The Grace and Glory of Gratitude

Typing these words on my computer while listening to Beethoven's 'Razumovsky' String Quartet. All I need to be happy is a laptop with an internet connection and all these simple joys of life come streaming in, like sunshine.

I don't pay much for my broadband connection, opting for the cheapest package available which is 89 ringgit a month for 30 Mbps. This connection is the umblical cord that provides nourishment to my soul. It is the key to all the greatest treasures of humanity through the centuries. Music, art, literature and access to all the best teachers on every subject in the world--everything is available at the click of the mouse.

What I feel is a deep sense of gratitude. With this alone, I could spend a thousand years in a cave, savouring the experience of mankind through the ages. I don't life in a posh neighbour nor have a large house furnished with designer furniture, but I do have a shelter, and sufficient food, and a good internet connection. The pandemic only makes us realize how little we all need to be really happy.

 Let's express gratitude for all the things we already have and not fret over things we don't. If you have a roof over your head and food to fill your stomach everyday, what more do you want?  Perhaps success; the kind of success defined by society: a social standing and being recognized as such and having the means to live life lavishly--the overseas holidays, the fine-dining and the designer clothes.  The good life. But for many, the pandemic has yanked all that away, reducing them to the bare necessities of life. But are you not grateful that, at the very least, you have that?

You are alright, right now. That's a mantra l have learned to tell myself, every time that I'm being anxious over something that is not exactly going my way. Well, at the very least I'm alive and at this moment, healthy. And if I care to really think about it: happy. Happiness is a simple thing. You are at ease and in possession of all your faculties, and being aware that you are, here and now, present and able to express gratitude for it.

Is that a difficult thing to do? If it is not, then it is not difficult to be happy. Happiness is simply gratitude. Gratitude is appreciating all that you have now and being aware that you are doing so. This awareness of the moment, this acknowledgement of the now, this presence of mind, body and soul--this is the divine state of grace and gratitude. 

The true prayer is a prayer of gratitude--of acknowledging one's fragility in the world and having made it so far with so little. It is with the grace of the universe that you live and thrive in this tiny sliver of space and time. When you see and feel that deep down in your soul, then you have been touched by the grace and glory of gratitude.

I Write, Therefore I Am

A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind

- Antoine De Saint-Exupery (French Aviator, Writer).

I'm typing these lines on a Saturday night. It has been a full and busy week as usual and I spent my Saturday as usual shopping for food and groceries in the morning and jogging at the park in the evening. I also write in my journal with my array of fountain pens. I also have a collection of inks of different colours ranging from the usual black, blue, red to more exotic colours from Diamine with fancy names like Claret, Green Umber, Steel Blue and Apple Glory. Writing longhand is a completely different experience from typing on a keyboard. You literally stroke your mind with the nib of the pen to tease out your innermost thoughts.

What's the benefit of writing in a journal? My main motivation for doing so is to understand myself better. When you put thoughts on paper, especially with a fountain pen, you slow down the pace of your thinking and allow the mind to breathe. Scribbling your thoughts on paper is like a mathematician working out a complex problem by first capturing it in a set of equations before working them out to their logical conclusion.

The pen acts like a seismograph--registering the minute movements of your thoughts. When you capture the stirring of your emotions on paper, you see them in their true colours. You feel their vibrations at the tip of your pen. Every nuance of your inner motivations are captured in the variation of your ink strokes on paper. I just love watching a wet fountain pen making marks across the surface of the paper. To me, that is how God created the universe--by writing out the Word.

Writing is spiritual. The act of drawing lines on a piece of paper that reflect the promptings of your mind is a piece of performance art.   You know your writing has quality when you've bridged the gap between thoughts in the head and written sentences on paper.  Writing longhand with a fountain pen helps in the process. The pen is a transducer of thoughts -- tapping the signals of the mind and amplifying them on paper, to be analyzed, read and disseminated, where they will trigger further thinking in better minds, influencing events in the real world.

I've called this process writhink.  Writing physicalizes thinking, allowing the signal of your thoughts to find their true expression in the external world. When you write what Hemingway calls a true sentence, you know that the sentence expresses the thought in the best possible way. And there's nothing more to say about it. That's one brick in the cathedral you're building in your mind. And you move on to the next true sentence.

Well, I am no Hemingway nor Exupery. But I write, therefore I am.

Metaphors for Work

 I've spent the whole week working and now when it comes to my weekly blog article, I'm going to write about -- work. But I've written a lot about work in the past. So is there still something left for me to write about?

Now, what does Kahlil Gibran say about work? Here's a quote:

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
And I truly agree with that. Work is sometimes such difficult labour, especially during this difficult time of the pandemic, when work is actually a matter of life and death.  Having work is a blessing and a boon to one's mental health. 
I work all day because my current job demands it. On a weekday I work continuously from nine to at least 11 at night. I don't break for lunch and I probably sneak in an hour for dinner in between. Even when I'm having dinner, I take peeks at my laptop to see if there are incoming emails and chat messages. It's a tough job but I see every day as an opportunity to learn something new.
At the end of my work day, I'd usually ask myself: what did I learn today? If not about the subject matter of your work, you always learn something about yourself. Always do an ego check. It's the cause of most work-related problems. 
After I close shop, I'd write in my journal, sometimes enjoy a cool beer. And the whole thing repeats itself again the following day. A weekend comes, a blog article like this is written, and after an anxious Sunday, it's Monday again. That's my worklife during this pandemic, which has raged on for more than a year now.
If you've read my old articles about work, you'll know that I associate the following words to it: worship, workout and penance. In a way, work allows you to kill three birds with one stone. Let me explain.
Work is a form of worship because it is a spiritual act of reverence. You are going through a repetitive ritual, in service of a higher goal. Or at least that's how I would approach work. You are not worshiping the company that you work for nor are you kissing your boss's ass. When you worship, you put your ego aside. You bow in humility and you see your work as a higher cause. Never mind if your job is a mundane one. All work is noble, because in the end, you are the one that would benefit most from your labour.
Which brings me to the second metaphor I often use for work: workout. Work is a form of exercise to improve your mind and body. At the end of a hard day's work, you can be assured that you are a fitter person than you were at the start of the day. Exercise is not labour, even though it can be exhausting.  Working out everyday only makes you healthier. And after a hard day's work, you sleep like a baby.
Why is work also a form of penance? This is the most interesting of the three metaphors. No matter how much you love your job, you would still encounter painful moments during the course of your work day. It could be criticism about your work, it could be dissatisfaction with the performance of a subordinate or an unreasonably difficult customer. There's always pain in work. The way to take this pain, is to see it as a form of penance. Take it head-on and see it as a form of healing. Pain only arises because you are challenged and bruised in some way inside. Examine the pain. Understand why it arises. Soften the hardness inside. You will find that if you confront pain as a form of penance, it does some magic to your soul. 
There in a nutshell is my whole philosophy about work. Blogging is the fun work that I do every weekend. It has elements of all three metaphors. Blogging is 'painful' because writing is not an easy task. You have to think of something to write about; you have to be coherent about the ideas you are expounding and in my case, there's a dateline to meet. But at the end of the article, I feel truly rewarded. Worship, workout and penance -- all three of them checked and done for the week.
 

Musings on Mortality

Another Saturday, another article. I'm listening to Beethoven's Pastoral Sonata while typing these words here in my bedroom, shielded by curtains from the harsh afternoon sunlight. I was just wondering last night what I am supposed to write today. And because this week I lost another good friend to the Covid-19 virus, I decided to write about mortality.

My late friend, who was a colleague of mine during my time in Indonesia had passed away last Friday, leaving behind 3 children and a wife. It was a shock to me when I heard the news, rather belatedly on Tuesday. He was a devout Christian and a clean-living person whom I respected very much. His death was totally unexpected and tragic to everyone. I guess it made all of us reflect on our own mortality. Any one of us could be whisked away by the Grim Reaper anytime.

We live knowing that we will all die one day. Sometimes when I'm in large glamorous gatherings of people, I morbidly imagine how in probably just another few decades, all the strong, healthy and beautiful people that I see around me will be nothing more than ash and bones--their ravishing smiles and laughter probably surviving as pixels on some storage in the cloud, unremembered and unsighted.

Like these sentences of mine too: mere arrangements of bits and bytes in some cloud storage, insignificant and unremarkable, perhaps even permanently wiped out--succumbing ultimately to the laws of entropy. 

We as humans will never come to terms with death. We have to find solace in religion, which do not always provide us with satisfactory answers. But having some answer is better than none, for death seems so final--the annihilation of everything dear to us: separation from our loved ones and all the things we are so attached to in this world. We think that each one of our individual existence is or is supposed to have unique significance across space and time. And we, our unique visions, hopes, feelings and dreams and physical bodies deserve perpetuation and preservation.

But let's pause for a moment and think. Yes think--such a human activity: having thoughts and emotions, a mind and free will, a soul, if you will. What if all this is but a small fragment of a larger existence? This is where words become inadequate to express this larger vista of being, for language is a human construct that arose out of our very limited spectrum of experience--this bio-chemical machine of protein and water, with electro-chemical energy coursing through a nexus of neurons, which we proudly interpret as a life of thoughts and emotions.

 After finishing writing the few lines of the previous paragraph, I dozed off for a while--having lacked enough sleep for the entire work week. And for those few moments--wasn't that no different from death itself? Did I care when I was sleeping? If I had not woke up from the slumber, I would have been 'contented' being 'dead' for I did not know better. But now that I'm 'alive' again, I want to cling on to this consciousness that is capable of writing these words that you are reading now, forever.

When we are dead, will we be disappointed at our unwelcome demise? That consciousness that we experience now, will it still even exist or matter? If it does, will it still have the same petty concerns as we do now? 

Perhaps not. Perhaps death is a process of outgrowing our present state of immaturity, which we call adulthood, like how we leave behind the innocent attachments of our childhood. Yes, we smile at how we used to care so much about our toys and ice-cream not knowing that real adult life offers a lot more than that.

Perhaps death is an awakening from the pupae of our adult life? Our consciousness suddenly becoming aware that we are resplendent butterflies, able to flap our magical wings to fly away and dance in an air filled with pollen and perfumed petals? We'll never know until we experience it. And at the moment, that's how I would like to imagine the lives that my departed friends are having. Something a butterfly can never communicate with a leave-crawling larva. A larva's view of mortality is all we are capable of now. And thus end my musings on mortality on a lazy Saturday afternoon, on another day in my earthly existence.

The Dance of Deviation

The battery on my laptop shows 84% and that should be sufficient for me to write this blog article for the week. Let me type a few lines of irrelevant sentences just to warm up my fingers and to get my thoughts flowing. I have been working hard the past week and last night I was thinking what I should be blogging about today.

I thought about balance. Again, I'm sure I've written about this before but the point is so important that it bears repeating. It's good to start with an analogy. We all know about physical balance--when you are walking on a ledge or standing on a stool, we all have to constantly adjust ourselves to avoid falling. I believe I've also likened meditation as being like walking on a tightrope. Thoughts are constantly throwing us off-balance and we need to readjust ourselves to come back to our object of meditation, which is usually the breath.

As you practice more, you begin to have less deviations from the centre of focus. Every time the mind strays, you become aware of the 'imbalance', and bring the mind back to the centre. After a while, you begin to do this instinctively, like how you avoid falling on a bicycle. You move your body and adjust the wheels so that you and the bike continue going steadily forward.

Riding a bicycle is I think a better analogy for meditation. We all have to learn to acquire the skill that keeps us balanced on a bicycle. After we've acquired it, we don't even think about the act anymore. It just happens. When we meditate often, we are training the mind to be balanced. It doesn't mean that we are permanently locked on one thought or object but we simply know where we are heading towards even if our trajectory is not a perfectly straight line. We will always sway and deviate but instinctively we make tiny adjustments which we are not even aware of to maintain our course.

That's what a mind trained in meditation is like. We have acquired that subtle sense of poise that ensures that the mind is never knocked off-balance. The better we are at it, the less wobbling we'll experience as we propel ourselves forward in time. I've also likened the process to surfing. Knowing these analogies make it easier to understand what meditation is all about.

We do not fear a mind that constantly deviate because we have an awareness of our position and direction. Trust the system to make the necessary readjustments. Once we've acquire the rhythm, we are moving perfectly in response to the stream of inputs that come from our senses and which arises spontaneously from within. This is the dance of deviation, which shall be the title and the last line of this blog post.

The Force of Forgiveness

I wanted to write about the subject of 'forgiveness' today and then I thought, I must have written about this before. True enough a search of my blog yields this article on the Art of Forgetting.  Though the article was more about forgetting, it is closely related to the subject of forgiveness. Today I will focus more on forgiveness itself.

Myra was texting me last night asking me why is it that her mother is always causing her so much pain. She didn't tell me about the specifics but I can understand the kind of difficulties that can arise in the relationship with one's parents. She was jokingly saying that she must have done something bad in her past life to deserve such a mum.

I laughed and told her that we all get what we 'deserve'. She has the mother that she has because she is exactly what she needs to perfect herself.  And what is it that she is supposed to learn from her mum? I told her that she is there for her to learn forgiveness. Surprisingly she understood perfectly and it seemed to comfort her a little.

Why do we get hurt? It's because we have 'sharp edges' that rub against others. Whenever we feel hurt, ask ourselves, what is it within us that's causing this pain?  Most of the time, it is our pride and ego. Or perhaps it's our relationship with money or other attachments that we are unwilling to let go of.

Pain points to our imperfections. Forget about what other people should or should not be doing. Like an athlete, we need to train ourselves so that we are fit to meet the challenges of the terrain that we are encountering. If we are not running correctly, with the right type of shoes, we could get injured.  

Sartre famously wrote: "Hell is other people". The line came from his play where 3 people arrived in hell only to find that they are supposed to spend the rest of their time in eternity with each other in a plain ordinary room. That could be a worse prospect than eternal hellfire.

Other people is the terrain that we have to deal with on a daily basis. If we do not know how to navigate through it, we'll get hurt.  Having the right strength, nimbleness and flexibility could save us from further injuries. 

Forgiveness is one of those skills that we need to acquire to protect ourselves from permanent injuries. Whenever we get hurt,  we try to understand why it hurts so much. And then we adjust our response to ensure that we don't get injured again in the future. To forgive someone means we are not reacting rashly in response. It doesn't mean that we are passive either.  It actually requires use to perform the right action and to train ourselves to know how to avoid similar situations in the future. 

To forgive someone is to depersonalize a pain and take the experience simply as an obstacle in the terrain that we did not navigate through wisely. We don't curse the terrain or kick the rock that tripped us. We just learn to deal with it better. There's nothing personal about a difficult path that we have to run through.  

It may be that other people are purpose doing certain things to hurt you. But they are also dealing unwisely with the terrain that they are encountering. Let them learn their lessons their way, in the right time. Your job is to run your own marathon.

By forgiving, you are acknowledging the lesson that is to be learned from the experience and allowing yourself to start afresh. The karma is resolved, without any tricky residue. It's always good to restart again after a fall without any distracting grudges or thoughts of revenge. 

What matters most is how you move on. You could be more bitter but certainly wiser.  Even bitterness is like temporary muscle sore that fades away. You end up stronger and more adapted to the terrain. Never under-estimate that powerful force called forgiveness.

The Cadence of Calmness

During this difficult time of the pandemic, which still doesn't show any sign of abating, I see a lot of people in a constant state of anxiety. Sometimes the things they are anxious about are not worth worrying about. 

Firstly, if you avoid crowded places and ensure that you wear a mask, I think your chance of catching the Covid-19 virus is minimal. If you do get it, then it's just pure bad luck. You'll have to accept it. You just do what's necessary to protect yourself--like getting vaccinated. There's a mad chase to get vaccination appointments these days. People are anxious that, even after registering they are still not called up yet for their jab. Some try various other avenues to jump the queue.

I didn't bother, because I knew my turn would come. And came it did. I had my first jab and will go for my second one this week. You just do the necessary and not fuss over things that are not within your control. All you have to do is register for it and things will be set into motion. A notification will come when you are called up. Checking your MySejahtera app every day and trying to read into every tiny little change in the application doesn't serve any purpose. Being anxious about your appointment won't make it come sooner. 

Doing what is within my control has always been my guiding principle. After you've done it, let it go. Move on to the next task. Tackle the problem at hand, once. There is no point in anticipating the future or lamenting the past. Any thoughts of the future is for planning purposes only. Planning is something you do now, with data that projects to the future. Plan, execute and move on. Just like the philosophy of pass-and-move football. Make the right pass, run into space and be ready to receive the ball again. Ultimately, these small moves will lead to a goal.

That's how I live my life. We don't need to make it too complicated. Life is already challenging as it is. Tackle the challenge at hand. Take reasonable action. Observe results, correct action and try again. Pass and move.  Always have the eye on the ball.  If things are unfavourable, don't complain. Complaining or blaming doesn't solve problems. A course of action based on an analysis of the facts at hand is the best move. If the outcome of an action takes a while, it is always good not to over-anticipate things. Relax, let go and move on to the next thing.

In difficult times, it is important that we know how to manage our minds so as to not plunge ourselves into a state of depression. I know how difficult it is when you are overcome by such mental states. You tend to fall deeper and deeper into an abyss, without knowing how to extricate yourself from it. Relax, let go, move on.  That's the cadence of calmness that one needs to maintain all the time. 

   

The Sovereign Within

I made it through the week and now it's time to blog. I slept late today waking up at 9 am. It has been a long time since I've been able to do that. It brings back memories of my days in Singapore and Jakarta. I never had to worry what time I woke up most of the time. Happiness is waking up and going out for a slowly breakfast with the morning papers.

When we sit still to meditate, we are in touch with the core of our existence. And as I mentioned in my previous blog post, existence is simply energy. This energy seeks to find stability by redistributing itself. Every time you perform an action, energy is expended. Some of it goes out and some are reabsorbed back in an inter-change with the external world. Knowing how this energy works is essential for our well-being.

Meditation simply increases our sensitivity into this energetic system. You begin to see that thoughts are nothing but manifestations of this energy--they are merely the signature of its its fluctuations. Very much like how the movement of the earth's core is felt as earthquakes and tremors on the surface. 

The hotblooded youth is like earth in its early infancy. Its instability manifests itself as active volcanos spewing out lava and ash into the atmosphere, shifting continental plates an churning oceans everywhere. That's an unstable system, attempting to find stability. It takes time, but inevitably all such high energy systems stabilize. If there's an Earth God, we'll interpret all these activities as the shifting moods of the divine entity. 

We are all gods of our own system. Reclaim your throne within and rule over your kingdom. Be in control of your elements. You rule over the seas and lands within. When the sovereign within rules wisely and justly, there's peace all across the kingdom. 

Existence is just Energy

Yesterday I had the first dose of my Covid-19 vaccine shot--Sinovac. My appointment was 7.30pm at the Setia City Convention Centre. The drive there was smooth but there was a congestion when I entered the road leading to the centre. I also had to find the particular centre assigned to me, there's HCO A, B and C which does not really correspond to parking areas also labelled with A, B,C and D. 

Thankfully, there wasn't much of a queue at the centre. After my shot, I felt slightly cold. The feeling was strange but it was somehow bearable. After the customary 15 minute observation, I received the date for my next appointment. It felt liberating to be driving home on the highway after such a long time. We're not allowed to cross district during this lock-down period. There was a police roadblock just at the highway exit and I had to show my vaccination card before they allowed me to go through.

I didn't have to work today. So I thought it's a good time to blog. Sleep helps to heal the body, which was why I woke up late today and even took an afternoon nap just now. When I had the strange feeling after my jab, I focused on my breathing and that's when my meditation skills came in handy. The breath is our lever of control for the function of the entire body. If you know your breath well, you can sense what's going on in the body and by controlling your breath, you can determine how it reacts to changes.

Existence is just energy. The flow of our breath is a manifestation of that energy. Call it qi, prana or what you may, but the fact is that the body is an energetic system. Most of the time it is self-regulating and we don't have much control over it. It functions well on its own, unless we prevent it from doing its job. When it wants you to rest, you'll have to obey because it knows best. That is why sleep is so important. By sleeping, you allow the body to do what it does best: re-balance and readjust everything without being disrupted by an external exertions. 

The vaccine definitely had an effect on my body. Hopefully it is doing what it is supposed to do--let my body learn how to deal with the Covid-19 virus if it encounters the real thing. I'll happily take the small discomforts now. Life is fragile. Recently a dear friend of mine passed away because of the virus. I shall always remember the conversations I had with him. And we who are left on this earth shall trudge on,. And as long as there's energy flowing through this body, I shall try to make the most and cherish every moment of it.

Milestones of Memories

Every blog post is another milestone in my life. That's how I see it. The time you have on this earth is finite. There's a fixed amount of time in your pocket and you choose how you want to spend this currency called Time.

What then is considered a good use of one's time? It's the same consideration that comes into play when you decide what you want to do with your money. You can spend it on something that you enjoy or you can invest it. 

Usually to try to kill two birds with one stone: enjoy and invest. Writing in this blog is one of those activities that I enjoy but what do I get out of it? It is like physical exercise. If you want to improve your writing, you simply have to write. The more you write, the better your writing becomes. And that's my motivation for maintaining this blog besides having it as almost like an online journal of my thoughts throughout the years. 

I've been blogging since 2003, when the war in Iraq broke out. At that time, there were many so-called 'warblogs'. Facebook, Youtube and smartphones were not in the picture yet. That seemed like a different kind of world now. I was living in a hotel in Jakarta then and I remember having to dial-up through the hotel phone to PT Telkom's ISP service to get a connection.

This blog contains all my thoughts since then and I've covered a wide range of topics. I can see how my thinking has evolved over the years and I certainly know myself a lot better now having thrashed out these thoughts on the pages of this humble blog. 

No one reads this blog of course and I'm happy about it. You see, when you practice writing, you need some kind of stage for rehearsal. A rehearsal stage is both private and public. Anyone can walk in and watch the performance, but it is not the actual performance that you would want your real audience to see. Anyone watching a rehearsal too understands that there will be imperfections and the performance is just a work-in-progress.

That's the spirit of this blog and that's how I choose to maintain it. The good thing about writing in a blog is that, it is forever etched in the akasha of the internet. For the first two years, I blogged almost daily. Nowadays, I try to post something once a week. These regular blog posts gives me a sense of accomplishment every week--like a columnist with a dateline to meet.

When I run out of things to write about, I simply write...about writing. And that's what this post is all about. It's about time, blogging, milestones and writing. It's a blog about nothing and yet it is everything to me. In the end, all you have are memories. And they are captured here for posterity. And it gives me so much pleasure to be able to write this final sentence that ends the post for this week!

The Karmic Quest for Self-Expression

Happiness is listening to some piano music while I read or write. I have John Field's Nocturne No 1 in E-flat Major playing in the background as I type these lines. Classical piano music always bring me back to my childhood.

There's a certain sense of familiarity whenever I listen to classical music. When I first listened to Beethoven and Chopin as a child, it felt like welcoming back old friends--I had a feeling that I had heard them before and I had always loved them. Was I evoking memories of my past life? Perhaps. But I wouldn't go so far. 

All cultures create their own music. Is music a basic necessity? No. We won't die but life would be intolerably boring without it. Music is an expression of karma. (There I go again, with my annoying New Agey lingo!). What I mean is that there are certain tendencies in human behaviour, in the way the human brain works, that manifest themselves in art and other forms of human expressions. 

Why do we enjoy chatting with friends? Most conversations do not serve any practical purpose. There's no real practical value in 'catching up' with old friends. But we socialize because it is in our nature to do so. Our genes demand it. We are compelled to do so. We are driven by our instinctive behaviour to do things that we do not really comprehend its purpose. Because to live is to do things, even without purpose.

Why climb a mountain? Because it's there. 

Why listen to music? Because it evokes certain feelings and memories. Why do we value these sentimental evocations? Again, it is an expression of being human. We feel, we think and we do. Must there be a purpose to everything?

We chase after pleasures. Life is the pursuit of pleasure--not in a negative sense. Having a partner for life and bringing up children whom you can love and be proud of is a pleasure. There is no shame in striving for that. It is what makes us human. It is what life is all about. To love and be loved. Again, it is karma expressing itself--energy being conserved, transferred and distributed evenly across the universe. 

You can assist or impede this flow of energy. But the laws of nature are dispassionate. You can push things off, but the universe has infinite patience. It cuts channels into mountains of stones and sweeps the soil from the land into the oceans. It is forever looking for stability. 

To live is to allow your personal channel of energy--your karma--to find its optimal path of expression. That in a nutshell is the purpose of life. Why does life even need a purpose? The need for purpose is another karmic kink within of which its quest is an act of expression. The sense of dissatisfaction you feel inside--those are the unstable regions of your psyche that need re-balancing.

May we all have better insights into the workings of our karma and may we ease them into resolution through our well-chosen actions. 

Tuning the Ever-forking Mind

Let me be reflective today. To just muse about things and not having to worry about sticking to a particular subject or theme. And quite inadvertently, I latch on to one: rambling.

We all have a rambling mind. It is the nature of the mind to jump from one thought to another. When we try to focus the mind on a single thing,--what we call concentration--we lose our connection with the surrounding. A focused mind accomplishes great things simply because all mental resources are targeted towards an intended goal. 

To focus one's mind is not an easy task as it is the nature of the mind to wander.  But what if we focus on the mind's wanderings? Is that sort of a meditation too? And of course it is: it's called mindfulness.

Being mindful is a different type of 'concentration'. You are tuned to a process, not an object. The mind in actual fact is a process--a stream of thoughts that does not cease. If we do not have any expectations, anxiety or distractions, the mind bubbles with natural 'thoughts'. 

If we tune the mind to noticing whatever it is that bubbles up, voila we are doing mindfulness meditation. It may sound easy but it is not. The problem is that we always latch on to a specific thought and then fork off from there. The mind is ever-forking and that's how we normally operate.

To be mindful is to not follow a thought. We allow the next fresh thought to surface. If our thoughts have a common theme or setting, then it is not a 'natural' thought--it is an obsessive stream, which we are often sucked into.

To be mindful is also to be in tuned with one's surroundings. You 'see' everything that's occurring as part of the vibratory nature of experience. You are part of the universal ebb and flow of energy--there's no separation between you and the universe.

The universe is the reservoir of inspiration. When we are in tune with it, we are creative. Ideas pop into our heads because we in essence are part of nature that is expressing itself.

Acceptance and Adaptation

It's a Friday today and I am taking a day's break from work. I took the opportunity to go to the bank to collect my cheque-book. Parking was a breeze because the lockdown is in full force. However, there were quite a lot of people queuing up outside the bank. Thankfully, I did not have to wait too long. 

The weather is extremely hot lately. It is almost impossible to work without air-conditioning. I had thought of going for a jog later but the late afternoon sun is still scorchingly hot. We modern folks have forgotten what it was like when air-conditioning was not a common thing. I grew up without it and even today I still sleep without air-conditioning.  The only time that I have the air-conditioner on is when I'm working--like now.

The first car I drove had no air-conditioning. I even drove all the way from KL to Singapore with that trusty Honda Civic. Whenever it rained, it was tough--you had to keep the windows partially open to be able to get ventilation, and and as a result you often end up with a very wet interior. But I was happy with the car, because riding a motorcycle was worse.

Which brings me to the subject of today's blog post: we can always get used to anything. I trained myself to sleep without air-conditioning. To do so, you'll have to embrace heat. It is alright to sweat. Once there's acceptance of the situation, there will be no resistance. And then your mind will find some other types of annoyance to occupy itself. You just move on to overcoming that.

That's how I train myself most of the time. I used to have a heavy lunch. Now I don't even stop work during lunchtime. When the body knows that it is not expecting any food during the time, it will not release digestive juices and make you feel hungry. The body and the mind are very adaptable. But the resistance for change is also huge. That is our biggest challenge.

To overcome this inertia, you need to always start with something achievable first. If you are trying to stop smoking, then resist going for the next cigarette. Ask yourself, what do you lose if you do not take the next puff. Nothing much actually will happen if you do not exaggerate your discomfort. Meditate on the discomfort. What is it like? In the end, everything boils down to a feeling and feelings are always ephemeral. Pain, like pleasure will always fade away.

When you meditate on your discomfort and seeing it for what it is, it loses its power over you. Pain is self-consciously shy. It creates annoyance to you when you are not looking at it. When you put it under the spotlight, it reveals itself as a fraud.

Look around you now. What is causing you discomfort? Is it the heat? Is it the noise? Focus on it and see it as a mechanical process without any emotional overtones. Everything is just matter in motion obeying the laws of physics. Even your emotions are electro-chemical processes in your body. Allow them to play themselves out.

That is the meaning of acceptance. We see the pain or discomfort that we are experiencing at the moment and we allow it to play itself out without adding or subtracting from it. There's no need for amplification or diminution.  If we master this skill, we can adapt to anything. Like this lockdown. Haven't we all gotten used to staying at home? And when we have adapted to it, it's not so bad after all.

The Penance of Pain

It is happening again--the total lockdown starting 1st of June. There won't be too many changes in everyone's lifestyle. By now we are used to the routine. I took the opportunity today to go for a haircut. Had to queue for a while though but I got it done. 

Just in my bedroom alone, I already have sufficient books to last me probably a couple of years. But I indulged myself (with the upcoming lockdown as an excuse) by shopping for a few books. If I have to lock myself up in my bedroom, I'm all set. I have sufficient pens, papers and notebooks to write with, even if I don't have an internet connection. 

Over the years I've trained myself not to be too attached to material possessions. True, I'm still very attached to my collection of books but much less so than say 20 years ago. I've even thought of giving away some of them. The most important thing about material possessions is their transformative power. Everything we possess reveals some weakness that we have.

Is a craving for knowledge bad? We have to ask ourselves this question: why do we seek knowledge in first place? For some, it is for some practical purpose like learning a new skill to make a better living; improving one's knowledge of the stock market so that one can become a better investor or understanding religious scriptures better to gain God's favour. 

Most of the time, we seek knowledge because we crave for certain things. Knowledge is the stepping stone for that craving. Choose what we crave for carefully for it is guaranteed to cause us  pain. Pain is the necessary ingredient for transformation. It is like taking the Covid-19 vaccine--there will be some mild side-effects. But that is the necessary pain that transforms your body's ability to protect itself against an even bigger pain--the Covid-19 virus itself.

 Life is a process of choosing your pain. Take the pain that could transform yourself for the better. That way you are better protected against unexpected pain. By craving for something, you are immediately exposing yourself to the pain of being denied its attainment. Are you strong enough to face the loss of something which you consider your dearest possession?

How painful will it be if I lose my entire lifetime's collection of books? It will be very painful indeed. But I'll take it on the chin and move on. I'll be grateful for the many moments of epiphany that these books had given me. Any further attachment to them as some sort of trophy or symbol of wisdom only serves to inflate the ego, which ultimately will cause more pain.

Any material possession that gives you pleasure is also laden with pain in equal measure. Always take the pleasure together with the pain. Penance is a way to proactively experience pain in order to tap its transformative power. Life itself is an act of penance. Remember this, every time you experience pain, know that some sort of transformation is at work. If you allow pain to play itself out, you know that you've allowed healing to happen. That is true penitence.

The Sacred Act of Penmanship

Our Covid-19 infection numbers are surging, with more than 6000 new infections every day. A tighter lockdown has just been announced by the government--something that everyone has been bracing for. But that's life in the era of the pandemic. 

I am grateful for having a regular income during this difficult time. The only good thing about the pandemic is that you don't spend so much money. I barely had to pump more petrol into my car. And I go for days without having to touch any money. Online purchases have increased but that's understandable. It is a good thing that I don't have any expensive hobbies. Reading is a cheap hobby because books last a lifetime.

I cannot understand most men's fascination with fancy cars. I look forward to a world where no one owns his or her own car. Movement from point A to point B should be done by some driverless electric vehicle which you can call on demand--just like pressing a button for the lift to arrive at your floor. 

I wrote about fountain pens in my last blog post. I confess to having some expensive tastes for pens--especially Mont Blanc. But my collection of pens were bought 20 years ago. I'm allowing a small indulgence lately with cheap Chinese-made fountain pens. It is remarkable how good and cheap they are--often comparable with their more expensive counterparts at a fraction of the price.

Hobbies keep one sane, especially during these difficult times of the pandemic. I must add writing to that too: not writing as in producing some substantial output like an essay, blog or even a letter--but just the physical act of scribbling something with a pen. I have an interest in calligraphy and do possess a number of books on the subject but I've not seriously pursued it since my student days. I lament the fact that penmanship is not something they teach you at schools anymore. My parents and my uncles were all schooled properly in penmanship during the colonial days. Their excellent handwriting is a constant source of inspiration to me.

I had practiced writing in cursive during my schooldays but over the years I've evolved my own lazy style. I realized that the older I get, the more unintelligible  my handwriting has become. Writing with cheap ballpoints also contributed to that. Which is why lately I'm reviving my interest in fountain pens--I want to rediscover the joy of writing longhand.

Writing is also a good meditation practice. Like any artistic endeavour, writing requires one to concentrate on the here and now. The point where the nib touches the paper is like the point of breath which Buddhist meditators are asked to focus on when they do breath meditation. By watching how words form letter by letter, one gets to practice focusing on the present. 

When we put thoughts into writing, we are subjecting our karma to a deeper analysis. It is like math--you write down your equation and then proceed to solve it step by step. Layer after layer of complexity is peeled away as your write and things reveal themselves with greater clarity. 

The pen is the inducer of thoughts. Graham Greene famously said: "My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does". Through writing you get a glimpse of your current karmic state. As ink flows out from the nib, you see the trajectory of your karmic flow, which drives your thoughts.  

Writing with a pen is sacred. If you dislike the boredom of counting your breath, or chanting meaningless mantras, try writing with a pen every day. The pen is the key to unlocking the secrets of your soul.

Fountains of Joy

Being old-school, I enjoy writing with a fountain pen. I remember when I was in kindergarten and Standard One, I learned how to write with pencils. And when I was allowed to use a fountain pen in standard 2, I felt it was a step up: I as finally being treated like a grown-up. 

Over the years, I've used many brands of fountain pens but the popular ones during schooldays were Parker, Sheaffer and Pilot. When I was working in Singapore, I started buying Mont Blanc fountain pens, which was one of the few luxuries that I allowed myself. Unlike some of my friends then, I had no taste for expensive watches; fountain pens were my thing and I took great pleasure in using them, especially when writing in my journal.

I had always carried a fountain pen with me whenever I traveled and I'd always find an excuse to scribble something in my notebooks. There's something magical about watching ink emerging from the tip of a nib as you push your pen across the grainy surface of paper--watching thoughts materialize before my eyes: emptiness becoming form. There's no purer moment of creation than that--like God giving life to Adam in Michelangelo's famous painting.

The only difficult thing about fountain pens is that using one is often a messy experience. Even the best ones leak. Unless you are using cartridges, having to carry a bottle of ink with you all the time  can be troublesome. Despite these inconveniences, nothing beats the experience of writing with one. 

The fountain pen is certainly not the writing instrument of choice for today's generation--that is if anyone even writes longhand at all. Nowadays, we text, cut-and-paste or snap photos to convey our messages across. Writing with a leaky pen on paper sounds absolutely medieval. Today's disposable gel pens certain does its job admirably for those rare occasions we do need to jot down something quickly on paper. And we don't have to fear losing a precious family heirloom if we happen to misplace one. 

It could be a relic of a bygone era but to me, the fountain pen is a symbol of learning and romance. To hold one, poised over a fresh piece of paper is to have the world held at bay, by a weapon that is truly mightier than the sword.  

The Stairway of Spirituality

Last week I wrote about the abstract concept called 'God'. To call God an 'abstraction' or a 'concept' might sound blasphemous to people who revere the Almighty and feel His presence deep down in their souls. The presence of God makes them feel loved and purposeful. Some pray to Him everyday and this connection with the Lord anchors their everyday existence. And there's nothing wrong with that. Each one of us finds resonance in a certain type of language and concept. The God model works for a lot of people and they should keep it that way.

The only problem I find with that model is  the doctrines that have been created by religious authorities over the ages to 'explain' their view of God. Great schisms and sects have arisen out of doctrinal differences. This is the sad thing about institutionalized religion.

Being unattached to any religion in particular allows me to sample the best of everything. I am personally apprehensive about using the word 'God' because it has been over-abused through the ages.

The most tedious thing about religion are the arguments about what the scriptures actually say. Proponents of religions that dissect every word in the scripture to find their 'real' meaning have to understand that most likely the version they are reading is a translation of the original. And even the original itself had been copied repeatedly and probably subjected to numerous edits and embellishments to support certain positions preferred by the people in power. Scriptures are only useful as a stepping stone for the exploration of spirituality. They are meant to inspire and serve as starting points for personal reflection. 

It is the reading and reflection that creates the understanding. And even what we claim to understand has to be accepted with humility for our human capacity to comprehend is limited. One 'aha' moment doesn't mean you've already understood God. 

Some religious scriptures, even though they are read in their original language, are also subject to interpretation as they were orally transmitted and written down much later. The language used is archaic and often its meaning had evolved over time. Every time we listen to the interpretation of scripture from an authority we are actually tapping the wisdom of the authoritative figure, who is merely recounting what the scriptures mean to him or her. It is not the gospel truth, merely one data point in many that the student has to collect in order to gain a fuller understanding.

If only we can approach religion this way, we wouldn't be in so much trouble with it. We wouldn't feel superior to others who are not following our path instead we adopt the humble stance of a seeker of Truth.

We can only interpret what we perceive as 'Truth' with the limited comprehension capability of the human mind. We know we are susceptible to beliefs that we somehow latch unto because it addresses an insecurity that we feel inside. The fact is, our neuroticism colours what we choose to perceive as truth. 

When it comes to spirituality, truth is a feeling. If it feels right, if it clicks inside, if  the Tetris block falls neatly into the right slot, a moment of epiphany arises. And some would call the feeling as being 'touched by God'. But be prepared to go further. On swallow does not make a summer; one insight does not make you a prophet. It is merely one small step up the stairway of spirituality.

An Abstraction Called God

I've always felt that at its core all religions are attempts to realize the basic truths of existence. Doctrinal differences to me are trivial. Rules and rituals sometimes hinder rather than help the spiritual progress of the devotee. It bores me whenever people argue about the virtues of their own religion. 

When we explain technical concepts in engineering, we often use models and architecture diagrams. To represent a web server, we draw a box. To represent a client communicating with a web server, we draw another box with an arrow pointing to the web server. And when discussing it, we have these images in our heads: boxes and lines of interactions going back and forth between them.

What does that have to do with religion? Well, religion are like those box diagrams we draw on the whiteboard to explain nature and how we humans are to function within it. 

Let's go back to the web server. A web server is a piece of program running on a server hardware. If we dive deeper, all we have are just lines of code--instructions--executing based on a predetermined sequence on a processor chip made out of semiconducting material. And even that is an abstraction. There are no 'instructions' as such. That's just our human way of conceptualizing what's happening inside a computer. 

If you open up a computer and look at its printed circuit board, you don't see any activities happening at all. No one barks out 'instructions' to another. The so-called processor feels hot, but you don't see it 'doing' anything. If you tap the the probes of a voltmeter at the right points on the board, you'll be able to read voltages. Voltage is just an indication of the energy possessed by that point relative to another, allowing it to drive the flow of electrons.

All that's happening are just electronic pulses that are being triggered based on the state of the memory, processor and the disk storage. One set of pulses trigger another based on the deterministic behaviour of semiconducting transistors that make up the processor. 

Engineers again use abstract symbols to represent these digital pulses - the '1's and '0's binary language of computing. This is an abstraction to help us humans think. Bits and bytes are concepts that don't exist in nature. Nature is only an interplay of matter and energy.

Even matter and energy are concepts invented by us to again help us 'explain' nature. It's similar to 'form' and 'karma' in Buddhist terminology. Every time we talk about something with the use of concepts, we are simplifying. But it serves our immediate purpose. Concepts have instrumental value. There's nothing intrinsically 'true' about concepts. 

What is the web server? A program, a grouping of logical instructions that execute in a specific way to help us realize a desired interplay of matter and energy, realized using materials such as silicon, copper and gold and electrical energy.  The laws of thermodynamics will always be at play, energy will always be conserved and quantum mechanical laws will be obeyed. Electrons (another abstract concept) will behave like particles and waves with probabilistic certainty.

Nowadays, we like to talk about cloud computing. That's another higher level of abstraction--we have lots of computing power (inescapably engineered configurations of matter and energy) which we can tap to deliver the information processing we desire: the movies we watch on our tablet, the songs we listen to on our phones, the chat messages and videos we send back and forth with friends. We operate at this level of abstraction--exchanging information and energy with the help of engineered systems made out of matter and energy.

God is an abstraction. The rules and rituals of religion are models we build to help us interact with each other as human beings in an optimal manner. Having the concept of an authoritarian God helps. It could be a monolithic architecture but every architecture has its strengths and weaknesses. Very much like how we used to have mainframes where all computing are centrally done. Nowadays we don't even know where the processing is done because it is 'in the cloud'.

Some people are more comfortable working at the level of matter and energy--electrons, heat, light and waves. Some prefer to visualize things at higher levels - a box to represent a server, another a client. But there's no such thing as a server or a client in this artificially assembled matrix of silicon and electron. 

Some people prefer to pray or talk to God, like how a client talks to a server. This client-server model is an architecture. Some like to think of reality as being distributed--everyone is a node for karma to find its optimum path. Karma is just energy, like electrons coursing through semiconducting material in accordance with the laws of physics; like water molecules in an ocean of waves, tsunamis and whirlpools; like human beings loving, hating, desiring and killing each other.

All are just different levels of abstractions. Abstractions are just temporary formations in the human mind. The mind is another concept that does not have an independent reality of its own. We draw a boundary around a group of electro-chemical processes and call it a 'mind'.

But abstractions are how we comprehend the world and interact with each other. We are temporary abstractions build out of lower level of abstractions. Ultimately we are nothing but nature being what it is, undulating and unfolding in its natural state.

This is how I experience the universe. What is 'I'? What is 'experience'? Where are their boundaries? By asking these questions, the boundaries dissolve momentarily. Then we suddenly know, God is in everything. That is, if we choose to use that abstract concept.

A Panacea for Pain

I'm back again on a hot lazy afternoon. I've taken the day off to run some errands. It's been a while since I've been able to do such things--to have a late breakfast and to loiter around at coffeeshops. 

But today has been productive so far: I went to Bangsar to settle some strata-title business; drop off my car at the service centre and then paid a visit to the bank before heading home. Life, like everything else, requires maintenance. 

Now I'm at home, having downed two cool beers, feeling relaxed and contented. The weekend looms and I intend to make it a productive one--productive in terms of maintaining that elusive work-life balance.

Wisdom is the knowledge of balance. How much is enough and when is it too much. That is the eternal question. How much money is enough? Many people would claim moral superiority by saying that they do not need too much to survive. Just enough to eat, with food and shelter. And of course, the occasional holiday overseas and maybe an expensive gadget or two. And of course, a nice pair of wheels.

But how many holidays? How much is considered expensive? And what difference does a flashy car make in getting you from point A to point B?

We can't answer all those questions with certainty. We think that we are just moderate in our consumption. But of course we wouldn't mind more. How much more is enough? We don't know when we cross that elusive line.

By nature, our consumption increases if we are better off financially. Everything we consume has a tinge of unsatisfactoriness--that eternal Buddhist bugbear. Can we live with this feeling of unsatisfactoriness all our lives? Those who can't end up seeking solace in spirituality. 

We are encouraged to see dukkha as an inevitable truth of existence. But how does it help? Does acknowledging that you are in pain make the pain more bearable? 

What else could one do? Suffer like an animal or suffer with dignity? Doesn't the need for dignity causes even more pain? What's wrong with suffering like an animal?

The pain of an animal is physical. The pain of a human being is complex and multi-layered--there's a physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual dimension to it. This is the 'pain stack'. 

Physical and to a certain extend emotional pain can be eased with medication. When the pain is intellectual and spiritual, where do we find solace. In idealism and religion? That's what the atheists and the religious fanatics have in common.

Who can blame us. We are all suffering creatures. Is there a panacea for pain? That's what we are here to find out. That's why I write this blog and you reading it. 

Simple Strength

I was at MidValley today to have lunch with some old friends. We all grew up in a small town and now most of us have seen the wider world out there. Are we wiser, or are we just the way we were before?

Most of us do not change that much. Our basic character is determined mostly by our DNA--the environment merely allows or prevents it from finding its true expression. Plant a seed in a flowerpot, the plant will grow to only a fraction of what it is capable of. But if you allow it to grow wild with enough space, sunshine and soil, it will expand into a majestic tree, with a large canopy. 

The environment nurtures and constraints us in equal measures. Sometimes we move to better environments that allow us to flourish better. Sometimes we trap ourselves in a rut. Life is a constant battle between our innate nature and the environment. If we find the strength, we end up shaping the environment to suit ourselves. But strength is a quality that's determined mostly by our genes.

How do we find strength whenever we need it? There's no guarantee that we will always be strong enough to overcome difficulties when they arise, but we can build habits that make it easier for strength to be summoned. Show strength when it is easy for you to do so. That way, you help to strengthen its muscles. By repetition, any action can become a habit. Repetition is something within our control. Even though we still require some willpower to overcome the laziness of performing an act, it is still more doable than summoning strength in a moment of weakness.

Give yourself easy wins. Make small wins a habit and by doing so you slowly build a habit of winning over your weaknesses. Find monsters that you can slay easily and slowly progress to more powerful ones.  Start with something doable: push away the junk food; walk to the convenience store; turn off the television. These are all simple tasks that can lead to bigger things: you'll find pleasure in rejecting unhealthy junk food after a while and even feel proud about it. A walk to the convenience store is a pleasurable way to exercise and to also accomplish an errand. Turning off the television forces you to focus on a more productive task like reading a book.

I always tell myself whenever I start a new blog post: just write one sentence and the rest will follow. And true enough, I've summoned enough strength to finish another post. My writing muscles have been further strengthened. That's one small accomplishment for today and I shall move on to the next one.

  

A Molecule in Heaven

I went for my haircut this morning at the Empire Shopping Gallery. While sitting outside waiting for my turn, I was thinking about people's idea of heaven.

Many people live a religious life with the intention of being admitted to heaven when they die. Heaven in their view is a place of perfect bliss and happiness--everything good about the earthly life without the pain and suffering: the company of loved ones, good food and perfect living environment where everyone goes around pursuing their hobbies, like playing the harp.

The problem with this idea of afterlife is that it is so limited. We are not able to imagine any kind of life that is vastly different from what we experience here. We see immortality as a continuation of everything that we cherish in this life. Heaven is just somewhere up there, occupying the same 3-D space that we know so well. And life consists of living as humans with the kind of pleasures that we are used to--things that titillate our senses and stimulate our taste-buds. 

Why can't we imagine an afterlife that's vastly different? An afterlife that will make everything that we care for now inconsequential and irrelevant. We'll look back at our earthly life and see how limited our minds were, how foolish and childish we were to think of heaven as some kind of pleasure palace where we'll be reunited with our loved ones. Think of a child who believes his toys are all that he ever needs in this world and imagine him being in a toy-store with all the time in the world and parents who would buy him anything he wants. Wouldn't the toy-store be heaven to the kid?

A river is not able to know what 'life' is like when it merges with the sea. Is a river's heaven a place where it can continue flowing majestically, irrigating large fertile plains and being praised for being a mighty, life-giving source of water to its surroundings?

We are like rivers who do not know the life of the sea. The sea does not have the petty concerns of rivers. It has its much vaster universe of water swarmed with myriads of new lifeforms. It is a world of its own, even though both rivers and seas are part of the same circulation of water on the planet.

Just like the river which do not grasp the sea, the clouds, the rain and lakes and as part of the global circulation of water, we humans only see a small fragment of the vaster life of the universe of which we are part of. We are not able to think like a 'star-child', who sees suns and planets, stars and galaxies as part of a larger scheme of divine life. Why should life be limited to a small slice of the electromagnetic spectrum in human timescales?

Our brains, complex evolutionary machines they may be, have no idea what it is like to be a bat, navigating its way around using echolocation. Do bats 'see' things like we do? We can't even see into the ultraviolet range, but so many birds and insects do. The world of flowers look a lot more beautiful to the bees. Is bee heaven a more beautiful place than ours?

Let's don't fool ourselves into thinking that all religion does is teach us how to be good so that we get rewarded in heaven. If you are happy with being 'religious' that way, you are missing out on the real heaven, which is much much more than you could ever imagine. 

Chuck your mediocre idea of heaven. Touch a drop of water, imagine the vibration of the water molecules within and try to understand where heaven is for them.

The True Reward of Giving

I actually missed 1 blog post last week because my workload has been crazy lately. I am determined not to miss another one this weekend. So here I am, typing these words on a Saturday night and probably by the time I finish, it is already Sunday morning.

I had lunch today with Myra and Paul and we had a good time catching up. Meeting up with friends, exercising and updating this blog, makes a perfect Saturday. I was talking to Myra today about my golden rule on helping others: give and expect nothing in return.

The best form of charity is one that's done anonymously. That way, you have no expectation of any form of return at all. You simply give and forget. It is not something that's easy to do because as humans, we always expect gratitude. We expect someone to be at least appreciative of what we have done for them. 

That problem is, when you give with an expectation, you are setting yourself up for a fall. It might not come in the form that you want or you might not think that you are getting back a good return. You are in effect imposing a debt on the recipient.

You spend the rest of the time, unconsciously being an emotional debt collector, keeping tab on all those whom you expect a favour in return. This is not good karmic management. You make life complicated that way. 

When you give, you are actually making a karmic action, which has consequences. But you want the consequences of your action to just bring about whatever good it can to the recipient.  To expect something in return is put an entry into the accounts receivable of your mind. You've sent an emotional invoice to the person you are trying to help.

But isn't that a naturally thing in all human interactions? True. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  That's the law of karma. When you give without expecting anything in return, you are not trying to stop the effects of karma (which is impossible) but in actual fact, allowing karma to find its best reaction.

You see, every good deed does bring you some form of karmic return. Just that it does not necessarily need to come directly from the person that you just helped. The goodwill that you inject into the universe will always pay dividend in unexpected ways. You have cleared many emotional obstacles for yourself in that one moment of selflessness. You have worked out the karma of the situation by not constraining it to react in a specific way.

Trust karma to find its best course of action. And by giving without expecting anything in return, you are a karma yogi par excellence. By freeing your mind from any expectations of return, you have greatly unburdened your mind. That in itself is already a great reward.    

    

The Dial of Emotions

I did not venture out of my house for the past five days, being tied to my work, glued in front of my computer screen all week. Only this morning did I get the chance to have breakfast at the kopitiam. Writing this blog post is part of my Saturday relaxation ritual--letting thoughts luxuriate on a blank page.

Today, I will talk about the relationship between karma, thoughts and emotions. Thoughts and emotions are to me karmic effects. Emotions are to the body as thoughts are to the mind. Emotions are felt almost as aftershock to a thought and both are just expressions of karma. 

Emotions are karmic reverberations expressed physiologically. This is identified by changes in body chemistry and physical reactions that sometimes culminating in action. But the source of every emotion is thought. It is like a tsunami--a movement or shift in the core earth causes shocks that reverberate across the ocean floor, causing  massive waves on the surface of the ocean. 

Emotions are amplifier of your thoughts's content. A mindful individual detects a thought and sees the signal in the content.This signal has a lot of potential energy, carried by the chain of karmic causality. Energy has to find expression and when this specific pattern of energy is expressed in the body, we call it emotions. Some emotions are strong enough to drive motion and that's when we act physically.

Of what use is emotion? It is merely a prompt for action. When psychic signals become chemical signals in the body, a mindful monitoring system will see that and allow them to dissipate their energy in the most optimal fashion.

Wise living is simply skillful management of karmic energy. It requires an early warning system, a mindful watcher that allows the nexus of energy to be played out within the mind-body system, without damaging it. 

Unskillful handling of emotions could also lead to bad outcomes in the physical world. You could harm someone because of your anger or jealousy; you could form an addiction towards some sense pleasures. Any unwise response to emotions create fresh karmic effects.

Mindfulness meditation helps in our response to emotions because the very act of mindfulness is like an early detection system. Once a thought signal is detected, its state is captured. 

This awareness of thought is an indication that some form of learning has occurred. To have learned means that the brain's neural network has changed to recognize the signal pattern which ensures that your subsequent response to the same signal to be different. Now you see the relationship between karma, thoughts, emotions and mindfulness.  

Emotions do not rule us. They are like the fluctuating indicator needle on a gauge dial. To be able to read this dial, is wise emotional management.

Gratitude for the Simple Pleasures

What are the simple things in life that I am most grateful for? Many indeed. But let's start with the first one.

1. Waking up

I've said it before, sleeping is not much different from dying. We die every night to be reborn again the next day. There's no guarantee that you will wake up. You simply surrender to sleepiness when you put your head on the pillow. When you wake up, you have some vague awareness that you were dreaming and you remember going to bed the night before. But all these considerations only happen after you wake up.  If you did not wake up, none of that would have mattered. Your dream life is akin to life after death. Perhaps life in heaven is just like that and those who end up in hell are just living a perpetual nightmare.

To sleep is to practice dying--surrendering everything you've got, not knowing if you will ever regain it. When you wake up, it is another opportunity to make things better. You are given a second chance every morning. Yesterday is your past life--the momentum of its activities which you still carry. To wake up in the morning every day with the full realization that it is a new beginning, is the very gift of life itself.   

2. Reading and Writing

I write here because I consider writing a miraculous act of expression. Reading and writing are two sides of the coin. When you read, you are listening to someone else's thoughts and ideas. Very naturally you would also want to express your own thoughts. So you write. Writing crystalizes ideas and sets them into motion. The hidden value of your thoughts become clear when expressed, their weaknesses exposed when put to written form on a blank page. It is a stage for thoughts to sell their own worth.

I am the old-fashioned type who still reads the hardcopy newspaper every morning. Breakfast with the morning papers is one of the greatest joys of life. One to be cherished with gratitude.  In an era of audiobooks and podcasts, I shall also include listening as an alternate form of 'reading'. Reading reprograms the mind.  AI technology takes its inspiration from the neuron structure of the human brain. Every sentence read and comprehended creates a new wiring.  Every insight gained creates a dopamine hit in the brain. We feel rewarded and satiated.  It is a pleasure I consciously lap up every time I read. The pleasure one gets from reading far exceeds that of eating or drinking. I can never understand why people complain about the price of books when what they spend so much more on food. The pleasure of the written word is undoubted one of the greatest joys of living.

3. Walking

Being able to walk is a great blessing that we should never take for granted.  For those of us lucky enough to have fully functional limbs, walking is such an effortlessly beautiful act. It just propels you forward in space. Walk slowly and steadily, absorbing the scene that passes through your vision; watch people and their idiosyncrasies; savour the different smells and aroma from the street; feel the sensations on the soles of your feet as you gently lift and land them. Walking is sampling life in all its myriad richness.  Every walk we take should be an action of meditation--a reaffirmation of life itself. 

I try to walk whenever I could. I sometimes park slightly further away from my meeting place so that I can get a chance to walk and approach the location gently, giving me an opportunity to organize my thoughts. Walking is a way to work out thoughts--it is thinking in motion and an immeasurable source of pleasure in itself.

4. Sitting

To sit at a sidewalk cafe, sipping a cup of coffee, reading or watching people passing by--isn't that one of the great simple pleasures of life? When this simple act of repose is combined with the activity of reading and writing, it is a state of blissful existence, one which I try to indulge myself in every time I get the chance. 

When I'm in a foreign city, simply walking its streets and sitting at a restaurant or cafe is my preferred way of enjoying the place. You get to learn a lot about the people and the place from this simple act. Too many tourists rush through cities from one sight to another, without actually slowing down to absorb its real atmosphere. When you sit, you sense everything that's happening around you. You are part of the place, at least for that brief space of time. To sit is to pause and to acknowledge the richness of the moment.

Having the privilege to perform these four acts of simple pleasures already make my life meaningful. And of course, there are others: good food, wine, conversation with friends, helping someone in need, exercising, playing games and doing creative work. All these are part of the joy of living. But these four four, if performed with gratitude, are the very essence of living itself.

Meditations on a Blank Page

You always start with a blank page. And then words begin to emerge from the void. "In the begining was the Word...", as the scripture goes.

How am I to fill this blank page today? Well, by simply emptying the contents of my mind.

Isn't it remarkable how we can never stop thinking and yet when it comes to writing, our fingers freeze. The blankness of the page stares back at us. Why can't we use the same psychology to turn the tables on our monkey minds?

Whenever we face writer's block, our minds are actually not blank. In actual fact, they are brimming with thoughts--negative ones. These are mostly fear, disappointment and distractions. Fear that what we produce is not good enough; disappointment at every sentence that we attempt to produce and then conveniently jumping to other tracks of thoughts that are less demanding or stressful.

If we just dump every thought we have, no matter how unworthy they are on the page, we'll never run out of things to write about. I fear writing another pointless sentence like this one. And this one. But why fear as no one will be reading this anyway? It's because I demand that of myself: I want to write something that carries meaning and insight. Every sentence I write is a mental bicep curl, to strengthen my capability to produce sentences that carry meaning. 

I have fears also that what I write is of such poor quality that my readers (if there's any at all) will not think well of me. That's another trap I want to avoid. To write to impress my imaginary readers--it is a good exercise by itself but if it bothers you that someone is unimpressed by what you do, then you have set yourself up for a lot of suffering.

But don't we all want an approving audience for whatever we do--be it a new mobile app you've hacked, a live show performance or a newly-launched business? As a matter of fact, in the case of a business, it is the raison d'etre of its existence. A product that no one approves of will not make the creator any money.

A business is a self-imposed ego structure--like a new-born baby. It has to have an ego to have a meaningful existence. An ego has a personality, a vision and a goal which it strives towards. It's a self-imposed purpose of existence which sets itself for a lot of painful obstacles. No successful enterprise comes without pain or sacrifice. A business that produce goods and services which no one approves of, is always a risk that it has to be prepared for. 

What do we do if we need an audience but we are attracting none? Then we need to do something about it--change our product features, style or content; revise our marketing strategy and get feedback from the users. We have to make adjustments. A failure to make adjustments dooms a business. The ability to be agile and nimble, to react quickly to change is essential for any business to be successful. 

Rejection can be painful but is just another data point. Use it to chart your next course of action. Iterate again. Life is a series of iterations. Every advance thwarted is another piece of experience that could help us refine our products. Sometimes our goals are not realistic; we could have completely misread the market. Adjustments are needed. Take stock, readjust and retry.

A sentence that materializes on an empty page like this is the result of many iterations. Some of them occur in the mind; some on-screen with the help of the trusty backspace key. A sentence lurches forward in fits and starts. But there's a constant forward motion, driven by an over-riding vision and a goal. In my case, it is to come to this point: the last paragraph and the last word. Period.

 

The Secret to Sanity

It's another Saturday dedicated towards catching up with friends. I enjoy light social drinking at outdoor places. The place I went for dinner just now appears to be doing quite good business now that restaurants are allowed to seat more than 2 persons per table.

This is life during the pandemic, something you can tell your children about like how my dad used to narrate tales of his experience during the Japanese occupation. Before this pandemic, the last major event in my lifetime was September 11 2001. That marked a lot of changes in my life--it marked the end of my stint in Singapore and the start of my Indonesian chapter.

The pandemic appears to be another turning point. It has devastated so many businesses. But many will also bounce back again. Let's see who can ride this period out and enjoy the inevitable rebound. Financial worries can be a big stress for many with families and other commitments. It can plunge someone into deep depression. 

To prevent that from happening, one must manage one's mind very well--a task I call mental housekeeping. Meditation is the practice that achieves this goal. Through meditation, one become aware of the behaviour of one's thoughts and they are nothing more than naturally occurring vibrations in the mind.

I can see depression as some kind of infinite loop that we sometimes experience with buggy applications. The mind gets caught in its own thinking loop and it is very difficult to extricate oneself from it.

This is when the skill of letting go plays a role. Thoughts take hold of the mind because we allow them to, through our attachments to certain outcomes. Letting go of attachments drains thoughts of their fuel. Without the binding power of attachments, thoughts fade away.

But what kind of  life is that without attachments to things? 

Well, instead of attachment, we can cultivate hope and appreciation. We hope for certain outcomes in life but we are not obsessively attached to a specific manifestation of this outcome. A hope is a general alignment of one's mental and physical faculties. But the universe always works out things in the most optimal fashion. We should not second-guess it. Allow it to unfold in the way it chooses.

This attitude allows us to be at peace with what is. It is what it is. If it goes your way, express gratitude and move on. If it doesn't, acknowledge, learn and move on. Letting go and moving on, letting go and moving on. 

Once you've achieved that rhythm of existence, life becomes very spontaneous. One is a peace with the universe. Thoughts do not become the tsunamis that wreak havoc in your mind. And that is the secret to mental sanity.

The Vortex of Existence

 It's rare for me to miss posting a blog, but somehow I did last week. It's probably due to the hectic combination of work and Chinese New Year. New Year celebrations are muted this year due to the pandemic. Everyone was trapped in the city, at home.

There have been a relaxation to the lockdown rules and restaurants are able to take dine-in customers with more than 2 persons per table. I had lunch with friends at the Tang Room this afternoon and the place was packed.  People are also eager to eat out for a change after being cooped up at home for so long.

Vaccines are coming but herd immunity is still a long way off. We are also playing catch-up with a virus that is fast mutating, with newer strains appearing to be much more infectious.  

Despite the inconvenience of the lockdown, I think we are all still very lucky.  We still have food and shelter and most of us still have a source of income. We must all express gratitude for that. 

I am grateful for still being able to  indulge in my favourite activities like reading and listening to audiobooks every day. It is remarkable how fully utilized all the hours in my day are. Perhaps too much of it is being allocated for work, but I'm just making the most of my days holed up at home during this pandemic.

My expenses have been radically reduced due to the pandemic. The good thing about it is that I know I can get by with so much less, with no less diminishment in my quality of living. I have more than enough books and audio content than I could ever consume. 

It am still driven by my deep-seated desire to understand everything about human existence. It is what keeps me going. It gives me pleasure to be able to wake up and breathe the cool morning air and feel  myself still in control my mind and other faculties. For that, I am extremely grateful.

Every morning meditation of mine is an expression of this gratitude. I am a part of the universe that attempts to understand itself--a small whirlpool, realizing itself as inseparable from the continuum of waters that is the ocean of existence itself. 

How momentary is the existence of the whirlpool, yet in its brief lifespan, it thinks it is the center of the ocean, sucking everything into its vortex. Ultimately, the goal of our lives is to transcend the limited vortex of our existence and be that omnipresent ocean of being. 

Waking Up Continuously

There's nothing magical about meditation; it is simply mental hygiene. The mind requires housekeeping. Over the course of our busy daily lives, we accumulate a lot of noise and rubbish in the mind. Meditation is just an opportunity to identity all these dark spots and cleanse them of their impurities.

We are not very good in managing the mind because we have no real awareness of its existence. We talk and perform bodily actions in reaction to our environment. We do things, we feel, we desire, we satiate ourselves. Where is the mind in this picture?

By not being aware of the mind, we allow ourselves to be shaped by our environment. We miss the gap between stimulus and response. We are but automatons, driven by desires. 

When we have awareness of the mind, we know what is involved in the dialogue with the external world. And after a while, we see that, this distinction between internal and external is quite false. We are just a part of the flux of nature. Our egoic existence is nothing but a small localized center of perturbation. 

By understanding the flow of nature, we see why pain and pleasure arises. We begin to understand how certain mental stances shape this universal flow. We are not the creators of these forces; merely conduits of their flow. If we understand the wind and the waters well, we can harness their energy, or at least not impede their flow.

Through meditation we observe this interplay of energy and understand how through conscious effort we are able to let them find its optimal course. If you are walking against the wind, you can adjust your body and walking stance so that you can move forward with the least amount of resistance. 

We as creatures who have consciousness, have a duty to explore its inner workings. To be conscious that we are conscious brings us to the next level of consciousness. Meditation is this great adventure of exploration into the terra incognita of the mind. 

What will we find there? It depends on the individual. We have spent our entire lives being lost in our thoughts. To meditate is to wake up to this slavery to thoughts an see them as what they are--waves of the mind.

To wake up is to be aware that you are aware and what prevents you from realizing this. This awareness arises in small glimpses initially. But after a while, it becomes a part of your normal way of perceiving the world. 

So be aware. Rise above your thoughts and see them for what they are--a mere dream. But how do you know this new awareness itself is not a dream? We don't. The key is simply to continue waking up. 

The First Principle of Communication

To relax with words--that's what I intend to do with this blog post. Writing can be relaxing, if there's no dateline pressure or any attempt to project a certain style or image.

Earlier today I was reflecting on how often we mis-communicate, especially in a work environment. When we are conveying our thoughts, we do so with a lot of assumptions and preconceptions.

What is obvious to you, might not be so to the other party. A good communicator, probes and listens and then dispenses his advice or opinion at the right moment, using the point-of-view of the listener.

The skillful communicator uses words that are familiar with the listener. There are a lot of cliches in the corporate world; many words and phrases from the IT world have been repurposed for everyday use. For instance, people don't say, they don't have time for something anymore. They'll say, "I don't have enough bandwidth to...". When did we all suddenly morph into stringy data cables? 

Another one that I hear frequently nowadays is "I'll ping you", which always want to make me reply: "OK, here's my IP address".  And whenever you want to avoid answering everything yourself, you can resort to "looping in so-and-so". 

Then there are those who say, "Let's jump on a call", making a dull conference call which you would rather avoid sound like a raucous trampoline session.

"Let's cut to the chase", is supposed to immediately ramp the tempo of a meeting up a notch when everyone is nodding off. You can immediately imagine the audience straightening up in their seats and reaching for their popcorn.

Are these cliches good? Only to a certain extent. They enable us to recognize certain stock situations but they certainly do not engender creativity.  "Out-of-the-box" (another corporate cliche) they are not.

We inevitably behave like automatons, cliche-in, cliche-out. That's a corporate executive for you. They are effective as long as things remain routine. But the moment an out-of-the-ordinary situation arises, communication often breaks down.

True listening is the beginning of good communication. Sometimes a clear yes or no, in answer to a person's question is more effective than any desire to explain and get your opinion across. "Yes/no, because....".  

Avoidance, indirection and allusions are all hindrances towards good communication. State facts plainly, go slowly. Let the questioner be heard until he or she is convinced that the question has been completely understood. Restate the question in your own words. Then only do you proceed to speak.  

That principle is encapsulated in my favourite habit from Stephen Covey's classic 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Seek first to understand. Then to be understood. It's amazing how often we forget that.

The Poetry of Sound and Images

I'm listening to the music soundtrack for the movie The Lover by Gabriel Yared. This is one of my favourite soundtracks and I have been listening to it since it was released in 1992, almost 30 years ago. It certainly brings back lots of memories of my days living in a rented room Damansara Jaya.

The movie was based on the semi-autobiographical French novel by Maguerite Duras. I liked the movie too even though it was panned by the critics. Gabriel Yared is also the composer of the music soundtrack for another favourite movie of mine: The English Patient, the award winning movie based on the novel by Michael Oondaatje.

All the movies that I love happen to have good soundtrack music or perhaps it is due to music that these movies are so enduring in my mind. The two Blade Runner movies are good examples, the first by Vangelis and the sequel by Hans Zimmer. Who can forget the Morriconne soundtrack in Once Upon A Time in America and The Misson. 

Music are an essential part of Wong Kar Wai's movies, which is why I am such a big fan of his works. Days of Being Wild is my all-time favourite, followed by Happy Together and Chungking Express. 

If I like a movie, I'll always buy its soundtrack album. But I've also enjoyed lots of soundtrack music of movies which I've never seen before. Cinema Paradiso and Il Postino comes to mind.  

A movie is nothing but a stream of colours and sounds held together by the narrative thread of a plot. The story provides the architectural framework--the canvas on which the director paints its vision with light and tone. That's how I define a movie. The plot is secondary. A movie is a holistic experience of the senses--a poetry in motion.

Which is why one never tires of a good movie. They become a part of your life, its soundtrack seeping into every lyrical moment of your life's existence. And life is so much richer because of them.

The Quest for Answers

We only experience a small spectrum of the electromagnetic wave--what we call visible light. We can't see in the ultraviolet range but some animals and insects do. What does their world look like? We don't know. Bats experience and navigate the world using sound waves. What is it like to be a bat?

That is exactly is the title of Thomas Nagel's famous paper published in the Philosophical Review in 1974, defining the ultimate problem of consciousness, which has been the elusive holy grail for our current generation of philosophers, neuro-scientists and psychologists.

We may never find an answer to that question. Why? Because any answer that we can come up with is ultimately interpreted by consciousness itself. Can consciousness understand itself? Can we ever capture the reflection of a mirror with another mirror?

What do we mean when we 'understand' something? Is understanding simply familiarity? 2+2=4? 

Is understanding simply a process of establishing a chain of causality? Why did I eat that piece of cake? Because I'm hungry. Or because I have a craving for sweet things. Is that sufficient explanation for why I ate the cake? 

Is understanding an intuitive process? A feeling? An 'aha' moment? In high school or secondary school, the mathematics teacher would write some formulae on the blackboard and demonstrate to you how you use them to achieve certain outcome. With some practice, you soon figure out how to apply it efficiently. You learn how to extract the necessary parameters in the exam question and insert them into the formula. Lo and behold an answer pops up. Full marks. But do you really understand what it is about?

Perhaps each one of us has a different criteria for defining what understanding is. If someone tells you that you go to either heaven or hell after you die, is that sufficient explanation to you for the meaning of life? You must do good and worship the right god so that you end up in heaven, where you will lead a life of eternal bliss and joy. Is that good enough an explanation for you? If not, what is?

If I tell you that the purpose of existence is to work out your karma. Is that a satisfactory explanation for you? What constitutes a 'satisfying' explanation? What are the standards that need to be met for you to 'understand' and be 'satisfied' with an statement of 'fact'? Must you touch it and feel it in your hands first? Or must you see it with your own eyes?

What is this intuitive 'aha' moment? Is it some state of mind, a certain pattern of neurons firing in unison? Or is there something non-physical, something of the spirit that moves us when we get that Eureka moment? Like being 'moved by the spirit' or being 'touched by God'?

What do we even mean when we say that? Is it simply aesthetics--the joy and delight when we listen to a beautiful piece of music or being awestruck by a magnificent work of art?

If understanding is intuitive. What is intuition? Is it something supernatural? Some magical property that inhabits the human brain when it reaches a certain level of complexity? An emergent property of the system?

I dont' have answers to all these questions. But what I do know is that, as long as I am alive, I will be pursuing them. If there's such thing as the meaning of life, it is the pursuit of these answers. It is that Socratic quest for the examined life. And that is exactly what I do every day, the moment I wake up. 

A Thought Bubble

I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. 

- O'Brien to Winston Smith in George Orwell's 1984.

After the dramatic events of the January 6 US Capitol siege by Trump supporters, I've been thinking a lot about the nature of belief and how much control we have over how we think and feel.

How do we determine what is true and what is not? Many who stormed the US Capitol building believed fervently that the election was stolen from them, leaving them no choice but to use force to rectify this grave injustice. Were they wrong? What makes you think you are right in thinking that they are wrong?

Is 2+2=4? Is that a fact? Or is that simply conventional belief? In George Orwell's novel 1984, the protagonist Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth which is responsible for rewriting history to fit the governing party's ideology. The Party which rules the state determines what is the truth because truth only exists in the human mind. And if the state is able to control its citizens' minds then it defines what reality is.

How does the state control its people's thoughts? In Orwell's fictitious nation of Oceania, the Ministry of Truth achieves its aim by making it a crime to have any thoughts that are not in line with the Party's doctrine--a thoughtcrime. It is the responsibility of the Thought Police to put the people under constant surveillance to catch any violation of its official beliefs. Total control of the citizenry's mind requires a new language: Newspeak.

In Newspeak, the English language is reduced to its bare minimum, and trimmed of words that convey independent and creative thinking. Words like 'excellent' are no longer required because you can replace with doubleplusgood. He runned doubleplusspeedwise in Newspeak means he ran extremely fast.

Today we willingly subject ourselves to the control of our favourite social media channels by clicking and tapping on every link that it recommends based on what you've viewed, narrowing our views and concept of the truth further and further. It is a form of thought control. Like it or not, you are already being controlled by the social media company's AI. You end up only reading and viewing content that are in agreement with what you choose to belief. And over time, that becomes the overwhelmed truth, because those are the only 'facts' you carry in your head.

Are you on the Left or Right? In all likelihood, everything you read on the Internet will not be a healthy mixture of the two. You are slowly being led by the social media's seemingly helpful algorithms ("If you liked this, you might like these too") into smaller and smaller opinion bubbles. 

Tweets are your thoughts. And finally today, Twitter decided that President Trump has commited Tweetcrime, banning him permanently from the platform. Well, who determines what is the truth? I'll leave that to you as food for thought.