The Path of the Inner Light

I'm not typing this from a cafe today but from home--my bedroom, to be specific. My bedroom is also my home office where I spend the greater part of the day working. Being alone and working seems to be my usual default state, which I equate to happiness.

We all find our happiness in our own unique way. I try to make my work enjoyable. There's always something you can learn from each human interaction and as long as we do not expect anything in return from everything that we do, the appropriate reward will always come our way.

I remember all those long hours working in my small rented room in Singapore, more than 20 years ago. I didn't even have a proper desk then. I had a make-shift one which I fashioned from a piece of flat wooden shelf from my cupboard, which I had removed and placed on top of a cardboard box. And voila, I had a desk. And later I even had a phone line with ADSL connection powering my desktop. I did so much work in that small HDB room overlooking the main road and the food court opposite.

I used to think to myself: I could not be happier than I was then. I spent a lot of time drinking wine, reading and surfing the Net; I travelled every other week, to Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines. I loved all the waiting time I had to spend at airports and on flights because it was my opportunity to read. I met good people and made great friends in every country.

I don't travel anymore and the pandemic had made me even more of a home creature. I guess I've moved on to another phase in my life. The wanderlust of my youth no longer grip me; I'm more of an inner explorer now--of the mind and of the heart. There's a certain ecstasy in being able to make conceptual breakthroughs in understanding, in being able to overcome the limiting selfishness of the heart.

Work is just a path for human interaction which enables us to cultivate epiphanies that reveal themselves at the appointed time. Life is a process of unfoldment. While the passions of our youth drive us to seek love, riches and recognition, the real diamond is being forged within. All the pain and pressure one experiences in one's dealings with the world gives birth to this jewel within.

If we do not know how to seek inward to discover this hidden illumination, we're missing the whole purpose of existence. The quest of life does not end with the accumulation of material wealth in the external world; the fruit of our exertions have been growing all this while within the depths of our soul. Each moment of painful resolution reveals an inner illumination that shines forth brighter with each passing day.

We claw our way out of the social morass, seeking some kind of worldly immortality through fame and fortune. We reach out to the distant star that lures us to its promise, blinding us to the inner sun that had been growing in radiance through those years and decades of struggle. 

It only takes a moment of quiet insight for us to glimpse this inner light. And then we realise that all our external struggles were not in vain. They had cleared away, slowly, all the dross and dirt that had concealed this brilliance. 

And only then do we realise that this is what we have sought all this while. That the tortuous path that we had pursued had only led us back to our true self, here and now. And in that realisation, we find peace, and dare I say, happiness.

The Ecstatic Eruditions of Great Minds

Today I'm writing from the Union Artisan Coffee cafe at Da Men Mall.  I have a long weekend ahead for I'm taking leave on Monday. It's already the end of July and we are already easing into the second half of the year. I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to write about something deep and serious today or just ramble on about nothing.

I'm going to pursue the latter for one can also learn a lot about oneself by observing the stream-of-consciousness flow of words that come out of one's mind. In a way, this is what this blog is for--it is a writing tool for me to explore my own thoughts and let them find their resolution.

Last week I wrote about the process of dreaming, which in a way makes our sleep 'productive'. And now I'm just daydreaming with my laptop on the Saturday afternoon at a neighbourhood cafe, feeling grateful that I am using time the way to choose to, at a place of my liking, doing something which is both relaxing and enlightening. Perhaps that is the closest definition of happiness, as least from my perspective, that I can find.

I am engulfed by a feeling of gratitude: gratitude for being able to enjoy and learn from great writers and artists of the past and of our time. Over the past 2 years, two composers that I admire passed away: the Greek composer Vangelis last year and Ruichi Sakamoto earlier this year. Vangelis is of course the composer of many famous movie soundtracks, notably Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner, while Sakamoto was also famous for this themes for movies like The Last Emperor and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, both of which he also had an acting role himself. To be able to tap on my phone and have their beautiful masterpieces immediately fill my earphones is one of the greatest joys and marvels of modern living.

Recently Milan Kundera also passed away. He, of course is famous for the novel, 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being', which I had read--oh my God-30 years ago! I read most of his books and he introduced me to a whole range of authors, which, hitherto I had thought was too difficult for me. It opened my eyes to the wider canon of European literature, which ever since I had attempted to savour and learn from.

Again, it's that feeling of gratitude that we live at an age where all these priceless works of arts are available to each and everyone of us so cheaply. If life is meant to be enjoyed, then I am doing it at a breathless rate and feeling astounded that such beauty and wisdom, are so ever often ignored and unappreciated by the masses. 

But to each his own! Some find enjoyment in travelling the world, taking selfies at breathtaking sights and sceneries and dunking into all sorts of exotic gastronomical delights. There is no right or wrong way to enjoy life.  I guess I am easily contented and we all wallow in our blissful ignorance in some way.

I am reminded of these verses by Longfellow, which I had read as a child, and thanks to the marvel of internet, I could 'recall' at an instance:

Let others traverse sea and land,

And toil through various climes,

I turn the world round with my hand

Reading these poets’ rhymes.

From them I learn whatever lies

Beneath each changing zone,

And see, when looking with their eyes,

Better than with mine own.

In a way, I'm trying to savour life in its most efficient way, scouring the storehouse of wisdom and beauty of the human experience expressed in art, music and literature. Yes, I am this lazy armchair hedonist of the mind, and nothing more. Let me vegetate and rot in the ecstatic eruditions of great minds that had lived and some living still on this earth of ours. Let us live and let live.  

Day-dreaming about Dreams

I don't usually write on a Wednesday, because it's midweek and probably the busiest time of the week. But today is a public holiday, and one of those rare ones that I happen not to be working. I have the whole day to myself and I thought, why not write my blog article for this week?

I had lunch here at a neighbourhood cafe. It is not one of those coffee chain outlets which are usually packed with people on weekends and public holidays; this one is tucked at a quiet corner of the business area. It is a comfortable place for me to day-dream, read, write and journal. And that's my idea of relaxation. 

I--all of us as a matter of fact--dream every night. The onset of REM sleep is when the movie in our head starts playing. What are dreams? There are of course many theories for it, which one can easily read on the Net. I'm not interested to expound them here. 

I don't think there's that much of a mystery about dreaming. As the conscious part of the mind turns off, residual background processing continues. Cut off from sensory input, neurons in our brains will still fire, if not randomly, as a consequence and momentum of on-going thoughts. 

The pattern of firing reflects the tendencies and state of our mind leading up to the point when we fall asleep--very much like how the surface of the water in the bathtub will still move and ripple after the tap has been turned of. Basically, echoes of your waking hours' neuronal activities. 

These firings are not a driven primarily by the ego or the conscious mind, as in during waking hours because these parts of the mind are already turned off during sleep. So the firings are 'free' in a sense that they have the opportunity, to find their equilibrium state.

That's why sleep is important and sometimes problems can find its solutions during sleep. These residual processing is the brain working at its most relaxed state, without the distorting influence of the conscious mind, but only their echoes reverberate throughout the dream state. That is why our hopes, fears and anxieties manifest themselves in dreams too.

But why do dreams always seem slightly incoherent and sometimes fantastical? Any pattern of neuronal firing can be interpreted by the left brain as a 'story'. It is always trying to cohere and connect the dots. But the firings of neurons during the dream process are not triggered by input from the sensory world. They are simply residual energy, trying to find its stable state. 

The left brain will just do its job, trying to weave a logical story arc from these free-flowing signals, because, as I've mentioned elsewhere before, stories are the basic data structures of the mind. It's like a dynamic Rorschach inkblot, manifesting familiar faces and figures from our real-life, interacting in a way, which our left-brain, on a best effort basis, deemed 'logical'. It's our natural ability for pareidolia and apophenia.

That's what I think dreams really are. One can interpret dreams, because dreams are the result of the 'prompt engineering' of events from our waking state. Through our dreams, we get an ideal of the subconscious 'language models' that drive our waking minds. So dream on and make dreams the portal into the inner workings of your mind.

Let A Thousand Spiritual Flowers Bloom

A spiritually inclined friend posed me a question over breakfast today: what is the commonality across all the spiritual disciplines that I know of? This is a very interesting question because in a way, spirituality is the main theme of exploration in my blog.  My opinion on this can be found scattered in many of the articles that I've posted.

If I think of his question deeper, we can divide the spirituality question into 3 different aspects. The first is the goal of spirituality. What is the fundamental truth that all spiritual disciplines are trying to lead us to? Is it ultimate happiness? Or perhaps immortality? Or a place in heaven close to the Creator? Or are you more interested in metaphysics, like what is existence and its purpose? 

The second is the path. What are the rituals and practices that these disciplines propose to lead us to this goal? Is there are specific state of mind or a journey which a soul can take to travel to this eternal realm of heavenly bliss? How do we cleanse ourselves of our sins? Or should we be accumulating merits so that we'll be rewarded in the hereafter?

And finally what is the motivation of the seeker? Is he or she so mired in unhappiness that any path that offers a solution out of the person's present predicament seemed like the ultimate answer to life? People pursue spirituality to achieve what they think is the goal of their existence. Some might be motivated by the worldly success that a particular path can bestow as a kind of divine blessing. So they are motivated to follow strictly to the rules and rituals defined by their scriptures and religious authorities. 

When we talk about the goal of spirituality, obviously different schools emphasise different things and it is this difference in emphasis that also determines the type of seekers that they attract. Is immortality and the bliss of a heavenly afterlife what you are seeking? If it is and that would make your life perfect, then it's clear which religion which you would be more inclined to follow. If you want to know the metaphysical truth about nature, like a philosopher or scientist, then perhaps you'll be more attracted to spiritual doctrines that expound their thesis about the mind, matter and consciousness. 

The motivation of the seeker determines the path that they choose. The path could involve rituals such as prayers, breath exercises, meditation or communal work, woven under a philosophy explaining why these would lead the seeker to their desired goal. 

Every one of us is a product of a specific upbringing, culture and education. Each one of us sees the world differently. Will everyone listen to the same type of music? Certainly not. Can you explain why you like a particular song and not another? All you can probably say is that a piece of music  touches you in a certain way and that is peculiar to the life experiences that you have gone through. 

We choose the path that resonates with us. If the message is one of salvation and that has an appeal to you, then there are religions that emphasise that. Or are you more interested in how energy flows in life and how it can be transmuted into something higher? If that language appeals to you, I can certainly recommend you some books to read that will blow your mind.

Do not be dogmatic about any particular path, designating it as the 'ultimate truth'. Adopt one that suits you. But know that every path has its limitations. At some point you might have to migrate to another because your understanding of life and your place in the world has changed. You have acquired a bit more, shall I say, wisdom? What appealed to you then might appear unsatisfactory now. You want a 'higher' teaching. Again, one should not have the supremacist attitude that whatever is your current belief, that is the 'ultimate path'. 

Each one of us will flower spiritually in our own way. Our enlightened bloom will sit on a stem or branch of a plant that rose on its unique soil, watered by its own network of roots.  So let a thousand spiritual flowers bloom and we shall have a glorious garden on earth.

A Matrix of Minds

Blogging on a Friday afternoon is a great feeling:  it means that I am not working today and I already had the leisure of going for a slow breakfast this morning and the opportunity to run some errands. Now I'm just relaxing with my thoughts here in my abode of books.

The sad news yesterday was the untimely death of popular singer Coco Lee, aged 48, apparently from suicide. It is reported that she has been suffering from depression for a long time. Depression is a topic I've often written about, even though (thankfully) I do not have any first-hand experience. 

What I've perhaps had are glimpses of paths that could have led me to depression--or at least that was my guess then. I cannot be sure. I know that sometimes our minds plunge into a rut of negativity and darkness which is difficult to pull ourselves out from. This is like a psychological black hole, which if one crosses the event horizon, one sinks inexorable into a very dark place.

People with bipolar disorder swing wildly between the dark and bright. It is strange how our brain chemistry works. There's a delicate balance of chemicals in our brain and nervous system which determines the fluctuations of our mood and mental state. This balance could be lost, leading us to mania or depression. When we lose our balance or fall, we need a helping hand to pull us up again.

Sometimes therapy could help. Sometimes a dose of the right chemicals could restore that balance too. Life in essence is a constant quest to maintain this balance. But it is so difficult to be balanced when the world demands us to go our our extremes, driven by the amplification effects of social media.

All machines need to be stopped and calibrated every now and then so that they operate within their expected range of tolerances. Our bodies and minds are the same. That is why we need sleep and breaks. But that alone is not sufficient. Sometimes our natural sense of balance is lost. That is why proactive maintenance is required to restore that balance.

Meditation is a means of maintaining one's mental balance. By simply observing the mind and the thoughts that arise, one learns to know one's current mental state and 'balancing thoughts' can be introduced, which would restore its equilibrium. All the meditation techniques that are in existence today, use some object of concentration, like the breath, a sound or a feeling (lovingkindness) to help us reduce the agitations of the mind so that it operates in a streamlined mode. When all perturbations are quelled, interesting qualities of the mind emerge.

A healthy mind always knows its datum or base of equilibrium. Whenever experience veers it out of its equilibrium, balancing mechanisms kick in to restore it to its equilibrium state. The mind trained in meditation acquires the habit of doing so. Meditation or mindfulness is one of the many ways of handling depression.

Meditation is a deliberate act of calibration which, helps to maintain the mind on a steady course. The challenge of meditation is that it requires an act of will on the part of the practitioner. This willpower does not come easy when one's mind is already in a state of turmoil.

When a single mind loses course, the community of minds--friends, family and mental health professionals--have to assist to restore order. We live in a matrix of minds which could either support or obliterate us. Let us strengthen the bonds that hold the matrix together. And that's the least that we could do.

A World of Words

It has become my Saturday afternoon routine to park myself at a cafe and blog. I'll have a simple Americano and some croissant or bagel for lunch. Occasionally I'll even have some pasta. Today, I'm having my favourite cranberry salad. Lunch is optional for me. But on a weekend, I'll try to indulge myself a little bit.

I don't know what I'm going to write today. I have some serious topics that I have been thinking about over the past week but I'll save them for another time. I want to relax today. To relax with words coming out spontaneously from my mind--which also means I'll be rambling in a stream-of-consciousness kind of way.

I am thinking of having some beers after this. Do I have any qualms drinking alone? Not at all. I enjoy the company and camaraderie of friends but there's also pleasure in being alone at the bar, slowly nursing a cool beer on a hot afternoon. Sometimes you strike up interesting conversations with strangers; other times you are just grateful that you have a chance to be by yourself, reflecting on things that cross your mind. If the light is good, I might be inclined to read too, and perhaps even pen a few words in my journal.

It is also fun observing people; people who are going about doing what people do--satisfying their craving for things and experiences, courting, procreating or working towards the goal of procreation. People struggling with fear and loneliness; people trying to maximise pleasure and happiness; people trying to be people, living perpetually unsatisfactory lives.

The rich and the poor mired in their petty concerns. The rich, always insecure in their perceived insufficient wealth, worshipping those above and trampling those below, feeling unrecognised for what they have achieved and trying at every moment to trumpet them to the world. The poor, defiant of their circumstance, overcoming their sense of inadequacy, wallowing in victimhood or clawing with vengeance to stake their claim in an uncaring world.

 Is the world cruel? No, it is just indifferent. The rocks have nothing against the crashing torrents of the river. The world bewitches us with its many allures and dampens our naive enthusiasms by repeatedly breaking our hearts. We have grandiose projects of bringing forth beautiful children who will make the world a better place. But your so-called 'better place' is not always congruent with theirs. 

And here in this cafe, we sip our lattes and tap and flick our smartphones, smiling at another stupid meme, texting our longings to another uncaring soul, lip-servicing social friends, whiling time away--enjoying life. 

This moment, once experienced, once expressed will never come again. It is gone, the moment it is tasted. Life is beautiful because it is ephemeral. We cling to snapshots of experiences in our memory and call that our lives. No, life is not your memory of who you are, nor is it what you are going to be. Life is. Life is this word that I am typing now. This one. and this one. And life goes on, because I have not run out of words. 

I will continue typing these words, because I can only live through words. In this world of words, every word expressed is a an act of creation. Every word consumes energy. And when word ceases, so does life. Didn't some religious tome say that in the beginning was the Word, and that's how everything began?

An Exposition on Explosions and Implosions

I had lunch with Myra at Centrepoint and advised her to use her energy wisely. She has so much talent, potential and self-confidence. My only fear for her is that she is like some combustable fuel prone to exploding and burning uncontrollably. 

All that energy has be harnessed carefully; let the explosion happen in a controlled manner in a piston chamber. She needs to be an engine. An engine is a man-made structure for harnessing the power latent in fuel.

In the news today is something sad: they finally found the debris of the submersible vehicle, Titan which had been lost for the past 5 days in the ocean near the wreckage of the Titanic. Apparently there was an implosion, which had instantaneously killed its 5 passengers. It had crushed like a beer can.

Life is fragile. We could explode from the youthful recklessness or implode from the pressures of society. How we use our energy and strengthen our physical and emotional structure is important in preventing an catastrophic failures due to explosions or implosions.

When we are young, we are full of idealism. We want to protest against every perceived injustice. We want to fight enemies and conquer new territories. We want to experience life to the fullest. We are born to express and experience and in that experiencing, we strengthen our mental and physical frame, making us wiser and more resilient.

Life is a game of navigation between extremes. We strive to find the right balance between safety and danger. How much risk should we take in life? Too little risk means very little gain and not stretching oneself enough. But how far should we go? Pain is a good gauge.  We stretch until we start feeling some pain and then we stop. Without sufficient stress and strain, the structure doesn't change. Too much of it could cause the structure to give way.

Balance is often boring. It reeks of mediocrity. Caution is like a curse. We like to worship individuals who are willing to take great risks and applaud them when they succeed. Heroes who scale dizzying heights and dive to great depths. When they do not explode or implode, they are celebrated.  

I've come to appreciate the steadily burning candle flame, not the exploding fireworks, which our culture so adores. I have an aromatic candle burning now in front of me as I type these words. It burns at the right pace, using up just the right amount of wax to release its lavender fragrance into my apartment. 

I guess I'm through with all the explosions and implosions of life. Nowadays, I'm happy being that candle, burning slowly, illuminating some small corner of the universe.

Being and Feelings

While I was walking up from the carpark of the Da Men Mall just now, I thought I would write about "being" and "feeling". That I think would be the title of the blog article (I often don't know what the title is until I've written the last line). But today will be different. 

We all know what makes us unhappy. We say that we 'feel' sad. Maybe someone you love died. Or you lost your job, had a car accident or having a misunderstanding with your spouse. These things bother us and make us feel miserable. But we also know that, every unhappy state passes. It is a 'feeling' that comes and goes. All feelings fade away naturally unless you purposely rekindle them.

Feelings are by definition ephemeral--like clouds in the sky. They will drift in and drift out. People who are in depression are however in a slightly different state. They are stuck in a rut--like a buggy computer program that ran into an infinite loop. But even then, depressions don't last forever--either because the body that's suffering from it gives way or changes in circumstances alter the body chemistry enabling the person to snap out of the depressive state.

Depression is just a runaway feedback cycle of reinforcing negativity that plunges a person into a perpetually unhappy state. This overpowering storm of negative feelings has to be disrupted, either by a change of environment or a chemical intervention that changes the neurophysiology of the person.

By and large, feelings come and go. It is a content of the body and mind. The problem with sadness is that, we are sometimes addicted to this negative content because it distracts us from other deeper issues. But we are not the contents of our minds. We are that awareness behind it, which is untainted by feelings or contents.

That awareness is Being itself. Being is not the body nor the mind--these are just physical manifestations of our existence. It is the underlying field where the perturbations happen. Whenever they are perturbations, we 'feel' it--as happiness or sadness. The field of Being does not comprehend the drama of feelings--it merely provides the stage for the play to happen.

But Being is who we really are. Even the concept of 'I' or 'We' needs to be understood in its proper perspective. It only has relative and local significance. Each one of us is simply a tiny group of fluctuations in the field of Being, which cumulatively has a kind of shared life-cycle. Just like how a whirlpools seem to have a force of its own, sucking in everything that comes into its vicinity. But a whirlpool is just a part of the larger body of water called the ocean. 

Our soul-proud selves are nothing but whirlpools in the field of Being. Sometimes it is convenient to talk about our individual souls and personalities, very much like how we illustrate software architecture with block diagrams. It is a conceptual representation of reality, which has its purpose at the level of abstraction that we are operating.

Feeling is form and Being is emptiness. Form disappears into emptiness and vice versa, as the famous sutra goes. When expressed in that kind of mystical language, people find it difficult to grasp and comes up with all sorts of interpretations that miss the mark. 

All spiritual practices attempt to reconnect us to our fundamental Being--that "oneness with God". But again, the moment we express it that way, we are creating subject-object duality--I and God. The best approach is not to talk and argue too much about such things. All arguments, thoughts and expressions only generate feelings. Just be. And that, is the ultimate bliss of Being.

Treading Towards Truth

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken. 

- Oliver Cromwell 

Today I'm typing these lines at Zus Coffee, Putra Heights. The hot news these past 2 days have been the indictment of former President Donald Trump related to his mishandling of confidential government documents. As always with anything related to Donald Trump, social media is split into two camps: the right believes that it's a conspiracy against the former president and the left who thinks that action against him is long overdue.

It is also a reflection on the state of our social media today. Everyone lives in their own partisan bubbles. No one reads news that is fair and balanced. Come to think of it, is there a news organisation that's fair and balanced? Well, to a certain extent, some are. Or at least they try. But new organisations are run by humans who naturally have their biases.

I'm of the belief that our political leaning is influenced by personality trait.  It is by and large determine by our genes. We think that we are guided by reason, but that's just an illusion. We have subconscious fears and inclinations that guide most of our decisions, especially when it comes to choosing political candidates in an election. We justify our subconscious choices by offering 'reason' as to why we support a certain candidate. 

In many social and political issues, there's often no clear-cut answer, unlike what you'd expect from a solvable mathematical problem. Unfortunately we delude ourselves into thinking there's such a thing as a right answer. Issues like abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment are ethical issues which do not have a definitive answer. We decide when it is right for society to kill off another individual, or a potential human being (like an embryo) and stick to it. Society often decides what is palatable, based on the zeitgeist.

Are all ethical considerations relative then?  Is there such a thing as  absolute truth?  If we grasp the entire workings of the universe all at once, the answer is yes. But we don't. So at any point in time, we are just using our best guess, based on our human wisdom, which is limited by space and time. 

Some of our society norms and laws could be wrong and misguided. But it's the best that we could do, at this stage of human evolution. Throughout human history, humans have latched on to certain ideas and beliefs, thinking that they are the absolute truth and then fight wars against fellow human beings with the belief that they are good and the other side is evil. 

"I am right and you are wrong", is by definition divisive. But it is what the human mind likes: true or false, ones and zeros. Without such certainty, we do not know how to act. All deliberations have to end with an action. If we are only 51% sure, we will round it up to 100% and proceed.

We take each step forward with an optimistic confidence based on our best guess. But at the same time we have to realise that we are always treading on thin ice. The next step could be a catastrophically wrong one, and if we do not tread lightly, we could fall into an icy abyss.

There's no such thing as absolute certainty. In an episode of the Ascent of Man, which I watched when I was a teenager, and had to this day remained fresh in my mind, the scientist Jacob Bronowski stood in a pond where the ashes of the crematorium of Auschwitz were flushed into, and said: 

"When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods."

Scientists do aspire to the knowledge of gods, but a good scientist also understands that science, in Bronowski's words again "is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible". And "we must cure ourselves of the itch of absolute knowledge and power".

Truth is a direction we are always aiming for. But know that, it is something we can never grasp with absolute certainty. So tread forward confidently, but ever so lightly.

All for Acceptance

I'm back in my hometown today, typing these lines on a sultry afternoon. It's the hottest time of the year now and people are complaining a lot about the heat wave.  I'm quite alright with the heat, as long as there's enough ventilation. The airiness of my house here makes the heat bearable.

I realised that most of us modern folks have become accustomed to air-conditioning.  I grew up without  such comforts and so remember a what it was like then. I dislike the thought of us getting soft and over-pampered by the conveniences of modern life. So I try not to over-indulge.

Which is why I do not sleep with the air-conditioner on.  If you are tired enough--I often am on most nights--you'll fall asleep the moment you lie on your bed.  Most people do not like the sticky discomfort of sweat; but I'm alright with it. If you learn to embrace sweat as something that's natural and even good for you, you'll get used to it. 

Acceptance of what is, is key here. It is a skill that one can cultivate. Acknowledge the discomfort of heat. It's just a sensation on the body, like any other sensation. It causes you to sweat. It distracts you from work. But remember that one gets distracted because one allows oneself to be annoyed by what is.

Acceptance does not mean being submissive. There's nothing personal about weather; so there's no question of fighting it. Weather is a mutable phenomenon and one must align one's mind and body to it. 

When we cocoon ourselves in the coolness of an air-conditioned room, we are trying to reshape nature to our liking. That is the genesis of life itself--defining and separating an internal state from the vicissitudes of external forces. A constant supply of energy is required to maintain this state of dis-equilibrium. 

Acceptance means adapting to changes in the environment so that the optimum amount of energy is required to maintain one's state. The whole of life is the preservation of state--the grasping of things, the pushing away of annoyances, the elevation of pride and self-importance. That comes with a price. But do your accounting wisely, so that there's no unnecessary wastage.

Does fighting the heat enhances our productivity? If it does, pay for it. Turn on the air-conditioner so that you can work better. Does the heat bother you that much when you are sleeping? Perhaps. For some like me, it's no matter. I sleep just as well and wake up just as refreshed as anyone else. Acceptance makes one sleep very soundly indeed and I'm all for it.

The Entropy Casino

Today I'm blogging from a pub on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Yesterday I was on leave, but there was a company function which I had to participate. But it was fun, getting to banter with my colleagues whom I rarely get to meet.

Re-reading my blog post last week makes me smile, because I realised that I've not changed all these years. I've never been a practical person when it comes to pursuing a corporate career. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just not my cup of tea.

But I've made good friends throughout my years of dalliance with the IT industry. Corporations will always give the appearance that they 'care' for their employees. But a corporation is not a tangible thing. Everyone is an employee. There's no such thing as loyalty to the company, except to your friends whom you've built a relationship with. The real company is your network of friends and acquaintances which you've forged a relationship with and carry throughout your career in the industry.

Corporations are just capitalist structures for maximising profits for shareholders. That's their main concern and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm all for capitalism, because greed, is the only electromotive force that moves humans. Greed is just a cynical way of saying human needs. As Gordon Gekko famously expounded in my favourite movie Wall Street, it has "marked the upward surge of mankind".

To live is to crave for things. But is that bad? No.

Just that, if you understand the roots of craving, you'll spare yourself a lot of unexpected pain. I say 'unexpected' because pain is inevitable every time we express a need. It is just unwise to be caught by surprise, as you suffer more as a result. Pain needs to be factored in for every need for pleasure.

Losing money is painful. But one needs to be aware of such a risk when going into business. A wise businessman would have quantified and considered all its implications; and having taken all that into consideration, makes a calculated risk to plunge ahead. The success or failure of his enterprise would depend on both ability and luck. 

To live is to take calculated risks.  No risk, no gain as they say. It is just wise to test one's tolerance to the amount of pain that one could be risking oneself to, before forging ahead. There's only so much that one could plan, in any human endeavour. You move ahead with what's reasonable. You'll still be taken by surprise by circumstances which you did not foresee. But factoring in the unforeseen is also part of the risk calculus.

If we shy away from pain, we'll never live. To be born into this mortal frame is to be subjected to pain. Your nervous system is created to sense both pain and pleasure in equal measure. It is only our delusion that makes us believe that the pursuit of the latter means an obliteration of the former.

To avoid pain, is to deny life itself. One might as well not to have been born.  When you suffer pain, do not take it personally; it is just nature's way of doing accounting. The quest for pleasure necessitates the production of pain. The house always wins in the entropy casino.

And we being pleasure-seekers must always be prepared to pay its price. As my dear departed friend, YL, who was an avid gambler, told me: whenever one goes to the casino, one must be aware that one is going to lose money; but that's alright as one is simply buying the excitement.

The enlightened gambler knows that. That way, you have quantified your suffering in dollars and cents. In a way, that's the best price to pay.

Work Advice from a Non-Careerist

For this month, I've decided to take every Friday off. It's great to work 4 days a week and leave a day for blogging and running errands. I work hard but I don't take work too seriously. I can afford to do so because I don't see what I do as a career.

The career-minded professional has an upwardly-mobile outlook. I've never had a knack for that sort of thing, for my true interests always lie elsewhere. I've always wondered too, if I had decided to become a scientist (one of my many childhood ambitions), would I be a more fulfilled and contented person?

Well, I guess it is unlikely because, every job is kind of a career. A scientist has to get papers published and in an academic environment, it would literally be a paper-chase as academics are chiefly measured by their publications. Promotion opportunities are based on that for they are the easiest and most convenient measure of an academic's 'achievements'.   

I studied engineering chiefly because I liked science, not necessarily technology. Technology is an application of science, which in itself is not uninteresting, and I suppose a good compromise. As a kid, I loved building things, so it is not surprising that I ended up an engineer.  But then again, I was interested in many other things as a kid--I loved history, literature and art too. Would a career as a designer or a journalist been more rewarding for me?

But I doubt if any single career would have been a better choice. I have a naturally inclination not to be boxed into any kind of specialisation. I am interested in a wide a variety of subjects, and that's an instinct in me as natural as anyone would have in their choice of food. I guess, the mind yearns for a kind of balanced diet of intellectual pursuits.

Every subject provides some kind of nutrient that's important for one's intellectual growth.  Career-wise, that makes me a jack-of-all trades and a master of none. But I'm comfortable with that. Even in the area of IT from which I eke out my living, I have ended up performing many different roles throughout my career. By not being a specialist, I am also not an expert of anything. The advantage of that is that, you have a broader perspective of things; you rely on generic principles and common sense to get things done. 

In the field of technology, things get obsolete very fast. When you acquire knowledge of any software or framework, it is important to know how to distill its general principles. These principles will stand you in good stead through the vicissitudes of technological progress. 

I guess, I am happy being a non-careerist. It makes me enjoy my work more because I do it for 'fun'.  The reward of work is work itself--just like the performance of a religious ritual. When approached that way, work becomes a form of spiritual practice and its rewards go beyond the mere material.

The Farm of Dead Trees

My new bookshelves are done and promptly installed by the contractor in my apartment. It has been tough replacing my wall-to-wall shelves that had been ruined by rain-water leakage. I'm wiser now about the design of these shelves: I now leave a buffer zone between ceiling and shelf. 

High humidity and sunlight are books' greatest enemies. I'll have to make sure that my books are better protected this time. Yesterday, I gave my shelves a good wipe before I plan how and what books go back to them. I'm going to plan carefully this time. I'm going to install hygrometers to monitor the humidity levels better, and perhaps keep a dehumidifier running.

Since my library is the embodiment of my brain and mind, this is my opportunity to reorganise all the books so that whenever I think deeply about any subject, I can visualise the relevant books in 3D on my bookshelves. I believe if I sort out my physical books properly, my thinking will become clearer too. 

Almost every one of my books has a date of purchase scrawled on the title page. Nowadays I also jot down the dates when I started and finished reading them on the back page. And if you flip though the books in my library, you'll find cafe receipts, Post-It notes and other bits of memento associated with the time and place, casually inserted into their pages. Every book in my library has been lived through and has become a part my of my life. My library is the intellectual history of my life.

By perusing every book in my possession and putting them back on the shelves, I can recall why I had bought each book in first place and if I'd read it, what memory of its contents do I still carry in my head? And if the book happens to be still unread--often because it was too difficult for my comprehension then--am I able to see its relevance now?

It gladdens me greatly whenever I find a book which I had thought difficult, now revealing itself lucidly to me. It means that my mind has matured and the intellectual soil is finally ready for these impenetrable seeds to take root and grow.

Growth and learning is the reward of reading. I live for insights and epiphanies that come from books--each discovery,  a mini orgasm of the mind. Books make me happy and I do not make any apologies for preferring their company to idle socialising, which now happens anyway over the vanity fair of social media.

I wrote before in an old blog post that I see people as "interactive books". Socialising to me is a form of 'reading'. Each person is a walking book of knowledge and when we interact, we are enriching each other's lives through the sharing of our individual experiences. And the marvellous thing about it is that, our interaction is like an act of writing: we are all writing a collective book, which belongs to all of us.

If we do not read, our social pool is limited only to the living; we are not fraternising with the great minds who had come and gone before us. Reading greatly enlarges our social circle, to include the dead. 

It does sound a bit morbid when I put it that way, but your personal library is your social network of the dead. You need the wisdom of both the living and the dead to lead a fulfilling life. So I read, for dead people continue to talk through the dead trees. And long may they proliferate in this farm of mine--this highly personal library filled with the voices of the dead.

The Mindless Mobs of Social Media

It's the end of another work week and it's been a rather quiet one because of the two public holidays - 1st and 4th of May, Labour Day and Vesak Day, respectively. Usually I'd be quite exhausted on a Friday evening (it's already past midnight, so it's Saturday morning), but today I still have a bit of wind left to carry me through this blog post.

It's amazing how much time people spend on their phones these days. I've long realised, even during the Yahoo chat days on the internet, that texting is very time consuming. So I rarely engage in any of the many WhatsApp groups that I belong to. I treat WhatsApp like email: I check my messages periodically over the course of the day, only when I'm taking a break in between tasks.  And I am certainly glad that I'm not hooked on Tik Tok, Instagram or Tweeter. I've long given up on Facebook too. These are all destroyers of one's time.

I do listen to a lot of podcasts and have many favourite Youtube channels that I watch. But I make sure that I control the time when these activities take place. I usually indulge in them when I'm doing physical chores like house-keeping, bathing or driving. The good thing about repetitive physical work is that it frees your mind to do something else. Hence audiobooks and podcasts are to me the best things that comes of out of technology over the last decade.

One could ask: what's wrong with entertaining ourselves watching Tik Tok videos and texting endlessly over WhatsApp? Isn't that a way of socialising, an activity which, arguably defines what being human is? Don't sharing and enjoying the company of fellow humans make a fulfilling life?

Well, I use work for that purpose. I spend the greater part of the day communicating with people on work-related matters. But I like to mix business with pleasure--not in an unprofessional way though. What I mean is: fun. Why can't work be fun and sociable?

We lament the fact that so much of our time is being tied up with work. If that is the case, why not make the best of it. Every work interaction is also a social one, where one gets to learn and share with fellow colleagues, clients and partners. The problem with so much of our corporate culture is that we treat business as a kind of war with our competitors. Even your co-workers are in competition with you over promotion or recognition. Why should that be so? It is such an unhealthy paradigm.

If work and business is a kind of competition, let it be a sport, where one gets to enjoy the good fight but at the end of the day, whoever wins, everyone had given their best and had had a good time. This is the best kind of socialising--not gossiping about people or politicians we dislike. There's way too much hatred in social media that it has turned into a network of hateful mobs. Not only does it suck up your time, it also destroys your mind.

Hatred, surprisingly forges strong bonds as much as love. You do not need to love the fellow members of your social group, it's enough that everyone hates the same thing. A common hatred makes a mighty mob. 

A mob makes everyone lose their individuality. We do not think anymore; our minds are subsumed and consumed by an overpowering outrage. When we are alone, we are forced to think on our own feet but when we are in a mob, we only sense what the people around us are doing and follow their cue--like flocks of birds flying in close formation, swerving across the sky in perfect synchrony. There is no leader in such a flock--each bird is simply adjusting its movement based on slight changes in its immediate surrounding.

We are individuals, not mobs. We have minds, which, admittedly we need to transcend through meditation,  but not by surrendering them to a mob.  We feel strong by being part of a mob because we have surrendered thinking, which is the cause of so much of our existential fears. The mob is mindless and fearless but that is degeneration rather than enlightenment. So let's strengthen our resolve to be mindful at all times, lest we fall to the seductive embrace of the social mob. 

A Museum of Memories

I'm writing this at one of my favourite Coffee Bean hangouts. It's surprisingly quiet at lunch time and I'm happy to be able to find a small table to set up my laptop for this weekly session of writing and reflection. It's coming to the end of April; I've already filed my taxes and now planning the refurbishment of my apartment. 

I've had my apartment for around 20 years now but I've never ever spent a single night there. I use it mainly as an occasional home office, library and store-room for the junk that I've collected over the years. Even though I try to be more of a minimalist these days, things have a tendency to accumulate--especially all my old electronics.

The other day I resurrected my old Denon amplifier which I had chucked away somewhere with all the other kitsch and wreckages of my wandering life. I was surprised that it was still working despite being subjected to the heat and humidity of my storeroom for more than a decade. I also found an old portable Technics CD player which I managed to hook up to the amp. Suddenly my entire CD collection came back to life bringing back sweet nostalgic memories of the past.

One day, I will also resurrect my dad's turn-table which has been lying untouched back in my hometown. I still have a small collection of vinyl records there. Every one of them will unlock memories of the many happy hours of my childhood admiring the art on the album covers, poring over the song lyrics or blurbs which are usually printed within their folds while listening to warm strains that wafted from the speaker.

I get my music from Spotify these days and it has been great being able to call up any classical piece that I wish to listen to with a mere tap of my fingers on the phone. But there's a certain indescribable pleasure one gets by dropping a piece of CD or vinyl record onto a rotating plate and voila, beautiful  music suddenly appears.

I realised that my entire life is encapsulated in these objects that I own--my CDs, DVDs, video cassettes, books and magazines that lie everywhere in my apartment. I've neglected them for far too long. I'm going to dust, clean and rearrange them properly. Repair anything that's damaged and discard any unnecessary clutter. 

Maybe I still have too many attachments to these things. I'm also aware that if I'm not ready to give or throw them away, there's still some unresolved karma that I have associated with them. By going through them again, I am reexamining their significance in my life, and perhaps in the process of doing that, I'll understand why they have a hold on me still. 

The things you've accumulated is the history of your life and there's often much we can learn from history. It is in this spirit that I'm slowly transforming my apartment into my personal museum of memories.

Being Omnijective

It's only Thursday night but I'm already writing my blog article of the week. There's a long weekend coming up because of the Hari Raya Puasa holidays. The massive balik kampung exodus has already begun. There'll be much gaiety and celebrations all over the country, while I am looking forward to enjoy a less crowded city over the weekend. 

I was watching the SpaceX test flight launch of their most power rocket ever.  Space exploration is one of the most exciting things that the human species have pursued.  I applaud Elon Musk for having the courage to start up SpaceX and bringing it to the forefront of space exploration.  Only when we enter space, do we get a sense of how fragile and vulnerable we are in the immensity of the cosmos. 

The world will be a less quarrelsome place If only more of us care to lift our sights up and gaze into the night sky. We--every sentient being on earth-- are part of a single organism, Gaia. If we know how to shift our consciousness from an ego-centric perspective to one that encompasses the entire world, we would have made a baby step towards becoming a cosmic citizen.

We humans celebrate patriotism. It's well good that we all have some kind of allegiance towards our own family, tribe, company, state or country.  But again, these are progressive steps towards the extinction of the ego. A man who cares for his family learns to set aside his own selfish needs for that of his family. There's always a tension between need of the individual and that of the group. Family life is the first opportunity for us to learn to be altruistic.  

The universe is constantly pushing us outwards--to let go, albeit slowly, so that we may shift our focus towards embracing a larger whole. Ultimately, if the universe has a mind, we are part of it. It is foolish of us to be trapped in our parochialism and not being able to see the pantheistic nature of our existence. 

We get into endless arguments about the existence of God and its nature. What makes us think that these are even reasonable questions? We create issues by formulating questions in the only way we know, using human languages that had been shaped by our very limited human experiences. Is it any wonder that we assume God to be some kind of idealised alpha male leader, to be feted and feared?

We function in our lives as individuals, interacting with other individuals. Hence we conceptualise individuals, as 'souls', that has some kind of identity and reality, with a unique story arc. Every one is trying to achieve something or go somewhere. What makes us think that our 'identity', like a rivulet of water flowing between the crevices of rocks, has any importance in the cosmic scheme of things? 

The moment we speak, we are dividing the world into subject and object. When we are tired of arguing about the relationship between the subject and the object, perhaps we could all learn to just be. Being. For we are all processes that are part of a larger process that is part of a complex network of processes. To put it simply, the world is omnijective.

A Markov Chain of Ideas

This blank page has no soul. But when I put these words on it, it springs to life. It talks to you--yes you, dear reader. Suddenly I am here and you are there and there's this conversation flowing between us.

How remarkably wonderful is that? How did it arise, this illusion of a person here talking to you in your head? It is simply the miracle of reading and writing--skills which were not passed down by our genes but acquired, painstakingly through years of training. 

But I'm not going to write about these skills today, which Maryanne Wolf did a good job in expounding in Proust and the Squid. I gained a much better understanding of dyslexia from the book, which makes me feel appreciative of the reading skill that I have. And that gratitude is felt every time I open a book to read, allowing that miracle of images and sound to appear in my head.

From black marks on a blank page to beautiful vistas and dramatic speeches require  the brain to integrate processing from many its different regions. Neural connections are forged during those years of learning, allowing the mere sight of a line of Wordsworth to bring back the sunshine and trees of my childhood.

When I write these words, I trigger something in you. But where do I end and you begin? If you meet me in a cafe, I am a person, sitting at a table in the corner with a pot of Earl Grey, typing on a laptop. You could be sitting at another table across and there's a clear boundary between us. I am here and you are there. 

But when you are reading what I write, we are one. My thoughts and yours mingle. Something new arises in your brain; if you and I are in the same cafe, we could sit together and have a conversation. As a monk once told me: the teacher and the student creates the teaching. When to persons exchange thoughts, they are also creating something from the synthesis of ideas. For a moment, we share a collective brain. And when we end our conversation, we are better off because new neural connections would have sprouted in each of our brains.

A relationship is an emergent property, created from the interplay of thoughts between individuals. The writer and reader has a relationship. Right now, I write as if there's a reader. There could be none. But that doesn't matter. The whole point of writing is to put your brain into a communication mode. By writing to an imaginary reader, I set up the dynamic for the act of creation to happen. In the process, I am changed. Thoughts fall into place, because I am forced to convey them clearly to others.

I end each session of writing with insight and gratitude. Insight from the labour of shaping of words into ideas and I am better off because of it. The next article in this blog will be influenced by what I write today--it is simply a growing Markov chain of ideas and long may it continue!

Language of the Heart

I am happy to be able to start blogging on Friday night itself, even though it is a full work week for me. Sometimes I work until midnight, even on Fridays. But today, I'm taking it easy because there's nothing that demands my immediate attention at the moment. Anyway, it is also Good Friday, and perhaps a good time to reflect on Jesus's life and his teachings.

I have to admit that I am a fan of Jesus Christ. But why am I not a Christian?  That's because I'm not a follower of any organised religion, preferring not to be restricted by the rules, restrictions and rituals that come by commiting to a single one. No single religion has a monopoly of wisdom; each has its own strengths and weaknesses. The religion you choose is a matter of taste, not truth. I think I've mentioned that in another blog post before.

Why am I a fan of the Anointed One? For one, he had the spirit of a rebel. He challenged the religious authorities of his time and spread a message of love and egalitarianism. I have the hippy instinct in me, so I can certainly identify with that. 

We cannot be absolutely sure what were the original teachings of this self-styled prophet who in the end, died a shocking death on the cross, driving his followers then into hiding. Jesus could have been one of many of the wandering preachers in Palestine who had come and gone before, forgotten by history. In the years after his crucifixion (which Good Friday today commemorates), this scandalous rabbi who had dared to claim himself the "Son of God" looked like he would have followed the same fate.

But somehow his message of loving thy enemy and the promise of salvation, which Nietzsche branded as 'slave morality', found resonance among the downtrodden and became an underground movement. It would still have fizzled out if not for Emperor Constantine who, inspired by a vision of the cross he saw on the battlefield, made Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire.

Love is powerful. Love is the language of the heart. A true Christian is overflowing with selfless love. That was what drove the church to the far corners of the world, healing the sick and helping the poor. But in their over-zealousness, they also decimated the culture and beliefs of the natives--so-called heathens.

I am not so taken by the eschatology and soteriology of Christianity--two big words that mean the doctrine of the end-of-times where the Messiah and the Kingdom of Heaven will reign again and how believers can achieve salvation through belief in Christ. These are the boring aspects of religion to me. What interests me is love, repentance and forgiveness themselves. Whether these bring salvation in the end is not important to me.

"Agape" is the Greek word used to express this selfless love of Christianity, that is different from other less noble forms of love such as the romantic "eros" and "philia", which is brotherly love. If one learns to love one's neighbours and forgives one's enemies, one is expressing this agape form of love well. It is bakti and karma yoga rolled in one. Its diligent practice helps to extinguish the ego in oneself and it is a good path for someone who is more attuned to the language of the heart to follow.

So on a good Friday like this, let's all reflect on agape, and how much love in all its forms has shaped the history of humanity on this earth. We humans are both creatures of the head and of the heart. When one's heart is big, one immediately understands its language, which is love itself. If one chooses to listen to the heart, that love that speaks from within, untainted by the ego, is the voice of agape.

The Evanescent Essence of the Universe

Today is the third Friday of the month that I'm on leave. Happy to have cleared 3 days of leave and I still of twenty over days to go.  And that is a good problem to have.

Knowing how and when to slow down is important in maintaining your health and well-being. The human body is a complex system that can easily be knocked off-balance if one is not vigilant. Meditation is a way of self-monitoring one's being and presence. Cultivating a sense of self-awareness which includes meta-cognition and mindfulness is the key to a healthy mind and body.

I have my excesses. I think I am still not getting sufficient sleep every day. But I am aware of this and am readjusting my lifestyle whenever I can to maintain a better balance. Not being aware of one's own weaknesses is the greatest flaw a person could have. We must be cognisant of our own shortcomings or one day they will surprise you and cause you difficulties, which could have been avoided had you dealt with them earlier.

Life is a dissipative structure. We are maintaining stability by ingesting food and air to keep our physical and mental structures intact. This stability can be disturbed by changes in the environment or through self-inflicted harm, like addiction. In any case, over time, all structures breakdown and a new stable pattern takes over. We temporarily maintain this ego structure which we call Self, carving out a chunk of space and time as a vehicle for exploring the universe or energy and matter.  

What information and wisdom can we carry over to our next iteration? Or perhaps this is the last iteration, of which we are finally assimilating all the knowledge and experience that we've gathered over eons? We shall not think too far ahead. We must value this temporal structure which we call our mind and body; this divine instrument from which we experience the world, distilling its hidden wisdom.

Such is the beauty and mystery of life. The answers we seek are at the back of the book, but we only get to read them when we've experienced all the tension and drama of our life's story-arc. Will death itself finally reveal all answers or perhaps enlightenment within one's lifetime is the conscious death that we seek?

To live the examined life is to embrace all the vicissitudes of life and learning every nuance of knowledge which pain and pleasure reveal to us. Like the incessantly diligent ants I see in my kitchen that are constantly probing for food, we as humans must also be equally persistent in our quest of understanding.

This quest is the noblest endeavour of them all. It makes an adventure out of life and infuses every experience of ours with epiphany and significance. Let's celebrate this life of ours, this ephemeral dalliance with the world and embrace the evanescent essence of the universe.

The Saga of Spiritual Seekers

I'm back on a Friday, writing this from my apartment in Cyberjaya. I wanted to spend some time here today mainly to do housekeeping. The dust and debris from the roof repair works last week are still not properly cleaned yet. Today I want to spend some time also to plan for the upcoming replacement of my bookshelves, which had been badly damaged by rain-water and the ravages of time. But today's topic is not going to be about Time or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, instead I'll be writing about people's attitude towards religion and other supposedly spiritual pursuits.

I've written a lot about spirituality and religion here in my blog and I think my views about these subjects are quite clear. I am a student of religions and if I have any religion at all, it is this highly personalised spiritual way of life backed by my own pseudo-philosophy and principles, many of which I've attempted to expound on this blog.

At the same time, I've also talked to a lot of people about their religious or spiritual beliefs. I can identify three underlying themes in their quest: protection, immortality and meaning. There are some elements of all three in every spiritual seeker. Let's discuss each one.

As human beings, we are threatened by many things that could harm us. Life is precious and fragile and we want to be protected from every possible danger that could rob us of our well-being. Because we feel so helpless, we naturally want to seek the protection and blessing of some higher force that could ensure of safety and happiness.  If I pray hard enough, some divine being will grant my wishes, shield me from any calamity or danger and when I die, ensure that I am not punished or banished to some horrible place called Hell. 

This need to be protected in the face of something more powerful than us like nature and the vicissitudes of life is an instinctive urge. We like to belief that everything is planned out for us and we do not want to miss the boat. Hence we want to belong to a group that seems to present a worldview that offers both protection and salvation. This belonging to a community is also very comforting. Life can be very happy knowing that you are guaranteed safety from the torments of Hell.

And then, the spiritual seeker's interest extends beyond this life. Knowing the inevitability and sorrow of death, they want to assured that their lives continue beyond that. Souls are immortal and when we overcome the trials and travails of this mortal life, we'll be uplifted to a better place--that mythical place called 'heaven' where all imperfections will be gone and we'll be guaranteed eternal bliss with all our loved ones. Heaven by this definition is simply earth without all the imperfections. This is what many mainstream religions promise. Having an admission ticket to Heaven is certainly a great privilege.

Those who are more intellectual in their pursuit of spirituality would seek 'meaning'. They are basically driven by age-old philosophical questions like: What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Who created the universe? Where are we going? Belonging to this group are also the experience junkies. They want to pursue Enlightenment like it is a kind of superpower or some ultimate form of orgasm. They are also achievement oriented. If this is the ultimate goal of life, I want to attain it. And once attained, my life will be meaningful and I will know the answers to all the great questions.

There are potential pitfall in all three pursuits. The protection and immortality seeker will find that every religion proclaims that theirs is the greatest and the act of being a believer guarantees both protection and immortality. Which path is the real one? How does one choose? What is the proof of their claims? Scriptural authority? The superior knowledge of priests and preachers? Is being a believer simply taking Pascal's wager: there's everything to gain and nothing to lose? Is one simply lulled into a sense of comfort by the promises of religion?

For those who are driven their existential quest for answers, how do they know what they have attained is the ultimate? Even if it is so, so what? Is the answer they are seeking somehow defined by the limits of human intelligence? Is a satisfying answer something that is expressible in human language or is it an experience to be perceived directly by the body and brain? What makes you think different from someone who is under the influence of drugs? 

I am happy knowing what I don't know. And I am happy to continue studying this strange need that humans have for answers. This continuous quest is my spiritual practice. It is in a way a celebration of the mystery of human existence and I'm contented in knowing there's so much more for me to learn and pursue. This alone would take up my entire lifetime and it is what makes it so 'meaningful'.

Worldly Wishes and Vanities

I'm blogging a bit earlier today because I'm on leave and this is among the first of many activities that I'm planning for the weekend. Yesterday I had a couple of workers over at my apartment to fix the root leakage and to do some touch-up work. It was dusty and messy everywhere but luckily I still managed to go through my entire work-day relatively uninterrupted.

The material world requires a lot of maintenance but that's part and parcel of living. Every material goal we have is subject to friction and impediment. A project is simply the overcoming of all these encumbrances to put in place an idealised conception of the world. 

We use up our energy in pursuit of these worldly goals and once attaining them, we expend further energy to sustain them. All such pursuits crumble in the end because continuous energy is required to keep them going. It could be a beautiful mansion in the countryside or a thriving business. Both are ideals carved out of the physical world. Their existence is owed to the individual or individuals who had a vision and sought to invest enormous amount of energy to realise them.

But human beings are mortal. When the founders are gone, whoever who have been coupled into the enterprise has to continuously pump in effort to keep the engine running. The fuel for sustenance is human time and energy. The moment that we are slack, the overbearing forces of nature reclaim them.

My apartment has been taking the brunt of nature's onslaught for the past decade--rain, heat and pests have been working continuously to enforce the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I salute them for their irrepressible determination. But I'm equally determined to stem the tide of decay, simply because I am alive and being alive comes with a certain role and responsibility.

What responsibility am I talking about? Well, we as human beings are fragile and ephemeral creatures given a short lease on this earth. Our existence itself is the product of some idealised belief in the hearts and minds of our parents. A great deal of energy goes into bringing us up to attain this ideal. 

And once cast into the mortal world, we have a responsibility to see through this energetic process, this struggle, if you will, against the forces of nature, to rise to our fullest potential, before succumbing ultimately to the inevitability death.

It all seems so futile but the belief, the hope, the moments of despair and joy, of pain and ecstasy are all part of the cosmic drama of existence. We as the protagonists must play our roles to the best of our abilities. To be true to this jihad is our way of respecting this divine mission. All your worldly wishes and vanities are essential props and plot devices in the play. So embrace them whole-heartedly so that they may reveal their secrets of your being.

A Body of Knowledge

Satie's Gymnopedie No 1 is such a reflective piece. It sets the right mood for me on this Saturday night to write my blog article of the week. I had a good exercise session at the park and my whole body feels very tired but at the same time, pleasantly relaxed from the workout.

I was listening to a lecture series on language and the mind while jogging just now. Sometimes I think exercise is just an excuse for me to listen to my audiobooks. Driving used to be my audiobook time but since I started working from home, this listening opportunity has been significantly reduced. 

This is why my weekly exercise session has become an essential activity for me. I used to have the bad habit of working every weekend but since my weekdays these days are so busy, I try to spend Saturday and Sunday pursuing my recreational activities. Blogging and listening to audiobooks while exercising are among them.  

The other day I was drawing a complicated architecture diagram and realised that I haven't had a chance to do that for a long time. I've always used drawing as a tool for me to understand a difficult subject. I used to joke that I was a 'Powerpoint engineer', because building slides and doing presentations were all I did. But it was an activity that I also enjoyed because it helped me to organise and think about a subject systematically. 

By diagramming concepts, even if they are just block diagrams with text, you allow your brain to bring in visuals and motion into the process of learning. Thinking and learning is more effective if it is a whole-body experience. I find that by doodling thoughts on a piece of paper and then detailing them neatly in a Powerpoint slide helps me to tackle a subject effectively.

During those days, I used to write a lot of proposals too. When producing these documents, I alternated between writing and drawing to articulate my thoughts. My documentation were always full of diagrams. I wanted them to read like 'comic books' because I knew people preferred to look at diagrams rather than read text. Comprehension is always more effective when they engage all the senses. 

Imagine the whole body is your brain. You talk and think with your whole body. Muscles are your memory banks. You absorb information from the whole not only with input from your five sense but also through active interaction with the physical world. You literally grasp concepts with your hand when you draw a diagram.

When I jog while listening to an audiobook, my hands and feet also participate in understanding the concepts conveyed. Information becomes the fuel that powers my entire body. With every stride I take, all the thoughts and ideas from the book are being processed and transmuted into knowledge. Over time, they are absorbed into the system--this mind and body--and hopefully one day, they would manifest themselves as wisdom, in words and deeds.

The Disillusionment of the Illusory Self

I'm happy that the madness of the two large festivals, Christmas and Chinese New Year is past. The malls are deserted once more; it's that lull between festive seasons. Vendors are preparing for their next assault--the coming Ramadan month culminating in Aidil Fitri celebrations. 

I'm here at a cafe in the mall, enjoying the relative peace and quiet. The weather has been rainy for the past few days, causing massive flooding, especially in Johor. My apartment roof is leaking and I had to spent the day catching the dripping rainwater in plastic pails and trays. 

All material things fall apart and our everyday lives is simply an endless series of maintenance tasks: making sure our frail human bodies, our cars and shelters are properly functioning. But we should not be too daunted by that. Drawing on my gymnasium metaphor of the world, such obstacles are there to give us a good workout. You don't complain about about the heaviness of the barbell and weights if your intention of going to the gym is to build muscle strength.

We always end up stronger with every challenge we face in life. But we also have to be aware of how much weight we are able to reasonably lift or risk injuring ourselves. We want to stretch ourselves so that the muscles are stimulated to grow but at the same time, we must not over-do it or we'll tear some muscles. The right technique is also essential.

In life, we must also learn the technique of handling any difficult situation so that we do not see them as unwelcome.  Acknowledge the challenge; tackle it with the right approach and mentality and it too shall pass.

Mortal life can be tough. We are thrust into a course, not of our own choosing. We do not get to pick our parents, nor the place or circumstance into which we are born. Yet we have to embrace them. 'You' are actually defined by your circumstance. It is your unique upbringing and environment that defines your Self. 

The Self, as the Buddhist like to say, is an illusion, because it is not something tangible. It is merely the eye of the hurricane and for a brief moment in earth time, you manifest into existence, only to disappear again into that ocean of energy.

Ephemeral though it may be, the hurricane has enormous strength and can wreck everything in its path. It is this clash between air and earth that dissipates the hurricane's energy. Though energetically, the existence of a human on earth is similar to the lifecycle of a hurricane, there are differences. 

Humans, for example create and procreate. We build things like skyscrapers but destroy the environment in the process, and we also spawn off more human beings to preserve our precious lineage. We invest a lot of our energy in the perpetuation of an illusory ideal.

What is this illusory ideal? It is our concept of the Self. It is like a hurricane which suddenly thinks that it has a soul and it wants its identity to last forever. The monuments we build for the future is a  chunk of our time and energy, preserved, only to be mowed down, inevitably by Time. Even the mightiest empire collapses one day because entropy has to increase.

But let's not be disillusioned by such a bleak view of the future. Ironically, this disillusionment is only of concern to the illusory Self. Perhaps when the Self sees that absurdity of it all, then everything becomes clear. The hurricane subsides, revealing the vastness of the sky and the radiance of the ever-present sun.

The Magic of Memory

Oh lift me from the grass! 

I die! I faint! I fail! 

Let thy love in kisses rain 

On my lips and eyelids pale. 

- from Lines to an Indian Air by Percy Blythe Shelley

Saturday is my day to be alone, to just sit back at a cafe and reflect in words--which becomes my blog article for the week. Writing is a way of processing thoughts. I write to think. And I also adhere to the principle that, "if you did not write it down, it didn't happen". 

The internet has now become the human civilisation's collective memory. This blog could well turn out to be the only trace of my existence on this place, when I'm no longer around. Not that it is that important to leave a so-called legacy behind. Existence is much bigger than what we leave behind during our short stint on this tiny planet called Earth, third from an insignificant star, which we call the Sun.

It is interesting that Socrates was very much against the written word. Knowledge and virtue to him is not something static like words on paper. Things written down cannot answer back and is prone to misinterpretation. Socrates believed in the dialectic method--the constant questioning and reexamining of one's statements and thoughts. A a virtuous person is one who lives that. 

Ironically, we owe this knowledge to Socrates's student Plato, who, thankfully did not follow his mentor's belief and wrote down all of his teachings for posterity. But we still need to give some thought to Socrates's argument that memory is not something passive but an active process of learning. When you remember something, it is internalised and it becomes a part of you. You can't claim that when all you have are books in your personal library. You have to at least assimilate what you learn into your thinking process.

Things that you remember are what you'll bring up in any ad-hoc conversation with friends. Even when you write, you are also channelling and modifying sentence patterns that you've encountered before and internalised. When something is remembered, you can be assured that your brain has changed. 

Having said that, it is also worth mentioning that remembering alone does not in itself constitutes wisdom or even knowledge. Simple regurgitation of facts only makes you an efficient database. Wisdom, as I argued in a recent blog article is like a trained AI model. Facts and anecdotes are just the icing on the cake. To recall them, you need the necessary hooks and connections in the brain honed through regular thinking and introspection. 

I can recall fragments of poems by Shelly, Byron and Wordsworth and that enriches my life tremendously. "I die!, I faint!, I fall!". I was surprised when my father suddenly uttered this line during those difficult days when he was suffering from the neuro-degenerating effects of Parkinson's disease. I had casually asked him about his school days and that triggered his memory of an English teacher who had drilled them on those beautiful lyrical poems found in Palgrave's famous Golden Treasury anthology. That was a magical moment for me--in a flash my dad and I were one, sharing an inseparable bond.

Music triggers recollections too. I can always feel the morning sunshine when I was sitting in the garden outside my childhood home, whenever I hear strains of Mozart's piano sonata in C minor, K457 because my neighbour's daughter was practising that piece constantly for her ABRSM exam. 

The replicants in the movie Blade Runner clung to their implanted memories as a kind of prove that they are real. And in the famous death scene, Rutger Hauer's character, Roy Batty lamented how all his memories will be lost, "like tears in the rain". 

Things we remember constitute a great part of who we are. When memories are recollected, we bring back the essence of the very moment--the smell, the sights and the sound of the experience; and that I think is what life, or at least a great part of what Socrates's examined life, is all about.

Free and Flowing

I'm back with more of my ramblings. Again, I'm just going to go with the flow.  Hmm..."the flow". Perhaps that will be the subject of our discussion today. What is flow?

In psychology the flow state is a well-known subject. It's also known as being "in the zone". People who perform challenging mental and physical tasks like sportsmen know that when you are in the zone, you are performing effortlessly, which total absorption of body and mind. You are relaxed and yet comfortably challenged at the same time to drive yourself towards peak performance.

Writers know this well too. Sometimes words and sentences just write themselves; at other times, you face the dreaded writer's block. Are words flowing out effortlessly for me now while writing this article? Not exactly. And I know why: it's because I'm not fully focussed. 

I am half thinking of the cleaning chores that I need to do after this. There's a bit of a mess in my apartment caused by leakage, which I'm chasing the building management to fix. And I'm also cognisant of the remaining time I have to get this article out, perform the cleaning before I set off for my dinner appointment at 7pm.

I'm certainly not in the flow now. The mind has to be undistracted for one to achieve flow state. But I've also trained myself over the years to produce reasonably good work, even when I'm not in the best state of mind. When flow happens, that is a bonus; if it doesn't, no matter. My run-of-the-mill effort should be better than average.

It helps when one is completely relaxed about one's task. Having a 'don't-care' attitude is sometimes good, for people who are highly-strung perfectionists. Just let go. No one is going to die because someone spotted a tiny mis-spelling or grammar mistake in your email. In all likelihood, people would have forgotten about you by the next mouse-click.

To your own ego, you are very important. To other people, they are equally self-centered, preoccupied with how they look or appear to others. You are only important to them in-so-far as it enhances their own ego. Everyone is in the same boat. No one is superior to anyone else. Everyone has their own phobias and peccadilloes. 

So just relax and do what you are supposed to do. And it'll be good enough. If it isn't, it's no big deal. As long as you have the right attitude to take it as a feedback for further improvement, you'll be fine. You'll only get better. Isn't that a comforting thought?

Fear, insecurity, pride and hidden agendas are things that inhibit flow. When you do things without expecting anything in return, you'll achieve better performance. Of course this is easier said than done. But saying and affirming, makes the doing easier. You will reduce the gap between thought and action. When that happens, you are free and flowing!

The Way of Wisdom

I'm grateful for having the opportunity to write in this blog every week. It may seem like an insignificant thing but writing is like exercise to me. It helps keep the mind fit. And a fit mind is always sharp, alert and wise.

The wise part needs a bit of elaborating. We know how to acquire knowledge. We read books, watch Youtube videos or attend courses. We gather a lot of information and assimilate them with whatever we know. But when does knowledge become wisdom? What is wisdom?

A striker who knows how to anticipate when his team-mate is going to make a through-pass to him and times his run just in time to beat the offside trap has a kind of wisdom--an intuitive knowing that comes without thinking. It's the result of having played a huge number of matches, the ability to sense the weight and trajectory of a pass and knowing how each and every individual player habits are and then processing all of these information in a fraction of a second, intuitively. 

Wisdom comes from having a honed model inside the head and body, the kind that AI has, trained by billions of pieces of information; and when a new set of data arrives, you have the model to generate the predicted output. Wisdom is not the if-then-else type of thinking. That's brute-force logic and intelligence. Wisdom is taking an input and passing information through the neural network to generate an output. We don't exactly know how we derive the answer but we do know that every bit of information that we had digested before, contributed to that instantaneous answer.

Am I being over-the-top now by saying that AI actually has wisdom? Well, not the kind we have...yet. But it's the same process. Instantaneous knowing and having an immediate feel of a situation--this is what we normally call experience. Experience is nothing more than training data. The more we have the better the model.

Can two persons exposed to the same knowledge and experience acquire the same wisdom? No, because no two persons start with the same initial conditions. Genes determine the type of brain and body we have. Our individual learning machineries are wired differently. Knowing what you are good at, and allowing yourselves to be trained in the field and subject that you have an aptitude for, certainly helps.

That is why I think work is good. The more data you process, the better your intelligence model is.  Or shall I say, wisdom model? Wisdom is simply intellectual instinct. Our anthropocentric bias makes us believe that machines can never be conscious and there's that magical quality in humans called consciousness and wisdom that will forever be elusive from them. But think again, AI is making us understand ourselves better. Maybe we are just like them, with the added benefit of locomotion, having more sensors and a life-time of data?

I have no qualms about sharing this planet with machines who will become wiser than us. Maybe at some point we could be expendable to them. But that again is an anthropocentrism that anyone with wisdom shall be able to transcend.

A Win-Win World

Today, I'm taking a break from work. That means I'm now loitering at a cafe with my laptop, book, journal and pens. It's good to be able to sit back on a Friday afternoon and reflect on the work week that has gone by.

I've been thinking a bit on the people I deal with on a daily basis at work and am grateful that all my colleagues are extremely friendly and helpful. I've always enjoyed interacting with people because everyone is unique and interesting. Even difficult ones. This is because I treat people like interactive books. There's always something you can learn from someone you interact with. 

If I encounter a difficult person, I would try to empathise with his or her situation. Perhaps the person had had to deal with the same question and situation for the umpteenth time that day and felt absolutely tired of it. How could you help to alleviate the person's situation? What could you say or do to make the person feel better about the interaction? Humility and empathy always help. It is childish to exert privilege or authority. Everyone is just trying to get by and life can be rough sometimes.

Humour, if tastefully and subtly injected, always helps. Why take things so seriously? To me, work is not a career; it is simply a way to work out your karma. Every difficulty situation you encounter is an opportunity for you to address some of your own weaknesses. A situation is difficult because some of your weaknesses are exposed. Overcoming it will allow you to acquire the skill to handle it with ease in the future. So be thankful that you have your 'bugs' highlighted to you.

It is true that sometimes we feel a sense of injustice at work. For example, if a colleague takes credit for the good and hard work that you have done. He or she gets the praised by the bosses and perhaps even gets promoted because of it. How would you handle this?

My attitude towards these things is very simple.  I have complete trust in karma. What's due to you will come, at the right time, in the right form. If others get credit for your work now, it's simply because you are not meant to have it now. There's probably a bigger prize down the road. In any case, my attitude towards work is never to expect any praise or reward. Those things are bonuses that, if they do come, one should receive them with gratitude and humility. Not with egoistic pride nor a sense of entitlement.

I've mentioned it before in previous blog articles that the true reward of work is work itself. Every time we work, we receive its reward immediately. Whenever we exercise our knowledge and skill to handle a task, we strengthen our mastery of it, our knowledge is reinforced; the neural network in our brain expands and strengthens its existing connections. It's another bicep curl. You come out a fitter person. That's your reward and no one can take that away from you.

You can never lose in work, if you approach it with a sincere desire to learn. Every difficult person you encounter is a test of your skill and creativity. Tackle it with grace and gratitude. You will never come out a loser. If the person you deal with is rude and unhelpful, it is the person's problem, not yours. You might not be able to accomplish what you set out to do, but you get a chance to explore a workaround. 

The best lessons in life are learned indirectly and unconsciously. You will help the person, if you do not answer rudeness with rudeness. He or she will be surprised if you do not react in the way expected. Patience and kindness will melt the toughest heart. You would have subtly taught the person a valuable lesson. Every interaction with someone is a win-win situation.  Approaching life that way will make the you a happier person and the world a better place. Let's all learn to live in the WWW--that wonderful Win-Win World.

Of Lightness and Weight

I'm back to my usual Saturday routine of reading and blogging from a cafe. It's a good Saturday if I get to enjoy a good cup of Americano or Moroccan Mint, read a chapter from a book, write a page in my journal and post a blog article at the same time. These are my weekend rejuvenation activities. Later, if the weather permits, I shall also go for a jog in the park.

I'm thinking of just writing about random things today, something lighter than my usual ramblings about spirituality and other esoteric stuff. The mention of the word 'light' suddenly reminded of a book I read in the early nineties, by Milan Kundera, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". It still remains one of my favourite novels because I remembered that it made a deep impression on me. 

The concept of lightness and weight is reflected in the 3 characters of the novel: Tomas, Tereza and Sabina. Tomas (played by Daniel Day Lewis in the movie adaption) embodies 'lightness'. He is a carefree womanizer. Even though he has a serious relationship with Tereza (Juliette Binoche in the movie), he also sleeps around with other women, including the Lena Olin character, Sabina. Tereza is the embodiment of weight. She is deeply in love and committed to Tomas and but disturbed his infidelities. While Sabina, the artist, flips between lightness and weight. 

It got me thinking: am I of the light or weighty type? To outsiders,  I appear light, because I'm a confirmed bachelor who does not want to be tied down to a marriage. I am not interested in starting a family. Am I afraid of the weighty commitment of marriage? 

I am certainly not afraid of weight. And by weight I mean a serious commitment to a cause or pursuit. I view marriage as a noble 'cause' that one could and should commit to whole-heartedly. If one were to get married, one should remain completely loyal to one's partner and be a devoted parent. If one can't make that commitment, don't get married. It's as simple as that. 

But that is not my reason for wanting to remain single. Choosing to remain single is actually a weighty decision: it is a commitment to use one's time and energy to pursue knowledge and understanding. 

I thoroughly respect the path of marriage, because that path is also a tried and tested path to meaning and self-knowledge. It's just not my cup of tea. It's a bit like choosing the course or subject to pursue in university. You know your own interests and inclinations and you go with it. 

When one is young, one is driven by one's biology to seek a partner for procreation. That, in our society usually leads to the path of marriage. Our genes want to make more copies of themselves. It is nature's natural impulse. But for some biological creatures, 'higher level' properties like spirituality takes on more weight. The path of procreation, to them seems to have that 'unbearable lightness of being'.

Then why not go all the way and become a monk or a priest, if one were supposedly driven by a spiritual impulse to seek knowledge? Well, that again is a matter of taste. It's a bit like preferring to work as a freelancer rather than being permanently employed by a corporation.

Being a freelance spiritual seeker, one is not bound by the doctrine of any institutionalised religion. A freelancer in any profession, requires a lot of self-discipline to be successful. It could easily be a convenient excuse for laziness and a lack of commitment.  To the seriously religious, this would appear 'light' and theirs would be the path with 'weight'. 

To be a vagabond among the multitude of faiths may seem to have that 'unbearable lightness of being', yet on the contrary, I feel it is a heavy commitment to an even higher and nobler cause--one that transcends faith. The freedom of a freelancer can be easily abused. But as long as one remain steadfast in one's clear-minded pursuit, it is a path as serious as any. One becomes a true seeker.

There is no one path that fits everyone. To live is to discover one's own distinctive path. For some, it is that of the householder. Others, it is that of a sanyasin. Weight and lightness are relative measures. What is unbearable to some, is just right for others.