Categories
Mental

Are we happier than the medieval poor?

The topic on happiness is an elusive one; much has been said and discussed but I have not found a truly conclusive argument from them.

Categories
General/All

The Last Alchemist (Part 2) – How To Find Your Passion

When I visit local bookstores, I can’t help but to notice the numerous books on how to seek the purpose of life, how to make life meaningful and how to rekindle the fire within.

Even though I am into the ‘everything is meaningless’ camp (click here for the post), as a gap filler, I guess the missing part is passion.

What is passion and how does one find it?

Categories
Mental Social/Emotion

The last alchemist

Does the end justify the means or does the means justify the end?  

How would one decide?

Categories
Mental Spiritual

Be attentive

One of the books that I got through abebooks.com is a gem called Improv Wisdom by Patricia Madson.

From Wikipedia: “Improvisational theatre, also known simply as improv, is a form of performance art… Some of the basic skills improvisation teaches actors are to listen and be aware of the other players, to have clarity in communication, and confidence to find choices instinctively and spontaneously“.

Categories
Mental

Be Average

I’m not dead yet even though the blog may seem so.

You see, for the past two months or so, I was studying for some exams. Thank goodness I passed them all today.

Before I continue with my main points, ( just to make the blog seemingly long enough), I was previously recommended by an American instructor to use www.abebooks.com. It’s awesome – much better than Amazon as they do deliver to this part of the world ( i.e. Malaysia, the country above Singapore). Otherwise, through Amazon, I need to get the books delivered to Singapore first. These days, I just couldn’t find the books I want in the local bookstores anymore. So try it peeps. More often than not, the shipping charges will be more expensive than the book itself – which is quite saddening because that must mean that cost of knowledge is more expensive here (in the country above Singapore).

Categories
Social/Emotion

The Vipassana Meditation & The Quietest Room in the World

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” 

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.  

“I don’t much care where–” said Alice. 

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. 

“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation. 

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

(Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland).

Most people, if at all, only talk about personal mission. How writing down stuff will help us achieve it. I for one is a recent culprit – click here for my previous post.

Categories
General/All

Part 3: The pursuit of happiness

We talked about how consciousness determines our level of happiness with the good news that we, for the first time, can control the input, i.e. our attention. (Click here for Part 1).  That our attention can be invested in either enjoyable activities or pleasurable activities (Click here for Part 2). By definition, only enjoyable activities can stretch our capabilities and thus necessarily transform us into complex beings. This in turn will determine the level of happiness in life.

Categories
General/All

Part 2: The pursuit of happiness

If it follows that on average life is a mere 185 billions bits of information (Click here for the post), how would you have planned out your journey? (Note that of this amount, roughly a good 15%  is spent on daily tasks like eating, dressing etc). So we are left with 157 billions of it. Rightly or wrongly, some people decide to to end their count much earlier by committing suicide. Strange if you ponder upon it.

Categories
General/All

Part 1:The pursuit of happiness

We are usually mesmerized by the term ‘subconscious’ as it implies a sense of mysticism and unreachable domain. We amuse ourselves with dreams, psychic power and the likes. But what about consciousness?

What is consciousness really?