In unexpected moments in life, an insight, an epiphany, a beautiful question, or an answer pops out of nowhere.
I have forgotten a lot of them because of the sheer arrogance of my ability to remember.
Work in progress: I try to jot them down immediately since some of these can be life altering moments.
Maybe 200 years from now, we will be laughed at for embracing moronic concentration of power by not lack of knowledge in neuroscience but unwillingness to connect the obvious dots between knowledge, action and inability to change.
Yes, there are regular "columns" about the foolishness of multi-tasking but yet we elect officials, presidents to multitask. We celebrate CEOs and so-called corporate leaders who multi-task. Even worse, we expect the same from doctors, nurses, cops, and fire fighters.
They just don't multi-task. Their role and responsibility is to tackle, understand, and solve the new problem, issue et al at a spur of the moment while still solving the issue at hand and yesterday's unsolved issue. Oh yeah, they also need to deal with family, celebrations, mundanity, issues and sickness. Watch news, tv, movies, and sports.
And they need to eat, poop, workout, and sleep.
All this in 24 hours of time.
No living being can do this. Lions don't chase Zebra's 24 hours a day nor do crocodiles. No living organism does this.
Humans cannot eat, read while doing pull ups.
But yet, our entire civilization, economy, politics, is built around the fabric of few humans who are capable of doing pulls while popping, eating and reading.
The real issue is the messed up dichotomy of mind and body. There is no dichotomy. The mind is not magic. It is an organic matter with limited capabilities.
Plus we breed smaller humans to make life altering decisions at 18 with their underdeveloped prefrontal cortex.
It seems that the entire complexity of human civilization is built on Robert Trivers’ fragile ground of self-deception.
The meta value here is - if one can not do any of the above, focus on few important things that matter in their limited time - one can not only thrive but have a wonderful and peaceful life.
The meditation of life is the ability to understand the self-evidence of current matters before it becomes self-evident to the masses years or worse decades from now.
In order for something to be self-evident, stick to fundamentals for everything. If humanity lacks fundamental knowledge then it's not a self-evident candidate.
I don't listen to everything that my mind thinks. Most of it is bull shit.
The trick is to curate it constantly so the mind learns to produce less garbage over time.
And remember "Mind" comes from the body which also includes the heart, brain, lungs, all other organs, microbiome and god knows what else we don't know.
What I think is a cumulation of all those and more.
Conversely, the irony is that being mindful of these cumulations so that the thoughts are grounded in reality so that my thoughts are less of a bull shit,
Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.
Around the time Max came into my life, that famous quote from Kant sounded wonderful and I got hooked.
Now with Max in me, the things that amazes me, create awe and wonder in me are the simple and mundane ones.
In other words, I grew out of that macro quote, and started focusing on micro ones.
What creates awe is how tiny microbes create my morality? How did Moss and Lichens survive when Dinosaurs went extinct and how are they still surviving during this Anthropocene?
How do I exist in an organic form? How do birds and fish recognize individual humans while I cannot?
How do humans do what they do knowing their mortality?
Most of those questions weren't in the realm of questions around the time I was born, I am glad these are not only questions but we have some rudimentary answers to them too.
How much of unknown truths come to light when I am gone?
The biggest of questions are the ones that haven't even entered the realm of questions.
What are the questions that we are not even asking now?
It's a shame humans suffer and die of dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases when such thrilling questions need to be answered.
A habit or trait which I once thought is "part" of me or worse "defines" me miraculously vaporizes one fine day.
Observing that moment when an "is" becomes "was " enthralls me with awe and wonder.
I feel I am maturing, growing and changing as a living being.
Hence I look forward to aging and embrace it.
I am glad I am growing old.
In life, the most important traits in everything boils down to three P's.
Patience, Persistence, and Perseverance.
The sooner you grasp that, the better your life will be.
Mine happened at 31 when Max came into my life.
There aren't too many ways people avoid talking about the immense pain and suffering people cause to our fellow non-human animals we share this planet with.
We evolved to eat meat as one, arguing, I don't care, language, I am busy, victimhood (yeah) and only a few more along this trend.
But the most common and potent one is "Humor".
Yes, people change the subject using some sly comment and avoid the topic. This is not related to only animal suffering but also this trick is used by many to avoid their cognitive dissonance in difficult and important topics.
My value is to catch this act while happening and not get angry but yet not laugh. I remember, and use the same humor during their difficult times and change the topic.
Might sound harsh, yes and this is my little pay back for the immense suffering they cause to our fellow non-human animals.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
- Voltaire
Meta Values - 9 - - There shouldn't be confusion about courage.
Men and women who perceive the world as us vs them and have nothing better to do than fight has nothing to with courage.
Their boredom and need to perpetually fight sometimes masquerade into patriotism, or other bullshit.
These men and women cannot tolerate being in peaceful moments and leave alone a peaceful world.
Standing up for truth needs courage. Violence and fighting are just one part of courage.
Courage means changing one's mind. Courage means civil disobedience to tackle wrongs. Courage means being silent when time calls and not making things worse. Courage means patience. Courage has multitudes of faces.
I tried meditation for 8 years without significant "insights" then I realized being with Max, we are not meditating for 20 minutes or a few hours but instead we are living a meditative life.
My life and every moment in it is meditation in itself with my awareness fueling it as much humanely as I could.
To state the obvious - have values in life. Specifically, because of impermanence meta-values are better than values.
Most of mankind's problems arise because (other than their inability to sit quietly even for a while) people don't value anything other than their family and cookie cutter religious, political or economic ideology.
Meta-values are something you act on every moment of your life. And this is not some abstract nonsense from historic text but what you live and breathe. Meta-values that reduce pain and sufferings on this planet.
Have meta-values.
I do respect money but I conscientious of the fact that money is always just a tool not an end in itself.
In current society, money helps gain freedom if one is wise enough not to become a slave to money.
Never compromise morality for money, period.
Money’s capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic and by doing so, to justify things that would otherwise seem outrageous or obscene.
- David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years
If you want to permanently eradicate any wrongs then focus on curbing demand rather than curbing supply.
Modern vigilantism and law is built around perpetual work of curbing supply.
Living a modest human life in any part of the world, we destroy non-human lives just with our modernity.
Hence, I am mindful of not destroying anything on this planet, instead focus on the easier task of protecting everything and anything and the much harder task of creating without destroying.
It is much easier to ignore irrelevant stuff than to seek wisdom.
List of some high level stuff I learned to ignore over the decades:
1. Sports
2. News
3. Most of politics
4. Stock Tickers
5. Talks about good old days a.k.a nostalgia
6. Talks about future
7. Most of small talk
8. Learning human languages
9. People who add no value to life
10. External validation
11. Unnecessary luxuries and most luxuries
12. Arguing
13. Signalling
All of the above and more, I have embraced in the past and suffered immensely. Now, I have taught myself to ignore.
Meditation is overrated plus hard since there is no benchmark and so open-ended.
Breathing exercises are underrated and easy and one can get instant feedback.
No one tells you this: Breathing exercises are prerequisite for meditation.
I am learning this the hard way.
I am still work in progress.
I'm at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions.
Even if you say 1+1=5, you're right. Have fun.
- Keanu Reeves
I wish someone told this moron to me when I was in my teens.
I started working out in my teens; in whatever way I can to get stronger and full of muscles. In other words, become rigid. But my main mission is to not get a list of diseases that my genetic lineage has.
When Max was there and in my late thirties, I joined Crossfit and it helped my quality of life immensely. I learned stuff and quit Crossfit and do similar workouts at home. Even with five or six years of Crossfit, I still didn't learn the key message.
I learned this during Max's last year.
More than anything - Being stronger and simultaneously being flexible is the key to health and aging gracefully.
Bruce Lee once said - "Be water, my friend."
I think he meant for the mind which I follow with the Mind as a River thing in almost every moment of my life.
But keeping the body flexible is key to graceful aging.
Be flexible and strong simultaneously - I think that's the value for the rest of my life.
Weight plus body weight training, boring stretching exercises, tons of walking (no running), and kinesthetics is enough in this lifetime (as of my knowledge today).
All conditioned things are impermanent’ — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.
- The Buddha, Dhammapada, verse 277
Truth - Impermanence of life, and everything else.
I think within a few months of Max coming into my life, I understood this. My time with him is limited. I have to immerse myself with him "now" like there is no tomorrow.
I don't remember how I understood this; if I had read Buddha or I understood this viscerally being with Max.
Our relationships, life, money, fame, friends, wishes, dreams, and decisions all are impermanent.
Understanding this helped me become a much kinder living being and on the contrary, it also helped me stand up against bullshits of envy, jealousy, self centeredness et al.
Everyday, even today and as long as I breathe - I live by understanding that everything is impermanent. Ironically, this truth is beautiful.
