the perfect life

the strangest thing about us is what we strive and work and work, for what we think would be our perfect life. if we don't get there, we always have that unsatisfied yearning, about what if i actually got there. and if and when we do get there, more often than not, it turns out not to be so perfect.

the idea of perfection of course in some ways is ludicrous. our minds are so jumpy, so easily bored, dissatisfaction is a much more normal state than satisfaction.

the one and only true trick is to train the mind to be still. to find the existing perfection in our daily lives, rather than in the abstract future.

inner peace is fragile

and poof! all that practice is gone.

the real trick is to blend real life and practice. then, we slowly remember the truth more often than not.

120,000

the hard part to remember, of course, is truth doesn't come from authorities, nor ancient texts, nor does it come from 120,000 people. all references certainly, truth only comes from deep reflection.

to quote Krishamurti:

'Truth is a pathless land'. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a fence of security - religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man's thinking, his relationships and his daily life. These images are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is his entire existence. This content is common to all humanity. The individuality is the name, the form and superficial culture he acquires from tradition and environment. The uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in complete freedom from the content of his consciousness, which is common to all mankind. So he is not an individual.

Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not a choice. It is man's pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity. Thought is time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge which are inseparable from time and the past. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the past. Thought is ever-limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological evolution.

When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts he will see the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless insight brings about a deep radical mutation in the mind.

Total negation is the essence of the positive. When there is negation of all those things that thought has brought about psychologically, only then is there love, which is compassion and intelligence."

remember to inspire

inspiration is the only way out of mundane existence. 

trust the training

i didn't think i could let alone walk to the track. i was so damn tired i had trouble putting on my running shorts without falling down. i was feeling this awful mix of bloated and hungry. have no idea how it's possible to have those two sensations at the same time.

anyway, i hammered it out the 10km. i don't know why it was easier than i imagined too. and right, i have been getting myself back in shape, albeit really slowly.

most of training sucks. but if i somehow keep at it, somehow, it starts to suck a little less.

what the hell happened to my willpower?

all these years, willpower has been the one thing that i've relied on. i am not the smartest, the brightest, the strongest, the whatever-est, but somehow through brute force i have managed to just get through. the gym was always something i looked back with some (probably misguided) pride. i was the scrawniest kid ever when i first stepped in. three years later, by senior year, i was putting up over 200lbs on the bench press. i could do pull-ups with a fifty pound weight added on. i seemed to have proved to myself that if i just worked damn hard, i could become reasonably good at something.

anyway, forward twenty odd years. i make promises to myself, important promises, that i could again do through sheer brute force. like practice hanuman, meditate every day. finish my damn book. teach yoga. somehow, i have been just talking all these years, and things remain where they are. i somehow end up reading the thousands of articles on my rss, sitting on the couch, or just doing nothing.

even the most "useful" of these activities, devouring info, am i now more informed? sure. am i more knowledgeable? maybe. am i wiser? if i were to believe myself, only knowledge applied, personalized, internalized, and finally realized, becomes wisdom. essentially, knowledge can be forgotten. wisdom, has been learned the very hard way, and simply cannot be forgotten.

so anyway, back to willpower, which has somehow deserted me. because i'm older? (and not wiser?) because i got married? because i'm stuck in a job that is neither good nor bad, just, well, a job? all of the above?

so these books tell me, to make it a habit, so i don't have to exert willpower. or, it's just a muscle, that we need to train, and keep training, then we can use it whenever we want in whichever situations. i haven't figured it out.

maybe it's simple - the rewards, at this stage of my life, are just no longer evident. not that i should have cared so much about them. in fact, it may just be a good illustration of that. the rewards (get big muscles, get girls, though that never worked out; do well on exams, get good gpa, good job, well, my thoughts can't think that far ahead), once someone pulls it away, or those rewards lose their meaning/relevance somehow, suddenly, i'm left with... nothing.

so, do i create some arbitrary rewards for myself? or even better, realize i really should not give a damn about rewards, and enjoy whatever it is i have at the moment? i think one of the difficulties of our generation is we have been totally conditioned under the work and reward system, from our earliest memories and experiences. do A, get B. why do A if not very useful and does not get you anywhere?

so i have to work around this. kickstart myself with imaginary rewards. put a big "X" on my calendar every time i fail myself. haul myself back up from the slippery slope of laziness and excuses. and think about how my own 14-year old-self used to motivate the hell out of my friends. let him loose again.

excuses

i am finding out i am incredibly good at excusing myself.

rather than staying focused despite changes, i somehow use changes as an excuse to not practice, as i need time to "get back on track".

i need to remember staying with my practice is the fastest way to get back on track.

and then, i can remember what the real things are.