The True Reward of Giving

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    

The Dial of Emotions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gratitude for the Simple Pleasures

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

1. Waking up

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

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

2. Reading and Writing

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

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

3. Walking

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

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

4. Sitting

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

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

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

Meditations on a Blank Page

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The Secret to Sanity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Vortex of Existence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Waking Up Continuously

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The First Principle of Communication

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Poetry of Sound and Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Quest for Answers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Thought Bubble

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Moment of Resolution

Let's talk about New Year resolutions since this is the first day of 2021. Of course, I don't make such resolutions anymore: to resolve to do better is a continuous state of mind, not a an annual ritual to be observed and immediately forgotten. 

The essence of living is resolving. One is always transitioning from one state to another. What one sees at any point in time is just the dy/dx--the instantaneous gradient of the curve. Being aware of this moment to moment inflection requires a nimbleness of mind that can only come through years of meditative practice.

Take this moment: how does it feel? Is there tension and anxiety somewhere? There, you can sense a bit of the dynamics involved. One can sense fear, craving and desire in the mix too if one observes closer. Every moment is what it is because of the previous moment. It cannot be anything else. 

To sample each moment completely is to put oneself in the best possible position to tackle the next one. This is what living in present means. All you can do is to comprehend each moment in its totality, and then things will take care of themselves.

One has to open the aperture of the mind wide to be able to do so.  And be aware of those moments of illumination, when one sees clearly, albeit briefly, the larger scheme of things.

I look forward to 2021 to provide me with many more moments like that. And to be able to receive those moments, one has to maintain this open-aperture mode continuously.  And this is what we call 'mindfulness'. 

Being mindful is being aware of the gradient of each inflection point as one traverses the curve of life. Each moment of awareness is both a reading and a resolution.  So let's do this now and see where we are on the eve of 2022.

The Spirit of Religion

Sometimes it amazes me how much respect we give to supposedly religious people. Being religious does not necessarily immediate make one a virtuous person. More often than not, it is a mask to hide a certain shortcoming in one's character.

I've written about it before and I'll state it again here: I'm not against religion per se but religion should not command more importance in the evaluation of a person's character than knowing his or her hobbies or favourite sports.  A person's adopted religion is a matter of upbringing and taste. Nothing more, nothing less. 

More often than not, religion is but a lifestyle choice. It comes in the form of dressing, the upkeep of a certain facial hairstyle and a distinct attitude towards life.

It is not surprising that many religious teachers and leaders abuse their position of authority in the community simply because the masses often give them too much respect, not realizing that they too are human beings, susceptible to the promptings of greed and pride. 

Every culture and civilization produces its own form of music, art and religion.  A greater part of religion is simply a cultural response to fear, the inevitability of death and the mystery of existence. No one has gone to hell nor heaven and come back to tell us what it is like. 

Religion at its best, dispenses some lessons in psychology an human behaviour. Its doctrine might even contain some good guidelines in community living which could have worked well at some point in the evolution of its people.  But to say that one must follow the rules and restrictions written in some book centuries ago as a kind of universal law ordained by God, is sheer nonsense. 

We must trust our own wisdom that takes into consideration the norms and challenges of the present times. Salvation comes from the struggle of the individual to better his or herself in response to the individual's unique circumstances. Religion could provide the inspiration and starting point but each person's spiritual quest is different from another's.

Let's all take religion in the right spirit. Honour its traditions, as one honours any school of art. Some of its doctrines could even be good rules-of-thumb and proven codes of conducts for human beings as social animals. But it is our divine right to take them further and create a new school of the spirit, that is a response to our unique times.

Peering into the Pandemic

 I've been taking a break these past few days, trying to clear some outstanding errands. Life requires maintenance and you have to schedule time for it. Work is easing too as the year ends because everyone else is taking leave. 

It is also time to reflect back on the year that passed. Despite the fact that the pandemic has impacted most of our lives negatively, I'd like to look at some of the positives that have come out of it.

The first good thing that the pandemic has done is that it has made everyone more hygiene-conscious. At no time in history has the human-race been driven to such concern towards cleanliness--being aware of everything we touch and washing our hands all the time. All food vendors have also been forced to raise their hygiene standards or risk being fined. It has been so much more pleasant to eat in restaurants that are far less crowded and where tables are cleared and cleaned more thoroughly.

There have been a lot less traffic on the road. This has contributed to better air-quality and less time wasted looking for parking or getting trapped in a traffic-jam. It has given us a glimpse of what the city can and should be--being car-free. 

The proliferation of cars is one of the things that make life less and less livable in the city. I look forward to the day when most people would order a driver-less vehicle to take them anywhere instead of taking the wheel themselves. I've often equated cars in the city to supermarket trolleys--why should anyone own one at all?

But I think the most important lesson that the pandemic taught us is this: we can make do with a lot less. So many of us have had our income reduced or decimated completely and yet most of us are still surviving. Yes, we cannot afford the little luxuries that we used to indulge in, but it's not the end of the world.  Staying at home and making do with a simple home-cooked meal is not something intolerable.  Not going to the mall for shopping unnecessarily actually helps us to save money. 

We learned to deal with boredom and restlessness. We find time to better ourselves and many of us picked up new skills--some out of necessity because they have lost their permanent jobs. Even though the pandemic imprisoned us in our homes, it has also yanked us out of our comfort zones. 

For many of us, it wasn't only our physical survival that had been threatened but the more challenging mental one. Mental health issues have certainly been brought to the forefront by the pandemic. A person's mental well-being is certain as important as his physical one. 

Mental strength and stability is something we need to consciously cultivate. More often than not, we find distractions to avoid deeper mental issues. People who meditate know how these deeper issues surface themselves during those quiet moments of contemplation and our task is allow them to find resolution. Burying them deep into the recesses of the mind will only make them pathological. 

The pandemic has forced us to look into ourselves. Some see an abyss staring back at them; other's see a glimmer light at the end of the tunnel.

A Saturday Nightcap

 It's that time of the year again: it's beginning to rain almost everyday, everyone is in a holiday mood and work is more relaxed. I was at the mall this morning and people appear to be regaining their courage to go out, despite the rising Covid-19 cases in Malaysia. The numbers are worrying but the vaccine is on its way. People are cautiously optimistic. 

I was sipping coffee at Starbucks and relaxing with a book. It's been a while since I was able to do that. Work has been very hectic the past 3 months and this weekend is a respite from it all. Tonight is a good time to write since I missed my blog post last week. 

I am not exactly a whiskey fan but tonight I decided open my bottle of Macallan which has been sitting on my shelf for a while. The cool weather certainly calls for a nightcap. 

It feels a bit like my days in Singapore, two decades ago. I was always drinking and writing in my small rented HDB room, surfing the Net on my, at that time, state-of-the-art 3Mbit/second ADSL connection.  I was way ahead of my time, watching the daily streaming news from CNA, when everyone else was struggling to send emails with their dialup connection.

I've not changed much. I've never been one to put career as my number one goal--even to the extent of telling my boss that. My attitude has always been: leave me alone to do my job, and I'll get it done. I don't expect praise nor accolades. That has always been my bad habit and certainly a career-limiting one. I worked for knowledge and experience. Every challenge made me a better person. And that was reward enough.

When I decided to move to Indonesia, my earnings dropped by half. But it was the best move I'd ever made. I could have stayed in Singapore if I wanted to, and would probably still be there now because it was such a comfortable place. I led a simple life--eating and reading at the foodcourt, taking the bus to office, listening to my audiobook cassettes and going to the movies after work. 

Surprising it was in Singapore--that metropolitan hub of unabashed materialism--that I advanced my interest in spirituality by leaps and bounds. It was there that I formed the core philosophical principles of my life, which I still adhere to. My posts in this blog, I think, capture many of my philosophical beliefs--thoughts that had been brewing in my head since those free and happy days in Singapore.

Life is less carefree nowadays, but I take every care that consumes my brain as a karmic knot that has to be untied. I'd been steadfast to the spiritual principles I had worked out in my tiny HDB bedroom in Singapore, and during those many long hours waiting at airports and sitting alone in planes on my way to different countries in the region. 

Perhaps one day I'll regain my wanderlust again. But for now I am contented, sitting in front of my computer screen, barely even stepping out of my house here in Subang Jaya. I'll probably drop by in Cyberjaya tomorrow since now inter-district restriction travel has been lifted. But that's as far as I'd go. Life is not elsewhere. I'm happy sipping my whiskey here and now.

Minding the Mind

You don't listen, do you? I don't think you ever really hear me. You just ask the same questions every week. "How's your job?" "Are you having any negative thoughts?"  

All I have are negative thoughts. 

- Arthur Fleck (Joker), played by Joaquin Phoenix

It's a relaxing Sunday at home and I'm feeling reasonably well-rested. It was good to finally get out of the house yesterday to have lunch with Myra at the Starling Mall. Like everyone else she was feeling a lot of anxiety over her loss of livelihood due to the pandemic. But I was happy to hear that she had over the last few months managed to act in a some telemovies and music videos. 

I advised her not to compare herself too much to others as she always feel that she is underachieving. Having goals is a good thing, but once they are set, we need to focus on the here and now. When you are always trying to peer over the horizon, you'll get a lot of anxiety as your destination appears to be never arriving. 

The future goal merely serves to help you lay down the direction of your track. But once a train is moving on the track, it never needs to look too far ahead. It just needs to look at possible obstacles immediately ahead, and ensure that nothing derails it. By doing just that, the train will arrive at its destination safely.

That's what I advised Myra.  Everyone feels inadequate about herself. There's always someone better than you. In a way, we'll never arrive at a point where we'll be completely satisfied with ourselves as there are always bigger goals to achieve. What is more important is to be better than who you were yesterday--that shows that you are growing and learning. 

That's what I've always felt to be my goal: to learn. What have I learned today that I did not know yesterday? It is important that we are constantly moving ahead and not to be weighed down by our past, at the same time ensuring that the pull of the future does not over-strain us.

This balancing act between the past and the future, is the essence of living in the present. True happiness is found in the here and now... That's what all the self-help gurus will tell you. And in your mind, you'll be thinking like The Joker in the quote above. ("But all I have are negative thoughts!").

How does one stop this flow of negative thoughts that keep coming incessantly into our present?  A thought is a vrtti--a whirlpool, or simply a wave in the mind. There are only 2 ways to stop a wave: 1. Attenuate it. 2. Neutralize it.

Attenuating a negative thought-wave is done by not reinforcing it. If we instinctively agree and follow its suggestion, we'll only increase its amplitude. All oscillations die away due to friction.  This is what mindfulness meditation trains the mind to do. 

You see a thought-wave coming, and you tell yourself: it is what it is. Nothing more nothing less and it too shall pass. And over time, your mind gets purified as less and less of its constituents will resonate with these thoughts. The half-life of every thought would be significantly reduced.

Sometimes you'd need to follow strategy 2, which is to neutralize a thought with an opposing thought. This is a bit of a 'brute force' method, but it is handy to have as a technique to douse a flame before it gets too large--you simply pour cold water to it. This is what many self-help books teach: to make positive affirmations: injecting a crest to neutralize a trough.  

But what if we are not mentally strong enough to pull ourselves together? That's when it is alright to seek the help of a friend or mentor. The mind is a peculiar thing. Even a cliche repeated by a friend can sometimes trigger a change, because we simply cannot pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. A helping hand, a small nudge in the right direction,  a shoulder to cry on, or even just a listening ear can often bring about a fresh perspective and restore balance.

As we like to say here in Malaysia during this pandemic: kita jaga kita. Let's take care of each other during these difficult times. And mental health is as important as its physical counterpart. By giving advise to Myra, I also remind myself to practice what I preach, which--more often than not--is not the case. 

The Surface World

The human mind likes novelties. We constantly need stimulus and diversions. It is no wonder why solitary confinement is so dreaded even among seasoned prisoners. 

And yet, there are monks who choose to meditate alone in a cave for years. These mental athletes know that beneath the surface noise of the mind, lies latent truths about the reality of our existence. But for most of us, our lives are spent swimming on that foamy and turbulent surface, trying to stay afloat, believing that deep down beneath, only annihilation awaits us.

Every time we turn on the TV, every time we click a web link or swipe our phone, we are making an unconscious move to remain afloat on the noisy surface. It brings a whole new meaning to 'surfing'. 

To live on this surface, we need to be connected to the larger world, so that we do not sink into a nothingness, which is like a dreaded abyss. The Tibetan monks have no such fear; instead they become explorers of this terra incognita. But we surface-dwellers are always feeling insecure. 

 Our need for novelty make us susceptible to juicy gossips, scandalous rumours and outlandish conspiracy theories. We want to believe that the world is fully of heroes or villains and nothing in between, when in reality most people are neither. We want things in stark contrast against each other because it takes a lot of brain CPU time to make subtle distinctions.

The simpler things are, the easier it is for the brain to digest them. The brain like its low-brow counterpart, the stomach, is addicted to junk food. Bite-sized, interesting and juicy information are what it desires most. And that's what we get from Tweets and other social media.

It is no wonder that the world is no longer able to decide what is the truth anymore. We can no longer agree even on facts. There are always 'alternate facts'. And we can easily contaminate facts by simply labeling it as 'fake news'. We can make conspiracy theories acceptable by simply broadcasting it loudly, as if they are facts.

We are sharing a planet but not a world anymore. How did we arrive here? In a way, it is inevitable. Technology such as social media merely amplified divisions which have always been there. 

The surface world is fractured. Everyone clings tightly to whatever they are comfortable with, for fear of falling through the cracks. If we just would care to peer down these cracks, we could catch a glimpse of what those Tibetan monks spend their lives seeking, in those cold dark caves.

Spiritual Fitness

I have kind of fallen behind my blogging schedule a bit as it has been an incredibly busy week for me against the backdrop of a gripping US presidential election, which kicked off on the 3rd of November 2020. Joe Biden finally prevailed against Trump to the relief of many. But as expected, we now have to deal with a supposedly outgoing president who is unwilling to concede and has been stirring up unsubstantiated accusations of voter fraud.

We all expected this. Just that we don't know how it will play out. To non-US citizens like us, this is the only time that we don't envy being Americans: the pandemic is raging there unchecked; Trump is rallying his diehard supporters and they could create trouble in the streets.

Here in Malaysia, the lockdown in the Klang Valley has been extended again to 6 December. It makes no difference to me now as I am completely home-bound. So much soul-searching to do for everyone and for every business big and small out there who have been severely tested.

I am still trying to make my days more efficient--ensuring that I get enough sleep and making sure that I am able to do all my essential life and spiritual maintenance activities. This blogging routine is one of them. And in the past week, I've slipped slightly. Hopefully, I'll be able to pick it up again. 

The only thing that I have not had the opportunity to do much is listening to my audiobooks as I have not been driving much. I only make runs to the grocery store on weekends. Weekends are very precious now. Yesterday I was able to jog in the park and had the opportunity to listen to my audiobook in the process. 

It is interesting to see how life is going to be when the pandemic finally ceases. There's already good news on the horizon, with Pfizer announcing a vaccine that's 90 percent effective. But the logistics of distribution is going to prevent this from being available widely for a while as it requires sub-zero refrigeration. 

Perhaps the pandemic has taught us to value life a lot more. Perhaps something good will come out of all this. As a glimmer of hope appears, let's all make a resolve to do better in the days and months to come. I will continue with my routine of working from home for a while as this is my present commitment. This stint of lockdown is good training for the soul. And hopefully we'll all emerge from it spiritually fitter.

Milestones of Happiness

Feeling a bit exhausted after working non-stop in front of the computer screen for the whole day. It is a good feeling to have spent the day productively. My new wide-screen monitor is certainly helping my productivity a lot. These days I work with 2 laptops and a 29-inch wide-screen monitor connected to both of them.

Having to resigned myself to working strictly from home (or rather my bedroom), I'm trying to make the best of the situation. A second laptop and monitor are among the luxuries that one can never have if one is nomadic. 

I've been thoroughly domesticated by the pandemic. I only get to step outside my house on weekends--shopping for groceries and enjoying a regular kopitiam breakfast, if I get the chance.

The new pandemic normal makes us realize how good life used to be. Will we able to experience that again? And when we do, hopefully we will all be more appreciative of those little daily blessings that we receive everyday. 

Happiness is being able to do the simple things in life--hawker food, teh tarik, nasi lemak, a jogging session in the park, browsing at the bookstore, reading at the cafe and hopping on the next available show at the local cinema. 

Being able to keep my blogging appointment every week is another one of those achievable goals that I set for myself as a weekly milestone. What awaits me after this is a nice warm bath and a bit of bedtime reading. And then I'll sleep with total abandon, surrendering myself to the mysteries of the unconscious, confident that I will be awakened tomorrow to a brighter day. Another day, another milestone, another excuse to be happy.

Of Breath and Bread

These are dark days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Almost every country is experiencing a surge of new infections. Hospitals are being overwhelmed again. People are losing their jobs; companies are filing for bankruptcy. 

Even though the death-rate due to the Covid-19 virus is relatively low, we are still unsure of its long-term consequences. In Malaysia,  people are generally conforming to the requirements to wear masks in public areas but I think most people find it hard to resist social gatherings among friends. 

Here in Malaysia, people are already bracing themselves up for the imposition of Emergency  rule on the nation. It looks like there's no alternative for the ruling government as it faces political uncertainty over the approval of the 2021 Budget and also the risk of upcoming by-elections and elections which could further exacerbate the current public health crisis.

The US presidential election is slightly more than a week away. While most of the world abhors Donald Trump, he still has his die-hard supporters who could turn the tide for him in some critical swing states. A close result could plunge the US into a lot of political uncertainty as Trump is already questioning the legitimacy of absentee mail-in ballots.

Over here in Malaysia, The Sabah state election had triggered our third wave of infection. We cannot afford any by-election nor state election, let alone a snap General Election. The problem in Malaysia now is that neither side has a strong majority. The 2020 General Election has wiped away age-old alliances and rearranged them unexpected ways.  There is also a lot of uncertainty. 

While these political intrigues are playing out daily, the average citizen is struggling to cope with the restrictions of the Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) imposed in the Klang Valley.  I think most people are more appreciative of their jobs now, if they still have one. Everyone is just trying to cope with their bread and butter issues.

I've been in a meditative mood in all my past blog posts. Which is why, I try not to write anything in that vein this time. I have a daily job which allows me to continuously improve myself and for that I am grateful. Let's take things a day at a time. And every day upon waking up, I do my daily meditation--acknowledging the basic fact of my existence: I breathe. 

How simple is the breath. And that is all there is to life. You take a breath, and the rest follows. That's how I approach each day.  My daily breath, is my daily bread.

The Signature of the Soul

A brief hour or so before dinner-time to blog. I've had a relaxing weekend, having cleared some of my life-maintenance errands and now ready to start another busy week. 

I've been holed up at home mostly during the work-days, not even stepping foot out of the house for meals. This is like those early days of the lockdown but I'm already used to it.  I'm grateful that I'm still able to use my time productively to generate some income.

The only way to understand yourself better is to expose yourself to difficult challenges. When you are faced with difficulties, you begin to see your strengths and weaknesses very clearly. Your weaknesses are the things that prevent you from achieving the things you plan. Identifying them is part of the payoff of any challenge.

Life throws you a lot of curve balls. You handle them with as much courage, stoicism and dignity as you could muster. In my last blog post, I alluded to the equivalent of the eye of the storm within you--a center of calm where we can find your inner self.

There's a part of you that is your 'nature'--something you can't really change. It is as if you were born to depend on its strength and suffer its many defects and accesses. It is the soul's signature.

When you meet old friends, you'll always notice how little people's basic characters change. The outward appearances and their social image would have undergone changes but deep within everyone's character remain as it were decades ago. The soul's nature often requires a lifetime to find its expression and resolution. 

You will only change your nature when you face existential threats. Only the ultimate pain can trigger a deep shift in the soul, because you have no options left. It is either extinction or change. The ability to change is the secret weapon you unleash. 

All change is initially painful because they expose your vulnerabilities. Suddenly you have to depend on the ingenuity of your brains and muscles to tackle the situation and not some standard cookbook formula from memory.

When change occurs, the soul's signature shifts into a new configuration. It is like a realignment of the planets. The new configuration will reveal new strengths and weaknesses, which require another cataclysmic event to trigger a change.

So be prepared when change occurs. The pandemic is a change. How have you adapted. Has your soul's signature shifted?  

The Eye of the Storm

These are crazy days: we are experiencing another surge of the Covid-19 virus. Just when everyone is getting used to life post-lockdown, now suddenly the treat of another one is looming ahead. It looks like I'm going to be holed up at home for some time to come.

What have we learned during these trying times of the pandemic? One, we can actually live with a lot less. We don't really need the superficial luxuries of dining out with family and friends, going to the movies or flying overseas for holidays to really appreciate life. 

Secondly, it is alright to fall down a rung or two financially, as long as one is not destitute and still has a roof over one's head. We are so used to upward mobility that we forget that our parents and grandparents used to live with a lot less and yet, they still managed to lead meaningful lives.  

We all need to learn to eat the humble pie. High-flyers who have lost their jobs are now grateful to be able to earn at least something to cover their daily expenses. Corporations who used to dominate the news with their overseas expansions and new product launches, now are trying hard to keep afloat and desperately restructuring loans with their anxious creditors.

The pandemic is resetting the economy. Many companies will inevitably fold. Many small businesses already have.  Those who can still survive have to make do with a lot less income. Yes, we all learn gratitude: counting our blessings rather than lamenting about our losses.

In the US, things are getting more acute with President Trump--already infected with the Covid-19 virus and supposedly recovered--is behaving like a runaway training, holding super-spreader rallies that further exacerbates the already bad pandemic there which had claimed more than 214,000 American lives. And we are less than 4 weeks to the US presidential election, with a possibility of a very messy outcome.

Uncertainty clouds the entire world. UK is considering another lockdown; cases are rising in Europe again and winter is approaching with its expected threat of driving up infection and mortality rates, as is always the case with respiratory diseases.

We are all being tested--each and every one of us, in our own unique ways. The pandemic brings different challenges for everyone.  We just need to brace ourselves for the coming storm of uncertainty. And in times like this, it is comforting to know that deep down inside, there's a place that one can find refuge. There one stares at the eye of the storm. 

The Knots of Time

We go to bed and fall asleep every night without hesitation, expecting to wake up the following day. Why are we so confident that we'll ever wake up?  And if we know that there's no certainty that we will, how would we live the remaining hours of the day now?

It could be a very morbid way of thinking about life: that sleep is no different from dying: we lose consciousness and we have absolutely no idea when or if we will wake up again. But yet, we do that willingly and even eagerly because the tired body yearns for rest. 

While it is good to live today as if it is your last, such an intense way of looking at life could actually be very stressful. We come to think of time as an acutely limited resource and that infuses a sense of desperation into everything we do. 

We can instead choose to see life as a fresh blessing which we receive every day. When we wake up in the morning, it is like being born anew. You have a chance to make good on things that you didn't do so well yesterday.  To be able to breathe, walk and taste your morning coffee is already a miracle of existence--a privilege granted to you every morning when you wake up.

The human body is fragile and breaks down rapidly. What is worthwhile only lives on in memory and even that is ephemeral. Instead the real memory of your existence are your deeds--the karmic effect you have on the universe.

Everyone tries to make a mark in the world, in their own small way. But the best mark that one can make is one that doesn't leave any traces of oneself. That is the essence of karma yoga--selfless action. If you choose to hep someone, do not expect anything in return. Better still do it anonymously. That way, every action resolves itself without generating any fresh karma. Love is a continuous state of being, not an act of grandiosity.

Sounds like idealistic New Age mumbo jumbo? Perhaps. I write, I post, I move on. And hopefully, something gets resolved inside, Next week, there be other karmic knots to unravel, for life is a long thread with many knots. And living is but a process of untangling them. But let's take it one knot at a time. 

The Walk of Life

Just a couple of lines to kick off another busy week. The pandemic doesn't look like it is abating and I'm glad that I at least is busy with work that I can do from the safety of my home.

What a far cry from my life two decades ago when I used to travel around the region every other week. Now I don't even leave my house at all for days on end! But I'm learning more than ever before. As long as I have an opportunity to do that, I should be reasonably happy.

The Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman talks about the experiencing self and the remembering self and how the two have different conceptions of 'happiness'. The remembering self summarizes a whole swath of time as a kind of 'story' with a definite outcome: happy or unhappy. While the experiencing self--the way we feel from moment to moment while we are living our lives, could be very different. 

"I'm alright, right now", is a good refrain I learned from Gurudeva, whenever I feel a certain uncertainty in my life. I am alive, breathing and at this very moment, safe. And that is 'happiness'--the happiness of the experiencing self.

Right now, I'm typing these words and watching them appear on the computer screen. How delightful is that? How miraculous! With a click of a button, my thoughts go out into the world, exposed in cyberspace, etched in the akasha.

To be healthy enough to think, understand and act is already a great blessing. My bar for happiness is set very low indeed. Happiness is being grateful for all that you've been given and having the strength and energy to continue improving yourself every day.

Tomorrow is another new day, beckoning like a blank canvas waiting to be painted. I will experiment with new strokes, trying out different shapes and colours--some will work, some won't. But that is alright. Life is an exercise in drawing. The important think is to put pen or brush to paper and then things will begin to happen.

To live is to be an artist every day.  The artist Paul Klee once said: "Drawing is like taking a line for a walk". Life is like that too. Do not rush through it. Take a walk. And every step you make is sheer happiness. Life doesn't need to be more complicated than that. 

Simple Spirituality

 With my workload getting heavier even during these difficult days of the pandemic, I am finding it more difficult to maintain my regular routine of meditation, exercise, reading and writing, let alone meeting friends. But I see it as a blessing: to have one day's filled with activities that one love is better than boredom and aimlessness.

Throughout my entire working life, I've never given much thought towards building a 'career'. Obviously it is recklessness on my part but I've never really been comfortable in working just to build a professional reputation and to climb up the corporate ladder. It is a worthy pursuit for many talented individuals but I found out long ago that this wasn't my cup of tea.

 I see everything as an adventure--every job a task where one could learn and grow, after which one moves on to the next thing. I've never had an opportunity to be comfortable for too long in any single endeavour. Growth, in all aspects--physical, mental or spiritual--comes through undertakings that take the form of an adventurous quest.

In an adventure, one is never certain of an outcome. One has to face one's fears and be ready to improvise for survival. The only thing that one can trust is one's ability to learn. How quickly and effectively one does that, determines one's success in the adventure. 

Now, success is a dangerous word. It often implies social and physical rewards to the individual. But to me success means insight. At the end of the day, I always ask myself: what useful insights have I gained today.

By being insight-focused, one entire's existence is automatically spiritual. Spirituality is simple: it is just bare attention and bare honesty with oneself. Seeing everything clearly, understanding why there's pain in the world and then see through them by applying skillful means.

This simplicity (or one could even say, naivete) of this approach towards life is a sense of joy and discovery. And in the final analysis, it is all that matters. 

A Half-Full Toast to Malaysia

 I've been so busy these past two weeks but I still want to maintain my routine of blogging weekly. Today has been hectic but I don't want to delay my blog post for the week.

Today is Malaysia Day, which is a public holiday--something which was started not that many years ago. Malaysians generally love their country even though everyone has their pet grouses. We love our food and we are proud of the fact that we are multiracial. 

But as I've mentioned before in another blog post, when you ask a Malaysian what do they think of their country and government, you can roughly expect the answers to fall into 2 categories: half-empty or half-full.

The former group thinks that we have not realized our full potential and have squandered many of our unique advantages; the latter thinks that we have done better than expected given the circumstances. But there is another more fundamental difference of opinion: we cannot agree on what kind of Malaysia we are building. What does mean to be a 'Malaysian'?

Many of the old-timers claims that racial unity used to be better, during the period before and right after Merdeka. Yes and No. Yes, because during that time, we were 'united' by a common official language: English. And those who wax lyrical about those days are mostly English educated 'Malayans' who chose to interact using a 'third-party' language and culture. English is more easily accepted as neutral medium of intercourse between the educated classes of the different races because it was and still is considered modern and progressive.  

So to many, the idea of being a Malaysian, is to be like the educated 'Malayan' of old. And yes, the English-medium schools were great places to forge unity among the different races because everyone proudly and willingly agreed to interact through a common foreign culture, adopting their liberal norms and values.

But when Bahasa Malaysia was chosen as our national language, many lament the fact that we were losing a competitive advantage.  Many also view it as a language of a lower stature, suitable only to be used in bazaars among the common folks. Even among the educated Malays, who are native speakers of the language, they too tend to adopt English phrases when they want to sound more uppity.

The second divisive element in Malaysia is religion. Even though we proudly claim that all religions are freely practiced in this country, we do have an 'official religion', which is Islam. We are a Muslim country, period. Some want to take it even further, suggesting that we should be an Islamic state, adopting syariah laws. That makes a certain non-Muslim segment of the population understandably uneasy. 

The third factor is affirmative action. Arguable necessary to help the natives who were lagging economically behind the immigrant races, it further divides the nation. Are they necessary? Perhaps. Have they been abused? Most certainly.  

The natives claim that they have been very accommodating to the immigrant races, while the latter feel that they have not been treated as equal citizens of the country. Half full and half empty again. 

Can our glass ever be filled? 

To many, they don't really care, because no one has died from thirst yet. So let's drink to that.

A Future on Cloud Nine

How will we remember these days of the Pandemic in years to come? Will we talk about it nostalgically as a time when the whole world decided to take a break from their usual routine to rethink their lives?

Or will be soon forgotten when the world goes back to normal where everyone is preoccupied with their cellphones and their social media feuds? Our world has become so noisy: information are bombarding our minds at an unprecendented rate. Just notice how many notifications that you receive on your smartphone every minute. They come in rapid succession: Whatsapp messages from your chat groups, emails from your work and personal accounts, news alerts from the sites that you subscribe to, Facebook and Tweeter notifications from the people you follow and the ever-present SMS spams advertising the latest illegal online gambling sites. 

We are swarmed with unnecessary information. How do we make sense of the world? How are our worldviews shaped by this deluge of mostly unsolicited information? I suspect we react to it simply by filtering out things that we dislike and only admitting those that conform to our chosen beliefs.

In this era of so-called 'fake news', we no longer know what is the truth, nor do we care. We simply choose to believe what we believe. And what we believe is what we are comfortable with. If you are left-leaning, then you will only admit liberal and progressive views into your bubble. And quite naturally your circle of friends would be people of the political beliefs, which again determines what kind of messages and alerts you'll be receiving throughout your day.

We are not comfortable standing in the middle, undecided. We need certainty to make sense of the world. Only then do we know how to act or the world would be too confusing for us. The world has no time for nuances; everything is polarized, pixelized and pigeonholed into neat little boxes. Every politician is either idolized as a hero or vilified as a villain. This makes life manageable and entertaining--like a good popcorn movie. 

We want the world to be easy to understand because it's too much hassle to treat everything as nuanced and measured. So we dumb down everything. And in the near future, I suspect we'll outsource all our decision-making to AI because they will do a better job. We'll all carry a better brain in the cloud. What kind of life will that be? Will we all be on cloud nine?  As always, the future is full of surprises. And I look forward to that movie.

The Glass of Ever-flowing Water

 Today is Malaysia's Independence or "Merdeka" Day.  Celebrating our 63rd anniversary of independence from British rule, where are we heading? Are we considered a success or a failure?

As always in Malaysian politics, we can view the situation as a glass that is either half-full or half-empty. The optimist will say that we have done very well considering the fact that we have a combustible mix of races and religions, which in other regions of the war have led to perpetual strife and unrest. If we look at South-East Asia, the level of poverty that you see here is unlike those that you find in many other countries in the region. True, we are not in the same league as Singapore, but we have not done too badly either. 

The half-empty folks will always point to the success of Singapore, which is like a 'better' Malaysia in miniature, as something we should have achieved by now. We are unfortunately  hampered by race politics and endemic corruption.  Some Malaysians consider themselves second-class citizens, denied of opportunities in education and top positions in the civil service and are uncomfortable with the growing Islamization and 'Arabization' of the administration. 

We can argue for either side until the cows come home and would still not agree on anything. That's the nature of politics. We feel strongly for certain positions which we believe are right and no logic or explanation will convince us otherwise.

We are all born different and we are comfortable with the culture and religion of our birth. When we are asked to go beyond what we are comfortable with, we tend to protest. Why do I choose to write in English instead of Malay? Well, because I've read more books in English and it is natural for me to think and write in the language. 

There-in lies one of the challenges of building a united Malaysia: we all live in our own language and cultural bubbles. Language shapes the way we think and behave. I know it whenever I switch from English to Chinese or Malay: I have to think differently, almost as if I have to use a different part of my brain. 

We humans often take pride in our rationality but experience tells me that most of the time we behave intuitively--making gut decisions and emphasizing opinions that appeal to our biases. We often do not vote with the head, most of the time we vote for the candidate that appeals to the heart. 

We certainly do not know many of the politicians like how we know our family members or friends but we form very strong opinions about them based on news we happen to read or watch on social media. With that alone, we are absolutely certain of whom we dislike. And that often determines our vote.

Thinking takes effort. And in an increasingly complex world, there are no easy answers to many of our social problems. We certainly do not have binary answers to them. Everything requires judgement and balance, which have to be exercise from case to case, from moment to moment.  It is always half-full and half-empty. 

Has humans entered a phase where the complexity of the world is simply too much for their sluggish brains to handle? Will we rather be ruled by AI who will make 'better' decisions on our behalf?  We humans are not good at statistical judgement, instead we are driven by stories: we seek to find causal explanations when most of the time it is not so clear cut. 

I have no easy answers for Malaysia. On this day when we celebrate its 63rd year of independence, I only hope that we can all unshackle ourselves from our instinctive habits of thinking. The glass contains water, and let's take a sip and continue filling it. 

The Spotlight of Awareness

Last week, I wrote about the flux of experience, which is a continuous flow of mental impressions that somehow brings about the cumulative effect of a 'self' that is the source of everything.  No-self or anatta is one of the 3 characteristics of existence that all Buddhists have to realize on their path to Enlightenment.

The concept of anatta is a difficult one for most people to grasp because almost all religions of the world have the concept of a soul that transcends the body. If there is no substance, spirit or soul that is permanent, what then is there? And Buddhists believe in reincarnation don't they? If there is no soul, what is it that is being reincarnated?

Let me put it this way: the concept of a soul is a simplistic way of viewing an on-going chain of causality. There's only energy or karma being transferred from one thought moment to another. And that's all there is. A conscious moment is like the momentary illumination of a strobe light, and we see karma in freeze-frame, exposed in all its nakedness.

You experience it, but you cannot hang on to that thought moment, no matter how seemingly pleasant or unpleasant it is.  This is where the 2 other characteristics of existence come in: impermanence (anicca) and suffering or unsatisfactoriness (dukkha). 

Experience is a process and being a process, one moment is different from the next. The laws of statistical mechanics dictate that entropy shall increase, simply because order or perfection is an unlikely circumstance.  So, unlike anatta, the concept of impermanence or anicca is a relatively easy concept for people to understand because we see it everyday in our daily lives. Things breakdown, decay and die. Nothing lasts forever. 

But why this emphasis on dukkha? Can't we just accept the impermanence of existence without this rather pessimistic view of suffering or dukkha? 

Yes we can, but unfortunately we don't. And this is simply because we cling or attach ourselves to these impermanent moments of experience. Each moment has a feeling of 'unsatisfactoriness' because of its transient nature. If it is at its intense peak, then the moment is 'over' before you knew it. If it is rising, then it is 'not there yet'. If it is falling, it is 'slipping away'. It is never ever achieving the ultimate state of perfection because it never stays the same. 

Hence dukkha is baked into anicca and the resultant illusion of anatta frames the entire system as a finite region of suffering--a life, an incarnation.The 3 concepts are interlinked and self-perpetuating. 

Occasionally, when allowed to do so, moments of insight arise, and the system untangles itself ever so slightly. Part of our mind is a semi-autonomous faculty called 'awareness'. Awareness is dumb, like a spotlight. It can point and illuminate certain views of the on-going process. This pointing of awareness is all the self-less 'you' is capable of doing. 

Each time an area of darkness is illuminated by the spotlight of awareness, some illusions will be dissolved. So all you can do is continue pointing that spotlight. 

But how do we know if we are pointing at the correct spot? Well, you'll know it when you see it. It's called insight. And they only come when you meditate with the spotlight of awareness.

The Flux of Existence

 I usually start off a blog article not knowing what I'll be writing about. Which is why I  usually ramble on a bit just to get my writing juices flowing. I've probably written about this before: it is always important to get things started first, and the rest will follow. Once I start typing these words, a torrent would usually follow.

Daniel Kanhneman in his famous book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, talks about the 2 modes of thinking in the human mind--which he labelled simply System 1 and System 2.  System 1 is instinctive and happens almost instantaneously whereas System 2 is logical, methodical and slow. The interesting thing is that System 1 will always form a 'conclusion' about any problem or situation and that is what we usually take as a default, if System 2 is not invoked.

System 2 is more expensive in terms of brain CPU time and so we usually hesitate to go into that mode unless it is absolutely necessary. So for most situations in our every day life, we form instant opinions about the news we hear, the people we see in the streets or the food we eat.  System 1 works incessantly and can never be uncoupled. Thus a constant stream of impressions and opinions drive our consciousness forward.

System 1 is a form of embedded intelligence, shaped by our past experience. Buddhists talk about the fetters of the mind, which bind us to suffering (dukkha). These are like 'bugs' in our System 1 thinking that are constantly leading us astray. What are these so-called fetters? The Pali Canon gave  a whole list of them: ten to be exact.  Among them are doubt, illwill, conceit, ignorance and restlessness.  

The fetters influences all our thoughts and actions. If they are not detected and eliminated at its roots, they drive our System 1 and possibly System 2 thinking too. They are the imperfections in our soul...but er hang on--Buddhists are very suspicious of the word 'soul'.  In fact, one of the first fetters mentioned is our tendency to belief in a self or soul.

Anatta, is the Pali word for no-self or no-soul, which is considered one of the truths of existence that a meditator needs to see clearly. It is in fact a sine qua non for a Buddhist to achieve Enlightenment.  Like many neuro-scientists today, Buddhists do not believe in a kind of intangible substance that exists independent of the body and the mind. You can talk about a stream of thoughts or consciousness but that's all there is. The individual feeling of self which we cling on so dearly to is actually an illusion, or 'virtual'. 

What about the mind then? Isn't that a kind of independent existence? No, the mind with its System 1 and System 2 modes of thinking are like software running on the hardware of the brain. It is only a matter of convenience to use words like mind, consciousness and even soul to talk about existence, because we always need a noun to point to something. 

A big part of the feeling of 'self' is caused by the pattern-recognition tendency of System 1. We see forms and patterns everywhere because evolution has honed our brains to look at the world that way.  We see some dark coiled object in front of us, and immediately think: snake! Our physiology changes in an instant, putting us in a fight or flight mode. But on closer inspection, System 2 kicks: it is only a piece of rope. 

Thoughts and feelings arise, some are interpreted as pleasant and some unpleasant. Some 'self' is experiencing that. But look closer: the self is like a fountain which appear like a solid object from a distance, but it is actually made up of particles of water moving very quickly in a concerted fashion to form a beautiful shape.

Look closer at your computer screen now. There are no words or pictures--only individual , ever-flickering pixels. But you in your 'ignorance' see objects that stir you emotionally. This stream of pixels could be a movie with a beginning and an end, with characters that love, hate and fight over non-existent causes. It excites and touches you emotionally. But look again, what it is that is 'you'? More pixels of thoughts, arising and passing away?  

So where is the self in this flux of experience which we call existence? Is the movie on the computer screen more real than the movie in your brain? 

A World of Words

It's only words and words are all I have
To take your heart away 

- Words by the Bee Gees

How do we learn most of the words in our vocabulary? Certainly not from school. We learn most of the words we know from experience--that is from listening, reading and narrowing down their meaning from the context of their usage.

We pin down the meaning of a word from a process of elimination. Initially we guess its meaning. And through repeated encounters with the same word, we zero-in on its range of possible meanings. 

Unlike words which we learn artificially from reading the dictionary or from a list prescribed to us by our primary school teachers, 'experienced' words maintains their subtle nuances and potency. Only when we learn words this way are we able to write poetry. For poetry explores the expressive properties words and pushes the envelop of their meanings.

A single word can conjure up a plethora of feelings and images in our minds. Sometimes, the right word at the right place and time strikes the listener like an arrow: it could hurt or inspire. A carefully chosen word could become a powerful metaphor that triggers an aha moment.

It is no surprise that there's an entire body of sacred chants and incantations that could invoke the divine in us. Words--it's imagery and sound--push buttons in our psyche and nervous system.  For didn't the book of John say that in the beginning was the Word? And the Word was with God? What is this mysterious Logos/Word? To simply equate it to Jesus is to immediate strip those immortal lines of of their awe-inspiring power.

Sometimes we run out of words. Speechless. For words are our inner-most thoughts and feelings made manifest. And when they are absent, it is akin to the lull before a storm. And when they come, they pour out in torrents sweeping away mountains of obstacles.

Words, written and spoken, are a miracle of existence. Say a word. Write a sentence. You become a creator, partaking in the drama of creation, an heir to the Word which spawned its very beginning.

The Food that is Love

The weather outside is hot today, with the late afternoon sun scorching the road and pavement outside. I'm happy to be cocooned in my cool air-conditioned room, typing these lines. Not feeling exactly sure what to write today but I'll latch on to something in no time.

The mind is always capable of latching on to something quite easily.  Especially when that something gives pleasure. When the mind continuously jumps from one thing to another without any purpose, we call that a restless mind.  When it latches strongly to a single thing at the expense of others, we call that an obsessive mind.  

Both states of mind are undesirable. A restless mind can never focus on a single task and carry it out to completion. An obsessive mind, if applied to a constructive cause, could produce results but it comes at a heavy price. Other important aspects of life would be neglected. If the object of the person's obsession is something negative, it could even lead to self-destruction.

Even though there's a slight difference between obsession and addiction, both are disorders that need to be treated. Obsession could start off harmlessly as a self-imposed discipline or simply fastidiousness. For example, during these times of the pandemic, a lot of people wash their hands frequently. But for those with obsessive compulsive disorders, this hand-washing could be carried out to the extreme. Initially, perhaps fear is the driver behind this behaviour, but after a while, it becomes a compulsive habit. 

Addictions on the other hand is driven by pleasure, at least initially.  Be it alcohol, cigarettes, food, drugs or porn--anything that stimulates the pleasure circuits of the brain could cause addiction.  It is the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain that gives us a sense of pleasure--the brain's reward mechanism. But when too much dopamine is released continuously, the brain makes adjustments so that it is not overwhelmed, which  causes the pleasure-seeker to intensify his indulgence in the substance or activity so that the same level of pleasure can be experienced again.

What we often associate with romantic love could also a form of addiction. Lovers who go through breakups suffer greatly from withdrawal symptoms not unlike those with a substance dependency. And the possibility of relapse is also high--it is not uncommon for lovers to break-up and reconcile many times over the course of a difficult relationship.  Even when both parties realize that they are going nowhere they would still continue to see each other to get their regular 'fix'.

Then is it possible to enter into a healthy romantic relationship without descending to the level of addiction?  

It is the same as asking whether we can eat or drink without developing a compulsive eating disorder or becoming an alcoholic.  We most certainly can: by not over-indulging ourselves, by eating slowly and mindfully, by knowing our limits and by cultivating a sense of gratitude for our food.  As healthy food nourishes us, so does true love. And let's drink to that.

Morning Thoughts

There's a certain joy in starting your day early--you get a head start. The mind is also at its freshest in the morning. I usually try to put in between 1 to 2 hours of work before breakfast. Today I've decided to blog instead.

Mental health is a great concern to authorities during these difficult days of the pandemic. Being cooped up at home and not being able to socialize physically with friends have been difficult for many. The uncertainty of the future and possible financial worries also contribute to the problem. Dealing with such stress is not easy.

The root of the problem lies in the fact that we are forever consumed by thoughts, especially thoughts of the negative kind. We are able to command our hands and legs at will but when it comes to the mind, we do not seem to have that much of a control. Thoughts occupy our minds like uninvited guests, hogging the space in our heads. When too many of such stressful thoughts accumulate consistently for prolonged periods, it could cause psychosomatic problems and plunge us into depression.

The first step in overcoming this condition is to recognize thoughts as thoughts. This may seem like a trivial thing to say but a lot of people don't actually objectify their thoughts. To them, they are their thoughts. People who meditate are taught to see thoughts as arising and disappearing, simply noticing without reacting to them. This is mindfulness 101. In doing this frequently, you are able to see thoughts as they are, something external that come and go like the ebb and flow of tide on a beach.

Thoughts are useful only as a means of processing information. But too often than not, our thinking is circular, driven by our fears and obsessions. Recognizing these infinite loops and breaking out of them is also a mindfulness skill. We live most of our lives unconsciously, driven by the promptings of our feelings. We are always trying to escape from pain and hide in our comfort zones. We seek the momentary pleasure of distracting ourselves from the boredom and tedium of the present.

But why should the present be boring? Simply noticing the mind and its myriad machinations is a fascinating exercise. Look at how it jumps from one thing to another. See how easily you get distracted. Feel the impact of thoughts on your body: is there tenseness in the stomach? Are there palpitations in the heart? Is there a surge of pleasure in the loins? The movie of the mind is simply endless.

As you stand and watch your mind with bare attention, you'll learn to create distance between you and your thoughts. That is a good first step. But there's a more difficult challenge ahead. Ask yourself: who is this 'you' entity that is watching 'your' thoughts? Does it exist? Or is it...another thought?

The Future Now

I almost didn't realize that it's already Sunday and another week has passed. Time for me to blog again. To me the biggest news this week is the one about Twitter being hacked. Around 130 accounts have been hacked, including those of Joe Biden, Obama, Bill Gates and Elon Musks.

False tweets were sent out from some of these accounts encouraging people to send Bitcoins. But to me this is considered benign, the scary thing is that they could have done a lot more damage. With so many of our leaders using social media like Twitter as their main communication channel, a single misguided tweet could have led to very serious consequences: pandemonium, stock market crash or even a nuclear war.

Social media has become so intertwined with our lives that it is almost like an extension of our nervous system. Celebrities and leaders often get into trouble by tweeting things that they shouldn't and once broadcasted, that single indiscretion lives on forever in the akasha of cyberspace. Social media is like the most efficient transmission medium for karma. Its effect are magnified and felt instantly.

Social media has brought great good to humanity by connecting us together globally. But at the same time, it has accentuated our differences and polarized us to an extend never seen in history before. Our connectedness has enabled us to find our like-minded kind and each of us end up huddling together in our closed little opinion bubbles--the Whatsapp groups, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that we follow. Everyone is emboldened because of anonymity and a feeling of safety in numbers.

The Dark Web has also given shelter to criminals, scammers, drug peddlers and paedophiles, allowing them to conduct their activities under a cloak cryptographic secrecy. We have an entire underworld lurking beneath the seemingly innocent facade of silly icons and idyllic wallpapers. The viruses that live in cyberspace are as dangerous as the one that is causing havoc across the world now.

Have we sold our soul to technology? Will we end up in a cyberpunk dystopia where machines rule the roost? At the rate that we are going, it doesn't look unlikely. But I also know that the universe always has something up its sleeves. There could another technological revolution that changes the game entirely and make us reevaluate our priorities anew.

Despite my apparent bleak assessment, I still find the future exciting. I look forward to its unfoldment with the wonder and excitement of a child reading the latest issue of his favourite comic book. And the Future is the most exciting book that one could ever read, even though we could only read the the page opened before us. Read it now, read it well. Tomorrow there will be a new one.