Trip to China — part 3: where am I now

This is more about things after the trip to China.

While I was in China, many times I have to multitask. It is not real multitask since at every moment I am still just doing one thing. But there are just many things coming at you almost the same time. My father just gave me the pictures in the past years to look at. In 2 seconds, my Mom wanted to talk to me about something. Then in 2 seconds, my father handed me an old device to fix. While in US, for most of the time, I work just by myself. It is quite different when you are living in your own culture.

At the time of my departure, although my Chinese was still not totally recovered, I realized that that state of mind I have then in China will take me forever to achieve in the states (given that I have no free control of my time in US).

When turning my back and walking away from my parents at the airport, my heart sank and I knew I was again walking towards a long period of extreme solitude.

As I was totally despaired with China, I was determined to take all the pains in US and overcome the difficulties. I was prepared to sacrifice my life. Even though I won’t have a life in US, I am hoping that I can contribute my knowledge and work with other people to build up the Open Source Learning and Grassroots Web here.

While I was in China, I realized that speaking Chinese didn’t interfere very much with my English any more. My English is already in the process of forming a layer and binding my consciousness together. Before my trip, I had stopped speaking any Chinese for about half a year and got used to thinking everything in English. I was glad that this newly formed layer of language and consciousness is becoming stronger. While in the states, after getting familiar with words in the daily life, I started expanding my vocabulary into the domains of math, physics, biology, chemistry and so on, and this helped bringing back a lot of old knowledge and consciousness a long time ago.

As my consciousness is growing here in the states, I know I need to have a higher level of social interaction in order to hold all my consciousness together. So there is a need for me to upgrade my activities.

Thus I decided to cut off my social contacts for the time being, as I need to focus on finishing my Open Source Learning software. I feel finally it is time for me to engage in doing OSL activities directly and interact with society on a higher level.

At the same time, because I found out what I have lost in China, I felt I need to make up for my loved ones. So I need to keep in touch with them. I also start to write a blog in Chinese for them, hoping this would be an effective way of communication with them.

All these prove to be too much for me. I tried to expand the space too big and now it collapsed.

I was supposed to keep solidifying the layer of English based consciousness. However, I was trying to bring the two worlds (English and Chinese) consciousness together. It proved to be too much for me. I remember that just building up the layer of English based consciousness was enough to consume all of my energy.

At the same time, I also felt reluctant to plunge into that extreme solitude again and cut off my Chinese connection totally. In the past 9 years, every time I gathered all my energy and tried to overcome English in a few months, I only ended up been defeated a few months later. I kept trying this over and over again all these years, gathering all my energy to fight only to be defeated and frustrated again a few months later. I am afraid I am developing a severe bipolar disorder because of this. It is said that the definition of insanity is that you keep trying the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. I guess I am quite insane. So knowing that I won’t have enough time to take on this task, I am reluctant to dive into it again.

The restraints that US government puts on foreigners just make it way too difficult for me.

As I was trying to focus on writing the software for the past few months, it was also very difficult for me now.

When I first came to this country, because of a lot of love I had from my home country, it is enough for me to go into a long time of solitude without problem.  But as time goes by, this reservoir is getting exhausted. It is becoming extremely difficult for me to lock myself up and work on a project for a long time. About 5 years after I came to US, this reservoir is almost emptied. My creativity is all dried up. Now I find it extremely difficult to work on a project a little longer. After cutting off my social contacts and trying to focus on the project, I realize that my reality in US is that I have to survive and have a life first. If I don’t have a life here, I cannot do anything.

Coming to US, I put myself in the position of slave in order to work on osl and gw here. 9 years later, I am reaching my limit. I cannot make any progress here anymore.

I don’t mind living poor or taking pains. I am willing to do all kinds of work in order to learn English and to know American society. But the restraints that are put on foreigners make me lose free control of my time. If I have a choice, I would rather not to work so I can fully focus on what I need to do now. If I have free control of time, I only need two years to overcome English and culture (now at most one year). But without free control of my time, it is taking forever.

The revolution in America

In America, a revolution is happening now. Actually it is better to be called Evolution. It is not very much recognized by the public so far since it is has been going mostly peacefully. The impact of this evolution to human society is going to far exceed that of American revolution 200 years ago.

The evolution, is essentially to transform from a mass production society to a society of empowering individuals. And this transformation is achieved through the change from the mass production of physical product to the bottom up peer production of social product.

The old American system is to serve the mass production. The mass production requires that the workers work like part of the machine on the assembly line. Mass production demands a single national market. All these requires people to be dumbed down. Thus Scientific Management was invented. According to SM, we don’t need many people doing management in mass production. So we only need 10% of the population to be smart and work as the brain. The other 90% should be dumbed down and work as hands and legs and managed by the brains. Compulsory schooling is the mechanism to dumb people down.

But America is going through a historical transformation. The percentage of manufacturing is going down significantly for a long time. And the production of social product is exploding. The so called physical products are stuff like food and clothing. Social product is stuff like music or social needs. There are many levels of social needs, and thus we need many different social products to meet those needs. In the mass production of physical products, only product that is demanded on a massive scale will be produced. As web reduces the cost of transaction and connects people together, the production of social product is exploding in the scale of billions of times. Understanding of all kinds of innovation in web2.0 should be put under this background.

The production model of social product is very different from that of physical product. The mass production of physical product requires making 90% of the population dumb, and let the capitalists coordinate all elements of production. The capital is the dictating position. But in the production of social product, individual creativity must be the center. It needs individuals capable of independent thinking and innovation. Money is reduced to a supporting role. In the production of social product, the musicians are no longer money-making tools of the capitalists. Because of web, the musicians can face their audience directly, and produce their own music.

Below I am going to describe some characteristics of the production model of social product. (The purpose of this article is to convey a message. So I am not going to do complex analysis. I will be very brief in describe those characteristics.)

In the mass production of the physical product, the physical product is a scarce resource. In the production of social product, however, people’s attention is the scarce resource. Social products are competing for people’s attention. People’s attention is limited. So the best solution wins.

There are many levels of social needs, thus there are many ways of organization to meet those needs. For example, these organizations can be made in-time, and exists temporally. Its birth and death depend on the needs of the society. The scope of the organizations can also be very different. It can be global. Or it can be very local, serving the local communities. (Hints: this is very much like computer programming.)

The production of social product is going to increase massively by billions of times, and the ways of organizations will also increase similarly. All these are the enrichment of the social sphere. They go way beyond what the government can govern and what the copy-right can take control. The production of social product must be a bottom up, self-organizing way of production, relying heavily on individuals creativity in meeting the social needs.

In the era of social product, individuals’ hobbies become the most important thing. People don’t have to work for survival. Most people are going to choose work that they really like to do. In the past, it can be very difficult to be an independent artist. But in the age of social product, independent artists are not going to be choice of a few, but mainstream way of life. The social idealism of many generations is going to be realized in our hands. Play, pursuit of love and beauty, are the peaceful forces of human society. In our time, these peaceful forces are going to be the dominate forces that drive the history.

In America, the corporates are getting stronger and stronger. They control the fabric of American life. The national identity of America is greatly strengthened. And the capitalists are using the state machine to exploit the people, such as huge national defense budget, sale of weapons, and stir up wars around the world. America is losing what is America. America is losing the independence and freedom of its early era. In the new era, the old system that was built for the mass production of physical product is no longer suited for the new production of social product. The tension is building up. In this crisis, Americans are reflecting on their system from many angles. The victory of Obama reflected people’s strong desire for change. However, the election of Obama can only make the crisis continue getting worse, since Obama doesn’t really represent the interest of people. Obama’s victory is the victory of the big corporates. Fortunately, the power of the grassroots is getting stronger with the help of the web. So I feel that this revolution in America, if there is no any accident, should keep going peacefully. This is going to be the first peaceful revolution of mankind.

Trip to China — part 2

I put off for a long time to write about my trip to China, despite some friends’ request. They don’t know how despaired I am from this trip. I am in total despair, knowing that it is impossible for me to do what I want to do (Open Source Learning) in China. But coming back to the states, I am again faced with another impossibility: to learn English and American culture while having no free control of my time. It is one billion times more difficult to do what I want to do in China than in US. It is also one billion times more difficult for me to learn of American culture and society without free control of my time. I have to choose a place to base my activities. It is a very difficult decision. I am supposed to spend a lot of time to go back and forth between these two countries to figure this out. But I don’t even have the time to do that. This is my dilemma.  What I know is that doing this in China will be a lot of struggles and a lot of pains, but it is a life. Doing this in US is totally another kind of pain. It is pain of no life, or painless pain.

Economically speaking, like everyone coming back from China said, it is of great difference from 9 years ago. For manufacturing capacity, now China can produce cars fully domestically (not relying on import of parts). (9 years ago, we couldn’t even build our own cars.) And a new line to make airplanes is about to be built this year. China still lacks in the ability to make sophisticated instruments such as medical instruments.

All these progress is not surprising to me. And I have expected this kind of change 9 years ago according to the progress then. It is a solid progress, but not much to boast of. There are still a lot of things that China cannot build. And the product from China is still mainly of lower skill levels. US is still the dominate manufacturing country of the world. http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2007/05/23/the_us_is_still_the_worlds_big/ People who have more data on this matter can comment on this.

The coastal cities are a lot more developed. All my friends are living a much better life than mine in America (But that might just be because I am burning myself in America). But my feeling is that if you put all the money in the few big cities, you can make these big cities as pretty as you want. I didn’t have time to travel to rural areas of China, so I cannot really comment on this. But I did pick a new expression in the Chinese language. People now like to talk about “the first tier cities” (referring to the four big cities in China), and the second tier cities (a dozen smaller cities in China). It sounds like a new class system. It sounds like that all the cities other than the first tier and the second tier don’t exist.

About the prices of merchandises in China, if it is of really good quality, it is about the same price as US. But people in China are buying them with lower salary. I learned of this when buying clothing and eye glasses in China. For the communication fee, the cost is about the same level as the cost in US. But people in China is paying for that with a lot less salary. There are a lot more variety of products in the store. I guess it might be because of more people there.

People in Beijing are dressed very well and clean. With the clean and bright subway cars, I guess this is what Japan and Korea are like.

E-commerce seems to be starting. Online shopping is made easier. Credit card usage doesn’t seem to be popular, but it is available. Other means of payment for online shopping are available and seem to be more preferred.

My friend in Shanghai was able to quickly find a pharmacy store nearby using his cell phone.

As far as I have gathered, there seems to be more protection of the poor, such as social security welfare. The disabled people are more taken care of. As I witnessed on a subway in Beijing, people’s responses to the disabled people begging for money on the subway are similar to people’s responses in New York. No one stared at their disfigured faces. Quite some people have generosity to give money to the disabled. I felt quite glad to see that.

About going green, I saw solar panels on top of very regular apartment buildings in Beijing. And the street lights are powered by solar panels.  The cars have to take breaks during the week to go on the roads (I don’t remember how many days break a week). The plastic bags are almost completely eliminated. I couldn’t see plastic bags in the super market. You have to pay quite some significant amount of money to buy a plastic bag.

What put me into total despair is that the market place of ideas is dormant. The media is dead. The internet is stupid (interrupted services of google.com and wikipedia, no access to all the major blogging sites such as livejournal and wordpress. The largest open source site sourceforge.org used to be baned, but the ban is lifted now. If you want to access internet in the internet cafes, you have to show your id and register.). The challenge and hope of the world is whether the west and the east can truly learn from each other and reinvent itself in the new age. I am seeing this going on in the states. But in China, it is becoming more and more dormant. China was forced to adopt the western system in the past. But now with our humiliated history long past, people don’t have the urgency to learn from the west anymore. People’s energy is only allowed to be expressed in making money. This is not healthy.

9 years of absence from China is a very long time. What I found out during this trip is that as I was trapped in my endless struggle in America, many bad things have happened to my loved ones in China. I feel very bad that I wasn’t there to prevent those things from happening. What I feared the most have already happened. My life is already screwed up. What I have lost is tantamount to killing myself.

You cannot imagine how much I have sacrificed for coming to America. However, I don’t consider it a sacrifice since on a deeper level I know this is what I chose to do for my life. I put myself into a position of slave and a very long extended period of extreme solitude in order to do Open Source Learning and Grassroots Web in America. Many of you are fans of Obama. I wish you can tell me what he has sacrificed for America? There are a lot of people in the grassroots community doing real sacrifices. If you want to give your trust to a politician, you have to ask what he has sacrificed personally. Otherwise you will just have your trust cast in vain since he is not going to make any personal sacrifice to do what need to be done in America. As he is your president, I don’t deserve to live in America as a free person.

A few principles of life

I summarized a few principles that I hold up to in my life:
Never be afraid of hardworking and taking pains when you need to,
Never get lost, always be awake,
Never do something that you will regret later,
Never lose the direct connection with the world.

Woman is stillness, man is dynamic

Note: Writing this in America or in the west, I think many people will accuse me of sexism. I just hope people don’t take me seriously.

Dynamic is to admit that life is a dynamic evolving process,
it is to admit that life has limitation,
so you need to expand to pursue the perfection,
this is the source of man;
Stillness is the source of the world,
the world is already perfect,
this is the source of woman.
The life of man is to pursue the perfection of infinite large,
the life of woman is to return to the perfection of infinite small.
Because of woman, man can reach the infinite large,
since the world is already perfect.
Losing the stillness and easiness, there is no way to reach the infinite large.
Because of man, woman can truly return to the perfection of infinite small,
since the world has many limitation and you have to learn how to face them.
The world is in fact in an evolving process. The stillness has to be achieved in the dynamic.
The perfection of infinite large and infinite small,
are the same kind of perfection.
This world,
is very perfect, is also very limited.
It is still, it is also dynamic.
Stillness and dynamic are of the same body,
it was split into two,
seeking and seeking,
full of wonders.
Every entity,
is already perfect.
The so called male and female,
are just stubbornness.

When you totally rest

When you totally rest, your mind stops differentiating. You realize the world as one and you feel it is actually pretty good to feel that way (I mean you have the peace).

Life is moving very quickly. Follow the flow. Then there is peace.

When you move, you stay with one. When you don’t stay with one, there is karma. To go into more details here, when you cannot stay with one, there is a self that is separated out and you start doing things catering to the interest of that separated self (thus the so called self-generated activities), then there is karma, which means you will have to make more efforts to make up for it. So it is better to just stay with one.

Play, learn, create, and friends

We human beings have limitation. To live in the dynamic life process, it helps to have some very simple minimum guidelines in your mind. What helps me in practice is: only three things to do — play, learn, and create (I have posted on this a lot. They are the basic living activities.); friends (Friendship is the most basic human relationship. All other relations, such as parents, siblings, lovers, have no base if there is no friendship.). These are the most basic reality. Just keeping them in mind when your mind wonder wasting time in emotions like anger, being sentimental and so on. These are basic feelings and you can start experiencing immediately. They will easily get you on the path, and you can start just doing the activity quickly. When you are following the flow of the world, you can have the peace and the absolute.

Don’t learn Buddhism

Don’t expect Buddhism can solve all your problems.  This is modern time and human civilizations have accumulated a lot of knowledge. As an individual, you have the responsibility to learn the knowledge to function responsibly in this world. You need to rely on thinking because you cannot see society clearly. That is the limitation of human being. If you are able to learn of the human world both horizontally (across different geographic regions) and vertically (historically), you will be able to see and act without thinking.

Human beings are limited, and we don’t know everything. When we need to carry out responsibilities that require us to obtain knowledge that is outside of our existing scope, we need to know how to obtain that knowledge. But it is not always easy to learn of new knowledge. So sometimes thinking helps, to a degree. But by thinking, we also easily send us to a path of confusion. I will not go into details here since it will require a lot more words to describe.

But when we are carrying out things that don’t really require us to obtain a lot of new knowledge, for example, brushing the teeth after getting up in the morning, we just stay with what we already know. There is no thinking. Then your consciousness is perfect and there is no problem at all. You are directly connected to the world and there is no anxiety. With that, even you encounter situations that require you to obtain new knowledge, you know how to learn without thinking. Also you need to know that you will never be able to know everything. So it is fine to just do according to what you already know now. When you just do that, your consciousness is perfect and you have no problem.

With all that said, how do you start your practice? When you brush your teeth, just brush your teeth. When you eat, just eat. When you sleep, just sleep. If you are able to do that in these simple situations, it will be easier for you when it comes to more complex situations, especially situations that require learning.

Don’t learn Buddhism. But find your own way of how you want to live your life. If Buddhism can be of any help in that regard, it is a big blessing. You don’t really need to learn Buddhism if you can just see what is going on.

Let society change me

I found this from an old note of mine (more than 3 years ago), and felt it an interesting thing to post here. So far below is the original note and I didn’t make any change.

Let me become a social person. Let society change me.

There is no such a thing as a Chinese community in US. Those Chinese work in American companies and schools. They buy stuff from American stores. They participate in American economy. They need to abide by American laws. There are no Chinese music, movies… So there is no such thing as a Chinese community. They just have no community, no society. They still read Chinese news (news from China), watch Chinese movies, but that is from a society on the other side of the planet, in which they don’t participate at all. Without a community, without society, how can they establish themselves as human beings? To become a full human being, they have to participate fully in this American society, in the local community. When I was in China, participation in society greatly changed me. I grow from a person confined by family to a person of society, bearing social responsibility and participating actively in society. There are many people who didn’t finish this process and thus still confined by small family things. There are people who become socialized totally unconsciously and trapped in all the negative things of a culture. Even so, I still have to say, no matter how negative a culture or society is, we have to fully participate in it. That is the only way we can realize ourselves as social human being. At the same time, it is important to go beyond. Human beings are never just by themselves. Human beings are always under various circumstances. To be a full human being, I have to know and encounter those cirmstances. I cannot just be myself. (I focused too much on software these years, although it was well needed. Doing book reading for too long is really a bad thing.) Let me DO things. Let me encounter all those circumstances. Let me fully participate. (Actually software study is also full of circumstances. It is actually what it is about.) Instead of always complaining (which is symptom of bookworm), I should embrace the circumstances. Work with them. As I was sitting in the deep night, I suddenly realize that this night is exactly the same nights I have experienced when I was in China. No matter how different America is from China, the nights are exactly the same. We felt a lot of difference just because the culture put on a cover on it. Although with different covers, the things underneath the covers are the same. Yes, the nights are exactly the same. I have exactly the same feelings aroused by the quite noisy nights. Oversea Chinese are disguised by the difference of the covers and refuse to know more about this new cover in the fear of losing their culture identity. However, by refusing to know about this new cover, they also lose the most important thing, which is the night underneath the cover. They cannot feel the night again. Their feelings are lost. This is how I feel after coming to US. I lost all those strong feelings. They used to be so strong. I wonder how they can get lost. But after I went back China for a visit, those strong feelings come back to me again and I have to tell myself that those feelings are true. It might be relatively easy to enjoy the nights again. We might just need to get rid of anxiety, close our eyes and forget the different covers, listen to the sound, then it will take us back to those feelings. This is how I have felt in those naps. I always flew back to China in those naps. But to enjoy the human relations, to enjoy a culture, which nurture human’s feelings of sound, pictures… , is a lot more difficult. This is how I lost my creativity. To be a social person again, to be a fully-fledged human being again, is difficult. This is how I was again confined by many small things. I want to enjoy the nights again. I want to be creative again. I want to be socialized again. Then I will see those things underneath again: the nights, the beautiful scenery and the beautiful human being. I guess humanitarian is to care about the respectful human being under various conditions. I guess this is one of the things I learned the most from the west. As there is no enough concern in oversea Chinese to understand the conditions we are in, I hope to raise such concerns. It is a tragedy that so many people live in a foreign land as FOREIGNERS for their lives. If we think ourselves as humanitarians, we have to care about this.

self exists

People practicing Buddhism know that Buddhism teaches of no-self. But here I want to tell you that self exists.

Why do I say self exists? Self exits because you have it.

People like to say that there is no self because you cannot find a solid separate independent entity as self. Saying that sounds like there is a solid separate independent entity of something else. Buddhism doesn’t deny existence.  So what exists then?

I say self exists also because we probably can find a material basis for that self. If we envision (surely we are speculating a little here) every thought like a bubble in your mind, then concept of self also have a material basis. When you have a concept of self, probably there is some material generated and it stands in between your being and your direct experience. So this self is quite real and it hinders you from performing your activities. When you have a self, that self keeps doing self-generated activities. So all your problems come up.

However，Buddhism insists that there is no self. That is just because Buddhism is very stubborn, and many people don’t understand that.

As we are living our lives, e.g. as we are doing our activities, we have a self which is embraced by our past (memory) and future (expectation). Otherwise, how do you know what you want to do next? How do you make decisions? The self is also embraced by inside and outside. The split of male and female is the different take on that split of inside and outside. So you have a self. And we say that self is born out of the parents of past and future, inside and outside (subject and object). You recognize the world because of the split of subject and object. Although the self is born, it doesn’t have to be separate from its parents. The parents will take care of the self. However, if the self is separated from the parents, all problems come up. When you are just doing the activity, you still recognize things and you are functioning. But your self is not separated from your parents. This is a big topic, we can talk about this in another post.

So we see how terriblely wrong it is to just blankly state that there is no self.

The Dharma Brothers

I watched the screening of this movie about one month ago. The prisoners in the movie had practiced in a very sincere way. Here are just some quotes from them (I don’t remember the exact words, so it is more a paraphrase):

“it is ok if i don’t get out of here for life. But it will be very sad if i die without having known my self…”

“just sit, have the courage to face myself”

Just these already made them far better than many Buddhism teachers.

Trip to China — part 1

I write this as a journey of consciousness. The whole thing might seem to be very strange to you. I guess you can just read it for fun.

I had thought that I might have overwhelming emotions when the horizon of China appeared before me, just like the last time I went back 7 years ago. But to my surprise, this time I didn’t feel very emotional as the airplane arrived at China.

For quite a few days during my stay in China, I felt like a stranger in my own country. It was quite like how I felt when I first came to US 9 years ago. I had the same task as when I first came to US: to melt into the local culture.

However, the difference is that although I had problem expressing myself in Chinese, I didn’t have much problem understanding what people were saying. I guess that made the whole difference. As I was listening to people’s stories, my feelings came back to me gradually and became stronger and stronger. My heart got stirred up and I started to have responses to things happening in China.

I went back to the city I went for college. Walking on the campus, I felt like in a dream. How many times while I was in US during my nap times I dreamed that I went back to China, to that city? It was so hard to believe that I was finally back. Walking on the campus, a whole layer of memory was dug out. Finally I felt the memory was connected. It was like that my memory was stored in that city. Only by going back to that city, could I have access to those memories.

Gradually my emotions grew and I felt strongly to be part of the country again. Then it was the time to be apart. It already became difficult to say goodbye again.

It was only a one-month trip. Many times, I was still uncertain whether I was expressing myself right in Chinese. Another goal of my trip is to try to get the creativity back. But it doesn’t seem one month is long enough to get the creativity back. I already knew this before I went back. So this trip is a half assed trip.

After I came back to US, for a couple of weeks, I felt something very unsettled in my heart. I had to take a walk in the park, and try to pinpoint what it was. It was a realization that my life in China is a very important part of my past. I cannot write it off. Too many people, too many things of my past in it. With that memory back, I feel more like a complete person. Similarly I cannot write off my life in US as well.

Start posting soon

Sorry I haven’t been able to post much on this blog recently. After returning from China, I opened a Chinese blog so I can write for my parents, relatives and friends in China. This trip made me realize that I owed them too much all these years. There were many sad things that wouldn’t have happened if I were in China. I feel very bad about it and try to make up for it.

Sunshine cleaning

There is no big drama in this movie. But this movie managed to touch the deepest spot of everyone’s heart. The content of the movie is something that everyone has in their lives, e.g. the feelings and emotions with your family members and being faced with life and death in your life.

Just watched the Counterfeiter the other night, which is a flawlessly executed movie. But it didn’t move me very much since I had expected everything from that kind of movie. I even started to suspect that movies don’t do with me anymore. However, Sunshine Cleaning is really not expected. Simple things, but managed to touch the deepest spot of the heart.

No solid and separate entity as self

I heard of this expression a lot. When people talk about no self or no ego they often say it is because there is no solid and separate entity as self. It sounds like there are solid and separate entities of other things. If you want to talk about existence or non-existence, I can say nothing exists.

Actually I can argue that there is ego or self, because you have it.

Furthermore, if we speculate that every thought has material basis we can try to visualize every thought as a bubble that emerge from your mind. So the concept of self is like a bubble standing between your being and sense of perception. Because this separation, at that moment, you cannot hear the sound. Your ears heard of the sound. But you don’t.

So I am speculating that the concept of self actually has a material basis, which means it is actually real. But Buddhism says the self is not real. Buddhism insists so only because you don’t need that concept of self and it doesn’t do you any good.

Relationship and Buddhism practice

Listened to the talk given by Purna Steinitz of the Trimurti Ashram in the IDP.

Since he didn’t leave much time for asking questions, I didn’t get the chance to ask my question. But here you are.

First I want to make some modification to his definition of relationship. He said relationship is to observe the other being… I would like to change it to that relationship is to realize the other being IS yourself.

He put a lot of emphasis on practicing Buddhism in the relationship. Since Buddhism practice is about realizing your self, I would ask him to dive deeper into explaining how to practice realizing the self in the relationship. When do you have a self? When you don’t have self? He said in a relationship you still need to ask what you want. He also said it is after 10 (?) years of relationship he started to realize something different. What is it then?

Driving all blames into one self–about absolute and relative

Heard of “Driving all blames into one self” in IDP discussion. If you are not there in the discussion, this might not make too much sense to you. Or it might.

This is a good case to illustrate the meaning of the absolute and the relative. Or what you called big mind and small mind. Actually I don’t like calling them big mind and small mind. Let’s just use absolute and relative.

When you know you are willing to take all the blames if it is needed, that is the absolute. But when do you need to take blames and when you shouldn’t? That is the relative. You have to figure it out in different situations. This is the human context. You have to learn it in the human context. How do you learn it? You have to use your self to learn it. So you use your self to engage in a dynamic process. Since you rely on your self, it is easy for people to generate the illusion of self (details of how the illusion of self is generated skipped here). After the illusion of self is generated, it blocks you from perceiving the absolute. You start to have concerns of yourself. Then what do you do? You do your sitting meditation, going back to the absolute, to what you already know. After you get up from the cushion, you engage in the dynamic life process again. You repeat this over and over again. This is Buddhism practice.

This is just a very simplified description of the process to give you the idea. You can apply absolute and relative to all human situations. So if you keep this in mind, we can explain more based on this as we study Buddhism.

To give another example of absolute and relative, It is like when I was trying to teach Buddhism in China. I had to adjust the teaching according to their way of thinking. Generally speaking, Chinese are very direct. They don’t rely much on knowledge construct. As long as they get it, it is ok. Westerners, however, are very different. Westerners tend to start with knowledge construct, trying to classify things into different categories. So even you give them the direct experience, later they still have the strong tendency of wanting to put that into some kind of theory framework. Thus Buddhism is always the same. But to teach these different people, I have to adjust the methods. While I was in China, I also have to push myself to use their languages. The language constructs are also very different in different cultures. I have to find what is already in their language construct and culture to base the teaching on. Coming back to US, again I need to adjust to the more theoretic approach that westerners are used to.

song of Maradona

Note: I don’t know if you recognize the following lyric. I am not sure it is originally written for Maradona. I got it from the recent movie on Maradona. Maradona was singing this song himself.

In a slum I was born, it was god’s will
that I grow up and survive
This humble example to face adversity
Eager to succeed in life. With each step I took

On the playground I forged an immortal left hand.
With experience A buringing ambition to make it
As a young buck, I dreamed of the world cup
And rising to the top in Primera
Perhaps by playing I could help my family

From the very outset
The Doce cheered
My dream contained a star
Full of goals and dodges
And all the people sang
The Hand of God was born
Sowed joy in the people
Brought glory to this land

Bearing a cross on my shoulders for being the best
For not selling out I confronted the powerful
Curious weakness if Jesus stumbled
Why shouldn’t I too
Fame introduced me to a white woman
Of mysterious taste and forbidden pleasure
Who addicted me to the desire to use her again
Taking my whole life
And this is a match that someday
I am going to win

From the very outset
The Doce cheered
My dream contained a star
Full of goals and dodges
And all the people sang
The Hand of God was born
Sowed joy in the people
Brought glory to this land

Python Design Philosophy and the Principle of Playing

Read of Python’s Design Philosophy on python Python’s BDFL’s blog.

Below I quote those lines that clearly embodies the principle of playing.

BTW, from that blog post, I can see why python succeeded where abc didn’t.

Do one thing well (The “UNIX philosophy”)–this is exactly the principle of playing.

A large complex system should have multiple levels of extensibility. This maximizes the opportunities for users, sophisticated or not, to help themselves.

“Things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.” — surely the essence of principle of playing. This is very important for people to be able to play together.

Borrow ideas from elsewhere whenever it makes sense.– the principle of playing emphasizing on playing with each other. Borrowing ideas is an extended form of playing with each other.

Don’t try for perfection because “good enough” is often just that.

(Hence) it’s okay to cut corners sometimes, especially if you can do it right later.

Don’t bother users with details that the machine can handle (I didn’t always follow this rule and some of the of the disastrous consequences are described in later sections).

Support and encourage platform-independent user code, but don’t cut off access to platform capabilities or properties (This is in sharp contrast to Java.)

Don’t waste your life on anything including Buddhism

I have been to many Buddhism centers in New York. What I saw is that very often the teachers were the confused ones. The teachers learned a lot of words. So they threw the words at the students. But the teachers didn’t really understand the teaching, and they mixed different things together, just making students more and more confused. (It is ok for the very beginners since they never heard of Buddhism. So it is good for them to hear something of Buddhism that they rarely heard of. But if those beginners come back with the same questions after one year’s practice, these teachers will not be able to answer them.) I guess the worst thing for a Buddhism practitioner is to encounter a wrong teacher. When you feel you are following a wrong teacher, you should leave immediately. Stay away from those lost talkers.

I used to think it was ok for them to follow those wrong teachers as long as the practitioners felt they were learning something. But recently I realized that many students were just wasting their time. If they are learning anything, they are learning it very slowly. Since they wasted so much time learning Buddhism from a wrong teacher, they don’t have time to explore other opportunities of learning. Have they had the time to be exposed to other things especially the wonders of life, they will realize they are wasting their time with the wrong teacher. But since they are trapped with the wrong teachers, they might just waste their whole life without realizing it until it is too late.

Furthermore, when this kind of teachers and this kind of students meet each other, they reinforce each other’s stupidity. It can be quite deceiving because what they are talking about sounds a lot like truth. But it is quite the opposite. Thus it is not difficult for religions to find a large following. (On the other hand, of course, any kind of religion has to make some kind of sense.)

Thus, don’t be afraid of pains of life. Keep expanding your horizon. It is ok for you to stop practicing Buddhism for a while if you haven’t encountered a good teacher and if you are not making much progress anyway. After a few years, you will come back and understand Buddhism more if you have kept on growing and hadn’t wasted your time.

What I said here applies to those teachers as well. You don’t have to trap yourself in teaching Buddhism. You could have learned much more if you didn’t waste too much of your time wasting other people’s lives. It is difficult to do no harm, right? If you are wasting your own life or wasting other people’s lives, you are doing harm as well. How big is the harm of wasting other people’s lives? In my view, it is only second to killing people.

When I was in college, there was a Nobel Prize scholar who came back to campus to give a talk. He said college life is important time of your life because this is the time of your life that you can learn a lot of things. His point was that we should focus on our study in school, treasuring the opportunities of learning in school. I agreed that college ages are the time of life to learn tremendously. But I thought I could have learned much more if I wasn’t trapped in school. It was the golden time of my life and I learned tremendously. But I felt if I was not bound by the school, I could have learned much more.

So if you are not learning with your fastest speed, you are wasting your time. When you feel you are wasting your time, just look around and see if there is something else you should do.