, i don't need to be better. not right now, at least. i'm tired of trying to constantly improve. in fact, i kind of want to get worse, just to see what it's like. just to spite myself, to spite everyone.

- it's ok, sometimes we all need a break to re-evaluate things?

- everyone reaches their own respective pre-destined levels?

- we need to keep going no matter what, as that separates the winners from the quitters?

- perfection is an illusion anyway, there's always a next stage, hence, why so serious?

placebo effect

the placebo effect is a well documented effect, that when a patient takes sugar pills, believing them to be effective medicine, and behold, the patient gets better.

if the patient is told it's a placebo, then is there still a way for the effect to exist? can he/she believe in something he/she knows deep down is untrue?

if i somehow find out religion is essentially a placebo, can i still believe it and reap the happiness benefits?

can i be logically delusional - i.e. fool myself to get the logically best outcome?

perpetuating unfairness

it might be too much to ask for us to actively make the world a fairer place. (fairer, for this instance, let's just say is a case where less people starve and in return some don't get to eat thousand dollar caviar while laying waste to the ecosystem. i hope we might be able to agree on that much)

but are we indirectly perpetuating unfairness?

when we buy luxury goods - is that providing employment or opportunities, or supporting the corporate infrastructure to continue their exploitation?

if i don't know where my coffee comes from - is that helping to keep the exporters strong, so they continue to take advantage of the struggling growers?

if i eat factory farmed food or mass-trawled fish (both cheaper options) - is that destroying the livelihoods of the traditional farmers and fishermen, now with most of the profits going to the industrialized food companies?

perhaps the question isn't even actively trying to make the world fairer - the issue is more of not making things worse.

it's going to be ok

sometimes, we like uncertainty, the thrill of not knowing what will happen.

many other times, we just want to know it's going to be ok.

we'd like to know certain risky decisions, which could turn out really badly, will turn out the way we hope they will. we'd like to know if our dire situations might turn around in the foreseeable future, because we just can't take it anymore.

of course, no one will know for sure. the darkest clouds part away for blue skies without warning. conversely, even in the smoothest sailing, a freak storm is just around the next corner.

so perhaps, worry less about how it will turn out, and rather, strengthen the determination to endure the dark times.

the end of a long, dark road, is either light or death. but, eventually, they all end.