The Meaning of Meaning

Today, I'm writing this from the Komugi Cafe, where I'm parked for at least the next hour to write this weekly blog article of mine. My laptop is partially charged and I'm relying solely on its battery and the internet connection from my phone. Now comes the question: what am I supposed to write today?

I've been thinking about about a subject that's so laughably corny and trite for the past few days: "What is the meaning of life?".  But I'm not going to bore everyone by writing about that. Instead I'm going to go a step further: What do we mean by "meaning"? 

Let's start with a dictionary explanation of the word "meaning": ...the end, purpose or significance of something.  That is a good start because whenever someone asks "what is the meaning of life?", there's a certain sense of hopelessness and futility behind it--the underlying statement is that, life appears to have no purpose. We struggle so hard to survive, only to die of sickness or old age. What is the point of all this? Why be born at all? Where are we heading? What happens after death? Is this all there is? Why am I here?

Usually whenever such a question arises, I would like to throw up another question: If I give you a definitive statement like "the meaning of life is X", where X could be something like, "to go to heaven", "to fulfil the evolutionary purpose of life","to find God", "to leave a legacy", "to love or be loved", "to be useful to my family, community and mankind","to achieve Enlightenment" or simply "to enjoy and be happy". Would that answer satisfy you? If not why?

If one of the above answers is good enough for you, will you stop at that? So what if you achieved Enlightenment or left a legacy or is assured of a place in heaven? Which is why I think the more fundamental question is: why do we seek meaning at all in anything we do? What constitutes something that is "meaningful"?

Is enjoying a happy family life, with a successful career and having someone to carry on your legacy and inheritance something "meaningful"? And having that "meaning" gives you an enormous sense of satisfaction? Is "meaning" just simply a statement that gives you acceptance and pleasure, because you think that is already in your grasp or within your mortal comprehension. Is it simply a goal that you can understand and pursue? 

If it is, then that's simple. Just define your meaning and be happy about it. Which is a bit of an existentialist attitude towards life: you are born and your meaning is defined by your actions. There is no pre-defined purpose or essence. "God is dead", as Sartre famously claimed. Meaning is not written in some divine book, revealed by God. Meaning is not some New Age-y pursuit like "participating in the evolution of life in the universe". Meaning is what you define your life to be. It is a purpose, a call for action and need not necessarily be a "happy" life in the conventional sense. Because your call could be "to fight and die defending your country". 

Which also begs the question: why must we have meaning in life? Why can't we just seek pleasure and pro-create like animals? Isn't the life of an animal "meaningful"? Then we realise the need for meaning arises because we have a certain "intelligence". We have already eaten the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We are cursed with a propensity for asking questions and seeking answers to everything. 

So if the need for meaning is a natural consequence from being an intelligent creature, we have to ask ourselves: does it serve any purpose? Is the need for meaning simply a natural consequence of following the causal logic of natural phenomena where everything has a cause and effect. We are simply seeking the next link in the chain of causality--if I am here living my life, what does it lead to? Is it simply a quirk of our logical mind, to seek meaning? All rivers flow to the sea. We can even go further and say that the meaning of a river's existence is to seek the sea. 

Are we all just like rivers, obeying the laws of nature and the question of meaning arises because simply because that's how we always think: everything must have a purpose and therefore meaning. What if that's not always true? Are we willing to accept that fact that the purpose of life is to live and die? Forget about meaning, because that's like asking if the shape of the waves on the ocean has any 'meaning'. It is what it is.

So am I going to just cop out and declare that asking for the meaning of life is a pointless question? Certainly not! Because there's a practical need for for meaning: it satisfies us in some strange way. It puts us at ease if we know that there's meaning in whatever we do. 

But we are all limited, in some way, by our intelligence. An alien being of advanced intelligence might think our conception of 'meaning', naive. So each one of us have a different criterion for what constitutes meaning. And as we mature, we will seek for 'deeper' meanings. X will change with time.  Some will find it in religion, other's in other pursuits that provide one with a sense of purpose. Meaning is simply instrumental. It helps it us to navigate through life. Having no meaning in life leads one to despair and even suicide.

So seek your meaning in life, whatever that means. To me, it is the constant examination of the nature of our existence: Why do we seek meaning? What is meaning? The meaning of life is to seek the meaning of life. Ah, we've visited this territory before: it's simply the Examined Life.  

The Music of the Mind

I spent the morning cleaning my apartment, especially the balcony where birds have been conveniently using it as their outhouse. The physical work was much welcome after the whole week of work in front of a computer screen. My man-cave needs a bit of maintenance after having survived multiple roof leakages which ruined some of my books. Will have to slowly engage the right people to fix them.

I admire people who are able to do all their household maintenance on their own. Handling drills and wrenches is not really my forte and not exactly on my list of priorities. Neither is cooking--but, this is one area which I think I might explore further as I grow older. 

Not that I am very interested in the culinary arts--it's just that I find that I have an intuitive understanding how different flavours and ingredients blend together. They are like musical notes--some combination of notes blend together to form a chord. As I grow older, I am beginning to 'hear' the harmonies of these flavours clearly.  

All the senses--sight, sound, smell, taste and touch impinges on the mind in the same way. They all have different tonal shades, which the artist use as his medium of expression. When we produce a work of art, we are expressing a combination of thoughts and feelings in space and time.

We experience life as we know it through our senses. I enjoy movies as a blend of images and sound, which are woven together by a storyline or plot that serves as a structure for composition. Some say that all stories are variations of a few basic themes--the Hero's Journey is one of them. But to me the story is the least important part of a movie--it's the masterful use of sound and images that I'm interested in. Which is why I admire Blade Runner so much and many other works by the director Ridley Scott. 

Every word has colour and tone. A writer chooses from a palette of words to best express his ideas and feelings. There's rhythm, there's harmony and there are themes and counterpoint. When we are in tune with the writing of the author, we resonate. And in the act of resonance, new melodies and spun off in the mind of the reader. We call that 'thought-provoking'. 

Thoughts are melodies. They arise because the background harmonies demand them. A melody sits on top of a chord progression like a butterfly flitting from flower to flower.  Thoughts arise as inevitably as the melodic line expressed by a saxaphone player in a jam session. There's a constant progression of chords happening in the mind through the movement of karma. 

When the melody of thoughts arises, action follows like how we instinctively dance to music. To meditate is to listen to the music of the mind. And that is the wellspring of all art.

 

The Sacred Paths of Life

For the past month or so, the world has been lapping up all the sordid details in the turbulent relationship between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard revealed in their trial. I haven't been following the trial online but from what I've read, neither party came off smelling like roses. As they were married at on point in their lives, they must have loved each other very much for them to have made that leap. How in the world could a relationship that had started with mutual love deteriorated so badly until it became an abusive one? 

Being a confirmed bachelor, I'm not qualified to comment about marriage.  And even though I've been in long-term relationships before, I don't proclaim to be an expert on the matter. But what I want to do is to reflect on the nature of relationships and marriage.

People often ask me why I don't get married. That question presupposes that one could get hitched if one simply chooses to, like going to the supermarket to pick up some oranges. I know of people who had tried hard to look for a life partner but by some stroke of bad luck, did not get to meet the right one, or they invested their time and energy on the wrong one. No one is divinely ordained to meet their soul-mate whom they can live happily every after with.

In my case, that wasn't the case either. I have had opportunities to pursue relationships which could have led to marriage, if I had remained on course. But I've always chosen not to, because I learned along the way how difficult it could be and the kind of effort and energy that is required to make it work.

Now, why should one be deterred by that? Isn't the end-goal worth all the pain and hardship? And isn't it a bit pessimistic to look upon marriage as a kind of difficult 'project' that one does a careful cost-benefit analysis before taking the plunge? Isn't a marital union between two souls who love and support each other the most beautiful thing in the world? Even though it is not easy, but wouldn't the task of building a life and family together be a worthwhile journey? To have someone who cares for you, to have a home to go back to, to have children who will love and care for you in old age and to leave behind your lineage and legacy? Isn't that what one would call a happy, meaningful and fruitful life?

Unfortunately the answer to all the questions in the previous paragraph for me is an emphatic 'No'.  I do respect the institution of marriage and admire people who have genuinely found happiness in it. I've written in an old blog post of mine that a happy family is like a garden filled with beautiful flowers. It takes a lot of effort to tend to it but once it materialises it is a thing of beauty and and endless source of pride and joy. 

I admire other people's gardens and partake in their joy, but I have no desire to become a gardener myself. I am more of a connoisseur of horticulture. There's happiness in that too. One sees the variety of plants and appreciates the challenge required to nurture and grow them in different kinds of soil and climate. By not being a gardener myself, I have the resources to study the variety of gardens and techniques of gardening themselves in greater breadth and depth. And that gives me a greater understanding of people and nature themselves, which is what I derive enormous pleasure in.

But isn't it human nature to want to pair up with someone and procreate? That's life and why not plunge into the celebration of a process that makes us all humans? But isn't it also in our nature too to seek our own purpose of existence and pursue that which we think would give each one of us meaning? 

That's all I'm doing. I wouldn't be honest with myself if I attempt to convince myself that the path of the householder is one which I find true meaning and happiness. I have chosen a path, which I sometimes jokingly refer to as that of a secular sanyasin. I am not a monk nor a householder--just someone who finds life an opportunity to learn and gain insight into what makes us who we are.

Of what use is such a person? No better or no worse than the average person who starts a family and imposes his or her idea of what a family should be on its members. It is simply living the examined life, of which the family man too in an indirect way is attempting to do.

Marriage is a commitment which comes with its attendant pains and pleasures. And if pursued wisely it is as good as any spiritual path the the religious renunciate claims to have found their true calling in.  One simply chooses a path that is most honest to oneself. Both paths are equally sacred, and each has its own unique lessons, tailored for the souls who chose them. And by following it truthfully, we will all meet at the same destination.

Transducer of Thoughts

In 2003, I wrote a blog article entitled Seismography of the Mind. Today, I wish to elaborate further on the subject which I merely mentioned casually in passing while I was back in KL briefly before rushing back to Jakarta.

Perhaps what strikes me most about an article written almost 20 years ago is that how much of what I believe in now had already taken root in my mind then. I've always kept a handwritten journal and thoroughly enjoy the physical act of writing in longhand. I can easily discern my mood from my handwriting and to see thoughts materialising slowly in black wet squiggles on the crisp white page is like magic.

People who write journals are likely to be lovers of fountain pens and I have a collection of them, ranging from Parker, Mont Blanc, Cross, Waterman, Pelikan to lesser known ones (at least to people who are not familiar with fountain pens) like Benu, TWSBI and Kaweco. Writing in my journal is also an excuse to put these fountain pens of mine to good use. Furthermore I could choose from my wide selection of inks, which is one of the joys of fountain pen usage. 

It's true that fountain pens are messy and inconvenient. A ballpoint or rollerball pen does the job equally well without any of the hassle. Fountain pens require maintenance--you'll have to flush it in water and clean it thoroughly before filling it with another ink and often nibs don't perform that consistently. And if one accidentally drops it, it could be be ruined. Sometimes the ink doesn't flow so well, causing scratchiness or hard starts. Pens are like pets, with their peculiar mood and character, which is also what makes them endearing.

Of course, we all like to quote the cliche that the pen is mightier than the sword. There's no denying that the written word has a power that surpass that of any weapon that man has ever wielded. Nothing is more power than a thought whose time has come. Which brings me to my original intent of this article--that the pen acts like a transducer of thoughts.

What are thoughts anyway? Thoughts are like vibrations of the mind. The meditator observes these vibrations and watch them rise and subside, But why do they arise in first place? It's nothing but the energy of your karma.

Now as always, I'm veering into the esoteric. But hold your judgemental thought--which as you can see is triggered by what I just wrote: One signal arising from my mind inducing another in yours. A thought once introduced into the world, has its karmic effect. You cannot undo what you have read easily. You might forget it after a while, but its potency has already taken effect. Like a virus, it has already crept into your being, infusing every future thought you have with its echoes and residual effect.

The pen, especially the fountain variety, is a precision instrument that captures thoughts. A written sentence is a signal extracted from the noisy turbulence of the citta. A handwritten sentence captures not only the raw signal of the thought but also its attendant qualities in the shape and shade of one's ink-strokes. One's mood and character are captured together with the idea on the handwritten page.

Thoughts are occurring all the time in one's head. Just that most of the time, there's nothing of significance that one should put to the page. How does one separate the wheat from the chaff? By observing thoughts carefully, and capturing the signal from the noise. And what better instrument to do that than to use a fountain pen? It acts like a the stylus of a turntable in reverse, instead of transducing the the.tiny bumps on the record groove into electrical signals and sound, it picks up the signals of the mind and etches them into the page, in the form of ink marks.

Holding a fountain pen in one's hand, poised over a piece of paper, is the most magical pose of all: it is the act of creation itself. Something from the immaterial world of thoughts is about to born into the world. The writer is at once a midwife and a craftsman--ushering ideas into existence through a careful selection of words. What a privilege and joy it is to write with a fountain pen--the ultimate transducer of thoughts!

 

The Story of Our Lives

A blank page begs for a good story. And here I am, in my apartment in Cyberjaya, trying to spin a yarn that hopefully could touch the reader both intellectually and emotionally.

Let's begin with the mind's yearning for stories. Why do we like them so much? Why do we listen to the storytellers of old, believe the myths passed down by our forefathers and worship writers and actors who bring these tales to life?

Let me put forth a thesis: the mind only understands and remembers stories. Stories are the mind's natural unit of storage--every story is like a file, if you will. We will always forget facts but remember stories. Stories tie facts together into a coherent whole. Facts woven neatly into a dramatic story will be remembered forever, because our memories are engineered by nature to store stories.

No wonder, one of the more popular mnemonic devices when it comes to remembering a list of things is to weave them into a story--the more fantastic the better. If only our teachers know how our minds work better, they would become much better educators. Students will never be forced to remember dry formulae in maths or important dates in history; by giving every formula a history context and every date an emotional significance these subjects will not be so dull.

Stories have a natural sequence of events and an emotional arc. No single event or fact stands in isolation. The mind recognises a pattern. There's tension and release, which generates emotion. That is also why we all like music--music plays with our mind's natural inclination for expectation (a fifth) and satisfaction (the tonic key). Whenever these patterns of ups and downs, tension and release harmonises with the the 'natural frequencies' of our soul, we find resonance.  We feel the 'vibe'.

Reason always have to be fused with emotions for anything to take root within our psyche. Stories, and in their larger context, myths do exactly that. Reason alone provides direction and logical sequence but it has no energy--it is static; emotion has energy but no direction--it is blind. The storyteller cleverly fuses the Apollonian and the Dionysian streaks in all of us, to create enduring myths.

All great accomplishments, all great nations and tribes, all religions require myths as their foundation.  Nothing endures without the binding power of myths. Nothing moves without the propulsion of belief, which is the mind's faith in the unfoldment of a good story, rushing headlong to its inevitable conclusion. Emotions, underpinned by reason, drives an army to war and a suicide bomber to martyrdom.

Stories and myths inevitably idealise things. We forgive the writers of historical dramas for exercising poetic license. Events are rearranged, dialogues invented for greater dramatic effect. They tug and play with our emotions, appealing to our sense of right and wrong and our natural inclination for justice, which requires heroes and villains.  If we recognise that is how our minds work, we can use the device of stories better to help us remember and organise facts, provided that we are careful in separating fact from fiction.

A person's life is itself a story--one that has a clear beginning and end. When a person's belief resonates with a larger cause--a nationalistic or religious myth--it becomes a current in a larger wave. A 'meaningful' life is nothing but a story that conforms to some archetypal myth. What's your story?

Prisoners of God

I'm relaxing at home in my bedroom-cum-office on a lazy Saturday morning, typing these lines and trying to figure out the blog topic for this week. I've been thinking a lot about religious people lately because as always, in Malaysia, religious sensitivity becomes an issue.

Why is religion so important to people? Let me discuss the pros and cons of both monotheistic and polytheistic religions. The belief in one God is, at least to the believer, is 'superior' to the worship or many gods or deities. Monotheists often look down on those 'superstitious' idol worshipers, who prostate before man-made statues made of stone or clay. What kind of ignorant fool would worship such objects and attribute special powers to them? Apparently, the same type of people who worship an invisible God, one which one has no proof of.

Arrogance, intellectual vanity and egoistic behaviour are natural tendencies of humans. We always want to acknowledge ourselves as smarter than others--often boasting about our own successes, vilifying people whom we look down on, criticising people in power for being stupid and incompetent. There may be some truth to some of these criticism, but an underlying motive behind such attacks is often the ego that seeks attention and praise.

By acknowledging that there's a superior God or gods, one at least puts a limit to selfish egoism. You surrender and worship a higher power who controls your fate. You obey Him and ascribe all sorts of superlative qualities to the Being--the most merciful, the unknowable, the fount of wisdom. Who are we mortals in the face of His Presence? We kowtow before the Lord, whose wrath we fear should we transgress from His Laws.

A God-fearing man, is a humble man, a moral, law-abiding person, who keeps his selfish wants in check, who tries hard to be a useful and helpful person in his community. What could be wrong in this? Nothing, as long as one understands the architectural principles behind the monotheistic model and its limits.

A polytheist believer has a slightly different architectural model--it's like a distributed system where you have many servers providing services everywhere versus a monolithic one. Polytheism is actually quite sophisticated but unfortunately its believers have a tendency to be superficial treating the deity whom they worship as the local gangster or Godfather whose protection they seek. Polytheism allows different individuals with different archetypal tendencies to worship a personal deity that resonates with the individual's nature, helping him to cultivate his strengths.

Both monotheists and polytheists, in their desire to strictly adhering to rules and rituals, have a tendency towards superstitious dogma. They disagree, fight and argue over the minutiae of religious practices, deeming some superior, and condemning others as heretical. 

Religious authorities who supposedly have an insight into the Truth get to declare what is right and wrong. When believers refuse to agree with their existing authority, they form new ones--a new school or sect is born. And when these new schools mix ideology with power and politics, bloody wars are fought to determine whose version of truth is the real one.

We are all so human when it comes to religious beliefs, mixing them with our petty fears and insecurities. When they get entangled with politics, they become an even more volatile mix. We take religion way too seriously, when the wiser approach would be to treat it like a soul-enriching hobby.

Religious texts, when interpreted by men of wisdom do inspire and enlighten the masses. However, they are often way over-valued. Some of our more modern spiritual writings and poetry contain equal if not better instructions for the seeker of Truth. The writings of some atheists are far more compassionate and lifting than the toxic hatred spewed by some of our firebrand preachers. 

We think that moral and social decay will set in if we do not strictly uphold the tenets of our religion. But the fact of the matter is that societies evolve; technology reshapes how we live our lives, amplifying both our good and bad natures; what used to work in providing social cohesion and stability are not adequate anymore. Being dogmatic about them does more harm than good.

Wisdom has to be cultivated from the inside. All the spiritual teachings accumulated over the ages can only provide the sunlight and soil for the cultivation of the divine soul within. If we are obsessed with outward appearances in the form of religious pedigrees and garbs, we'll never acquire the skill of inner awakening. 

We all have the godhead within that lies dormant like a seed. That's the one true god that we should seek. The God and gods that we all worship externally are nothing but shadows cast by this inner divine light.  Like Plato's prisoners in the allegory of the cave, we should all unshackle ourselves, and turn towards the light.

The Continuous Rebirth of the Soul

I slept very late last night because I had to finish off some work before I go on leave today. So here I am now, in my abode of books in Cyberjaya, typing these lines to the strains of some nice Baroque music. 

Time to relax, stretch out my legs and reflect back on the week that passed. What did I learn? It was a tough week workwise with a lot of technical challenges. I've learned to trust my instincts when it comes to work. Every time I am stuck, I'll continuing plowing on, trying one thing after another until I hit a solution. The universe wants to be resolved, One must always believe that.

To believe in oneself is to surrender to whatever that arises. The ego has to get out of the way first. Or else you'll be led off course by your own selfish interest and not towards the best outcome. Selfishness is often ruled by fear--the need to cling to an existing state of affairs and not welcome another.

But change is inevitable, as is always the case. By surrendering to the flow of things, one dissolves one's ego, allowing a new outcome to arise. Clinging and grasping are are natural tendencies of the ego. How does one detect that? By listening to its signals--the palpitations of fear, the flush of shame or the hunger of greed.

We fear, because something we hold dear is threatened. Self-preservation instincts kick in. All our cunning and deceitfulness start working overtime to address the situation. The mindful man would always detect the onset of this course and correct it immediately. There's a self-monitoring mechanism at work in the mind of the wise, with a high sampling rate: sample, check, proceed, sample, check, proceed, sample, check, stop!

Shame, if not followed up by a need to hide it, is harmless. It is merely the dissolution of the ego. Something--a self-image, pride, a false belief--crumbled. And in that crumbling, the soul cries out in shame because its falsehood has been exposed. Allow shame to find its healing through acceptance. Take it as a blessing that in being ashamed, one has been given a chance to set a new course.

Sometimes change itself exposes opportunities that stir one's greed: why can't I make some money from this? Why not take the opportunity to accumulate more of what I already have? Why not claim more credit by exaggerating my achievements? What's the harm in that? None whatsoever, if the ego gets out of the way. 

'Greed', is the natural tendency to expand and grow. But unselfish growth can only be driven by creativity. Is it a creative thing to do? Is there potential pain there that one has not identified? Spur yourself on if you must, driven by your creative impulse to grow and create and procreate. It is your way to work out your karma. 

No child is born into this world without first causing a lot of pain to his or her mother who had to go through the trauma of childbirth. But delivering a child is pain that a mother willingly takes on, knowing that it is her purpose of existence to procreate. In bringing a child into the world, the universe has expressed itself creatively. The birth pangs of a mother are noble suffering one takes stoically.

Every moment the soul is reborn. The rebirth of the soul is painful. That is why life is suffering. But it is suffering one takes consciously and willingly, one moment at a time. Taken moment by moment, everything is bearable and noble.  And long may this process continue!

Nature's Course

It's the last.day of the month of April and tomorrow marks another change of phase in the pandemic for Malaysians. We can officially do away with the mask outdoors and we do not have to check-in via the MySejahtera app when entering any premise, as we have been doing for the past 2 years.

Will I be taking the opportunity to go out more? Unlikely, because I've changed and my job now demands me to be indoors for the major part of the day. It's difficult to work from cafes as I have to rely on my large  desktop monitor to access many different interfaces at the same time. Moreover I have to go on calls every day, which makes it a bit difficult to do in a noisy cafe.

But I've bought myself a portable monitor, which I am experimenting with, to see if I could set up office with 2 screens, wherever I'm at. It's in keeping with the subject of my previous blog article--everything is play, including work. Work should not be so serious. We should all lighten up. It is easier for me because I do not have any skin in the corporate game. Work to me is just like hanging out with friends, and putting in a helping hand wherever and whenever I can. Everyone is by default a friend. Why not help a friend without expecting anything in return?

Why is it important to not to expect anything in return? I believe I have written extensively before regarding this, with reference to karma yoga, which to me is the simplest and best spiritual practice because it blends into our everyday lives. Every time we give without conditions, we are setting in motion forces in the universe that will find its natural course, nurturing the environment around us in the most optimal way. Nature always finds equilibrium which we in our human-centric language call 'justice'.

Justice is nothing but the law of energy conservation. Whenever humans create a code of ethics or a guide to morality--which organised religions do, with good but misguided intentions--we are simply provide good rules-of-thumb for effective energy management. 

We do no waste energy chasing after ego-driven goals, because we will set into motion repercussions which we have to handle further down the road, with greater cost. You cannot create a crest without forcing a trough. That doesn't mean that we should all be complacent people, leading lazy and contented lives. Instead, we go after them purposefully, but allowing room for the universe to surprise us with its best outcome.

What the universe decides for us is the best, because karmically, it is the most energy efficient outcome. When you put ego, pride, revenge or hatred into the mix, you are setting up a nexus of forces that will ultimately be costly to manage. Nature knows best. Some religious-minded person might want to replace the word 'Nature' with 'God'. As the cliche goes, Man proposes, God disposes. And in the same spirit I post this article, allowing it to find its natural course in cyberspace.

The Cosmic Play

Today is a day for me to run errands and relax. Blogging is a way for me to relax--allowing my natural thoughts to flow and find their way as words on this empty page.

Words emerge from the void. You just need to know how to listen for them. Whenever we face a block, it is usually because we are not listening intently. Our minds are too noisy. Noise cannot be transcribed into words because they are incoherent.

A coherent thought has a natural grace that expresses itself with ease in words. Thoughts need not contain any points--just like the flow of water on a river, governed by gravity. Thoughts are just the spontaneous manifestation of nature.

And occasionally these thoughts contain seeds that germinate. And what mighty trees they become!  What was the seed that led to the tree that is the company that you've built?  Or the book that you have written? Or the marriage that you now find yourself in?

Everything began with a single thought. And where did these thoughts come from? Did you will them into being? No, they arose spontaneously, driven by the conditions you find yourself in, and your natural inclination--your genes. Some thoughts are as inevitable as rain in December. The winds and the currents all conspire to produce them.

And here I am, writing these words: thoughts musing on thoughts and the process of thinking--like fish frolicking playfully in the pond. The universe is at play. Lila, as they like to call it.

As kids we all like to play. We discover the universe through playing. Sometimes we get hurt in the process, but the bruises and pain are all part of the fun. What is life without play? The universe itself is playful by nature.

Life becomes miserable whenever play is disrupted--very much like a football match with too many interruptions from fouls. When we play we must also be sporting. Being sporting means respecting the spirit of play. It is by being sportingly playful that one is in harmony with everything.

Just like this blog article. I don't exactly have a real subject--I'm just playing with words. For writing, when it is fun and spontaneous, is also play, as is everything in life. Through play, we relax into our natural state, in alignment with all the forces at play in the universe.

In the end, all the universe is doing is playing itself out--from the moment of Big Bang to its ultimate disintegration or collapse. All the determinism and randomness are part of an unscripted performance. And we, as bit players in this cosmic drama, should strive to play our part.

The Quest for Qualia

It takes a lot of skill and courage to see things from another person's point of view. All of us are naturally prejudiced. What feels so right inside you is naturally difficult to dislodge.

Why did Putin choose to attack the Ukraine? Historians for generations to come will continue to dissect this. We will never know with certainty how he sees the world. Because we are all inclined to judge others based on our own standards.

We are all products of our genes, upbringing and life experiences. The trauma you suffered as a child and shaped who you are today, is difficult for another person to comprehend. The books that I find so inspiring could be utterly boring to you.

We look at trees and see green leaves. We both agree that green is a cool and relaxing colour. But how can be sure that the green I experience with my senses is the same as the one that you are having? It is possible that what I see as 'green' is actually the experience of 'red' for you. There is actually no way to find out. I've been conditioned since birth to see the colour 'red' as cooling rather than something hot and fiery. The experience of the colour 'red' is exactly like how you feel when you see green. 

Philosophers call this qualia. Qualia is what your senses and mind perceive. It is the 'greenness' of leaves. We could agree on the frequency of green light mathematically, but you and I can never objectively compare these experiences.

Experience is always qualia-tative. It is what it is. Wavelength, amplitude, frequency--these are quantitative data which can never convey what we actually experience as a human being.

What I find fascinating is that despite the variety of human experiences, we actually could agree on a lot of things. If I tell you that I'm in love, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Why? How could it be possible that we--two genetically different assemblages of biological cells that had been been subjected to different sensory experiences, nutrition and education conjure up within our internal worlds, something which we can agree as 'love'?  Is the qualia of love universal?

Or perhaps life and its associated experiences are not so complicated after all. Our common experiences could be an inevitable outcome of physical processes obeying physical laws. Just like how perturbations on the ocean would always take shapes which you would recognize as 'waves', and vapour condensing and clumping together into recognizable fluffy-looking objects in the sky, which we call 'clouds'. These are all natural formations, observable under similar conditions in any planet in the universe.

The qualia of love could be a natural state that arises when there's a natural affinity of needs between two biological systems. Life is nothing but the arisal of qualia. And all of human civilization, our art, culture and scientific achievements are part of this neverending quest for qualia.

The Value of Work

Looking forward to a good rest this weekend after a tiring work week. As I slowly relax on a Friday evening, my mind begins to ponder about the nature of work and the type of work that brings the most satisfaction.

There are both boring and challenging aspects to what I'm doing now. There are repetitive tasks that I have to do again and again--these are  the 'boring' type of work. And yet I do not mind doing them because they can be done almost subconsciously. I merely treat them as opportunities to practice mindfulness--to be aware of what you are doing, no matter how boring, and to see them as actions that are most appropriate for the moment.

What is boredom anyway? Boredom always begin with an expectation. When the expectation of the mind is not fulfilled, there's disappointment and frustration. Or when nothing happens at all--like when you are watching an action movie and 30 minutes into the show, there's still only dialogue and no car-chase or nor killing-- you are both bored and disappointed.

Work can be like that. When you are doing the same data-entry task for the umpteenth time, you begin to question if this is the most worthwhile way to spend your productive working time. Is this going to get you anywhere? You begin to long for fresh challenges, where you could utilize your skills.

However for some, this repetition of the familiar is a much-welcome comfort zone. You are master of all you survey, at least in the small area of your expertise. You are never stressed and you handle every task with efficiency and aplomb. Wouldn't this be an ideal job?

It all depends on where you are in your life. If you are young and ambitious, you want to be upwardly mobile. You want to make a name for yourself and climb the ladder of success. You yearn for the glory of power, position and money. That's not a bad thing at all. One should go all out to pursue one's material ambitions.

But when one reaches a stage in life where one has a family to feed, then security of career and income become upper-most. No more risky career moves that could put one's rice-bowl in jeopardy. The daily chore of bringing up kids and managing household expenses is already a challenge enough. You see a lot of these people in the corporate world--people entrenched in their secure jobs, grateful for the regular paycheck that ensures the wellbeing of their families.

My attitude towards work is slightly unconventional. Being single, I do not have the pressure of having to provide for a family, even do I do have dependents and household expenses to pay. But the glory of corporate success never held any attraction for me, which explains my independent streak and my tendency towards straying from the 'right' way of doing things, to the detriment of my career. I never saw work as a 'career'.  

Work is action performed towards a goal. It could be any goal. And the work that is done towards that end will always present some challenges that expose your weaknesses. That is what I am grateful for. The pain one has to go through in overcoming obstacles always says something about oneself. And by being mindful of these, one can gain a lot of insights.

Work, as I've said before is a kind of penance, a pilgrimage if you will. Whatever accolades one gets in the process of performing it is just bonus. Work is a revelation when performed with the right mindset. And that to me is the real value of work.

The Gut of God

“Look, here is a tree in the garden and every summer it produces apples, and we call it an apple tree because the tree "apples." That's what it does. Alright, now here is a solar system inside a galaxy, and one of the peculiarities of this solar system is that at least on the planet earth, the thing peoples! In just the same way that an apple tree apples!”   - Alan Watts

I begin with a quote today because I have been thinking all week about the process of life in the universe. I can't help it, but these are the thoughts that occupy my mind in between my mundane daily activities and my only way of making sense of them is to process them out here in my blog.

We often think of life as something special and precious that sets living things apart from the inanimate matter. It's like something magical that is bestowed on a specific class of of systems, even though both living and inanimate things are built using the same materials--the 118 chemical elements in the periodic table. This gives rise to words like 'soul' or 'spirit', which is an attempt to put a label to that extra 'something' that differentiates living from non-living things.

Genesis 2:7, Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

As what the famous verse says, we are moulded from clumps of dirt and the X ingredient is injected into us to make us alive. But when it comes to 'organisms' like viruses, are they considered alive? Biologists argue about it because a virus is nothing more than a  protein sheath around strands of DNA or RNA but it reproduces itself like any other lifeform, albeit by taking advantage of its host. Viruses can be crystalized and remain inert forever like chemicals and spring back to 'life' again when conditions are right.

We are also getting close to having robots and AI systems that passes the Turing Test flawlessly and its behaviour would be indistinguishable from an average intelligent human being. Will they be considered as living beings and be accorded the same rights in the eyes of the law as us?

We even see ourselves as above other indisputably living things like animal and plants. But how many of us would have wished that our loved ones display the kind of unconditional love that a dog has towards its owner? 

Even plants are not unlike us. According to scientists and those who work in managing forests, trees are also social beings and they struggle against yet cooperate with each other for survival. They communicate with chemicals over an 'internet' of roots and fungi with each other. 

 If we look closely at our own living human body which we are so proud of, we find that in terms of cells, more than half of us consists of the community of bacteria living in our guts. It is this symbiotic relationship with our microbiome that makes us healthy and living. We simply cannot survive without them. We have 2 sets of genome: the human one and those carried by our gut microbes. Based on the number of genetic instructions that determine the functioning of our living body, we are more microbe than human.

What does that say about the process of life in nature? Isn't nature itself like a big gigantic living thing? Through the concept of Gaia, we already know that the Earth is like an organism. 

Nature is life. It is what existence is. There is no clear separation between living and non-living things: it is a continuum. The Earth is 'peopling'' because it is part of a natural process that happens when the conditions are right.

The photons, atoms, molecules, stars and planets and galaxies are undergoing an evolutionary process because existence itself is a process. Process means change, according to the laws that it is subjected to. Every step of change is natural and inevitable, based on its condition and environment. 

If we want to be romantic about it, we can call this living universe,God. God is us and we are God. But I think a more picturesque description would be: we are like microbes in the gut of God.

The Pupahood of Pettiness

Having finished my work early, I could afford to start blogging on a Friday evening. It's a great feeling being able to look forward to a weekend ahead for rest and recuperation.  

The television is filled with news on war in the Ukraine. We humans can never seem to outgrow our instinct to control others for our own self-preservation. We view life narrowly--from our own selfish point of view. Don't we all do that? When it comes to the crunch, you and your own family members matter more than your neighbour's. 

The instinct for self-preservation is what drives life on Earth. The perpetuation of our own kind is what matters. Genes need to perpetuate themselves at all costs. That is the game of life. My genes matter more than yours, on this small tiny clump of matter circling an average star on an unremarkable spot in the Milk Way galaxy, which consists of several hundred billion stars, which is also part of a cluster of galaxies called the Local Group, which is part of the larger the larger Virgo Supercluster, which is just one of around 10 million superclusters in the obvervable universe.

And still we fight over small swathes of land, as if they are the ultimate purpose of our existence. But what is the purpose of our existence? Don't we wonder about this with our puny brains, made of carbon-based molecules. And what laughably grand thoughts emerge from these brains, filled with so much pride and pomposity. 

We also spend a great deal of time speculating about life after death. Yes, there must be some kind of paradise which exists beyond the seemingly tough struggles of existence on this earth where all our desires and needs will be fulfilled. And our dreams are defined by what we know to be desirable in our short lifetime--all the things we wish we had but did not. That's our dream of paradise--defined by very mortal sights, sounds, smells and touch that give us pleasure.

We think we humans are the pinnacle of life. Don't we pity those insects and animals who do not fathom the aesthetic beauty of our music and art, the culinary delights of our world cuisines, the excitement of our video games and outdoor sports and the stimulating conversations with our loved ones and friends. 

But is what we experience with our mortal consciousness the epitome of experience? In our more philosophical moments, we do sometimes wonder, what's it like to be a bat? To 'see' the world with sonar? To dance from flower to flower, as a butterfly, guided by the ultra-violet display of flower petals?

Certainly the caterpillar, stuck on a surface of a leave could not have fathomed the life that awaited him as a butterfly, with wings to flutter across gardens filled with a dazzling array of multi-coloured flowers, sucking the sweetest of nectars from within the hearts of these blooms?

How curious would have been the life of a catepillar, from the viewpoint of a butterfly. And wouldn't the caterpillar think that its slow transformation into a mummy-like pupa akin to old-age and death? We could all laugh at our pettiness one day, when we all become butterflies. How we were childish little caterpillars, thinking that the leaf that we clung to so desperately for food and foothold were all the world there is.  How silly we were to dread our decline into pupahood! 

But we know better now, as resplendent butterflies, smiling at the pettiness of the caterpillar. Or do we?

The Happiness of Pursuit

I need to rest as I've been staring at the computer screen all day for the past week. I went for a haircut at the mall and had a leisurely stroll through the aisles of a bookstore and as always, ending up with a couple of new purchases.

The crowd is coming back to all the shopping places and that's a boon for the retail businesses. We are supposedly entering the endemic phase of the Covid-19 pandemic where we learn to live with it, with so-called 'standard operating precedures' or SOP, which Malaysians have adopted as part of their everyday vocabulary.

Will we go back to our old habits of spending, littering and generally, consuming in excess? We certainly will because it is in our nature. It is also our nature to forget, which may not necessarily be a bad thing, as I've argued many times in previous blog articles. But pain is a great etcher of memory and hopefully we've learned many such painful memories during the pandemic.

While we complain about the many inconveniences which the pandemic had brought us, Ukranians are now living under the fear of being bombed to smithereens by their Russian neighbours. When our everyday ordinary lives are being disrupted, we'll start to appreciate more of what we've always had. All the ordinary things that we take for granted--a walk in the park, browsing the latest bestsellers at the bookstore, slurping through your wonton noodles at your favourite hawker stall or simply going to the ATM to withdraw cash--become longingly beautiful.

Life is great and we make it unbearable by wanting too much. We yearn to be elsewhere, to find the life partner of our dreams, to have that perfect job that provides the position and perks and the recognition of others. We should start appreciating the fact that we even have that opportunity and possibility of chasing after these yearnings of the heart. Being able to do the things that you set out to do is what that matters. Happiness--the everyday mortal variety--is found in the act of pursuit.

The Nuances of Analog Wisdom

I took the day off from work yesterday and besides catching up on some overdue chores, I also spent some time mulling over the subject of my blog article this week. I know I have written a lot in the past about the trap of dogma and certainty (e.g. here and here) and it is the naturally tendency of our minds to fall into the trap of confirmation bias.

Today, I'm going to elaborate further on the other side of the coin: if we operate in a mode of uncertainty, wouldn't we be unable to function decisively in the world?

I've mentioned before that 'perhaps' is my favourite operating state. A lot of things in life are not binary: it's never true or false, good or bad, white or black. The answer lies somewhere in between--not in the digital, but the analog domain.

Which is why analogies work well as a tool to grasp an understanding of any situation. You compare one situation with another which you have an intuitive grasp of; having an intuitive understanding means that you 'feel' it in your body, you have physical and emotional sense of it.

If I tell you that ruling a country is like walking a tightrope, you get a sense of the difficulty in finding you balance at all times--to be vigilant and not sway too much to one side. You are are always sensing and adjusting to changes in your position.

For any area of expertise, you'll need sufficient experience before you get a feel of things. You cannot rely on flowcharts with yes/no tests to determine what you are supposed to do in every situation. Real-time situations have nuances and extraordinary exceptions, which can never be captured completely in any instruction manual.

I've always believed that a good football striker is one who has a good positional sense. He takes in everything in a heartbeat--the direction of the ball, the position of the defenders and goalkeeper, the run of his team-mates and then deciding what movement--to accelerate, to jump, to slow-down, to readjust his body, so that he can be in the most optimal position to receive the through-ball, the cross or the pass from a team-mate. All this is done instinctively. And when he processes all these very quickly, he outwits the opposition and arrives at the right position and at the right time, to head or strike the ball with the correct technique and force, to score a goal.

The football striker has a nuanced feel for the situation.  It can only come through a mental and physical wisdom honed through practice and experience. The mind and body learns things that way.  He doesn't mentally decide how to move at every instant, he simply 'flows' with the game, in a holistic immersion.

The analogy extends to almost all of life's roles and situation. How much freedom should you give to your child? It depends. How much affirmative action should a government enforce to help the minorities and the disadvantaged? Again, it depends on the situation. There's no simple answer for it.

The most important stance is to never have any dogma and always have a keen awareness of one's own mental biases. Listen to the facts, observe the situation and make a decision. Observe, evaluate and take another action after that. It's a continuous feedback control system. Have a feel for the nuances, the many gradations in shade and hue of the situation.

An analog signal captures everything, albeit within the sensitive range of the sensor. A digital one, chops and judges with absolute certainty--it's either a 1 or 0 at the instance of sampling. Ones and zeros are good for transmission and storage once the signal has been captured--we can do that without loss. But what we lose are the nuances at the point of sampling. Once lost, they can never be recovered.

Which is why, there are audiophiles today who prefer vinyl records and vacuum tube amplifiers for the audio-system, claiming that the sound is 'warmer' compared the precision and perfection of digital CDs or MP3 players. The analog signal captures all the nuances of sound at the moment of creation. True, noise is often introduce at every stage of processing, but something of its original quality and character is also preserved. And that makes all the difference--at least to the diehard aficionados.

Living in a the real-world requires a mode of perception that is similar to analog signal processing. You take in everything as best as your senses could, and never judge prematurely. That way, all the nuances of life are captured and taken into consideration. That to me is the essence of wisdom.

The Examination of Life

"The unexamined life is not worth living"  - Socrates

Reflecting on how sedate my life is nowadays, I thought of writing about a time when life was more turbulent and uncertain--the passionate days of my youth, especially my undergraduate days.

Poetry poured out of my soul then. I was always scribbling down verses which found some readership in a local tabloid. Those were days before Instagram and Facebook and had I been born later I probably would be attempting to find my niche among the Insta-poet crowd.

Recalling some of my juvenilia, I realized that I had been heavily influenced by the romantic poets like Shelley, Wordsworth and Byron and also modern ones like Dylan Thomas and Edwin Muir. 

I was an engineering student at a local university but I spent my days in the university library in the Humanities section, lapping up the literary treasures denied of me, growing up in a small town.

There were eagerness, passion, anger and loneliness mixed up in a potent brew which fueled my incessant scribblings. I was comfortable straddling the worlds of the arts and the sciences--being compartmentalized into any one area would have suffocated me. It wasn't my nature. Science and mathematics gave me the grandeur of vision; the arts, a sense of beauty that yearns for expression.

In the cold halls of the library, I read Kant, Aurobindo, Asimov (whom I found had a book of dirty limericks), the letters of Dylan Thomas and also books about movies. I remember enjoying one which analyzed all the movies of Stanley Kubrick. The wealth of knowledge did distract me from my engineering studies but I always made sure that I studied intensely before the final exams to get good grades.

Exams, which thankfully we only had to sit once a year were harrowingly difficult, not because the questions were tough but more because we did not know what were we supposed to know. I was not a good note-taker and unlike students today who have the luxury of being given lecture notes and Powerpoint slides, we had to make sense of the aimless ramblings of the lecturers--many of whom taught at their whim and fancy.

I could understand why some students were driven to the edge of desperation during exam season--there were always rumours of some poor soul in another faculty attempting suicide. The library would be filled to the brim the month before exam. One had to go early in the morning to book one's seat. Everyone had their favourite spot to study--mine was close to the philosophy section on the ground floor.

I did not feel any sense of accomplishment even after I had graduated with a good Upper First Class degree. University education was a bit of a letdown; the only consolation was the library where I saw how wide the world of knowledge was. It despaired me to know how much more I had to know to understand the world.

Thinking back, my life could have taken so many different turns but I chose the mundane one, gaining employment with one of the large multinationals where quite by accident I entered the world IT, because I was tasked with the job of managing a network of UNIX workstations. 

But I never had a sense of a career--a job was something one did to sustain oneself so that one could decipher the mysteries of the universe. Throughout my entire life, I had never made a move that I had thought would advance my professional career. The real meaning of life was always elsewhere. And this has been the recurrent theme in my life--from the turbulence of my youth to a temperate middle-age. 

One could say that I am unpragmatic and and unworldly. Perhaps so. But one thing I've realized is that one can never suppress one's true nature. I am comfortable living the life I choose. I could not have chosen any other path.

Facing examinations in university was tough, but to me life itself is one big on-going examination. The questions of this examination are posed by nature, and there are no correct answers. One just has to commit to one's chosen answer and follow its consequences. That to me, is the proverbial 'examined life' of Socrates.

The Firmware of Violence

The biggest news this week is the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.  Philosophers and psychologists have long claimed that war is Man's natural state. And today I'm going to reflect on this truism. Can we as a human species ever outgrow war as a way to settle conflicts?

First of all we have to acknowledge that we are all born different. Both genes and our environment shape the way we think and feel about the world. The moment a child is born, we can see that each one already has a different personality--some cry louder than others, some are more active and others show annoyance over certain types of discomforts.

If we put two individuals with different personalities in close proximity, frictions are bound to occur. Each one of us have different wants and expectations.  We want to control the environment around us so that it maximizes our comfort and pleasure. We want to feel at ease--to not feel threatened and to live the life we choose.

At the same time, we also realize that no individual can live in isolation. We seek the companionship of others to fulfill both our physical and psychological needs. We need things and services that come from others and that is what makes an economy.  Naturally, genetically similar individuals flock together. When similar people congregate, they create a way of living, which we call 'culture'.

Culture emerges naturally out of human interactions. Genetically and culturally similar people is what makes a tribe. A tribe, or culturally similar tribes occupying a geographical area becomes a country. Laws are written down to formalize the previously unspoken contract between these individuals. 

Law and culture bind a nation together, allowing everyone to know what is acceptable, and what is not. No one will have all their wants and preferences met but the fact that they choose to remain within a society means that the benefits far outweigh its inconveniences.

Is it any surprise that the differences between countries are no different from differences between individuals? Political leaders who determine the course of a nation are both a reflection and a magnification of the peoples beliefs. A strong leader accentuates and reemphasize certain cultural beliefs of a nation. 

A leader can come to the conclusion that his or her nation is under threat. And to protect the people's interest they should go to war. And so a country goes to war with another. 

Is war ever justified? Certainly not. But can humans outgrow their violent impulse to subjugate another? Not when we have uncontrollable fears, wants and urges. Is there a way out of this quadmire? Not with our present level of thinking. We need a massive paradigm shift to lift ourselves up to the next level of civilization.

But that is not impossible. We have fundamental shifts in human society before--like the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women. War is a tougher nut to crack. How do we outlaw war and enforce it? With what? With more violence?

How do we as a human species outgrow our animal instinct for territoriality and violence? These instincts are deeply embedded in our hardware and firmware. We cannot reengineer ourselves genetically yet. It is also difficult to change our culture--which I liken to firmware and operating system. But we can certainly enforce it on the application layer. 

That's where law and ethics come into play. Religion was supposed to be a powerful software that could alter the behaviour of humans but it is a double-edged sword, which, more often than not, is used to justify violence and accentuates differences between people.

Mental transformations can only happen gradually by examining our firmware code line by line. That's where mindfulness come into play. When a violent instinct arises, you detect it early, acknowledge it and insert a check: if violent, let go. Slowly, it'll become a habit that's part of the firmware.

Let God be X

I was reading the newspapers early this morning and a couple of things about religion riled me up. But I'm not going to succumb to the temptation of ranting about it again. I've said enough. Today, I'm going to write about learning.

This is a topic that has intrigued me every since I was a kid. I've always observed that each one of us is born with a certain aptitude for specific areas and not others. I noticed that in my class then, there were those who were hopeless when it came to subjects like mathematics, but excel in languages.

What makes a person pick up maths easily but flounders when it comes to stringing a simple sentence in English? In my case, I certainly wasn't a math whiz and I even disliked the subject during my primary years,  but then I learned to like the subject when I entered Form Four. 

I've always loved subjects like history and geography but was also scientifically inclined. Which made me neither this nor that. If there had put me in the Arts stream, I would have been bored by the way in which there teach the subjects. Humanities require good, inspirational teachers, which are few and far between.

Like all reasonably good students, I was of course put in the Science stream. And that was a revelation, akin to a religious awakening. The subjects of Physics and Chemistry suddenly opened to me what real science was all about--that the universe itself could be understood and expressed in beautiful mathematics. Mathematics became to me, the language of God. 

I fell in love with mathematics. But I realized at that time, I did not perform as well in the subject as some of the other students who came from Chinese schools. I was curious. What was their secret that made them excel in the subject?

As I spent more time with them, I noticed that their minds were more logical. There's no vagueness in everything they say or do. It was the 'dullness' of their logical minds that made them think clearly when it came to solving math problems. 

This clear logical style of thinking is something that my young mind was not accustomed to. I had the mind of an artist--prone to passionate bursts of emotion and poetry. A romantic, if you will. And when it came to solving mathematic problems, I was careless and always making silly mistakes. And I noticed that I did not bother to understand the underlying concepts with the thoroughness and clarity of a logician.

 To achieve that precision and clarity of thinking, I realized that I had to slow down my mind. As an artist, I value my flights of fancy--the flurry and passion of thoughts as they whiz through the mind. But this is like painting in broad impressionistic strokes of impasto. You can fill the canvas up very quickly but leave out a lot of details.

When it comes to mathematics, you have to be a Pointillist. One dot at a time. One logical conclusion after another. State a fact, and then ask yourself, what's the next logical step. Put that down on paper, clearly. Clarity and precision are key.  Always, one statement of truth at a time. Break a large problem into smaller parts. Tackle them independently, and then put the pieces together. By following this principle, you will always arrive at the inevitable conclusion: the right answer.

I began to perform a lot better in maths after that. I was thoroughly in love with the subject because it opened up a world of beauty to me. Every problem, can be broken down into simple parts, by the application of specific mathematical techniques--a deft substitution, a transformation or a geometrical approach. And when I saw how mathematics were used to expressed the laws of Nature, I was ecstatic because I finally could catch a glimpse of God's genius.

It is funny how I use the word "God" so often when I discuss mathematics but in everyday life, I try to make my language secular. You will never find me saying "God bless you". But when it comes to mathematics, I am unashamedly 'religious'.

I am veering dangerously back into the subject of religion, which I am trying to avoid because I have written too much about it. But I just want to register this point: it was applied mathematics that made me understand why people find the concept of a personal God, even an impersonal one, appealing.

For instance, in the subject of Statics Mechanics, there's the concept of centre-of-gravity. You are always given a weird looking object with various weights or forces impinging on it and instructed to calculate where is the centre of gravity for this system of forces. You will define a point X somewhere in the middle of object and then you write an equation that balances the moments caused by the forces clockwise and counter-clockwise. When the point X is found, you can forget about all the other details. Everything reduces to a single force acting on point X. Point X is where you would put your finger, to hold the entire object in balance. A complicated problem is reduced to an extremely simple one, by finding X.

God is like X.  We always need mental stepping stones to figure out the problems in life. As humans, we deal with people. We know how to love or be loved by someone. Our minds work with people-related metaphors. If God is a fictitious lord, invented by superstitious people, it is perhaps a necessary one. We know how to obey or respect a person of authority. And that streamlines all our subsequent actions. A centre-of-gravity 'exists' because all forces act in a resultant manner on that particular point. 

We can debate the ontological truth of God, but we will never transcend the limitations of human understanding, which sees the world in terms of people, 3-dimensional space and time which moves from past to future. We are, in other words, 'naive'.  But even a naive understanding of the universe is useful, as long as we understand it as a model, and not the ultimate reality, if ever there was one.

To tackle mathematics, I had to modify my model of thinking. When I understood mathematics, I saw metaphors that helped me to under other concepts like God. Without labels like "God" or "center-of-gravity", we would find it difficult to express anything that is useful. Is there such a thing as a "center-of-gravity"? It's not important. It is a property of the system that has a certain utilitarian value.

Always define the unknown as X. Put it in an equation. Sometimes there are more than one variable: X, Y, Z or X1, X2, X3....  There's no harm in polytheism as long as it serves some useful purpose. But remember, they are there because we need them to think and act. As long as we are clear with the metaphors that serve us, we'll never run into delusions about their reality. Beyond that, there's nothing more to be said. 

A Quantum of Thought

Yesterday was a crazy day, filled with a flurry of activities. I had to work on some urgent issues on my laptop while coordinating some workers who were repairing my roof leakage and also some movers who came to pick up stuff that my friends left at my apartment when they went back to India.

I worked until almost 1am this morning. Today I had a good breakfast of rice noodles and now I am back in my apartment, hoping to finally relax while writing my weekly blog article.

Blogging can be relaxing when you are just allowing thoughts to deposit themselves on the page. Thoughts come, thoughts go and as they go, they leave a trail of words. When you observe how thoughts arise and fall, you'll understand the basic rhythm of the universe. Observe them like how you would, standing on the beach as waves lap at your feet. 

The waves of thoughts are the residual echoes of previous actions. When you allow them to subside, their energy is expended. Karma is worked out. But when you react to them, you create reverse ripples, which reverberate throughout the universe.

Sometimes what other people do or say stirs up strong reactions in your mind. And if you do not resolve them by allowing them to rise and subside, you'll always be in a state of mental turmoil. A mind at peace is a clear mind, and a clear mind is capable of penetrating any subject that it chooses.

A mind clouded with all sorts of anger and dissatisfaction is like having eyes with cataracts--your vision will be clouded and you won't be able to see through things clearly. By allowing these strong emotions to subside, you'll improve your mindsight.

Blogging is part of my weekly relaxation ritual. As I write, I am able to work things out, letting go of stress and anxiety. And at the end of every blog article, I feel energized, refreshed and enlightened.

Nosce te ipsum--know thyself, as the ancient sages like to say. What better way to do than to write in a journal or blog. We are so preoccupied with the external world that we do not even know the motives of our own words or actions.

Each thought is the summation of your life up to that point in time. There's nothing more about you than that thought that you have now. It contains your entire past and future. So give every quantum of thought its due now.

The Handicap of Luxury

I am writing again after working over the Chinese New Year holidays beginning with New Year's Eve on Monday. I'm finally on leave today and tomorrow. I caught up on my sleep and settled all my outstanding credit card bills. I'm ready to tackle a fresh new month. 

The year doesn't really begin in this part of the world until the Chinese Lunar New Year is done. Usually falling on the end of January or February time-frame, the end of Christmas is the beginning of the CNY shopping season. When all the deafening sound of firecrackers and the pounding drums of the Lion dance have died down, only then can one really get down to business.

However my start to the year has been a good one in terms of reading. Without realizing it, I finished reading 3 books. Now I have the good problem of picking my next read. Maybe this year, I will give special preference to books by local writers, usually biographies or commentaries on local politics. They have always proven to be exciting reads due to their relevance to me. Which is why, I have covered 3 sizable books within a month.

When it comes to books and pens, I live in absolute abundance. These are the only 2 'luxuries' that I unashamedly allow myself to indulge in. I have a collection of fountain pens, which include Mont Blanc, Pelikan, Lamy, Kaweco, Pilot, Parker and Conklin and a selection of multi-coloured inks to go with. 

Recently on a trip back to my hometown, I spotted a beautiful Parker Duofold in the showcase of the local jewellery shop. It has probably sat there for more than 2 decades, the shop proprietor having resigned to keeping it as a prop, as they sell mostly watches and gold to the local clientele. But it was love at first sight for me: I could not resist holding the beautiful marble green Parker Duofold in my hand and dreamt of writing in my journal with it. After some half-hearted haggling, I decided to swipe my card to make that impulse purchase, to the delight of the shop owner.

Expensive fountain pens are a luxury. The ten ringgit one can perform as well as the high-end ones. The Parker Duofold starts with 4 figures, and that's because it has an 18K gold nib, which does not necessarily improve writing experience a thousand-fold. 

For someone who does not like expensive things, collecting fountain pens is a hobby which I 'approve' of, just to ground myself as a normal human being. And this is where it will stop, because I've always considered luxury a handicap.

Once you are used to staying in 5-star hotels, it's difficult to downgrade yourself to cheaper ones. The same goes to other luxuries. Once you've tasted it, it's difficult to let go, and you are forever beholden to that need. That is why I call it a handicap. It's the reason why I do not sleep with the air-condition on. I grew up without one and I could sleep perfectly well. I can sleep anywhere, even if it is hot and stuffy. That is a 'skill' that I want to preserve.

I have nothing against spending on the good things in life if one could afford it. But do not make it another necessary condition for happiness. Remember, no matter how much you have, there's always more to acquire. Were you less happy when you had less? Certainly not. Why create more necessary conditions for happiness? Wealth is relative. There's always someone richer than you. No matter how rich you are, you are still mediocre in the eyes of someone above you.

During Chinese New Year, we wish each other good fortune, wealth and prosperity for the coming year. Define prosperity your own way. It's not necessarily material wealth that we should consider. Being able to work efficiently and thus allowing one to enjoy more leisure is a good form of acquired prosperity.

So I wish everyone a wealth of wisdom in the year of the Tiger. Pick and choose your luxuries and may those that you indulge in do not end up handicapping you in life.

Positive Penance

With the relaxation of Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, I can see the crowd again whenever I go out to do my grocery shopping. Furthermore, it'll be Chinese New Year next week and for the first time in 2 years, people are allowed to go back to their hometowns. I can see shops doing good business now. It is a relieve for many businesses to be able to enjoy the brisk sales of the festive season.

Most people have already gone on leave. I actually look forward to seeing KL streets being emptied again as always during the festive holidays. This year however I will be especially busy because I will be working over the first 3 days of the holidays. 

The pandemic has changed my lifestyle a lot. I hardly go out anymore, except on weekends. Is this change for the better? I am not sure, but I find it interesting that I can adapt to this new routine. I even see it as a kind of penance, that is ultimately good for the soul.

Usually penance is a sort of self-punishment inflicted on oneself in order to repent for some sin committed. It is a way of consciously dealing with the karma of one's actions. You pay your debts now, in the form that you choose so that they do not surface unexpectedly in the future.

Penance and confession come hand-in-hand--something the Catholics know very well.  I think it is a good practice, if not mired in superstitious beliefs. When you confess to some wrongdoing, you are allowing the karma to work itself out in its most efficient way in the external world, instead of allowing the guilt to create all sorts of psychological damage inside.

Penance is karma yoga in action. As long as it is not physically sadistic, it allows a person to suffer pain consciously and enables the effects of one's past actions end  there and then. First you have to identify the action that needs resolution and then you have to clearly see what was the erroneous motivation that led to the action. You confess to it, so that its consequences can be unraveled openly. And then you proactively take its pain by taking penance.

Professional athletes subject themselves to strenuous regiments of training and exercise that are tailored to address weaknesses and build up strengths. Penance is the same too. Penance is a form of spiritual training. To associate it with sin and punishment is to bring an unhealthy element of religious superstition into it. 

We can see every challenge in life as a form of penance. It is challenging to you simply because of certain inherent weaknesses in yourself. And by willingly taking it head-on, you will learn and thus addressing the source of its pain. 

Penance taken to the extreme is asceticism, which is certainly not the Middle Way that the Buddha promoted. Sportsmen know that the wrong type of training can caused injuries. Similarly with asceticism. Let's see penance as something positive and therapeutic. Take the penance approach to every challenge that comes up in your life. And by doing so, every challenge becomes an opportunity to perfect yourself.

The Carrier Wave of Life

Finally, time for some quiet reflection. This is one of the joys of blogging. In a way it is like writing in a journal because it is personal, but expressed in a public way. I've been thinking about this week's topic last night and the thought that occurred to me is the subject of happiness. But a quick check revealed that, I've written about this subject many times before.

Perhaps today we could examine what are the things that make happiness elusive. Is it seemingly elusive because we always define happiness as something that we do not possess now but aim to get in the future? What is your present state of mind? Are you happy? If not, why? Why in the world are you not happy?

When asked this question, the mind would come up with a litany of complaints: I hate my job, I don't have enough time with my loved ones, I have mounting debts, someone backstabbed me in the office, my spouse or partner is not faithful to me. And the list goes on, ad infinitum.

If you think about it, it appears that we define happiness as some ideal state where all the troubles and inconveniences of life are absent. Is this what real happiness is? Perhaps this is why heaven is such an allure to some religious minded people: there all my needs will be met and everything will be ideal and perfect. This mortal world of matter is an imperfect one, created by a lesser God perhaps, like what the Gnostics believe.

Life by definition is inconvenient. If we always envision happiness as some idealized state of perfect bliss, then we may never be happy. Happiness and gratitude goes hand-in-hand. Be grateful that you are blessed with some challenges which you have to strife hard to overcome.  To embrace challenges is to live.

I have an apartment filled with books. That makes me happy. But the apartment roof has a leakage problem, and rain-water seeped into my shelves and ruined some of my books. Does that make me unhappy? It sure perturbed me for a while, but then life is full of such inconveniences. Some people lost all their possessions to the flood recently. My problem, if it is even one, is trivial and petty. And I also know that any attachment causes pain. In this case, I certainly have a lot of attachment to my books--their destruction certainly is a cause of grief. But understanding these things make you see things in their proper perspective.

So life goes on. You have to deal with the maintenance of material possessions because it is their nature to break down. Impermanence and the Second Law of Thermodynamics rule supreme. Being able to see these truths, and seeing them in action in the world, surprisingly brings me a sense of joy.

Because we always define happiness as some sort of peak state, they become elusive. Behind the ups and downs of life there's a constant underneath--I call that the carrier wave of life. It is there to carry the signal of happiness and sadness, the fluctuations in the wave that carry 'information'. If you focus too much on the signal, you miss that state of bliss, the sat-chit-ananda of the mystics, which is that underlying carrier wave.

And what is this carrier wave that underlies life's turbulent experiences? It is that knowing, the wisdom and the truth that reveals itself when we are not distracted by the ecstasy and agony of living. Being able to tap into it gives one the foundation for--not happiness--but, equanimous joy. 

The peaks and troughs of life will come and go but the carrier wave--it is always there. And if you know how to tap into it, you are in touch with your innermost soul. Call it what you may: soul, essence, core, spirit; just remember, it's there always, and at anytime you can  tune into that carrier wave of life.

 

Of Pigs and Politicians

I have been thinking about my blog topic this week for the past few days and actually did have something in mind. But this morning another topic occurred to me and I thought I wanted to get it off my chest by blogging about it.

As the non-existent readers of this blog would know, I never blog about politics. This is not because I'm not interested in the subject but more because I feel that adding more rants--of which most socio-political commentaries are--serve no purpose. There are tons of them around and I have nothing new to say. Nor am I an insider with a first-hand knowledge of things in the corridors of power. But what I am interested in is the psychology politics, politicians, their supporters and the masses, who are the ultimate victims or beneficiaries of the political game.

Comments about politicians are often cynical: they are doing what they are doing for power or other greedy selfish interests. It is often said also in Malaysia that it is politicians that divide us with their rhetoric on race and religion. Actual everyday Malaysians live in harmony with each other and will help each other irrespective of skin-colour or creed.

I think that view is absolutely naive. Politicians are not much different in terms of their 'greed' or 'selfishness' from ordinary people. They are a reflection of who we are--just an exaggerated version. It is very much like how social media amplifies the good and the bad in our society. They are the manifestation of our deepest hopes and fears. They are neither devils or angels, only caricatures of ourselves pushed to the fore by voters who need a vehicle for their expression.

The ordinary citizen is not more virtuous nor moral than politicians. True, to become a politician, one requires certain qualities. I can never see myself as one. But if there's a political figure who believes and expresses the views and principles that I also hold, obviously I would support him or her fervently. Politicians exist because they have support---they exist because we need them to channel our beliefs and principles on how our government should function.

The greed for power does have something to do with a lot of political intrigues in any country. But even ordinary people are seduced by power, just that there is no opportunity for it to surface yet. You want power because you want to be able to command others to do things that you believe in and enjoy the privileges that you think you are entitled to, or get away with.

If you look at how 'ordinary' citizens behave when they are customers in a restaurant: chastising waiters when they get an order wrong, making demands which they are entitled to as a paying customer, you'll see the root of that instinct manifested in our politicians. Politicians are just the embodiment of the ordinary flaws and foibles of society, writ large.

The seemingly selfless NGO leader, who works tirelessly in a charitable organization and criticizes the corrupt political leadership of the country, when put in the position or power, will also face the same criticisms. This is not to excuse the corruption and ineptitude of the government, which in many cases is true but let's not view the world in black and white. 

Everyone has flaws and when you are a public figure, every action of yours, whether good or bad is judged in a very superficial way. The opinion the masses have on a politician is never nuanced. It is the nature of the human mind to make instant judgements and put someone in specific box, often with scant information.

An ordinary citizen who uses his company resources which are within his authority for some harmless, even reasonable personal purpose, gets a way with it because it is trivial. But a politician in power with the authority to award million dollar contracts at his whim, is considered corrupt if he takes such liberties.

Again, this is not to excuse the bad behaviour of our politicians. They are just no better and no worse. The real political leader is someone who understands such human weaknesses and chooses to rise above them. But they are few and far between. 

I don't love or hate politicians. But I do not believe that we'll be better off without them. When you think that we have gotten rid of them, like the chickens and the horses in Orwell's Animal Farm, we will find that the pigs who have taken leadership, are no better.

The Void Beyond Wisdom

This is my first post for the year 2022. It has been a very busy start to the year and it did not occur to me to blog until today when I have a bit of breathing space. My morning and afternoon were spent running errands and the weather which was sunny and hot earlier has now turned gloomy, threatening rain and thunder.

Being out and about today refreshes me. One thing that I have to watch out for during this pandemic is the lack of exercise. I will have to see how I can incorporate more physical activities into my everyday life. 

As one advances in age, one has to be very careful with one's physical and mental health. The body starts its downward slide after a certain age. And so does the mind, if we are not careful.

The thought occurred to me earlier today on how we tend to over-estimate the intelligence of the average adult. We assume that adults possess the necessary reasoning capability and judgement to act wisely. But our actions are only measured by the intelligence of other similar adults--all who have come to the peak, at least biologically, of their mental capabilities. We can continue to learn and gain more knowledge, however as an adult we have to admit our physical body is already on its downward slide. 

An adult would always understand that a child would never understand certain things which they see so clearly. But they know that as the child grows up, he will change his point of view because he would have gained more experience in life and learned its valuable lessons. Our intelligence is not unlike the artificial ones--AI--which is becoming ubiquitous everywhere. It becomes better, the more data or experience is fed into it. It builds its model from the flow of information that it processes everyday.

 But after a certain biological age, the hardware to further improve our intelligence model is no longer growing in tandem. Our intelligence does not register the kind of leaps that we see from a baby to a child, a teenager and finally an adult. 

We can smile and understand the innocence of a child's thinking. But what makes us think that we are not equally naive when viewed from a higher alien intelligence? Why are we so certain that aliens would want to even communicate with us, given our still infantile intelligence?

If we are to project the intellectual growth that we had experienced on the way to adulthood onwards, what levels of super-intelligence would we have achieved, if only our biology is able to keep up with it?

This is why I am not sympathetic to people, especially religious ones, who think they already have all the answers. Everything that seem important to us now, the material life, the family we want to build, our career ambitions, the birth and death of loved ones would seem rather 'childish' when viewed from a higher intellectual vantage point. From there, all our concerns would seem rather petty because we are only seeing a small part of the picture, the same way a child cannot comprehended the everyday cares and concern of an adult.

What is important to us now--like the need to have a happy afterlife--may seem like the silly concern of a child who fears that Santa will not reward him with gifts if he does not behave. A child does not know any better. Neither do adults.

Humility in the face of the unknown is the best attitude. There's nothing wrong in admitting that we don't know and we are working on it. Our brains do not grow at at the rate that we experienced in our adolescence.  But at least we can factor in the limits of our intelligence when discussing matters beyond our ordinary sense-level experience. 

It is my hunch that this life that we cling on to so jealously and desperately is part of a much larger process of evolution, of which "we"--if that word has any meaning of all in this scheme of things-can partake, if we do not prematurely stunt our growth with certainty.

Absolute certainty is our greatest enemy of wisdom.  When we admit that we don't know, at the very least, we are looking out into the void of unknown. Who knows, something profound might emerge slowly out of the darkness?

The Cloak of Boredom

It's the last day of 2021 and a good time for us to reflect back on the year that passed. To the nation and the world in general, it has been nothing short of horrible since the pandemic began. The events of 2021 are those that none of us want to repeat again as we experienced more political upheavals, more deaths due to Covid-19 and culminating with the the worst floods in recent memory.

When I was a kid growing up, every year felt different from the previous one.  I was developing fast both intellectually and emotionally. But after you've reached a certain age, every year begins to feel the same. Your thinking does not seem to have deviated much from those of previous years. It feels as if you've stagnated in your development, if not deteriorated.

That's when you understand how the weariness of life creeps in on you. You do not have the energy to seek for adventures anymore. You become risk averse. You get bored seeing the same things repeating again and again--people's behaviour, the movies on TV and the headlines th in the morning papers. Can you blame some old people for being so cranky? Life can be repetitive.

This year's new year celebrations will be muted as most countries are imposing strict controls due to the surging Omicron infections. Which is well and good for me as I've never really understood why certain days, like New Year's Eve, or one's birthday are singled out as 'special' days that need to be celebrated. Isn't every new day a miracle that deserves equal celebration?

Every night when you go to bed, remember that there's no guarantee that you'll wake up tomorrow. You willingly surrender into the arms of sleep and 'die'. What makes you so sure that you'll still exist tomorrow?

Which is why when you wake up in the morning, that's the greatest moment of all that deserves as much thanks and gratitude as all the other special days. Rejoice for you are alive and able to breathe the morning air and that your heart is still pumping blood into every part of your body and you can command your body and limbs to get up and participate in the daily saga of life.

We need to keep our minds fresh to avoid descending into this state of tiredness. Freshness is achieved by seeing the same things in a new light. It is up to us to live life with a creative eye, to see joy and wonder in even the commonest of things.

Penetrate each moment of existence like sunlight on a multi-faceted jewel. Notice all the subtle variations of light and shade, the dazzling reflections that scatter hues across the room. Each moment is a precious gem that is able to spring its surprises. We just need to look closely.

So let's greet the coming year with this resolve, even if we have to see the same dull headlines and trite cliches being repeated everyday. Look at each moment of experience closer and penetrate the secret of its sameness. For Nature conceals its deepest beauty in a cloak of boredom.  

The Inevitable Tides of Time

This week's blog post has to be about the devastating floods that have wrecked havoc across the nation. I think it started on Friday night, when it began to rain all night and continued raining the whole of Saturday. I didn't pay much attention to it as it was like any typical rainy day in December.

But this particular day was different: a whole month's of rainfall fell within 1 day and water completely inundated many low-lying areas in Selangor, Pahang and even Negri Sembilan.  Klang and Shah Alam were the worst suffering places in Selangor while all the major towns in Pahang had it bad too.

It was like a biblical deluge, threatening to wipe out entire towns and cities. People were trapped on the top floor and roof of their houses, without food, water and electricity. Cars were completely submerged and washed down like flotsam down roads which had now become muddy rivers.

As always there were a lot of blame to go around. People were understandably angry as rescue efforts were slow. The sick, the elderly and the handicapped were  were stranded helplessly in their homes as flood waters rose. People on the ground had to help each other out. The destruction to homes, properties and businesses were incalculable.

This is a double-whammy after the livelihood of so many people had been severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic which is still showing no sign of abating. How do we deal with such challenges in life?

Is life simply suffering, as the 'pessimistic' Buddhists like to put it? Or have we just been lulled by the comforts of our middleclass existence only to find the real world unbearably harsh when we are literally thrown into the deep end of the water?

The truth is that, life has always been precarious. The universe is a harsh place for fragile carbon-based organisms like us which require very optimal conditions to flourish. We are but a small flicker of existence in space and time.

We are small and insignificant when viewed from a cosmic perspective--tiny clumps of molecular debris flushed out into the immense void. This localized aggregation of matter which we call a living being has but only a transient existence. Are our mortal sufferings then considered insignificant in the larger scheme of things?

The very fact that we realize that we are suffering, is by itself an awakening. This chance conglomeration of matter is suddenly conscious of its existence and considers itself to be separate from the universe. This separation and the need to constantly preserve its existence is the very definition of suffering.  

Suffering is the price of consciousness. To love the life we live is to awaken to the bliss and harshness of the universe, in equal measure.  We alternate daily between heaven and hell, finding the former when our needs are met and suffering the latter when what we love are taken away from us.

When we suffer, we are exercising our right to be conscious. We want to control that piece of space-time real estate which we call ours--our bodily existence, our material possessions and our connections to other living beings.

We suffer when we see what is ours destroyed by the ruthless forces of the universe. Relief only comes when we are willing to let go, and allow the torrents of mud and water to reclaim them. In the end, nothing is ours: they were only leased to us at the pleasure of the universe.

We must live with the assumption that nothing is ours. What we consider ours is simply loaned to use temporarily. We should never claim ownership to them. That way, we'll let go of them more easily. Yet, there's no less enjoyment in their possession when we appreciate the fact that we are blessed with the opportunity to enjoy them, even for a brief moment. 

When we assume that everything we have belongs to the universe, we tend to be more generous--giving and sharing whatever that we are being blessed with, which by and large is a matter of chance and luck. And when someone suffers the pain of losing something they own, we share what we have with them. 

It is the giving and sharing--not owning--of what we have, which is what true existence is about. The less we own, the less liable we are to suffering. When the floods come to claim our possession, we know that the debt-collector of pain has come to demand what is due. 

Ultimately, everything will be lost. If not swept away by the waters of the flood, inevitably they will be reclaimed by the tides of time.