independence

this is an excerpt from a book that i’m reading

Clearly, it is not the highest action to deliberately destroy or abuse one another.  Clearly, it is equally inappropriate to neglect the needs of those you have caused to be dependent on you.

Your job is to render them independent; to teach them as quickly and completely as possible how to get along without you.  For you are no more blessing to them so long as they need you to survive, but bless them truly only in the moment they realize you are unnecessary.

i love my vDream

habits of happiness talk

Found this on TED, thought it was really good.  In general thought it was aligned with the Dalai Lama’s book, “The Art of Happiness” pretty well.  Pay attention to the section on Mind Training and then the section afterward where they applied mind training to scientific experiments.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/matthieu_ricard_on_the_habits_of_happiness.html

fight or flight? what does your body say?

I was doing a typical 3 mile run today, when I approached one of the corners that I always turn at.  As I approached the corner I saw 2 elderly people slow down their walking pace as they reached a stop at the corner.  As I began my right turn around the corner, I saw a 2 year-old girl, and then within a split second she yelled out a enthusiastic “BOO” as she was chasing down her grandparents.  My first reaction was a quick jump to the left and then felt my heart go into relief.

My first thought after that was why did I tense up?  What about surprises makes me jump and go into alert mode.  Then I thought about what some of my friends would do.  And it seems a lot of guys would get ready to fight or punch someone or something.  So then I started thinking, why are people so paranoid?

I wonder what life would be like if we didn’t train our bodies to respond to danger so much.  If I saw something coming, I can move out of the way and react to it, but its funny how even the voice from a little girl got me all jumpy.   I surely would not want to punch her.

Relationships: the only meaningful thing in life

At the age of 5 or 6 I saw a biblical cartoon on Noah’s Ark and assumed that was reality: there was a God and life after death is Heaven. Shortly after I told my mom the great news about what I had learned that day, she taught me some concepts in Buddhism: cause and effect, karma, reincarnation. For some reason, that made more sense to me and that became the defacto standard until I graduated from high school. I have always been pretty spiritual because life wouldn’t make sense if there wasn’t some sort of after life, but I never committed myself seriously. My reasoning at the time (and still is) was that if life ended after you die, then what would be the point of living? Why not blow up the earth and get it over with? Therefore based on that logic, there had to be some sort of reason as to why we exist.

In college, I began to rebel and question my original beliefs in search for my own meaning to life. During this time, I gave both Buddhism and Christianity some serious thought, weighing the positives of each teaching, but disliked the rigidity and structure in the way it was taught. I started to believe that religion was man’s way of creating power by instilling fear into people and gradually started to side with atheism. During this rebellious phase, I started challenging my mom’s spiritual ideas with what I had thought to be pretty sound arguments, only to get shot down on my own limited understanding of the spiritual concepts to begin with. It just didn’t make sense to me anymore (It’s kind of like the feeling when you learn calculus for the first time and realizing everything you had learned in math before was crap because it was the kiddie way of doing things). Sensing that I was a bit lost, my mom began recommending spiritual books for me to read after college. I was eager to relearn concepts from a different perspective, hoping that it would perhaps ease some of my frustrations.

Fast forward another year and 6 books later, I have concluded that although most of what I have read all give the same or similar message, there are definite minor differences in the teachings. Focusing on these differences would ultimately miss out on the more important and finer truths to life. My new definition for spirituality is now “Accelerate your self-understanding to move on towards unconditional acceptance of others”. I have came to this conclusion that it doesn’t really matter if there is a life after death because the most important thing while you’re here on this planet is your relationship with yourself and your relationship with others. If you treat yourself and others well, then there should be no reason for you not to have a better “after life” (define “after life” however you would like). If you had all of the wealth, power, and intelligence in this world, it would not matter the instance you lose all of your relationships. Thus true wealth lie in the abundance of you relationships. True power lies in the quality of your relationships. And true intelligence helps you maintain those relationships.

Those are my beliefs…for now.

hey grandpa…

I’ll always remember the time you scolded me in 5th grade when I cried because homework in Chinese was too hard. I’ll always remember the time when you said you were going to take me to go see this computer convention, and then you ended up ditching me. But you always loved me and always spoiled me.

Back in college, I wanted a tattoo on my back consisting of the 4 Chinese characters that represented the family name from my generation to your father’s. Those characters meant success in life through each of our generations. I want you to know that you have nothing to worry about, my generation of kids will be fine, I will make sure of it.

I was glad to see you one last time back in April. I knew you were glad to see me too. Rest in peace.

its a love, hate relationship

Got the following points from a book I just finished reading relating to psychology/spiritual stuff.  I just listed things that I have experienced or could relate to.

+ Left alone, hate does not last. The hater is attracted to the object of his hatred by deep bonds. It is never a steady constant state, and will automatically change if not tampered with.

+ Hatred does not initiate strong violence. The outbreak of violence is often the result of a built-in sense of powerlessness.

+ Love and hate are based upon self-identification in your experience. You do not bother to love or hate persons you cannot identify with at all. They leave you relatively untouched. They do not elicit deep emotion.

+ Hatred always involves a painful sense of separation from love, which may be idealized. A person you feel strongly against at any given time upsets you because he or she does not live up to your expectations.

+ You “hate” something that separates you from a loved object. It is precisely because the object is loved that it is so disliked if expectations are not met. You may love a parent, and if the parent does not seem to return the love and denies your expectations, then you may “hate” the same parent because of the love that leads you to expect more. The hatred is meant to get you your love back. Hatred is the not the denial of love, then, but an attempt to regain it, and a painful recognition of circumstances that separate you from it.

+ Love and hate are not opposites. They are different aspects, and experienced differently. To some extent you want to identify with those you feel deeply about. You do not love someone simply because you associate portions of yourself with another. You often do love another individual because such a person evokes with you glimpses of your own “idealized” self.

+ The loved one draws your best from you. In his or her eyes you see what you can be. In the other’s love you sense your potential. This does not mean that in a beloved person you react only to your own idealized self. This is a peculiar kind of vision shared by those involved (husband and wife, parent and child). This vision is quite able to to perceive the difference between the practical and the ideal, so that in ascendant periods of love the discrepancies in, say actual behavior are overlooked and considered relatively unimportant.

SiCKO

I went to watch SiCKO last friday with my department at work. Although very one sided – like the rest of Michael Moore’s movies, it does point out a problem in our society. Here are some of the facts that I have learned from the movie:

+ 50 million americans do not have health insurance or can’t afford health insurance

+ 18,000 people die a year because they can’t afford health insurance

+ Told many stories of people getting screwed over (here’s one): Lady’s insurance refused to cover her ambulance bill because she didn’t give preapproval since she was unconscious during the ambulance ride to the hospital.

+ In America, doctors that work for organizations get bonuses based on the number of claims or patients they reject or deny service to. More profit for the organization = higher pay check for the doctor.

+ Bills were passed that make consumers pay more for coverage, which allows health plans (private corporations) to profit.

+ Certain Congress men are opposed to a universal healthcare because they are directly supported by health plans. Thus they end up supporting bills that give health plans more power. Once the bills are passed, some congressmen step down to work directly for the health plans that are expected to gain large profits.

+ Universal healthcare (government paid healthcare) is seen as socialistic which is bad, however somethings that we have adopted that are socialistic are and do work are the: police/fire department, K-12 education, library

+ Canada/England/France have free healthcare for everyone. Pharmacy drugs are also very cheap – $5 or less no matter how many pills you buy. However downside is wait time. Doctors instead are incented with bonuses for things like: getting people to quit smoking

+ America (the most powerful country in the world) is ranked 37th in the world in terms of healthcare coverage

It’s a good movie and I encourage you to watch it to at least be aware that there is an issue. One thing I did notice is how did America, the most wealthy and powerful country have such crappy health care? How and why do we keep screwing over the poor? I feel like the wealthier you become, the more “Me” first mentality you get. And I tend to think the less money you have the more you are willing to give up.

chick flicks

I’ve been watching too many of these alone in the past several months: The Lake House, Pride and Prejudice, The Last Kiss (I do watch normal movies as well…). And in all of these movies, there’s always some shake up between the lovers or lovers to be. Maybe I miss having a relationship, but sometimes I just think, “God why can’t you guys just work this out, how can it be so hard if you guys love each other so much.” Of course its always easier pointing out all the mistakes people make when you’re calm, thinking rationally, and are seeing things from a 3rd person’s point of view.

The only theme I noticed that tends to cause arguments and fights is when people start to be dishonest towards one another. Things start to go sour when they start to hide things or they’re afraid of telling the other person how they truly feel. Aside from the obvious physical attraction and personality, I think the key things to a succesful relationship are trust, honesty and the willingness to compromise. But then again, I haven’t been in one for over 2 years now, so I could be totally off =P.

On the bright side of things, I think this hiatus has made me learn more about what I want from a relationship, and it has also forced me to put thought into why I will appreciate being in my next one.

Oh and Rachel Bilson is totally hot in The Last Kiss

what the #$^@^@ do we know

So I just watched the movie, “What the bleep do we know – down the rabbit hole. Overall it was a pretty entertaining movie despite it not getting the best feedback.  It is a spiritual movie about how quantum physics implies some sort of spirituality.  Here are some of the notes I took from the movie:

+ reality is filtered through your senses and is happening all around you all the time

+ brain processes 400 billion bits a second, we are only aware and focused on 2000 of those bits

+ quantum mechanics vs classical mechanics – presents two different way to look at the the world and explain how it works. In classical mechanics, we are machines, there’s no room for consciousness, we are robots that can die and it won’t matter. Quantum mechanics “suggests” that you can think of the world as a highly interconnected large organism that extends through space and time. In that kind of environment the way you think and behave has a huge impact on the world.

+ 2 separate laws that govern the universe: 1) in our every day classical world we are governed by Newton laws of motion (think of basketballs bouncing, gravity) 2) in subatomic particles, quantum mechanics have theories that say 1) particles can be in multiple places at once (superposition) 2) particles can behave as waves spread out spatially and temporally (wave particle duality) 3) they may be interconnected over great distances (entanglement)

+ if you take the vacuum within a single hydrogen atom 10-23 cm^3 and take the latent energy in that, there’s a trillion times more energy in there than in all of the mass, stars, planets up to 20 billion light away. If consciousness allows you control even a small fraction of that, creating a big bang is no problem.

+ objects never really touch each other (atoms between a ball and the ground never touch)

+ 2nd law of thermodynamics say things unwind and move forward.  In the micro world, the law doesn’t seem to hold and things can go backwards or be timeless. It suggests that the future can have a cause and effect on the present just as much as the past can.

+ In conscious experience, it seems we move forward in time. In quantum theory you can also go backward in time, and there’s some suggestion that process in the brain can project backward in time. In the late 1970s a famous experiment studying patients who had neurosurgery on their brain with the brain exposed while still being conscious. He would stimulate a finger and then record the electrical impulse on the corresponding sensory part of the brain to see when it got there. He would also ask the patient to respond when they felt the stimulus. He would then also stimulate that part of the brain and then ask the patient when they felt the stimulus on their finger. You would think that stimulating the finger would take some time to reach the brain, and thus the patient would respond a fraction of a second later. Likewise, if you stimulate the brain directly, the patient would respond immediately. However the experiment proved the exact opposite. If you stimulate the finger, the impulse would arrive at the brain immediately, while if you stimulate the brain, it would take some finite amount of time to reach the finger. Scientist came to the conclusion that the brain was projecting information backwards in time, so it does take a finite amount of time for the stimulus to reach the brain, but the brain was sending information backwards in time so that conscious perception was that the stimulus could be felt when the actual pinch occurred (very cool).

+ particles/matters at the quantum level can act like a wave (split and interfere with itself, you’ll have to watch the visual on this section..its pretty cool and too hard to describe)

+ scientists hypothesize that your own mind is creating multiple possibilities superimposed on top of each other, you choose one possibility and focus that one as being reality

+ Entanglement – Take 2 electrons that are created together and are “entangled”. If you take one electron and bring it to the other side of the universe, and then if you do something to one, the other responds instantly. So either information is traveling instantly fast, or in reality the 2 electrons are actually still touching. The theory is that since the big bang, all particles in this known universe are entangled and space is an illusion that makes everything appear as separate objects.

and then the film switches gears and focuses a lot on spirituality and a lot less science..which seem to not connect entirely, but you get notes like these…

+ Human intentions affect the outcome of reality. Experiments have shown that there are instances where people’s intention will affect random generation (there were some examples, but i’m too lazy to type out). People affect reality through thoughts.

+ Experiments on the message of water. Water particles that are frozen form different images based on the thought intent or word placed on the water. (The film said that 90% of our body is made from water, but I found in other places that our bodies contain 50-60% water weight. I have wrote in the past on how thoughts affect your body here and here).

Some picture examples
The message of water home page

+ Experiments were then made to see if these intent that affect experiments were happening in real time. They recorded clicks that can be heard in the left and right ear separately and then stored one copy of it in the vault. Then they had someone place their intent on the audio tape asking them to make the left clicks occur more frequently than the right clicks, then when they replayed the audio, both the one that they had and the original one in the vault both showed more clicks in the left ear than the right ear. This suggests that the person’s intent didn’t affect the audio at the moment it was playing, but the thought moved backwards in time and affected it at the moment it was being generated.

+ don’t blame organized religion, blame human insecurity

+ An addiction is something you can’t stop. We get into situations to fulfill the biochemical cravings of the cells of our body by creating situations to meet our chemical need. So if you can’t control your emotional state, then you must be addicted to it.

+ The hypothalumus releases neuropeptides into the blood stream the regulates your body’s hormones and emotions. Done experiments to animals where they hooked up a lever to activate the neuropeptide in the body. The animals who choose the neuropetide release over hunger, thirst, sex and sleep to the point of physical exhaustion before it would take care of itself. That’s what stress does to us. We are so addicted to the stress that we can’t quit our job or leave a relationship because it doesn’t serve us.

I read some of the reviews on this movie afterwards, and it seems that the general scientific community do not accept some of these implications.  However, the one thing I completely agree with in this movie is that there is no real objective reality.  Everything is subjective to your mind.  What is considered fast?  Who is fat? How much money is enough money?  Who determines these things?  Thus, if you’re not happy with something, it is only because you’re forcing yourself not to be happy.  There’s no reason why you can’t change your mindset to look at the bright side of things.

As someone who had a major ankle injury over the past 4 weeks, I must say I’m very grateful that I have a healthy body with 4 healthy limbs.  I haven’t been able to fully sprint and jump with full power yet, but I’m getting close.  Do you realize how much we take for granted just to have a healthy body.  The next time you’re mad or angry or sad about something, think of the bright side of the situation.  Are you really in that bad of a position?

Life is good, and if you don’t believe so, you can only blame yourself.