The fundamental attitude of learning is to say “I don’t know” and even when you think you know, you say “Is that so?”

We can call this simply, a questioning attitude.

Tada, I’m done with my post today… just kidding.

I find this is as opposed to the prominent behavior or attitude of people who are considered successful or are expected to be successful, where one must always demonstrate, or pretend, the fact that “I know.”

So it becomes always that everyone goes around with this “I know”… where most of the stuff that we do know is, truth be told, only assumptions we have about life. Because we think “I know”, we never bother and get around to examining these assumptions, and holding basic assumptions that is not parallel to the nature of life and reality is like having a bad foundation for a building, or starting a race running in the wrong direction. It wouldn’t matter how fast we run.

Thus it is often that we mistake lies as facts. Illusions as reality.

Therefore, to be able to say “I don’t know” and “Is that so?”, to have this questioning attitude is essential. It is definitely essential for people in the pursuit of mastery of certain art form. And I find it would be great if one adopt in the pursuit of health and weight training, where one will inevitably begin to experience the idea of Qi.

And most importantly, this question is required in exploring the deepest, yet simplest, questions in life. To say it in a bit cheesy way, it is required for those who are genuine truth-seekers. That is, these people would concern themselves with these questions:

– Where do we come from?
– What is the meaning of life? (aka. Who are we?)
– Where do we go? or where are we going?

However, there is one missing question, cleverly pointed out by Alan Watts:

– Is it serious?

For those who somehow, whether by sheer will or birth-right or contemplation, able to arrive at a questioning yet non-serious attitude and is able to bear those questions, they will invariably discover the greatest wisdom, the reality as it is (without answering the questions).

That is, if we are not all too busy getting rich, becoming famous, doing politics, entertaining ourselves and everyone else, saving the world, or whatever else “important” that could be on a modern man or woman’s schedule.

This blog has been going for more than three years now. Look in the Archives! The fact that it does not generate revenue nor does it have a high flow of readers on average, why do I still write?

Well, it has a lot to do with my inquisitive nature and my approach to learning.

Quoting Eleanor Roosevelt, “Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.”

No, I do not claim to be a great mind. However, when I study current events, observe people, read books, and reflect on my own experience, my primary intention is to study the main ideas that drive the occurrence of the events and the behaviors of people. Put another way, I want to understand the underlying trends — cultural trend, social trend, mental trend, and what not.

A crude example being that, there are many such trends that underlie the occurrence of our “financial crisis”, as oppose to some CEOs claiming that it had to happen and that somehow it suddenly happened… so when I read and learn about the financial crisis, that is what I look for, instead of focusing on numbers, or the names.

Or another quick example, what are the fundamental belief systems that heavily influence behaviors of Americans, Islams, Chinese, and what not?

Therefore, writing is kind of my process of digestion of information to understand those trends. When I seem to have read and gain “enough” (completely subjective) information, I turn the blurry ideas that I have and what I “vaguely” know into words with the requirement that I need do my best to explain them quite simply.

On the other hand, I may or may not have to do more reading and research for better understanding about details of the events and the people. Oh, the hours of reading and searching online… I can say with confidence that I probably had read more than 99% of population, especially becuase I read both English and Chinese. Anyways…

In the end, I do my best to write and express my understanding and opinions about the main ideas with words at the moment of writing but meanwhile, I am actually integrating my experience, knowledge, and information into me — instead of just memorizing facts and data. Because otherwise, information, events, and people are just scattered dots… and I want to connect the dots. That is the fun part!

Additionally, and hopefully, the occasional readers who come across here enjoy my words and the sharing of such ideas.

Now, maybe you will say what I write and had written make no sense sometimes (or always, hah!), and my answer will be yes! Indeed I may have written non-sense. That is, I find the understanding of main ideas and trends as something not entirely presentable and expressible by mere words.

That takes me to the idea that, to understand main ideas in life is to understand life, so not to be easily surprised and frightened, which is what happens when we get bogged down by details.

That has to do with how best for us to learn and that shall be the topic of next post.

Awhile ago, I wrote the post The Agenda Mentality

Well, meditation is directly related to that. Because…

The goal of meditation is not meditation. Meaning, there has to be no agenda about meditation.

And yes, you heard me right.

Meditation is unlike anything else that we normally do everyday and all that we are taught to do. That is, most of our doing are about “getting from one place to the next”.

To meditate is to be completely here and now.

To be completely here and now is to be your whole being. And that involves your body, your mind, sensation from 5 senses, your surrounding, and ultimately, everything. This is the state of being, which we are all capable of, that meditation is simply a mean for us to practice it and eventually, be in such state of being without trying – doing without doing.

To fully immerse in the experience of meditation, you cannot be doing something specifically.

So in a way, we qualify meditation as a practice of doing nothing. And to do nothing, it is helpful to be able to conceive and re-discover you are doing something, and also you are doing something that you don’t realize you are doing.

Therefore, we are provided with guidelines and steps to meditate. But keep in mind, to meditate is not to meditate, that is, to follow steps and guidelines.

The easiest way to meditate, at first, is by sitting because in sitting, you are at least not doing something physically.

So then we move on to the mental part. It is irrefutable that modern people are addicted to thoughts. We find our logical minds so useful that we cannot stop using it. Therefore, we are to sit and simply observe our thoughts.

And we do not try to stop thinking in meditation. If we think, we let it happen and simply notice what we are thinking. Eventually it will go away. If we try to stop thinking, we just end up thinking about trying to stop thinking which is another thought.

Beyond the mental part, we have the body. While we can watch our thoughts, we can also watch our body. We can observe all the sensations at the various parts of body. Feel where the tension is. And do not try to relax because trying to relax is itself an effort that causes tension. Simply pay attention.

After awhile, we will notice the intermingling relationship between our mind and body. When we think different kinds of thoughts, we cause different kinds of sensations/tension in our body. So we pay attention to both, which including the reception of our 5 senses and our surrounding is all a part of “the whole experience.”

Of course there are other techniques, such as breathing, but that is an whole other topic. One tip is for us to re-learn belly breathing and that when we focus on breathing, it is impossible for us to be thinking at the same time. There.

To re-iterate, meditation is about none of the particulars described about meditation. Just that if it must be said, it is a practice of a state of being.

Learning to be here.

Not “another thing to do to achieve peace”. Or blah blah blah.

And you start by rediscovering your innate awareness and letting it be free — by paying attention. Pay attention to your mind. Pay attention to your body. Pay attention to your surroundings. Pay attention to things you cannot see. Pay attention to everything.

Thus the story of a master telling a student what’s the secret of practice of zen (meditation) is “Attention, attention, attention.”

One of the most fundamental attitude toward life that we seem to agree on today is the pursuit of happiness. On this topic, I simply want to present an analogy here.

Happiness is like water to us.

Yes, we need water. However…

If we try to grab and hold on to water, it simply flow out of the hand.

If we try to preserve a batch of water in container forever, it will become stale water — dirty and stinky.

If we retain all the water we drink in our body and never let out, our bladders will get bloated and eventually we will get sick.

If we drink way too much water, we will also get sick and may even die.

If we hoard water, it does almost no good as we can only drink so much at once.

If we poke, kick, and strike water to try to figure out what it exactly is, it only gets murkier.

So is water. So is happiness.

Know that sensation when you find when you are most thirsty.

Know the taste of water across the tongue.

Know the moment when water flows into the mouth and down into stomach and your thirst is fulfilled.

Know the non-sensation of drinking more water once you are fulfilled.

Know the feeling when you drink too much and you are bloated.

Finally, we always perceive peace, beauty and vitality in water that flows free.

Now if we try to control how water would flow… Well, I will let you finish your own thought now.

I think we are under a kind of illusion about life. Or should I say, modern life?

It’s all about productivity
It’s all about technological advances.
It’s all about the newest and greatest.
It’s all about moving forward, progress.

And also allow me to make a blunt statement, that in the name of progress, our successes become failures.

Maybe we ought to take a minute and stop to do nothing. More than the question of what and how to do, NOW. Perhaps it is time to consider what not to do. That it maybe a good idea to do nothing than do just anything.

So many of us, come out of the mothers’ womb and from that moment, we are to take off and start running, metaphorically. We say “Life is short”.

So therefore, we are to learn to eat, pee, poop, talk, walk, run, and then to get educated, to become successful, to contribute to community and the world… as fast as possible. Meanwhile we learn parents’ and elders’ ways of living philosophy, friends’ advice, society trend, marketing information and what not. Over the years, we accumulate more and more identities and expectations.

Ah, so many things to do and accomplish.
From birth, we ought to never stop.
No matter what, we just gotta keep doing.
ALWAYS.

And so that is how humans had been for past hundreds, if not the last one or two thousands years.

As a result, we are incapable of knowing when not to do something. Or rather, we suck at doing nothing.

We spellbind ourselves into the illusion that we must be doing something.

Despite all that. I find that in life, we only need to do a few things right in life to have a decent time. That much is definitely the truth.

But instead, because we must do something always, we do a lot of things that create messes and troubles and then we spend the rest of the time fixing them. Probably making more messes and troubles because we are not very good at doing nothing.

If we are able to do nothing, there are much less things for us to set right.

In a orchestra performance, each instrument is to wait until the exact moment to come in and out. In between, it is to be silent. Unable to do exactly that, the performance is ruined.

Doing the right thing in life is the same. Knowing in your bone who you are, what to do, and what to apply at the right moment. You simply do it. And you know exactly when to act because you are not busy doing something else.

Like a beast attacking its prey. Attack at the exact right moment means there is a meal. Any slight error means nothing to eat, perhaps for days.

However, the instance for us modern people is more so where let alone all the things we must do to succeed and accomplish, we also over-dose ourselves socially, mentally, and emotionally.

It is no wonder we all seem to end up with social, mental, emotional indigestion. Well, and likely physical indigestion too :P

When we cease to do nothing, we never get the chance to be with ourselves. We never learn to live with ourselves. We never come to understand ourselves. We never give our brain and body a chance to recuperate.

And most of us don’t even sleep enough.

The situation of the world and the state of affair amongst humans are self-spoken and evident enough that such living attitude is bringing us to the verge of going estranged That is, if you think we are not already estranged.

A derived question from this topic, but nonetheless as important, is that as good as us modern people are with thinking and so fascinated by it that we even think about thinking, when and how do we stop thinking?

Because, doing nothing includes the cessation of thinking.

Some of you may find this somewhat doom and gloom?

Well, quite the opposite, the only reason and it is pointed out, and the fact that somebody (because I am not alone to observe this) can point this out, means that something can be done about it, by each of us. If you choose to.