tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-140473122024-03-13T05:17:48.683-07:00Mavrky Book ReviewMaverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.comBlogger44125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-38397085242730410832011-05-14T03:55:00.000-07:002011-05-14T03:56:59.409-07:00A Gift to My Children: A Father’s Lessons for Life and Investing<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O-Tqf5uFhgE/Tc5a6RgaHsI/AAAAAAAAKs0/0xVDcCPoyWY/s1600/Picture1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 180px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O-Tqf5uFhgE/Tc5a6RgaHsI/AAAAAAAAKs0/0xVDcCPoyWY/s200/Picture1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5606518543301091010" border="0" /></a>A Gift to My Children: A Father’s Lessons for Life and Investing<br /><br />By Jim Rogers<br />ISBN: 978-0-470-74268-6<br />Paperback; 106 pp.<br />US$16.00/S$26.70 including GST;<br /><br />Available at all major bookstores<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">What makes for a successful investor? And more importantly, what makes for a happy and meaningful life? According to legendary investor Jim Rogers, the road to financial success and the road to happiness are one and the same.<br /><br /></div>Rogers co-founded the phenomenally successful Quantum Fund, which in ten years delivered a return of 4200 percent. He retired from Wall Street at the age of thirty-seven, and continued to manage and invest his own funds with great success.<br /><br />A Gift to My Children marks his effort to share Roger's wisdom and insights about finance, investing, and life in general with his two young children. It is anchored by the two basic rules Rogers invests and lives by:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The first is that you have to see the world up close if you're going to understand how it works.<br /><br />Rogers begins with exhortations to work hard, think critically, trust your own judgment, and work to identify your passions and dreams beyond simply making money.<br /><br />The second is that you must always question conventional wisdom, as many of his most successful investment strategies and ideas have resulted from swimming upstream.<br /><br />Rogers is also a big proponent of the idea that it's essential for young people to study history and to experience world's culture first-hand through travel.<br /></div><br />Rogers reveals how to learn from his triumphs and mistakes in order to achieve a prosperity:<br /><br />(1) Trust your own judgment<br /><br />(2) Focus on what you like<br /><br />(3) Be persistent<br /><br />(4) See the world<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">In December 2007 Jim Rogers and his wife Paige Parker and their daughters, 7 year-old Hilton Augusta, nicknamed Happy,and 3 year-old Beeland Anderson, sold their New York mansion for USD16 million and moved to Singapore last December so that Happy can learn Chinese in a Mandarin-speaking environment.<br /><br />He is quoted as saying: "If you were smart in 1807 you moved to London, if you were smart in 1907 you moved to New York City, and if you are smart in 2007 you move to Asia." In a CNBC interview with Maria Bartiromo broadcast on May 5, 2008, Rogers said that people in China are extremely motivated and driven, and he wants to be in that type of environment, so his daughters are motivated and driven. He also stated that this is how America and Europe used to be. He chose not to move to Chinese cities like Hong Kong or Shanghai due to the high levels of pollution causing potential health problems for his family; hence, he chose Singapore.<br /><br />Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with legendary investor George Soros in the 1970s, has repeatedly said he believes China will be the next great country in the world.<br /><br />"The best gift we can give our children is to let them learn Chinese and prepare them for the future," he tells The Straits Times, while carrying the baby in his arms.<br /><br />Soon after Happy was born in 2003, they hired a mainland Chinese nanny in New York to teach her Mandarin. They also have a live-in nanny from Ningxia province here in Singapore.<br /><br />This explains why the little girl is able to speak the language fluently, without the jarring accent that many non-native speakers have.<br /><br />In fact, she is so confident in the language that she sang a Chinese song for this reporter and recited the national pledge in Mandarin, stumbling only towards the end as she forgot some parts of it.<br /><br />"I like both Chinese and English lessons, but I like Chinese more," she says in Mandarin.<br /><br />Her baby sister is also having an early start in learning the language--the nanny plays her Mandarin songs every day.<br /><br />In the past few years, they have visited Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong many times to look for the perfect school for Happy, before deciding on Singapore.<br /><br />"As much as we want to be in mainland China, the pollution there that you read about is real," says Parker.<br /><br />"Singapore doesn't have that. It also has an extraordinary health-care system and great schools, and it's a wonderful place for a family."<br /><br />Rogers says many people felt they were making a big mistake when they announced that they were uprooting to Asia.<br /><br />"They thought we were crazy, because we were doing it voluntarily. Many people thought we moved to China. They don't know that Singapore is not China," he says.<br /><br />"Some people told me I was smart to do it for my children, but they couldn't do it themselves."<br /><br />Their plan is to "stay here forever, unless something else happens", he says, adding that he hopes to travel around China one day with his daughters as his interpreters.<br /><br />When asked what his net worth is--believed to be billions of dollars--he replies: "I'm sorry, but I can't answer that."<br /><br />After a pause, he adds, tenderly: "My net worth should not be measured in monetary terms, but it should be measured in how good a father I can be."<br /></div>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-59325044572247116302010-06-28T23:32:00.000-07:002010-06-28T23:33:12.408-07:00Kiss My Tiara<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/TCmTOj0ADLI/AAAAAAAAKbQ/O2NPviCzkmE/s1600/Picture1.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/TCmTOj0ADLI/AAAAAAAAKbQ/O2NPviCzkmE/s200/Picture1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488079499268459698" border="0" /></a><br />From the book:<br />Kiss My Tiara<br />by Susan Jane Gilman<br /><br />"Most women today wants two things: (1) some smart, no-nonsense advice about how to navigate the world, and (2) to laugh. Ideally, we want both these things at once.<br /><br />"Woman have acquired all the responsibilities that come with sexual equality, i.e. earn their own paycheck, but few of the equal benefits. They were encouraged to be empowered but vilified for being feminists. They have more career opportunities than ever, but somehow they still get the message that: 'A bustier, not a brain, is the real source of "Girl Power".<br /><br />"Women are inspired to scale the corporate ladder, but they are also fully aware that it still bumps up against the glass ceiling, and that, more often than not, some guys is still peeking up their skirts as they climb.<br /><br />"Many corporate women's personal battles are not in the boardrooms or courtrooms but in their own bathrooms.<br /><br />"It is true that most women literally can't see past the nose of their face.<br /><br />"For women's progressive prima donnas, The Rules, at first glance, is nothing but a warmed-over version of the "Trade your hymen for a diamond" formula that nice girls followed.<br /><br />"My grandma said: 'Have another piece of cake and wash it down with a gin and tonic.'<br /><br />"My grandma also said: 'Take a few lovers, travel the world, and don't take any crap.'<br /><br />Finally, remember: To address women's issues without humour in this day and age is sort of criminally negligent. Because, really, it's the only sane choice. If we don't use humour and irreverence, what are the alternatives? Anger, fear and victimhood - and Goddess knows we've had enough of that!<br /><br />***Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-47988756597645111132010-05-29T20:56:00.000-07:002010-05-29T20:57:17.507-07:00The Life of Mahatma Gandhi<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/TAHRcZiWKEI/AAAAAAAAKZs/rom-yywsMHM/s1600/Gandhi.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/TAHRcZiWKEI/AAAAAAAAKZs/rom-yywsMHM/s200/Gandhi.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5476888907680720962" border="0" /></a>January 30, 1948, Friday<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">"Bapu (father), your watch must be feeling very neglected. You would not look at it today," said Abha, the young wife of Kanu Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma's cousin.<br /></div><br />"Why should I, since you are my timekeeper?" Gandhi retorted.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">"But you don't look at the timekeepers," Manu noted. Manu is the granddaughter of another cousin.<br /><br />Gandhi laughed.<br /><br />By this time Gandhi was walking on the grass near the prayer ground. A congregation of about 500 had assembled for the regular evening devotions.<br /><br />"I am late by ten minutes," Gandhi mused aloud. "I hate being late. I should be here at the stroke of five."<br /><br />He quickly cleared the five steps up the level of the prayer ground. Most of the people rose; many edged forward; some helped to clear a lane for him; those who were nearest bowed to his feet.<br /><br />Just then, a man elbowed his way out of the congregation into the lane. He looked as if he wished to prostrate himself in the customary obeisance of the devout. Manu tried to stop him and caught hold of his hand. He pushed her away so that she fell and, planting himself about two feet in front of Gandhi, fired three shots from a small automatic pistol.<br /><br />The first bullet entered Gandhi's abdomen three and a half inches to the right down the middle of the body and two and a half inches above the navel and came out through the back.<br /><br />The second bullet penetrated the seventh intercostal space one inch to the right of the midlde line and likewise came out at the back.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />The third shot hit one inch above the right nipple and four inches to the right of the middle line and embedded itself in the lung.<br /><br />One bullet, Dr Bhargava says, probably passed through the heart and another might have cut a big blood vessel.<br /><br />Devadas, Gandhi's youngest son, touched his father's skin and gently pressed his arm. Gandhi's head lays in Abha's lap. His face wore a peaceful smile. He seemed asleep.<br /><br />"So serene was the face and so mellow the halo of divine light that surrounded the body that it seemed almost sacrilegious to grieve ..." Devadas wrote later.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">That was 30 January, 1948, the day Mahatma Gandhi at 78 died. Mahatma was what he had always been: a private citizen without wealth, property, official title, official post, academic distinction, scientific achievement, or artistic gift.<br /></div><br />Mahatma was a moral man, and a civilization not richly endowed with morality felt still further impoverished when the assassin's bullets ended his life.<br /><br />'I never saw Gandhi. I do not know his language. I never set foot in his country and yet I feel the same sorrow as if I had lost someone near and dear.' Leon Blum, the French Socialist wrote.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Professor Albert Einstein wrote: 'Gandhi had demonstrated that a powerful human following can be assembled not only through the cunning game of the usual political manoeuvres and trickeries but through the cogent example of a morally superior conduct of life. In our time of utter moral decadence he was the only statesman to stand for a higher human relationship in the political sphere.'<br /><br />General Douglas MacArthur, supreme Allied military commander said: 'In the evolution of civilization, if it is to survive, all men cannot fail eventually to adopt Gandhi's belief that the process of mass application of force to resolve contentious issues is fundamentally not only wrong but contains within itself the germs of self-destruction.'<br /><br />"I know no other man of any time or indeed in recent history who so forcefully and convincingly demonstrated the power of spirit over material things," Sir Stafford Cripps wrote.<br /><br />In New York, a 12-year-old girl had gone into the kitchen for breakfast. The radio was on and it brought the news of the shooting of Gandhi. There, in the kitchen, the girl, the maid and the gardener held a prayer meeting and prayed and wept.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Just so, millions in all countries mourned Gandhi's death. The whole world has been plunged into mourning by the death of this extraordinary man. They did not quite know why; they did not quite know what he stood for. But he was a 'good man' and good men are rare.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Nathuram Vinayak Godse, age 35, was the editor and publisher of a Hindu Mahasabha weekly in Poona and he was a high-degree Chitpawan Brahman. Godse resented Mahatma's insistence that refugees be evacuated from the mosques and he was bitter because no demands were made on the Muslims. At the trial Godse said he was brooding intensely on the atrocities perpetrated on Hinduism and its dark and deadly future if left to face Islam outside and Gandhi inside. Gose testified, 'and ... I decided all of a sudden to take the extreme step against Gandhi.' Hindus like Madan Lal and Godse and their ideological sponsors were incensed by the presence of Muslims at Hindu services and the reading of selections from the Quran. Godse said at his trial, at which he was sentenced to be hanged: "Before I fired the shots I actually wished him well and bowed to him in reverence."<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Gandhi had always insisted that those who differ with him are not necessarily evil. Instead, they should try to convert him to right thinking and right doing. "I deserve no praise; I would deserve praise only if I fell as a result of an explosion and yet retained a smile on my face and no malice against the doer. No one should look down on the misguided youth who had thrown the bomb," Gandhi told his devout followers.<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In response to Godse's obeisance and the bows Gandhi touched his palm together, smiled and blessed him. At that moment Godse pulled the trigger. Gandhi fell, and died murmuring, :Oh, God!"<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">All around us, material things had power over spirit. The sudden flash of Gandhi's death revealed a vast darkness. No one who survived him had tried so hard - and with so much success - to live a life of truth, kindness, self-effacement, humility, service and non-violence throughout a long, difficult struggle against mighty adversaries. He fought passionately and unremittingly but he kept his hands clean in the midst of battle. He fought without malice or falsehood or hate.<br /></div><br /><br />****<br />SOURCE:<br /><br />The Life of Mahatma Gandhi by Louis Fischer; Harper Collins Publishers 1997<br /><br />*****Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-73123134456884684652009-11-28T03:22:00.001-08:002010-05-29T20:57:40.851-07:00Affluence & the Goddess of Wealth<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/SxEINjwH_0I/AAAAAAAAKIk/xxVa03o0G6w/s1600/Deepak+Chopra+%28Creating+Affluence%29.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 139px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/SxEINjwH_0I/AAAAAAAAKIk/xxVa03o0G6w/s200/Deepak+Chopra+%28Creating+Affluence%29.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409113656477089602" border="0" /></a>Once upon a time in a faraway land, a young man went to the forest and said to his spiritual master, "I want to have unlimited wealth, and with that unlimited wealth, I want to help and heal the world. Will you please tell me the secret to creating affluence?"<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />And the spiritual master replied, "There are two Goddesses that reside in the heart of every human being. But there is a certain secret that you need to know, and I will tell you what it is.<br /><br />"Although you love both Goddesses, you must pay more attention to one of them. She is the Goddess of Knowledge, and her name is Sarasvati. Pursue her, love her, and give her your attention. The other Goddess, whose name is Lakshmi, is the Goddess of Wealth. When you pay more attention to Sarasvati, Lakshmi will become extremely jealous and pay more attention to you. The more you seek the Goddess of Knowledge, the more the Goddess of Wealth will seek you. She will follow you wherever you go and never leave you. And the wealth you desire will be yours forever."<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">There is power in Knowledge, desire, and spirit. And this power within you is the key to creating affluence.<br /><br />Wealth consciousness is a state of mind, a sense, not of believing, but really knowing that what we need is available to us. Affluence is indeed our natural state of being.<br /><br />Infinite worlds appear and disappear in the vast expanse of our own consciousness, like motes of dust dancing in a beam of light.<br /><br />Affluence is reality. When we are grounded in the nature of reality and we also know that this same reality is our own nature, then we realize that we can create anything, because all of material creation has the same origin.<br /><br />All of material creation is made from the same stuff and comes from the same source. Experiential knowledge of this fact gives us the ability to fulfill any desire we have, acquire any material object we want, and experience fulfillment and happiness to any extent we aspire.<br /><br />Life experiences are the continuum in the seamless matrix of nothingness. They are our experiences of joy and sorrow, of success and failure, of wealth and poverty. All these events seemingly happen to us, but at very primordial levels we are making them happen. The impulse of energy and information that create our life experiences are reflected in our attitude towards life.<br /><br />Knowledge has organizing power inherent in it. It is simply enough to know, to be aware of the principles; the knowledge will be processed and metabolized by our bodies, and the result will be spontaneous. The results do not occur overnight, but beguin to manifest gradually over a period of time.<br /><br />You are where your attention takes you. In fact, you are your attention. When your attention is in the past, you are in the past. When you attention is in your present moment, you are in the presence of God and God is present in you. Simply be aware of the present, of what you are doing. The presence of God is everywhere, and you have only to consciously embrace it with your attention.<br /><br /></div> ****************************************************<br /><br />Extracted from:<br /><br />Creating Affluence by Deepak Chopra<br />Amber-Allen Publishing and New World Library, 1993<br /><br />******************************************************<br /><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-25851072745791586422009-10-19T08:41:00.000-07:002010-05-29T20:57:54.769-07:00Barack Obama: Audacity of Hope (Part 2)<span style="font-weight: bold;">OBAMA: The Audacity of Hope</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">"One thing I've discovered as I get older is that you have to do what is satisfying to you. In fact that's one of the advantages of old age, that you've finally learned what matters to you. It is hard to know that at twenty-seven. And the problem is that nobody else can answer that question for you. You can only figure it out on your own."<br /><br />"I am getting to an age where I have a sense of what satisfies me, and although I am perhaps more tolerant of compromise, I know that my satisfaction is not to be found in the glare of television cameras or the applause of the crowd. Instead, it seems to come more often now from knowing that in some demonstrable way I've been able to help people live their lives with some measure of dignity.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">"Benjamin Franklin once wrote to his mother explaining why he had devoted so much of his time to public service: 'I would rather have it said, He lived usefully, than, He died rich.'<br /><br />That's what satisfies me now - being useful to my family and the people who put me where I am, leaving behind a legacy that will make our children's lives more hopeful than our own."<br /></div> </div><br />**********************************************<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">When I read those passages from Obama's book, I thought I was the man myself. Ya, I now feel that way too. Age had caught up with me and youth had passed me by. I now need to do what really satisfies me, not just doing things just to earn some money. There are two fundamental things that is far more important to life - values and ideals.<br /><br />In Obama's words: "If I am wiser, it is mainly because I have traveled a little further down the path I have chosen for myself, and have gotten a glimpse of where it may lead, for good and for ill."<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Ya, I think I am far wiser than I was before. The journey of my life had been rough and painstaking. I had toiled for decades, achieving nothing, except for the last few years where I was greatly blessed. Today, I had some success to savour and feel good. God willing I hope to continue with what I am doing for another few years where I can contribute back to the society - to do thing that are useful to my family and the people who helps to put me where I am now, and most of all, to those who needs my help and assistance. I hope to be able to leave behind some kind of legacy that will make my children's lives more hopeful than my own.<br /><br />Life, afterall, is about achieving something satisfying.<br /><br />This too is my Audacity of Hope!<br /><br />********************************<br /></div> <input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-27126452742834244132009-10-18T02:17:00.000-07:002010-05-29T20:58:07.952-07:00Barack Obama: Audacity of Hope<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/StrRCnituRI/AAAAAAAAKG0/EqaVncOEI_0/s1600-h/Barack+Obama_Audacity+of+Hope.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 118px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/StrRCnituRI/AAAAAAAAKG0/EqaVncOEI_0/s200/Barack+Obama_Audacity+of+Hope.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393853346634119442" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">BARACK OBAMA</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Audacity of Hope</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-style: italic;">"We have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done</span>."<br /></div><br />_______________________________________________________<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">When I decided to run for the United States Senate, I wasn't so sure of myself. I had preserved my independence, my good name, and my marriage, all of which, statistically speaking, had been placed at risk the moment I set foot in the state capital.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">But the years had also taken their toll. Some of it was just a function of my getting older; each successive year will make you more intimately acquainted with all of your flaws - the blind spots, the recurring habits of thought that will almost certainly worsen with time, as surely as the hitch in your walk turns to pain in your hip. In me, one of those flaws had proven to be a chronic restlessness; an inability to appreciate, no matter how well things were going, those blessings that were right there in front of me. It's a flaw that is endemic to modern life and one that is nowhere more evident than in the field of politics. Whether politics actually encourages the trait or simply attracts those who possess it is unclear.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Someone once said that: "Every man is trying to either live up to his father's expectation or make up for his father's mistakes."<br /><br />I suppose that may explain my particular malady as well as anything else.<br /><br />In any event, it was a consequence of that relentlessness that I decided to challenge a sitting Democratic incumbent for his congressional seat in the 2000 election cycle. It was an ill-considered race, and I lost badly - the sort of drubbing that awakens you to the fact that:<br /><br />"Life is not Obliged to Work Out as you'd Planned."<br /><br />A year and a half later, the scars of that loss sufficiently healed, I had lunch with a media consultant who had been encouraging me for some time to run for statewide office. As it happened, the lunch was scheduled for late September 2001.<br /><br />"You realize, don't you, that the political dynamics have changed," he said.<br /><br />"What do you mean?" I asked.<br /><br />We both looked down at the newspaper. There, on the front page, was Osama bin Laden.<br /><br />"Hell of a thing, isn't it?" he said, shaking his head.<br /><br />"Really bad luck. You can't change your name of course. Voters are suspicious of that kind of thing. Maybe if you were at the start of your career, you know, you could use a nickname or something. But now ..." His voice trailed off and he shrugged apologetically before signaling the waiter to bring us the check.<br /><br />I suspected he was right, and that realization ate away at me. For the first time in my career, I began to experience the envy of seeing younger politicians succeed where I had failed.<br /><br />The pleasure of politics began to pale against the meaner tasks of the jobs: the begging for money, the long drives home and clipped phone conversation with a wife who had stuck by me so far but was pretty fed up with raising our children alone and was beginning to question my priorities.<br /><br />I began to harbor doubts about the path I had chosen. I began to feel, after years of commitment to a particular dream, after years of waiting, to realize that it's gone just about as far as talent or fortune will take me. The dream will not happen, and I now faces the choice of accepting this fact like a grown-up and moving on to more sensible pursuits, or refusing the truth and ending up bitter, quarrelsome, and slightly pathetic.<br /><br />Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Despair - I'm not sure I went through all the stages prescribed by the experts. At some point, though, I arrived at acceptance - of my limits, and, in a way, my mortality. I refocused on my work in the state senate and took satisfaction from the reforms and initiatives that my position afforded. I spent more time at home, and watched my daughters grow, and properly cherished my wife, and thought about my long-term financial obligations. I exercised, and read novels, and came to appreciate how the earth rotated around the sun and the seasons came and went without any particular exertions on my part.<br /><br />And it was this acceptance that allowed me to come up with the thoroughly cockeyed idea of running for the Illinois Senate seat in 2004.<br /><br />An up-or-out strategy was how I described it to my wife, one last shot to test out my ideas before I settled into a calmer, more stable, and better-paying existence. And she - perhaps more out of pity than conviction - agreed to this one last race, though she also suggested that given the orderly life she preferred for our family, I shouldn't necessarily count on her vote.<br /><br />I let her take comfort in the long odds against me.<br /></div><br />********************************************<br /><br />In 2000, Barack Obama was unsuccessful in his bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.<br /><br />On March 2004, Barack Obama won the Democratic primary election to become the States Senator of Illinois.<br /><br />On February 2007, Barack Obama began his run for the US Presidency. He beats Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party presidential primaries and become the Democratic party nominee.<br /><br />In the 2008 United States General Election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain.<br /><br />On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States.<br /><br />***********************************************<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify; font-style: italic;">Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current president of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office, as well as the first president born in Hawaii.<br /><br />Obama previously served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.<br /><br />Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for United States Senate in 2004. His victory in the March 2004 Democratic primary election for the United States Senator from Illinois brought him to national attention. His prime-time televised keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 made him a rising star nationally in the Democratic Party. He comfortably won election to the U.S. Senate in November 2004.<br /><br />He began his run for the presidency in February 2007. After a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. On October 9, 2009, Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.[4]</div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-45837898669600285162009-10-03T07:58:00.000-07:002010-05-29T20:58:47.845-07:00The Allegory of the Cave<div style="text-align: justify;">Do you remember the movie "The Shawshank Redemption"?<br /><br />There was a very poignant part of the story where a man who had been in prison for most of his life finally gets released at the age of 70. But he has no way to live in the world outside of prison, and he ends up committing suicide.<br /><br />That story reminds us of the difficulties of adjusting to a reality that differs from the world that's familiar and comfortable, even if that reality is one where we're "free" and aligns much more with what we truly value.<br /><br />Our cultural domain is a kind of prison. It's about separation - from one another, from nature, and ultimately even from ourselves. In extraordinary moments, we break out of the story. We encounter a world of being one with ourselves, others, nature, and life in a very direct way. It shifts our awareness of our world and ourselves in radical ways. It brings a great sense of hope and possibility but also great emotional uncertainties. It can be hard suddenly finding ourselves outside the story that has organized our life up to that point. It may be wonderful to be free, but it is also terrifying.<br /><br />More and more people are getting out of "prison" today. The situation is like what Plato described in the "Allegory of the Cave". If you have been living all your life in a cave, looking at shadows moving across the wall, suddenly finding yourself outside can be blinding.<br /><br />Our cultural dominant story is also part of us, and the pressures to pull ourselves back into the cave or prison, to go back to our habitual ways of living, can be overwhelming sometimes.<br /><br />It is one thing to have momentary transcendent experiences, to be outside the prison or cave, but it's another to stabilize the awareness they bring. But going back to the cave can also be painful, because you no longer quite fit there. We feel caught between both worlds. Part of us wants to flee the sunlight and return to the cave, but we are also more and more out of sync with life in the cave.<br /><br />At the heart of our culture's dominant story sit core myths, and these myths shape how we make sense of the world. However, reductive science and redemptive religion are now breaking down and we can no longer simply wait around for a great leader to come along and lead us nor protect us. The economic myth we've been in for the past decade isn't serving us well either. People are waking up to the inadequacies of the economic myth and they are questioning whether it is all about short-term self-interest.<br /><br />The important point is that in exploring the future, you aren't exploring a future someone else has written for you. It is instrumental of life itself, to accomplish what life wishes for you to accomplish. We had to use ourselves as an instrument for something better to emerge, being open to our larger purpose.<br /><br />Everyone is born with a destiny or a purpose, and the journey of our life is to find it. The ultimate aim is to find the resources of character to meet your destiny, and to find the wisdom and power to serve life that way.<br /><br />But without free choice or free will, that dance with destiny may not begin. Freedom and destiny are solemnly promised to us and linked together without meaning. When the sort of commitment we observe and see are happening, we feel as if we're freer than before and more free to be poor as well as more free to be further discriminated. It's a huge paradox.<br /><br />People can no longer trust traditional institutional forms and structures, and if any one of institution sets itself up as the protector of such, it will backfire. Today the mysteries or the magical no longer take place in sanctuaries but in the main station, in the midst of everyday life.<br /><br />We may not be able to change the larger systems overnight, but we can commit to the continual development of awareness and the capacity to choose. The capacity to choose is key, and that's always linked to our awareness.<br /><br />Our fate is still very much in our hands. There must be profound transformation of our spirit and mind and of our relationships to each other and to the earth. We must be conscious and aware that every choice we make has the power to affect things one way or another. And those choices are a direct result of how deeply we're sensing.<br /><br />We need to give ourselves to something larger than ourselves, and to become what we were meant to become. Then we can attain the goals that we're supposed to achieve.<br /><br />Until the larger community start to master their thoughts, to pacify the minds, we won't be able to escape this prison of ours.<br /><br />As Phil Lane says, "The longest road we will ever walk is the sacred journey from our head to our heart."<br /><br />**********************<br /><br />"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies"<br /><br /><br /><br />Extracted from: "Presence"<br />Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, Betty Sue Flowers<br />Nicholas Brealey, 2005<br /></div><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-7133760312185742082009-09-22T07:13:00.000-07:002010-05-29T20:59:11.933-07:00PRESENCE: Exploring Profound ChangeKopf hoch, mein Junge, Blick nach vorn.<br />by C. Otto Scharmer<br /><br />From the book:<br />Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organization and Society<br />Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2005<br />*******************************<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">I was sixteen years old. I left school one morning, and by the time I got home, everything had changed.<br /><br />That day in school, about halfway through the day, the principal called me out of my class and told me to go home. I asked why? She didn’t tell me why, but I noticed her eyes were slightly red, as if she had been crying.<br /><br />I walked as quickly as I could to the train station, and from there I called home, but no one answered – the line was dead. I had no idea what might have happened, but by then I knew that it probably wasn’t good. I boarded the train, and after the usual 45-minutes ride, I took a cab rather than wait for the bus to take me the last few miles home. It was the first time I’d ever taken a cab.<br /><br />Long before I arrived, I saw it. Huge grey-black clouds of smoke were rising into the air. The long chestnut-lined driveway that led to the farm was choked with hundreds of neighbours, fire-fighters, policemen and gawkers. I jumped from the cab and ran the last half mile.<br /><br />When I reached the courtyard, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The huge 350-year-old farmhouse, where my family had lived for the past 200 years and where I’d lived all my life, was gone. As I stood there, I saw that there was nothing – absolutely nothing – left but the smouldering ruins. As the reality of what was before my eyes sank in, I felt as if somebody had removed the ground from under my feet. The place of my birth, childhood, and youth was gone. Everything that I had was gone.<br /><br />As my gaze sank deeper into the flames, the flames also seemed to sink into me. I felt time slowing down. Only in that moment did I realize how attached I had been to all the things destroyed by the fire. Everything I was and had been intimately connected to had dissolved into nothing. But no – I realized not everything was gone; there was still a tiny little element of myself that was gone with the fire. I was still there watching – I, the seer, I suddenly realized that there was another whole dimension of my self that I hadn’t been aware of, a dimension that didn’t relate to my past, to the world that had just dissolved.<br /><br />At that moment, time slowed to complete stillness and I felt drawn in a direction above my physical body and began watching the whole scene from that other place. I felt my mind expanding to a moment of unparalleled clarity of awareness. I realized that I was not the person I thought I was. My real self was not attached to the tones of stuff now smouldering inside the ruins. I suddenly knew that I, my true self, was still alive, more awake, more acutely present than ever before. I now realized how much all the material things that I’d become attached to over the years, without ever noticing it, had weighted me down. At that moment, with everything gone, I suddenly felt released and free to encounter that other part of my self, the part that drew me into the future – into my future – and into a world that I might bring into reality with my life.<br /><br />The next day my grandfather arrived. He was 87- years old and had lived on the farm all his life. He had left the house a week before to go to the hospital for medical treatments.<br /><br />Summoning all the energy he had left, my grandfather got out of the car and walked straight to where my father was still working on the cleanup. He didn’t even turn his head towards the smoking ruins of the place where he’d spent his entire life. He simply went straight up to my father, took his hand, and said, “Keep your head up, my boy. Look forward.” (“Kopf boch, mein Junge. Blick nach vorn.”)<br /><br />Turning around, he walked directly back to the waiting car and left. A few days later, he died quietly.<br /><br />Even after all these years, this moves me still - that little scene of my grandfather walking by, ignoring the ruins of his home, and focusing all his remaining life energy on shifting my father’s attention from reacting to the past to opening up to what might emerge from the future.<br /><br />It also evoked a question in me that still remains: “What does it take to connect to that other stream of time, the one that gently pulls me toward my future possibility? It was a question that eventually prompted me to leave Germany to do my postdoctoral research at MIT several year ago. And that question that draws me still, right to this very moment.<br /></div>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-24849212881920096412009-09-21T06:17:00.000-07:002010-05-29T20:59:45.280-07:00A Tribute to Nelson Mandela<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/Srd8u0Ze2CI/AAAAAAAAI24/36tdYQ6kNvM/s1600-h/Nelson+Mandela.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 159px; height: 200px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/Srd8u0Ze2CI/AAAAAAAAI24/36tdYQ6kNvM/s200/Nelson+Mandela.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5383909023326066722" border="0" /></a>Born in 1918 in a tribal village in the Eastern Cape and educated as a lawyer, Nelson Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC), the movement for black rights, beginning a long struggle against apartheid, the system that fostered separation of the races in South Africa.<br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Apartheid - literally "apartness" - had been established in 1948 by Afrikaner nationalists with the goal of securing white supremacy and ensuring Afrikaner control of political power. Under apartheid, South Africa was divided into ersatz Bantu nations, or "locations" - Africans-only settlements for a rural labor force working in gold and diamond mines. A non-white community, Bantu nations were a pretense for restricting the movement and autonomy of the black African labor force..<br /><br />South Africa had always been rich in natural resources - in addition to gold and diamonds, it produced more than one-third of Africa's goods and services and nearly 40% of Africa's manufacturing output with only 7% of the African continent's population and 4% of its total land area. But it had been torn by centuries of racial conflict.<br /><br />In 1944, with close friends Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu, Mandela formed the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), becoming its president in 1950.<br /><br />In 1953, banned by the apartheid regime from speaking in public for 2 years, he was forced to officially resign from the ANC. He concentrated on the law practice he had started with Tambo - the first black law firm in South Africa.<br /><br />After the 2-year ban ended, Mandela resumed his public role opposing apartheid. The state's relentless crackdown on the ANC, including widespread arrests, killing of demonstrators, and banning of meetings, eventually led Mandela to conclude that the ANC's policy of nonviolence was not working. He formed and led Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), or "Spear of the Nation", to move the struggle from peaceful resistance to armed reaction. Mandela was eventually captured and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">By the late 1980s, South Africa faced a changed post-cold-war global environment and a faltering domestic economy. The apartheid regime became a pariah around the world, with international pressure and sanctions excerbating the economic slump.<br /><br />Responding to international pressure, F.W. de Klerk, then head of the apartheid government, was ready to free Mandela - after 27 years in prison.<br /><br />Mandela negotiated the timing of his release on his terms - the unbanning of the ANC and other anti-aparthead organizations on February 11, 1990.<br /><br />After his release from prison Mandela quoted his well-known statement from the trial that resulted in his confinement:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">"I have fought against white domination and I had fought against black domination. I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities."</span><br /><br />Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pik Botha echoed this hope:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">We [South Africans] are like the zebra. It does not matter whether you put the bullet through the white stripe or the black stripe. If you hit the animal, it will die."</span></span><br /><br />On March, 1990, Nelson Mandela was elected deputy president of the ANC's National Executive Committee.<br /><br />South Africa held it's first-ever democratic elections in 1994. The ANC was victorious and Mandela was inaugurated in May as the country's first democratically elected president.<br /><br />As the leader of the new South Africa Mandela had to walk a tightrope between addressing the pain and suffering that millions had experienced under decades of brutally enforced segregation, while fostering a spirit of reconciliation aimed at moving the country forward.<br /><br />South Africa's black majority, having achieved civil rights after years of struggle, was impatient for economic advancement and the associated delivery of services. But many whites were now living in great fear as to how the past was going to be dealt with and what their future in the new South Africa would be.<br /><br />Mandela's task was to shift the cycle of decline. Significant challenges stemmed from the legacy of apartheid, including economic inequality, suppression of information, and suspicion and anger of racial groups towards one another.<br /><br />A 1994 report by ANC and economists detailed the extreme poverty of at least 17 million South Africans who lived below internationally accepted poverty level, including 12 million citizens who lack access to clean drinking water, 4.6 million adults who were illiterate, 4.3 million families without adequate housing and a majority of schools without electricity.<br /><br />All level of confidence were depressed. Investor confidence had eroded and although the events leading up to Mandela's election had ended international economic sanctions against South Africa, there were the risk that continuing political tensions, including the threat of retaliations, could create economic and social instability.<br /><br />Mandela had only 5 years to shift the cycle - that is, until the next election. He had announced that he would serve only one term - a remarkable gesture not only in Africa, a continent known for corrupt leaders who refuse to cede power, but also remarkable for someone who had waited so long and given so much to reach this position of power.<br /><br />Many of the laws that restricted the flow of information had already been removed soon after Mandela was released from prison. Despite some progress, Mandela criticized the press establishment for not changing quickly. Mandela wanted more than just cosmetic change, more than just a few faces of a different color. Mandela was deeply committed to a free press and access to information by all South Africans. <span style="font-style: italic;">"It was the press that never forgot us,"</span> he said upon his release from prison.<br /><br />As president, Mandela continued to champion freedom of the press, which he was as part and parcel of the liberation of the minds of South Africans:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">"I don't want a mouthpiece of the ANC or government ... The press would be totally useless then. I want a mirror through which we can see ourselves," he said in 1996.</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">"</span><br /><br />A freer press was just one way to open dialogue. The electoral process was designed to ensure widespread input. Beyond voting, the public was given direct voice in other significant issues.<br /><br />Even before he became president, Mandela used his skill as a communicator to try to heal the country. On April 10, 1993, a year before Mandela's election, Chris Hani was shot dead in his home near Johannesburg. Hani was the most popular leader after Mandela, especially among black youth. An Afrikaner woman wrote doen the licence number of the assassin's getaway car and reported it to police. They soon captured the perpetrator, a Polish immigrant. The National Party, still officially in power, feared that all whites would be blamed, and that widespread violence would erupt, paralyzing the country.<br /><br />Upon hearing the news, Mandela flew to SABC television studio (South African Broadcasting Corporation, the country's largest public broadcaster) in Johannesburg to broadcast a message - one that some recalled as the speech that saved South Africa from chaos. Mandela addressed an emotional country in a calm, deliberate manner:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">"A white man full of prejudice and hate came to our country and committed a deed so foul that our whole nation now teeters on the brink of disaster. A white woman, of Afrikaner origin, risked her life so that we may know, and bring to justice this assassin."</span><br /><br />These words were aired repeatedly. Mandela had provided crucial direction to South Africans on how to react to the tragic loss of Hani in a way that would not undermine the very thing Hani had also fought for - liberation and democratic elections.<br /><br />When he became president, Mandela knew that before he could move the country forward as a new South Africa, he would have to reverse the victim culture of anger and blame that stemmed from the legacy of the past. To Mandela, the South African people must take responsibility for their own actions and confess their mistakes, without provoking acts of revenge and hatred that would tear the country apart.<br /><br />Parliament passed the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act in 1995. Mandela's administration shepherded a program of accountability without rancor, in the form of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The new minister of Justice, Dullah Omar echoed: <span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><br /><br />"We need understanding, not vengeance, we need reparation, not retaliation, and we need ubuntu [humanity], not victimization."</span><br /><br />Mandela emphasized: <span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">"We must regard the healing of the South African Nation as a process, not an event ... it helps us move away from the past to concentrate on the present and the future." </span></span><br /><br />Mandela had begun the process of accountability, forgiveness, and reconciliation.<br /><br />The structure of Mandela's government signaled inclusiveness and collaboration across political parties. His executive branch had members not only from the winning ANC, but also from the opposition National Party (the previous ruling apartheid govt) and Inkatha Freedom Party, both of which became a part of the Government of National Unity.<br /><br />Beginning at a press conference soon after his release from prision, and continuing throughout his presidency, Mandela emphasized that:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">"Whites are fellow South Africans and we want them to feel safe and to know that we appreciate the contribution that they have made towards the development of this country."</span><br /><br /></span>He urges whites to stay in South Africa and pointed out that they, too were a part of the nation.<br /><br />He told a crowd in the shantytown of Khayalitsha, "<span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Those that do not know how useful whites are know nothing about their own country."</span><br /><br />Mandela understood that a strong economy involved active initiative to build new enterprises and upgrade community infrastructures. So, in May 1994, Mandela announced a Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP) that aimed to tackle the issues at the very heart of poverty and economic opportunity, such as health, housing and education. He reassured international investors that the plan would be financed via cuts and adjustments in government's existing budget. As a symbol of commitment to the process, and setting a personal example of sacrifice, Mandela, together with senior government officials, accepted salary cuts of between 10% and 20% to contribute to social reconstruction.<br /><br />At the opening of the South African Parliament in February 1996, Mandela issued a call to action:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">"We can neither heal nor build with the victims of past injustices merely forgiving and the beneficiaries merely content in gratitude."</span><br /><br />Moving poor people from helplessness to hope and enabling them to take the initiative to improve their circumstances was impossible without education. Under the RDP, free compulsory education was phased in for all children, along with a school lunch program aimed at providing at least one full meal per day to children whose families lived below the poverty level.<br /><br />Opening opportunities meant addressing the racial basis of economic disparities. In October 1998, Mandela signed into law the Employment Equity Act, the goal of which was to eliminate historic race and gender-based discrimination and facilitate a move towardachieving a workplace representative of the country's demographics. Gradually, a new black middle-class began to emerge. A new generation of black business leaders became captains of industry. Great inroads were made in the delivery of essential services. Progress was also occurring in education, with literacy levels increasing across all age and gender group.<br /><br />Overall, large numbers of people who previously enjoyed no control over their economic circumstances and had to struggle for survival found more opportunities and tools to improve their life situations. Mandela did not guarantee jos or higher incomes, nor shower gravy-trains flooded with free-wealth, equity/shares, licence or schemes to get-rich-quick for the black communities. His Administration created the circumstances to give all the people more capacity to move out of poverty, and to give the more affluent the confidence to invest in growing the South African economy as entrepreneurs or business leaders.<br /><br />As with all his actions, Mandela was inclusive and practical. He did not want black empowerment to be accompanied by white flight, which would drain the country of capital and talent.<br /><br />At his inauguration in 1994, Mandela indicated that he would serve only one term as president. On June 16, 1999, nearly 50,000 people from around the world gathered on the lawns of the Union Buildings in Pretoria to witness a historic occasion: the first transition of power in a democratic South Africa. Millions more watched on television.<br /><br />It was unimaginable, for historically, very few revolutionaries have voluntarily handed over power and Mandela's act was unique for Africa - a peaceful transition of power in a continent torn by violence, and in a country surrounded by neighbors with entrenched and corrupt leadership.<br /><br />When the incoming president, Thabo Mbeki, stepped forward to take the oath of office, he offered a poignant tribute to his predecessor: Mbeki clasped Mandela's hand and raised it, commenting that the day was a <span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">"Salute for a generation that pulled the country out of the abyss and placed it on the pedestal of hope on which it rests today."</span><br /><br />Much had been done, and much was still to be done.<br /><br />Mandela sought power in order to distribute it rather than to use it to dominate others. He was the kind of leader who not only transforms, but elevates all those with whom he is involved.<br /><br />Mandela said of himself:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">"I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances."</span><br /><br />When asked to comment about those unflattering verdict on his performance as a leader, Mandela simply smiled and replied:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">"It helps to make you human."</span><br /><br />***********************************<br /><br />Reference/bibliography<br />Mandela: A Long Walk To Freedom<br />Rosabeth M. Kanter: Confidence<br /></div>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-52480722588926205812009-06-14T18:43:00.001-07:002010-05-29T21:00:51.024-07:00Smart Girls Marry Money<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/SjWadKJ6o1I/AAAAAAAAH6c/UK9WR2OGR7Q/s1600-h/Picture1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 170px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/SjWadKJ6o1I/AAAAAAAAH6c/UK9WR2OGR7Q/s200/Picture1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5347349958305162066" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Smart Girls Marry Money:</span></span><br />How Women Have Been Duped Into The Romantic Dream--And How They’re Paying For It.<br /><br />Authored by:<br />Elizabeth Ford and Daniela Drake<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Women can't have it all - they can't have romantic life and all the money they wanted, at the same time, sleep with the same man in the same bed, performing the same art, with the same passion.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The thesis - that money and the marrying of it is essential for women, because, given the current working culture, women are rarely able to earn as much as men, and should their marriage fail it is a fact that women rarely bounce back, professionally or financially, as easily as men, nor even romantically. Most men becomes richer after divorce.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">In recent research by Professor Stephen Jenkins, director of the Institute for Social & Economic Research, it was reported that 5 years after divorce, men were 25% richer, whereas women has less money than they did pre-split. Professor Jenkins conclude that until true equality exists in the labor market and in the way people come out of divorce, women remains at a disadvantage.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Smart Girls Marry Money was written by Daniela Drake and Elizabeth Ford. Elizabeth is a single mother, whose husband traded their marriage for a younger model - a chick 15-years younger than her. She swears she is not bitter; it's just that if she knew then what she know now, there's a lot of great and essential things she would get from that man she married. "I can attest from almost marrying someone for love (who also happened to HAVE money), there’s no way to prevent or take the burn out of being left brokenhearted, " she added.<br /><br />MC: You're both accomplished working women, but you're telling us we should marry for money. What gives?<br /><br />FORD: The juggling act required to be a successful woman, to be a good mom and to be a careerist, makes you want to say, "Screw it, I should've married money."<br /><br />MC: So you're saying we should quit our careers?<br /><br />FORD: You should definitely keep your job. But we haven't climbed the ladder as far as we should have. We have to keep that in mind when looking for a partner, and steer clear of seductive slackers.<br /><br />Miss Drake divorced her first husband because she felt that passion and love were gone from their relationship. She said: "Things might have been different if I'd known then that LOVE is TRANSIENT, that it doesn't exist, that a lack of it is not a reason to get out of your marriage." He first husband has now gone on to be quite rich. She remarried and is now happily married.<br /><br />So, why does society applaud a girl who falls for a guy with big blue-eyes yet denounces one who chooses a rich-ugly man? After all, isn’t money more a reflection of a man’s values and character?<br /><br />Smart Girls Marry Money challenges the ideals and assumptions women have blindly accepted about love and marriage—and shows how they’ve done so at their own economic peril.<br /><br />In their book, Elizabeth Ford and Daniela Drake use cold hard facts and true stories to present a compelling case for why mercenary marriages make the most sense for future happiness.<br /><br />Smart Girls emphasize on "Female “empowerment” - women working hard to look sexier than ever, while demanding more than their fair share financially. Yet sadly, statistics prove that: not only do women continue to earn far less than their male counterparts, they also suffer far more economically when marriages fail. Ford and Drake think it’s high time that women get their heads out of the clouds and start caring about their own security—the kind that can be measured in dollars and common sense.<br /><br />In a straight-talk tone, the authors serve up an intriguing strategy for how women can truly “have it all": that sexual fulfillment is dependent on discovering yourself through masturbation; that it is imperative to marry young, while you have the seductive powers of the sexually attractive and fecund; that women must be aware that men are prone to trading up once women no longer have the great skin or looks; that sleeping with your boss is fine if you can do so without harming your feelings or prospects.<br /><br />According to Merryn Somerset Webb, the editor-in-chief of MoneyWeek, "Even really smart women are victims of their own Cinderella Syndrome." Webb wrote "Love is Not Enough" after her husband asked her: "How do you intend to keep yourself in old age?" "I said, 'I'll share your money. To which he replied, 'No. Sort your own finances out." In the "Marrying-Money" agrument, Webb says, "It's all very well, as long as the money you marry don't leave you on your own in a poor financial position. Marrying money isn't a solution - it is not emotionally satisfying. Marriage is exhausting enough with someone you love - imagine doing it with someone you don't. I don't think people would marry purely for romantic love."<br /><br />The book would surely spark conversation and controversy, Smart Girls Marry Money intends to empower women with a new way to take control of both their economic and romantic lives.<br /><br />While the book is intended for the audience of "young supple beauties squandering their hotness," there is good news for single women whose "sell date is long overdue": Women over 40 "may still avoid working until you drop dead." (review by Bonnie Goldstein of doublex.com)<br /><br /><br /></div>Read: <a href="http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/article6365533.ece">timesonline</a>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-88729243224423611012009-02-01T18:39:00.000-08:002010-05-29T20:59:45.281-07:00Who are the Intellectuals? (Part 2)Who are the Intellectuals?<br /><br />"Any man or woman who is willing to think. All those who know that man's life must be guided by reason, those who value their own life and are not willing to surrender it to the cult of despair in the modern jungle of cynical impotence, just as they are not willing to surrender the world to the Dark Ages and the rule of the brutes."<br /><br />--- Ayn Rand in her book: For The New IntellectualMaverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-77951769688422392362009-02-01T18:35:00.001-08:002010-05-29T20:59:45.282-07:00Who are the Intellectuals? (Part 1)<div style="text-align: justify;">"The tragic joke of human history is that on any of the altars men erected, it was always man whom they immolated and the animal whom they enshrined.<br /><br />It was always the animal's attributes, not man's, that humanity worshipped: the idols of instinct and the idol of force - the mystics and the kings - the mystics, who longed for an irresponsible consciousness and ruled by means of the claim that their dark emotions were superior to reason, that knowledge came in blind, causeless fits, blindly to be followed, not doubted - and the kings - who ruled by means of claws and muscles, with conquest as their method and looting as their aim, with a club or a gun as sole sanction of their power.<br /><br />The defender of man's soul were concerned with his feelings, and the defender of man's body were concerned with his stomach - but both were united against his mind."<br /><br />--- John Galt in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand<br /></div>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-46087131531431362052009-01-28T04:21:00.000-08:002009-01-28T04:22:03.691-08:00Like the Flowing River by Paulo Coelho (Part 6)<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/SXSA_17vo5I/AAAAAAAAHfU/Z9uxPVrcwO4/s1600-h/Paulo+Coelho_Like+river+flowing.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 130px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/SXSA_17vo5I/AAAAAAAAHfU/Z9uxPVrcwO4/s200/Paulo+Coelho_Like+river+flowing.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292997296364954514" border="0" /></a>A boy was watching his grandmother write a letter. At one point, he asked:<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Are you writing a story about what we've done? Is it a story about me?"<br /><br />His grandmother stopped writing her letter and said to her grandson:<br />"I am writing about you, actually, but more important than the words is the pencil I'm using. I hope you will be like this pencil when you grow up."<br /><br />Intrigued, the boy looked at the pencil. It didn't seem very special.<br />"But it's just like any other pencil I've ever seen."<br /><br />"That depends on how you look at things. It has five qualities which, if you manage to hang on to them, will make you a person who is always at peace with the world.<br /><br />"First Quality: you are capable of great things, but you must never forget that there is a hand guiding your steps. We call that hand God, and He always guides us according to His will.<br /><br />"Second Quality: now and then, I have to stop writing and use a sharpener. That makes the pencil suffer a little, but afterwards, he's much sharper. So you, too, must learn to bear certain pains and sorrows, because they will make you a better person.<br /><br />"Third Quality: the pencil always allows us to use an eraser to rub out any mistakes. This means that correcting something we did is not necessarily a bad thing; it helps to keep us on the road to justice.<br /><br />"Fourth Quality: what really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So always pay attention to what is happening inside you.<br /><br />"Finally, the pencil's Fifth Quality: it always leaves a mark. In just the same way, you should know that everything you do in life will leave a mark, so try to be conscious of that in your every action."<br /></div><br />Source:<br />Paulo Coelho<br />Like The Flowing River (page 10-11)<br />2006<br />HarperCollinsPublishers, London<br /><br />****<br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Review:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This is a fantastic book by Paulo Coelho. I recommend those who loves philosophy and humanity to spent time reading this book.<br /><br />Like The Flowing River is an intimate collection of Paulo Coelho's reflection and short stories. The stories relates to the philosophy of life, our destiny and choices, of love and his thoughts and reflections that explores the journey of life in search of its true meanings.<br /><br />Other good books from Paulo Coelho are: The Alchemist, The Pilgrimage, Eleven Minutes and The Zahir. Some of the other books that did not interest me are: The Fifth Mountain, Veronika Decides to Die, The Devil and Miss Prym, Manual of the Warrior of Light, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept and Valkyries.<br /><br /></span> </div> <span style="font-style: italic;">I have yet to read "The Witch of Portobello" which I bought on 14th September 2007. I will finish it by this week.</span><br /><br />***Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-72264925785669844752009-01-28T04:17:00.000-08:002009-01-28T04:18:26.752-08:00The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin S. SharmaPeter was a very lively little boy. Everyone loved him: his family, his teachers and his friends. But he did have one weakness. Peter could never live in the moment. He had not learned to enjoy the process of life.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">When he was in school, he dreamed of being outside playing. When he was outside playing he dreamed of his summer vacation.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Peter constantly daydreamed, never taking the time to savor the special moments that filled his days.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">One morning, Peter was out walking in a forest near his home. Feeling tired, he decided to rest on a patch of grass and eventually dozed off. After only a few minutes of deep sleep, he heard someone calling his name. 'Peter! Peter!' came the shrill voices from above. As he slowly opened his eyes, he was startled to see a striking woman standing above him. She must have been over a hundred years old and her snow-white hair dangled well below her shoulders like a matted blanket of wool. In this woman's wrinkled hand was a magical little ball with a hole in the centre and out of the hole dangled a long, golden thread.<br /><br />'Peter,' she said, 'this is the thread of your life. If you pull the thread just a bit, an hour will pass in seconds. If you pull a little harder, whole days will pass in minutes. And if you pull with all your might, months - even years - will pass by in days.'<br /><br />Peter grew very excited at this discovery. 'I'd like to have it if I may?'<br /><br />The elderly woman reached down and gave the ball with the magic thread to Peter.<br /><br />The next day, Peter was sitting in the classroom feeling restless and bored. Suddenly, he remembered his new toy. As he pulled a little bit of the golden thread, he quickly found himself at home, playing in his garden. Realizing the power of the magic thread, Peter soon grew tired of being a schoolboy and longed to be a teenager, with all the excitement that phrase of life would bring. So, he pulled out the ball and pulled hard on the golden thread.<br /><br />Suddenly he was a teenager with a very pretty young girlfriend name Elise. But Peter still wasn't content. He had never learned to enjoy the moment and to explore the simple wonders of every stage of life. Instead, he dreamed of being an adult. So again he pulled on the thread and many years whizzed by in an instant. Now he found that he had been transformed into a middle-aged adult.<br /><br />Elise was now his wife and Peter was surrounded with a houseful of kids. But Peter also noticed something else. His once jet black hair had started to turn grey. And his once youthful mother whom he loved so dearly had grown old and frail.<br /><br />Yet Peter still could not live in the moment. He had never learned to "live in the now." So, once again, he pulled on the magic thread and waited for the changes to appear.<br /><br />Peter now found that he was a seventy-year-old man. His thick dark hair had turned white as snow and his beautiful young wife Elise had also grown old. His wonderful children had grown up and left home to lead lives of their own.<br /><br />For the first time in his entire life, Peter realized that he had not taken the time to embrace the wonders of living. He had never gone fishing with his kids or taken a moonlight stroll with Elise. He had never planted a garden or read those wonderful books his mother had love to read. Instead he had hurried through life, never resting to see all that was good along the way.<br /><br />Peter became very sad at this discovery. He decided to go out to the forest to look for the old woman who had given him the ball and the magic thread. But she was nowhere to be found.<br /><br />"My whole life has passed before my eyes without giving me the chance to enjoy it. Sure, there would have been sad times as well as great times but I haven't had the chance to experience either. I had missed the gift of living."<br /><br />Peter decides to "live in the now" from now onwards. He will now take whatever time is left tn this world to embrace the wonders of living.<br /><br />****************************************************<br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Adapted from: </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Robin S. Sharma's The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">HarperCollinsPublishers</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">1997</span><br /><br />*****************************************************<br /><br /></div>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-3997895328324694042009-01-28T04:16:00.000-08:002009-01-28T04:17:15.185-08:00Like the Flowing River by Paulo Coelho (Part 5)<div style="text-align: justify;">A missionary who, as soon as he arrived in Marrakesh (in Morocco), decided that he would go for a walk every morning in the desert that lay just outside the city.<br /><br />The first time he did this, he noticed a Arab lying down, with his ear pressed to the ground and stroking the sand with one hand.<br /><br />'He's obviously mad,' the missionary said to himself.<br /><br />But the scene was repeated every day, and after a month, intrigued by this strange behavior, he decided to speak to the stranger. With great difficulty, since he was not yet fluent in Arabic, he knelt down by his side, "What are you doing?"<br /><br />"I'm keeping the desert company and offering it consolation for its loneliness and its tears."<br /><br />"I didn't know the desert was capable of tears."<br /><br />"It weeps every day because it dreams of being useful to people, and of being transformed into a vast garden where they could grow cereal crops and flowers and graze sheep."<br /><br />"Well, tell the desert that it is performing an important duty," said the missionary. "Whenever I walk in the desert, I understand man's true size, because we are compared with God. When I look at its sands, I imagine all the millions of people in the world who were born equal, even if the world has not always been fair to all of them. Its mountains helps me to meditate, and when I see the sun coming up over the horizon, my soul fills with joy and I feel closer to the Creator."<br /><br />The missionary left the man and returned to his daily tasks. Imagine his surprise when, next morning, he found the man in the same place and in the same position.<br /><br />"Did you tell the desert everything that I said?"<br /><br />The man nodded.<br /><br />"And it's still weeping?"<br /><br />"I can hear every sob. Now it's weeping because it has spent thousands of years thinking that it was completely useless and wasted all the time blaspheming against God and its own fate."<br /><br />"Well, tell the desert that even though we human beings have a much shorter lifespan, we also spend much of our time thinking we're useless. We rarely discover our true destiny, and feel that God has been unjust to us. When the moment finally comes, and something happens that reveals to us the reason we were born, we think it's too late to change our life and continue to suffer, and, like the desert, blame ourselves for the time we have wasted,"<br /><br />"I don't know if the desert will hear that," said the man. "He's accustomed to pain, and can't see things any other way."<br /><br />"Let's do what I always do when I sense that people have lost all hope. Let is pray."<br /><br />The two men knelt and prayed. One turned towards Mecca because he was a Muslim, and the other put his hands together in prayer because he was a Catholic. They each prayed to their own God, who has always been the same God, even though people insist on calling him by different names.<br /><br />The following day, when the missionary went for his usual morning walk, the man was no longer there. In the place where he used to embrace the earth, the sand seemed wet, for a small spring has started bubbling up there.<br /><br />In the months that followed, the spring grew, and the inhabitants of the city built a well there.<br /><br />The Bedouin call the place "The Well of the Desert's Tears".<br /><br />They say that anyone who drinks from its water will find a way of transforming the reason for his suffering into the reason for his joy, and will end up finding his true destiny.<br /><br />***********************************************************************<br /><br />Extracted from the book, "Like The Flowing River" by Paulo Coelho.<br /><br />***********************************************************************</div>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-27153472079189646202009-01-28T04:15:00.002-08:002009-01-28T04:16:24.910-08:00Like the Flowing River by Paulo Coelho (Part 4)<div style="text-align: justify;">The more we plan our steps, the more chance there is that we will go wrong, because we are failing to take into consideration four things:<br /></div><br />1) Other people (2) Life's teaching (3) Passion, and (4) Calm.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The more we feel we are in control of things, the farther off we are from controlling anything. A threat does not issue any warning, and a swift reaction cannot be planned like a Sunday afternoon walk.<br /><br />Do not allow your supposed experience of life to transform you into a machine.<br /><br />Often what we call experience is merely the sum of our defeats. Thus we look ahead with the fear of someone who has already made a lot of mistakes in life and we lack the courage to take the next step.<br /><br /></div>*************************************************************************************<br />Extracted from Paulo Coelho's book, "Like the Flowing River<br /><br />*************************************************************************************Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-32296185561501603872009-01-28T04:15:00.001-08:002009-01-28T04:15:40.572-08:00Like the Flowing River by Paulo Coelho (Part 3)A wise man moved to the city of Akbar. No one took much notice of him, and his teachings were not taken up by the populace. After a time, he became the object of their mockery and their ironic comments.<br /><br />One day, while he was walking down the main street in Akbar, a group of men and women began insulting him. Instead of pretending that he had not noticed, the wise man turned to them and blessed them.<br /><br />One of the men said:<br /><br />"Are you deaf too? We call you the foulest of names and yet you respond with sweet words!"<br /><br />"We can each of us only offer what we have," came the wise man's reply.<br /><br />**********************************************************************************<br /><br />I have a lot to learn from this wise man. I will pray for courage and strength to apply this lesson in my life.<br /><br />**********************************************************************************<br /><br />Story extracted from Paulo Coelho's book, Like the Flowing River<br /><br />**********************************************************************************Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-22821367119267588152009-01-28T04:14:00.001-08:002009-01-28T04:14:56.297-08:00Like the Flowing River by Paulo Coelho (Part 2)<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">The Story of the prince of Thing-Zda</span><br /><br />Around 250 BC, a certain handsome prince of the region of Thing-Zda was about to be crowned emperor; however, according to the law, he must first had to get married.<br /><br />Since this meant choosing the future empress, the prince needed to find a young woman whom he could trust absolutely. On the advice of a wise man, he decided to summon all the young women of the region in order to find the most worthy candidate.<br /><br />An old lady, who served as a servant in the palace for many years, heard about the preparations for this gathering and felt very sad, for her daughter nurtured a secret love for this prince.<br /><br />When the old lady got home, she told her daughter and was horrified to learn that she intended going to the palace.<br /><br />The old lady was desperate.<br /><br />"But, daughter, what on earth will you do there? All the richest and most beautiful girls from the court will be present. It's a ridiculous idea! I know you must be suffering, but don't turn that suffering into madness.<br /><br />And the daughter replied:<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">"My dear mother, I am not suffering and I certainly haven't gone mad. I know that I won't be chosen, but it's my only chance to spend at least a few moments close to the prince, and that makes me happy, even though I know that a quite different fate awaits me."</span><br /></div><br />**********************************************************************************<br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 0, 0);">Second Chance: The story of Antonio</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">I was walking along the Gran Via when I saw a woman - petite, light-skinned, and well-dressed - begging money from passers-by. As I approached, she asked me for a few coins with which to buy a sandwich. I was used to beggars wearing very old, dirty clothes, and so I decided not to give her anything and walked on. The look she gave me, however, left me with a strange feeling.<br /><br />I went to my hotel and suddenly felt an incomprehensible urge to go back and give her some money - I was on holiday, I had just had lunch, I had money in my pocket, and it must be terribly humiliating to have to beg in the street and to be stared at by everyone.<br /><br />I went back to the place where I had seen her. She was no longer there; I searched the nearby streets, but could find no trace of her. the following day, I repeated this pilgrimage, again and again.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">From that day on, I slept only fitfully. I returned to my country and told a friend about my experience. She said that I had failed tomake some very important connection and advised me to ask for God's help. I prayed, and seemed to hear a voice saying that I needed to find the beggar again. I kept waking up in the night sobbing. I realized that I could not go on like this, and so I scraped together enough money to buy a ticket back to Madrid in order to look for the beggar.<br /></div><br />I began a seemingly endless search, to which I devoted myself entirely.<br /><br />I had been back to Spain several times since, and I know that I will never meet the beggar again; <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">but I did what my heart demanded.</span><br /><br />************************************************************************************<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lessons Learned: </span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="font-style: italic;">We may not get what we wanted but we are in control of what we can do, and the outcome is not for us to decide. If we had one chance, whatever the outcome it may be or what we may presumed, let's not lose that one chance, for we may not have another.</span><br /></div><br />***********************************************************************************<br />Adapted from Paulo Coelho's story in his book, Like the Flowing River<br /><br />**********************************************************************************Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-41394631040017020782009-01-28T04:13:00.000-08:002009-01-28T04:14:03.193-08:00Like the Flowing River by Paulo Coelho (Part 1)This was the conversation between a monk and Isabella.<br /><br />Monk: "Did you know that bananas can teach you the meaning of life?"<br /><br />The monk then took out a rotten banana from his bag and threw it away.<br /><br />Monk: "That is the life that has been and gone, and which was not used to the full and for which it is now too late."<br /><br />Then he drew another banana, which was still green.<br /><br />Monk: "This is the life that has yet to happen, and for which we need to wait until the time is right."<br /><br />Finally, he took out a ripe banana, peeled it, and shared it with Isabella.<br /><br />Monk: "This is the present moment. learn how to gobble it up without fear or guilt."<br /><br />************************************************************************<br /><br />Extracted from Paulo Coelho's book, Like the Flowing River<br /><br />************************************************************************Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-13798548958363170732009-01-28T04:11:00.000-08:002009-01-28T04:12:37.339-08:00The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/SX8aEyjrl1I/AAAAAAAAHjo/vcNAKFNxTs0/s1600-h/Picture1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 126px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/SX8aEyjrl1I/AAAAAAAAHjo/vcNAKFNxTs0/s200/Picture1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5295980356404221778" border="0" /></a>No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind the door;<br /><br />No one sacrifices the most important thing she possesses: Love;<br /><br />No one places her dreams in the hands of those who might destroy them.<br /><br />No one, that is, but Athena!<br /><br />*******************************************************************<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">"If a man we don't know phones us up one day and talks a little, makes no suggestions, says nothing special, but nevertheless pays us the kind of attention we rarely receive, we're quite capable of going to bed with him that same night, feeling relatively in Love. That's what women are like, and there's nothing wrong with that - it's the nature of thje female to open herself to love easily."<br /></div><br />--- Deidre O'Neill, doctor.<br /><br />************************************************************************************<br /><br />"... my heart struggled vainly not to allow itself to be seduced by a woman who don't belong to my world.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">"I applauded when reason lost the battle, and all I could do was surrender and accept that I was in Love. That love led me to see things I'd never imagined could exist - rituals, materialization, trances. Believing that I was blinded by Love, I doubted everything, but doubt, far from paralyzing me, pushed me in the direction of oceans whose very existence I couldn't admit.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">"I'm finally coming to accept that I was only a temporary inhabitant, there as a favor, like someone who finds himself in a beautiful mansion, eating exquisite food, aware that this is only a party, that the mansion belongs to someone else, that the food was bought by someone else, and that the time will come when the lights will go out, the owners will go to bed, the servants will return to their quarters, the door will close, and he'll be out in the street again, waiting for a taxi or a bus to restore him to the mediocrity of his everyday life.<br /><br />"I'm going back, or rather, part of me is going back to the world where only what we can see, touch and explain makes sense.<br /><br />"I also know that, at night, another part of me will remain wandering in space, in contact with things as real as ..."<br /><br />---Heron Ryan, journalist<br /><br />************************************************************************************<br /><br />The above are just a few lines from the book "The Witch of Portobello", another great story book written by Paulo Coelho, and it is the kind of book that will transform the way readers think about Love, passion, joy and sacrifice.<br /><br />The Witch of Portobello is a story of a girl by the name of Sherine Khalil who later changed her name to Athena, a mysterious young woman born in Romania, raised in Beirut and living in London. Her life is told by many who knew her well, or hardly at all.<br /><br />For those reading enthusiasts who prefers to read a story that is structured from a beginning and expecting the last chapter to be the conclusive ending of a tale, then you would be disappointed, as the book is structured in which each chapter consists of a testimony or statements related by an individual who knew Athena, telling their personal experiences and knowledge of Athena.<br /><br />My Rating: I prefer Coelho's Like the Flowing River, The Alchemist and The Pilgrimage. This book is somewhat similar in styles with Coelho's Eleven Minutes and Veronika Decides to Die.<br /><br /><br /></div>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-40217019523650425802009-01-28T04:10:00.000-08:002009-01-28T04:11:27.107-08:00Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho<div style="text-align: justify;">Once upon a time, there was a bird. He was adorned with perfect wings and with glossy, colorful feathers. He was a creature made to fly about freely in the sky, bringing joy to everyone who saw him.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />One day, a woman saw this bird and fell in love with him. She watched his flight, her mouth wide in amazement, her heart pounding, her eyes shining with excitement. She invited the bird to fly with her, and the two traveled across the sky in perfect harmony. She admired and venerated and celebrated that bird.<br /><br />But then she thought: He might want to visit far-off mountains! And she was afraid that she would never feel the same way about the other bird. And she felt envy, envy for the bird's ability to fly.<br /><br />And she felt alone.<br /><br />And her thought: "I'm going top set a trap. The next time the bird appears, he will never leave again."<br /><br />The bird, who was also in love, returned the following day, fell into the trap and was put in a cage.<br /><br />She looked at the bird every day. There he was, the object of her passion, and she showed him to her friends, who said: "Now you have everything you could possibly want."<br /><br />However, a strange transformation began to take place; now that she had the bird and no longer needed to woo him, she began to lose interest.<br /><br />The bird, unable to fly and express the true meaning of his life, began to waste away and his feathers began to lose their gloss; he grew ugly; and the woman no longer paid any attention, except by feeding him and cleaning out his cage.<br /><br />One day, the bird died. The woman felt terribly sad and spent all her time thinking about him. But she did not remember the cage, she thought only of the day when she had seen him for the first time, flying contently amongst the clouds.<br /><br />If she had looked more deeply into herself, she would have realized that what had trilled her about the bird was his freedom, the energy of his wings in motion, not his physical body.<br /><br />Without the bird, her life too lost all meaning, and Death came knocking at her door. "Why have you come?" she asked Death. "So that you can fly once more with him across the sky," Death replied.<br /><br />"If you had allowed him to come and go, you would have loved and admired him even more; alas, you now need me in order to find him again."<br /></div><br /><br />************************************************************************************<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/SYAv11BxSiI/AAAAAAAAHko/FXLzwGu3Rp0/s1600-h/Picture1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 164px; height: 200px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/SYAv11BxSiI/AAAAAAAAHko/FXLzwGu3Rp0/s200/Picture1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5296285763601779234" border="0" /></a>The above are Extracted from the book:<br />Eleven Minutes<br />(p215-217)<br /><br />by Paulo Coelho.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Eleven Minutes tells a story of a young girl who falls in love at the age of eleven and discovered that sex actually only takes ele<span style="font-style: italic;">ven minutes.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">In her odyssey of self-discovery, the girl has to choose between pursuing a part of darkness, sexual pleasure for its own sake, or risking everything to find her own 'inner light' and the possibility of sacred sex, sex in the context of love.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">In this gripping and daring novel, Coelho sensitively explores the sacred nature of sex and love.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">*************************************************************************************</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Notable notes:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">It is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Perhaps love really could transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">In the search for happiness, however, we are all equal; none of us are happy.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"I have discovered the reason why a man pays for a woman; he wants to be happy."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Everyone needs to earn money, but not everyone chooses to live on the margins of society.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">More Experience, Earn Less: </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Prostitution isn't like other businesses: Beginners earn more and more experienced earn less. Prices went down as the woman's age went up.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Customer Satisfaction / Quality Management:</span> "When your client comes, you must always groan as if you were having an orgasm too. That guarantees customer loyalty." Buy Why? "They're paying for their own satisfaction." "A man doesn't prove he's a man until he is made to believed that he can pleasure a woman. And if he can pleasure a prostitute, he'll think he's the best lover on the block; and he will start to admire his dick."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Men are very strange: </span>They can beat you up, shout at you, threaten you, and yet, they are scared to death of women really. Perhaps not the woman they married, but there's always one woman who frightens them and forces them to submit to her caprices.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Men are very strange: </span>It was the woman who would have felt ashamed for being unable to arouse them, but, no, they always blame themselves. Perhaps not the woman they married, but always one woman who frightens them and forces them to submit to her caprices.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">For a night? </span>Now come on, you're exaggerating. It's really only 45 minutes, and if you allow time for taking off clothes, making some phoney gestures of affection, having a bit of banal conversation and getting dressed again, the amount of time spent actually having sex is about Eleven Minutes."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Eleven Minutes! </span>The world revolved around something that only too Eleven Minutes. When the moment came to go to bed with someone, Eleven Minutes later it was all over.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Civilization:</span> Something was very wrong with civilization, and it wasn't the destruction of the Amazon, rainforest or the ozone layer, the death of the panda, cigarettes or prison conditions, as the newspapers would have it. It is precisely that thing: sex.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Men and women may withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">You can't mend a broken heart?: </span>In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">How can you mend a broken heart? </span>In love, no one can harm anyone else; but I'm not sure when that love is lost thereafter.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Ownership & Possession:</span> I am convinced that no one can loses anyone, because no one owns anyone.; no one possesses anyone else. Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever will finally come to realize that nothing really belongs to them.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Beauty is Money: </span>So many pretty girls let themselves be seduced by the illusion of easy money, forgetting that, one day, they'll be old and will have missed out on meeting the love of their life. Beauty is like the wind; beauty, my dear, don't last.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Heart or Body or Both:</span> Those who touched my heart failed to arouse my body, and those who aroused my body failed to touch my heart.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Don't Play-Play:</span> When it comes to seduction, feelings and contracts, one should never play around.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Wisdom: </span>"My dear, it's better to be unhappy with a rich man than happy with a poor man, and over there you'll have far more chances of becoming an unhappy rich woman."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Love is tangible and measurable:</span> "I didn't love your father at first, but money buys everything, even true love."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Exit Strategy:</span> No one knows what life is in store for us, and it's always good to know where the emergency exit is.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Women wants three things in life: adventure, money and a husband.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of pleasure and treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Being young inevitably means making mistakes; that's what all drug addicts says too.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone. From that point onwards, things change ... and what happens before - the attraction that brought them together - is impossible to explain and sustain.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Don't think how to do; Just do it: </span>Not everything in life is a matter of what position you adopt when making love, and that any variation usually occurs naturally, without thinking, like the steps in a dance.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Wisdom of a woman: </span>"I allowed myself to fall in love for a simple reason: I'm not expecting anything to come from it."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Love or make? </span>"Everyone knows how to love; but not everyone understands how to make love; the majority of us have to re-learn because there is a connecting thread. Our bodies must learn to speak the language of the soul, known as sex, and that is what a woman can give to the man who gave her back her soul, even though he has no idea how important he is to her life. That is what he asked for, and that is what she would give."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">No one can know how to humiliate another person if they themselves have not experience humiliation.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Wise man says:</span> Human beings weren't made solely to go in search of wisdom, but also to plough the land, wait for rain, plant the wheat, harvest the grain, make the bread, and have sex.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Witholding the object of desire:</span> Real love has nothing to do with imagination. We will discover it when a chain of events provoked by the energy engendered by love - courtship, engagement, marriage, children, waiting, more waiting, getting old, retirement, illnesses, the feelings that it is far too late. Sexual energy comes into play before sex even takes place. The greatest pleasure isn't sex, but the excitement of the thoughts of it. And then you awaken desire by not immediately handing over the object of that desire.</span><br /><br />*************************************************************************************<br /><br />N/B: Not everything quoted above are absolutely Coelhos'; there're quite some other Paulos around.<br /><br />N/B: Not me!<br />*************************************************************************************<br /><br /></div>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-90324473610546315512008-09-07T01:45:00.001-07:002010-05-29T21:01:11.731-07:00The Secret - The Law of Attraction<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/SMOVJs1EbrI/AAAAAAAAFFc/UnwVnXrq8xU/s1600-h/The+Secret_Rhonda+Byrne.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/SMOVJs1EbrI/AAAAAAAAFFc/UnwVnXrq8xU/s400/The+Secret_Rhonda+Byrne.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243198385074499250" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 102);font-size:130%;" >The Secret</span><br />by Rhonda Byrne<br />2006, Atria Books<br />available at MPH Bookstore<br />RM79.90<br /><br />This is a good book to read.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The Secret unveils the knowledge of ourselves and how we could understand the hidden, untapped power within us.<br /><br />The Secret contained wisdom from teachers such as Bob Proctor, Dr Joe Vitale, John Assaraf, Dr John Demartini, Dr Denis Waitley, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Lee Brower, Marie Diamond, Mike Dooley, Bob Doyle, Hale Dwoskin, Morris Goodman, Dr John Hagelin, Bill Harris, Dr Ben Johnson, Loral Langemeier, Lisa Nichols, James Ray, David Schirmer, Neale Donald Walsch, Dr Fred Alan Wolf, Dr John Gray and Jack Canfield.<br /><br />The Secret is about the law of attraction. Everything that's coming into our life we are attracting into our life. And it's attracted to us by virtue of the images we're holding in our mind. It's what we're thinking. Whatever is going on in our mind we are attracting to us.<br /><br />Go and get one of this book at the bookstore. it is value for money. But I prefer the DVD copy which is also available at MPH; however, the DVD could cost around RM130.<br /><br />This book was introduced to me by my student from CatLand. Watch the DVD!<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/SMOVtrzCnjI/AAAAAAAAFFk/a2KDGJXHVR4/s1600-h/The+Secret+DVD_Rhonda+Byrne.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/SMOVtrzCnjI/AAAAAAAAFFk/a2KDGJXHVR4/s400/The+Secret+DVD_Rhonda+Byrne.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243199003272846898" border="0" /></a>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-14970887053703782682007-12-24T06:51:00.000-08:002007-12-24T07:24:17.309-08:00Eat, Drink & be Merry<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/R2_IiXb-wlI/AAAAAAAAB3w/80vEpjMih4w/s1600-h/Picture1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/R2_IiXb-wlI/AAAAAAAAB3w/80vEpjMih4w/s200/Picture1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5147553391840248402" border="0" /></a>As a Chinese, I often wonder why we Chinese place so much emphasis on food and soup. Often we hear Chinese people says, we live to eat, and not the natural of which we eat to live.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Whenever we celebrate birthdays or festivals, we arrange dinner settings, with plenty of food and drinks.<br /><br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Lin YuTang posed: "What is the use of saying, “Peace, Peace,” when there is no peace below the diaphragm? This applies to nations as well as individuals. Empires have collapsed and the most powerful regimes and reigns of terror have broken down when the people were hungry.<br /><br />Why does a husband work and sweat in the office the whole day, except the prospect of a good meal at home? Hence the proverb that, <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-style: italic;">“the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”</span> When his flesh is satisfied, his spirit is calmer and more at ease, and he becomes more amorous and appreciative.<br /><br />Wives had complained that husband don’t notice their new dresses, new shoes or new eyebrows. But have wives ever complained that husbands don’t notice a good meal?<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">In his book, The Importance of Living, Lin YuTang cited a passage from the prefatory note of a book on the General Art of Living by a Chinese epicure Li LiWeng, and I surely find joy in reading it. Li LiWeng wrote a complaint about our having this bottomless pit called the stomach:<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify; font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">I see that the organs of the human body, the ear, the eye, the nose, the tongue, the hands, the feet, and the body, have all a necessary function, but the two organs which are totally unnecessary but with which we are nevertheless endowed are the mouth and the stomach, which caused all the worry and trouble of mankind throughout the ages. With this mouth and this stomach, the matter of getting a living becomes complicated, and when the matter of getting a living becomes complicated, we have cunning and falsehood and dishonesty in human affairs. With the coming of cunning and falsehood and dishonesty in human affairs, comes the criminal law, so that the king is not able to protect with his mercy, the parents are not able to gratify their love, and even the kind Creator is forced to go against His will. All this comes of a little lack of forethought in His design for the human body at the time of the creation, and is the consequence of our having these two organs.</div><p style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">He has given us<span style=""> </span>not only these two organs, but has also endowed us with manifold appetites or desires, besides making the pit bottomless, so that it is like a valley or a sea that can never be filled. The consequence is that we labor in our life with all the energy of the other organs, in order to supply inadequately the needs of these two. I have thought over and over again, and cannot help blaming the Creator for it. I know, of course, that He must have repented of His mistake also, but simple feels that nothing can be done about it now, since the design or pattern is already fixed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">How important it is for man to be very careful at the time of the conception of a law or an institution!</p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter 3: Animal Heritage</span><br />The Importance of Living<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">There is certainly nothing to be done about it, now that we have got this bottomless pit to fill. Confucius reduced the great desires of human beings to two: alimentation and reproduction, or in simple term, food and drinks, and woman.<br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Many men had circumvented sex, but no saint had yet to circumvented food and drinks. The most constant refrain of our thought occurring unfailingly every few hours is, “when do I eat?” This occurs at least 3 times a day. And stomach-gifted that we all are, the best arrangement we can think of when we gather to render public homage to a grandfather is to give him a birthday feast.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There is a reason for it. Friends that meet at meals meet at peace. Put two of the best friends together when they are hungry, and they will invariably end up in a quarrel. It is for this reason that, with the Chinese deep insight into human nature, all quarrels and disputes are settled at dinner tables instead of the court of justice. The pattern of Chinese life is such that we not only settle disputes at dinner, after they have arisen, but also forestall the rising of disputes by the same means. We bribe our way into the good will of everybody by frequent dinners. It is, in fact, the only safe guide to success in politics. Should someone take the trouble to compile statistical figures, he would be able to find an absolute correlation between the number of dinners a man gives to his friends and the rate or speed of his official promotion or approvals.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">With this philosophy, therefore, the Chinese have no prudery about food, or about eating it with gusto. When a Chinese drinks a mouthful of good soup, he gives a hearty smack; that would be bad table manners in the West. Western table manners compelled us to sip our soup noiselessly and eat our food quietly with the least expression of enjoyment, which they call, the art of cuisine. Most Americans haven’t got the good sense to take a chicken drumstick in their hand and chew it clean, but continued to pretend to play at it with a knife and fork, feeling utterly miserable and afraid to say a thing about it. This is criminal when the chicken is really good.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Such is the human psychology that if we don’t express our joy, we soon cease to feel it even, and then follow dyspepsia, melancholia, neurasthenia and all the mental ailments peculiar to the adult life.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In fact, I believe the reason why the Chinese failed to develop botany and zoology is that the Chinese scholar cannot stare coldly and unemotionally at a fish without immediately thinking of how it tastes in the mouth. The reason I can’t trust Chinese surgeons is that I am afraid that when a Chinese surgeon cuts up my liver in search of a gall-stone, he may forget about the stone and put my liver in a frying pan. For I see a Chinese cannot look at a porcupine without immediately thinking of ways and means of cooking it without being poisoned, and so was with all the other animals and plants.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">By nature, men are not carnivorous animal although they enjoy a good steak. The difference between the cannibals and civilized men is that the cannibals kill their enemies and eat them, while civilized men kill their foes and bury them, put a cross over their bodies and offer up prayers for their souls.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Half of the world spends their time doing things, and half the other half spends its time making others do things for them. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Food, then, is the very few solid joys of human life. There is no question of morality that arises in connection with food. Once food gets inside the lips, there is comparatively little side-tracking. It is readily admitted that everybody must have food, which is not the case with the sexual instinct. At the worst, some people eat their way into dyspepsia or an ulcered stomach or a hardened liver, and a few dig their graves with their own teeth. For the same reason, fewer social crimes arise from food than from sex. The criminal code has comparatively little to do with the sins of illegal, immoral and faithless eating, while it has a large section on adultery, divorce, and assault on women. At the worst, husband may ransack the icebox, but we seldom hang a man for spiking a fridge. Should such a case be brought to court, the judge will be full of compassion. Our hearts go out to people in famine, but not to the cloistered nun. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There is little public ignorance about the subject of food, as compared with public ignorance on the subject of sex. The subject of food enjoys the sunshine of knowledge, but sex is still surrounded with fairy tales, myths and superstitions. There is a closer relation between food and temperament. All herbivorous animals are peaceful by nature: the lamb, the horse, the cow, the elephant, the sparrow, etc; all carnivorous animals are fighters: the wolf, the lion, the tiger, the hawk, etc. nature does not produce a pugnacious temperament where no fighting is needed. Cocks still fight with each other, but they fight not about food, but about women.</p><div style="text-align: justify;">In food and at death, we feel the essential brotherhood of mankind. When the stomach is right, everything is right. A well-filled stomach is indeed a great thing; all else is luxury.</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">Women, wine, and beautiful songs; that's men's life!</span>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-18842553866623790092007-12-24T00:48:00.000-08:002007-12-24T06:00:46.148-08:00Lin YuTang: The Importance of Living<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/R29x-Hb-wkI/AAAAAAAAB3o/qLHQOvF2dWY/s1600-h/Lin+YuTang.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/R29x-Hb-wkI/AAAAAAAAB3o/qLHQOvF2dWY/s200/Lin+YuTang.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5147458211070001730" border="0" /></a><b style="">Lin YuTang<o:p></o:p></b> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">The Importance of Living<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Cultured Lotus, 2001 <o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">(First published by The John Day Company, Inc 1937)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">‘The Importance of Living’ by Lin YuTang is a personal testimony, a testimony of his very own experience of thought and life.<span style=""> </span>The main ingredient of his thought is matter-of-fact prose (<span class="sensecontent">the ordinary language people use in speaking or writing), natural leisure discourse. </span>Lin YuTang called his writing, a “Lyrical Philosophy” to express his thoughts which is based on highly personal and individual outlook. It lays no claim to establish eternal truths. <span class="sensecontent"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="sensecontent">When I started reading this book, I was jolted when I read a passage he wrote in the Preface: “I am not deep and well-read. If one is too well-read, then one does not know right is right and wrong is wrong.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="sensecontent">I pondered hard to discover what Lin was trying to express. I am still puzzled and blank.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="sensecontent">In the Preface, he expressed his philosophical limitations and said he had not read John Locke or David Hume or Berkeley, and had never taken a college course in philosophy, but only read life at first hand. His sources of knowledge comes from: Mrs. Huang, an amah in his family, a Soochow boat-woman, a Shanghai street car conductor, the cook’s wife, a lion cub in the zoo, a squirrel in New York, a deck steward, and all news in boxes. That’s his source of philosophy of mankind.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="sensecontent">While I continued reading, I gather that, Lin had being quoting various sources from (1) Chinese Philosopher & Poets such as: Su Tungpo, ChuangTse, Mencius, Confucius, TseSse (Confucius’ grandson), <span style=""> </span>LaoTse, Po Chuyi, Yuan ChungLang, Chang Tai, Tu ChihShui, Li ChowWu, Chang Chao, Li LiWeng, Yuan TseTsai, Chin ShengTan, Tao YuanMing, Li Mi-an; (2) Western & Greek Philsophers such as: Thomas Hobbes, Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Plato, Dr Alexis Carrel (Man, the Unknown), Clarence Day (This Simian World), Lord Balfour, Omar Khayyam, Mussolini, William James, James Harvey Robinson (The Mind in the Making), Shakespeare, Aesop, Chaucer, Swift, Anatole France, Einstein, Newton, Hans Christian Andersen (The Mermaid), Kaiser Wilhelm Hodenzollern, Hitler, Hegel,Walt Whitman (Democratic Vistas), Napolean, Marx, Stalin, Emerson, Amiel, Joubert, James Bryce, George Santayana, and so many, many, more. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="sensecontent">The writings in this book covered wide views on human awakenings, views of mankind, animal heritage, human dignity and life’s enjoyment, the importance of loafing, celibacy and sex appeal, enjoyment of nature, culture and travel, man’s relationship to God, and the art of thinking.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">This philosophical book is a difficult read. You have to have passion and yearnings to want to learn and find out more about the philosophical views of mankind, in particular, the wisdom and thoughts of a Chinese philosopher; otherwise, you would throw the book away.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In Lin’s own words, “I am only interested to present a view of life and of things as the best and wisest Chinese minds have seen it and expressed it in their folk wisdom and their literatures.” It was surely an idle philosophy born of an idle life which evolved with the time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I love it when he said that “The Chinese philosopher is one who dreams with one eye open, who views life with love and sweet irony, who mixes his cynicism with a kindly tolerance, and who alternately wake up from life’s dream and then nods again, feeling more alive when he is dreaming than when he is awake, thereby investing his waking life with a dream-world quality. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">A “Dream-world” quality, what a nice phrase</p> <div style="text-align: justify;">Dr Lin was born in Changchow in the Fukien province of China on Oct 10th 1895, son of a Christian Minister. He was raised as a Christian, but soon abandoned Christianity for the old Chinese Pagan religions of Taoism and Buddhism, only to rediscover Christianity later in his life.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">He took his degrees in St. John's (Shanghai), Harvard, and Leipzig. He was a teacher at Tsinghua University, Beijing in 1916-1919; married and went with his wife to Harvard in 1919 where he studied Comparative Literature under Bliss Perry and Irving Babbitt until 1920. They then moved to France, where Dr Lin worked with the YMCA for Chinese labourers at Le Creusot, 1920-1921. He studied at Jena and Leipzig (where he received his Doctorate) 1921-1923; was Professor of English at Beijing National University 1923-1926 and Dean of Women's Normal College in 1926.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">It was in 1937 that Lin first published the book The Importance of Living. It was pure philosophy, and an ancestor of modern "self-help" books, and it achieved instant fame in the United States.<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Though Lin's subsequent works contained many philosophical ideas, The Importance of Living is the only one of his books dedicated solely to the mystery of life and the secret to living it successfully.<br /></div><br />In 1959, at the encouraging of his wife, Lin attended the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. The minister's sermon about eternal life left Lin curious and intrigued, and he began to return "again and again." After some time, he said:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">"The scales began to fall from my eyes. I no longer ask, 'Is there a satisfying religion for the modern educated man?' I know there is. Returning to the Bible, I have found in it not merely a record of historical events but an authentic revelation that brings God, through Christ, within my reach. I have returned to the church. I am happy in my accustomed pew on Sunday morning. I believe we go to church not because we are sinners, and not because we are paragons of Christian virtue, but because we are conscious of our spiritual heritage, aware of our higher nature and equally conscious of our human failings and of the slough of self-complacency into which, without help from this greater power outside ourselves, we so easily fall back…. Looking back on my life, I know that for thirty years I lived in this world like an orphan. I am an orphan no longer. Where I had been drifting, I have arrived. The Sunday morning when I rejoined the Christian church was a homecoming.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"> The result of Lin's conversion was a book, From Pagan to Christian. It is a text that provides valuable biographical information, and a detailed discussion of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, with a final discussion on why he finally chose Christianity. He asserts that no person can rightly claim to have "a monopoly of truth," and spends much of the book pointing out the qualities of other religions.<br /></div><br />Lin Yutang died in 1976 and was buried at his home in Yang Mingshan, Taiwan. His old home has now been turned into a museum, which is run by Soochow University.<br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b style="">Chapter 1: The Awakening<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I like to share some of his thoughts about mankind. In the first chapter ‘The Awakening’, Lin said that, “It is generally known that the Chinese mind is an intensely practical, hard-headed one … and profoundly sensitive, profoundly poetic and philosophical. It was evident that the Chinese as a nation are more philosophic than efficient, and that if it was otherwise, no nation could have survived the high blood pressure of efficient life for 4,000 years. 4,000 years of efficient living would ruin any nation, says Lin.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Lin expressed: “<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">In the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, while in </span><st1:country-region style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><st1:place>China</st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">, the insane are so unusual that we worship them</span>, as anybody who has knowledge of Chinese literature will testify.” (<span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Hahahaha, I truly love this phrase</span>.) </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In Lin’s thesis, Mankind seems to be divided into idealists and realists, and idealism and realism are the two great forces molding human progress. The forces of idealism and realism tug at each other in all human activities, and real progress is made possible by the proper mixture of these two ingredients, so that the clay is kept in the ideal pliable, plastic condition, half moist and half dry, not hardened and unmanageable, nor dissolving into mud. Some countries are thrown into perpetual revolutions because into their clay has been injected some liquid of foreign ideals which is not yet properly assimilated, and the clay is therefore not able to keep its shape.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">A vague, uncritical idealism always lends itself to ridicule and too much of it might be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginary ideals. If there were too many of these visionary idealists in any society, revolution would be the order of the day.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Human society would be like an idealistic couple forever getting tired of one place and changing their residence regularly for the simple reason that no one place is ideal and the place where one is not seems always better because one is not there.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Very fortunately, man is also gifted with a sense of humor, whose function, is to exercise criticism of man’s dreams, and bring them in touch with the world of reality. It is therefore important that man dreams, but it is perhaps equally important that he can laugh at his own dreams. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">So then, wisdom of the highest level of thinking consists in toning down our dreams, or idealism with a good sense of humor, supported by reality itself. That is to say, <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The Dreamer says: <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“Life is but a dream.”</span> The Realist replies: <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">“Quite correct. And let us live this dream as beautifully as we can.”</span> But the Realist is a poet and not a business man, who is like an old man running his finger through his flowing beard, and speaking soothingly. And the dreamer is a peace lover, for no one can fight hard just for a dream. He will be more intent to live reasonably and well with his fellow dreamers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But the chief function of realism is the elimination of all non-essentials in the philosophy of life, holding life down by the neck, for fear that the wings of imagination may carry it away to an imaginary and possible beautiful, but unreal, world.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The problem of life for the Chinese is the impatience with metaphysics and the pursuit of knowledge that does not lead to any practical bearing on life itself. It also means that every human activity, whether the acquiring of knowledge or the acquiring of things, has to be submitted immediately to the test of life itself and its subservience to the end of living. The significance is that, the end of living is not some metaphysical entity – but just living itself.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Therefore, the philosophy of the Chinese becomes a matter of direct and intimate feeling of life itself, and refused to be encased in any system. For there is a robust sense of reality, a sheer animal sense, a spirit of reasonableness which crushes reason itself and makes the rise of any hard and fast philosophic system impossible. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism are robust, yet common sense dilutes them all and reduces them all into the common problem of the pursuit of a happy human life. The mature Chinese is always a person who refuses to think too hard or to believe in any single idea or faith or school of philosophy whole-heartedly. When a friend of Confucius told him that he always thought 3-times before he acted, Confucius wittily replied, “To think twice is more than enough.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The final product of this culture and philosophy is that, man lives a life closer to nature and close to childhood, a life in which the instincts and the emotions are given free play and emphasized against the life of the intellect, with a strange combination of devotion to the flesh and arrogance of the spirit, of profound wisdom and foolish gaiety, high sophistication and childish naiveté. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">This philosophy of life is characterized by: (1) a gift for seeing life whole in art; (2) a conscious return to simplicity in philosophy; (3) an ideal of reasonableness in living. The end product is, strange to say, a worship of the poet, the peasant, and the vagabond.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Man’s dignity consists of the facts that which distinguish man from animals. First, man has a playful curiosity and a natural genius for exploring knowledge; second, that man has dreams and a lofty idealism (often vague, cocky & confused); third, that man is able to correct his dreams by a sense of humor, and thus restrain his idealism by a more robust and healthy realism; and finally, that man does not react to surroundings mechanically and uniformly as animals do, but possesses the ability and the freedom to determine his own reactions and to change the surroundings at his will.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Somehow, human mind is forever elusive, uncatchable and unpredictable, and wriggle out of materialistic dialectic that crazy psychologists and unmarried economists are trying to impose upon him. Man, therefore, is a curious, dreamy, humorous and wayward creature.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-weight: bold;">The Scamp as Ideal.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">My faith in human dignity consists in the belief that man is the greatest scamp on earth. Human dignity must be associated with the idea of a scamp and not with that of an obedient, disciplined and regimented soldier.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">In this present age of threats to democracy and individual liberty, only the scamp and the spirit of the scamp alone will save us from becoming lost as serially numbered units in the masses of disciplined, obedient, regimented and uniformed coolies. The scamp will be the last and most formidable enemy of dictatorships. He will be the champion of human dignity and individual freedom, and will be the last to be conquered. All modern civilization depends entirely upon him.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living, and I call no man wise until he has made the progress from the wisdom of knowledge to the wisdom of foolishness, and become a laughing philosopher, feeling first life’s tragedy and then life’s comedy. For we must weep before we can laugh. Out of sadness comes the awakening and out of the awakening comes the laughter of the philosopher, with kindliness and tolerance to boot.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">This world is far too serious and being far too serious, it has need of a wise and merry philosophy. The philosophy of the Chinese art of living can certainly be called the “gay science”. After all, only a gay philosophy is profound philosophy; the serious philosophies of the West haven’t even begun to understand what life is. To me, the fundamental view is that, the only function of philosophy is to teach us to take life more lightly and gaily than the average business man does. The world can be made a more peaceful and more reasonable place to live in only when men have imbued themselves in the light gayety of this spirit. The modern man takes life far too seriously, and because he is too serious, the world is full of trouble. We ought, therefore, to take time to examine the origin of that attitude which will make possible a wholehearted enjoyment of this life and a more reasonable, more peaceful and less hot-headed temperament.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">This is perhaps the philosophy of the Chinese people, a philosophy that transcends these and other ancient philosophers, for it draws from these fountain springs of thought and harmonizes them into a whole, and from the wisdom, it has created an art of living in the flesh, visible, palpable and understandable by the common man.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-style: italic;">(The above is only chapter 1. I will cull some of the interesting thoughts and essays later).</p>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14047312.post-22379414477962969612007-12-22T09:46:00.000-08:002007-12-21T05:53:00.289-08:00Man's Search for Meaning<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/R2vDy3b-wdI/AAAAAAAAB20/y0ZjE_z98ys/s1600-h/Viktor+Frankl+Search+for+Meaning.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BJGWfUvJNiQ/R2vDy3b-wdI/AAAAAAAAB20/y0ZjE_z98ys/s200/Viktor+Frankl+Search+for+Meaning.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146422277843108306" border="0" /></a>Viktor E Frankl<br /><br />Man’s Search for Meaning<br /><br />Beacon Press, Boston, 1959, 2006<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">To review this book had been made easy by the Forward penned by Harold S. Kushner. There’s really nothing that need to be said that had not been said by Harold. In Harold’s words, "<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">if a book has one passage, one idea with the power to change a person’s life, that alone justifies reading it, rereading it, and finding room for it on one’s shelves. This book has several such passages."</span><br /><br />It is a book about survival. Frankl was cast into the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. Miraculously, he survived. This book is not an account of what he suffered and lost, for it is about the sources of his strength to survive, as Frankl approvingly quote the words of Nietzsche: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.”<br /><br />Frankl described poignantly those prisoners who gave up on life, lost all Hope for a future, and inevitably died. They died less from lack of food or medicine than from lack of Hope.<br /><br />But Frankl discovered an enduring insight, in that, “forces beyond our control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” In Frankl’s words: “You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you feel and do about what happens to you.” “ …that we can never be left with nothing as long as we retain the freedom to choose how we will respond to a suffering.<br /><br />Camp’s Life<br /><br />On their admission to the camp, all possessions are taken away from them, and each prisoner had nothing but a number, tattooed on their skin or sewn to a certain spot. They all lost their identity, for they will never be asked for their name except their number; and anyone can claim a fictitious name or profession. Frankl was number 119,104 and most of the time he was digging and laying tracks for railway lines. He also dig tunnel, without help, for a water main under the road.<br /><br />In his writing, Frankl examines his and the many prisoners’ experiences, and observed that there are three phases of the inmates mental reactions to camp life: the period following the admission; the period when he is well entrenched in camp routine; and the period following his release and liberation.<br /><br />The symptom that characterizes the first phase is shock. Auschwitz is the name that stood for all that was horrible: gas chambers, crematoriums, massacres. With the outlines of an immense camp becoming visible, step by step they had to become accustomed to a terrible and immense horror.<br /><br />However, there was a certain “delusion of reprieve”. Nearly every prisoner lived under the illusion that they would be reprieved, that everything would yet be well. Like a condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute. Frankl clung to shreds of hope and believed to the last moment that it would not be so bad.<br /><br />Slowly, those illusions were destroyed one by one, and then, most of them would overcome by a grim sense of humor, for they had nothing to lose except their naked lives. Only sleep can bring oblivion and relief from the pains they had endured. The thoughts of suicide were entertained by nearly everyone. It was born of the hopelessness of the situation, the constant danger of death and the closeness of death.<br /><br />There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. Newly arrived prisoners experienced the torture of other most painful emotions, all of which he tried to deaden. They were disgusted with the ugliness which surrounded them. At first the prisoners looked away if they saw the punishment of another group; he could not bear to see fellow prisoners being tortured.<br /><br />Days or weeks passed, and the prisoners soon passed into the second stage of his psychological reactions, for they did not avert their eyes any more. By then their feelings were blunted, and they watched unmoved and unconcerned.<br /><br />Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that once could not care any more, were the symptoms arising during the 2nd stage of the prisoners’ psychological reactions, and which eventually make them insensitive to daily and hourly beatings. This insensibility of the prisoners soon surrounded them with a very necessary protection shell. Beating occurred on the slightest provocation, sometimes for no reason at all. At such a moment it is not the physical pain which hurts the most; it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all.<br /><br />Strangely enough, a blow which does not even find its mark can, under certain circumstances, hurt more than one that finds its mark. There are moments when indignation can rouse even a seemingly hardened prisoner – indignation not about cruelty or pain, but about the insult connected with it.<br /><br />Apathy, the main symptom of the 2nd phase, was a necessary mechanism of self-defense. Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: preserving one’s own life, and that of the other fellow. Such a state of strain and the concentration on the task to stay alive, forced the prisoners’ inner life down to a primitive level - a “regression” – a retreat to a more primitive form of mental life. His wishes and desires became obvious in his dreams. They dream of brad, cake, cigarettes, and nice warm bath. The lack of having these simple desire satisfied led them to seek wish-fulfillment in dreams. Even the strongest was longing for the time when they could have fairly good food again, not for the sake of good food itself, but for the sake of knowing that the sub-human existence, which had made them unable to think of anything other than food, would at least cease.<br /><br />Whether these dreams did any good is another matter; the dreamer had to still wake from them to the reality of camp life, which is terribly contrasting between that and the dream illusions.<br /><br />For those who had not had similar experience can hardly conceive of the soul-destroying mental conflict and clashes of will power which a famished man experiences. Undernourishment, besides being the cause of the general preoccupation with food, probably also explains the fact that the sexual urge was generally absent. The effort of having to concentrate on just saving one’s skin led to a total disregard of anything not serving that purpose, and explains the prisoners’ complete lack of sentiments.<br /><br />During the later part of his imprisonment, the daily ration consisted of watery soup given out once daily, and a small crump of bread. The diet was absolutely inadequate, taking into consideration the heavy manual work and constant exposure to the cold in inadequate clothing. When the last layers of subcutaneous fat had vanished, they looked like skeletons disguised with skin and rags, and they could watch their bodies beginning to devour themselves. The organism digested its own protein, and the muscles disappeared. Then the body had no power of resistance left. One after another died and each of them could calculate with fair accuracy whose turn would be next, and when his own would come. They were, but a small portion of a great mass of human flesh, of a mass behind barbed wire, a mass of which daily a certain portion begins to rot because it has become lifeless.<br /><br />There was neither time nor desire to consider moral or ethical issues. Every man was controlled by one thought only: to keep himself alive for the family waiting for him at home, and to save his friends. Only those prisoners who could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. With no hesitation, any prisoner would arrange for another prisoner, another number, to take his place to be sent to the gas chambers.<br /><br />“For each man saved another victim had to be found”<br /><br /><br />In Frankl’s words, “It is not for me to pass judgment on those prisoners who put their own people above everyone else. Who can throw a stone at a man who favors his friends under circumstances when, sooner or later, it is a question of life or death. No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.”<br /><br />The spirit of Love, Art and Nature<br /><br />In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the life in a concentration camp, it was still possible for spiritual life to deepen. On one of those morning march to work site, a thought of his beloved woman came to mind that transfixed Frankl: for the first time in his life he saw the truth, the truth that, LOVE is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. He understood then, how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way, in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.<br /><br />For, Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases, somehow, to be of importance. There is no need for him to know whether she is still alive at all; for nothing could touch the strength of his love, his thoughts, and the image of his beloved. Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.<br /><br />This intensification of the inner self helped him to find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence, by letting him escape into the past. When given free rein, his imagination played with past events, often not important ones, but minor happenings and trifling things. His nostalgic memory glorified them and they assumed a strange character. These memories could move one to tears.<br /><br />As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before. Under their influence he sometimes even forgot his own frightful circumstances.<br /><br />Humor, the Soul’s Weapon<br /><br />Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipotent.<br /><br />A man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore, the size of human suffering is absolutely relative.<br /><br /><br />Negative Happiness<br /><br />It also follows that a very trifling thing can cause the greatest of joys. The prisoners were grateful for the smallest of mercies. They were glad when there was time to delouse before going to bed; they were thankful if there was no air raid alarm which would keep them awake half the night. The meager pleasures of camp life provided a kind of “Negative Happiness” – freedom from suffering as Schopenhauer put it – and even that in a relative way only. Real positive happiness, even small ones, were very few.<br /><br />3rd Stage of Mental Reactions – Liberation<br /><br />The 3rd stage of a prisoner’s mental reactions is the psychology of the prisoner after his liberation. In the morning when the white flag was hoisted above the camp gates after days of high tension, the state of inner suspense was followed by total relaxation. But it would be quite wrong to think that the prisoners went mad with joy. “Freedom”, they repeated to themselves, and yet they could not grasp it. They had said this word so often during all the years they dreamed about it, that it had lost its meaning. They could not grasp the fact that freedom was theirs. They had literally lost their ability to feel pleased and had to relearn it slowly.<br /><br />Psychologically, what was happening to the liberated prisoners could be called “depersonalization”. Everything appeared unreal, unlikely, as in a dream. They could not believe it was true. They had being deceived by their dreams so often in the past years. And now the dream had come true, but could they truly believe in it?<br /><br />The body has fewer inhibitions than the mind. It made good use of the new freedom from the first moment on. It began to eat ravenously, for hours and days, even half the night.<br /><br />One day, after the liberation, Frankl walked through the country past flowering meadows, for miles and miles, toward the market town near the camp. There was no one to be seen around; there was nothing but the wide earth and sky and the larks’ jubilation and the freedom of space. He stopped, looked around, and up to the sky – and then he went down on his knees. At that moment there was little in mind – always the same: “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space.” How long he knelt, he couldn’t remember. But from that day onwards, his new life started. Step by step he progressed, until he again became a human being.<br /><br />Frankl’s Logotherapy<br /><br />Frankl’s experience at the concentration camp serves as the existential validation of his doctrine which seeks to convey the message that life holds a potential meaning under any condition, even the most miserable ones.<br /><br />For a man’s character became involved to the point that he was caught in a mental turmoil which threatened all the values he held and threw them into doubt. Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life and human dignity, which had robbed man of his will and had made him an object to be exterminated, under this influence the personal ego finally suffered a loss of values. If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value. He thought of himself then as only a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of animal life.<br /><br />It is well known that an enforced community life, in which attention is paid to everything one does at all times, may result in an irresistible urge to get away, at least for a short while. The prisoner craved to be alone with himself and his thoughts. He yearns for privacy and for solitude. It would be a fortune to find solitude for about five minutes at a time. He would then sit and looked out at the green flowering slopes and the distant blue hills of the Bavarian landscape, framed by meshes of barbed wire. He would dream longingly, and his thoughts would wander in the direction of his home, but he could see no clouds. Even the corpses near him, crawling with lice, did not bother him.<br /><br />It is difficult for an outsider to grasp how very little value was placed on human life in camp. The inmates were hardened. A man is only counted because he had a prison number. The life of a number was completely irrelevant. What stood behind those numbers and that life mattered even less: the fate, the history, the name of the man. They had no documents; everyone was lucky to own his body, which, after all, was still breathing. The prisoners saw themselves completely dependent on the moods of the guards and this made them even less human than the circumstances warranted.<br /><br />By the above accounts, Frankl might have given the impression that the human being is completely and unavoidably influenced by his surrounding, in this case, the unique structure of camp life, which forced the prisoner to conform his conduct to a certain pattern of life. Is man no more than a product of many conditional and environmental factors – be they of a biological, psychological or sociological nature? Does man have no choice of action in the face of such circumstances?<br /><br />The experiences of camp life shows that man does have a choice, says Frankl. There were enough examples that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.<br /><br />There were sufficient proofs that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.<br /><br />There were always choices to make, every day, every hour, offered opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstances, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.<br /><br />Fundamentally, every man can, even under such difficult circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread; not to be worthy of my sufferings.”<br /><br />The last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that the prisoners were worthy of their sufferings; what they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.<br /><br />An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life, namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. For without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.<br /><br />The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity – even under the most difficult circumstances – to add a deeper meaning to his life. It is true that only a few people are capable of reaching such high moral standards.<br /><br />Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering. But when we were confronted with a great destiny and faced with the decision of meeting it with equal spiritual greatness, we had forgotten our youthful resolutions of long ago, and we failed. Psychological observation of the prisoners have shown that only the men who allowed their inner hold on their moral and spiritual selves to subside eventually fell victim to the camp’s degenerating influences.<br /><br />Life in a concentration camp could be called a “provisional existence” or as defined as “provisional existence of unknown limit.” New arrivals usually know nothing about the conditions at a camp. On entering camp a change took place in the minds of the men. With the end of uncertainty there came the uncertainty of the end. It was impossible to foresee whether or when, if at all, this form of existence would end. A man who could not see the end of his “provisional existence” was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life. He ceased living for the future. Therefore the whole structure of his inner life changed; signs of decay set in which we know from other areas of life.<br /><br />A man who let himself decline because he could not see any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts. There was the tendency to look into the past, to help make the present, with all its horrors, less real. But in robbing the present of its reality there lay a certain danger. It became easy to overlook the opportunity to make something positive, opportunities which really do exist. Such people forgot that often it is just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond their inner strength; they did not take their life seriously and despised it, as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless. It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.<br /><br />Naturally only a few people were capable of reaching great spiritual heights. The words of Bismarck, “Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.” Most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of prisoners. Spinoza say in his Ethics, “Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. Those who had lost faith in the future – his future – is doomed. He then declined and become subjected to mental and physical decay.<br /><br />There is also a close link between the loss of faith in the future and the dangerous giving up. There is a close connection between the state of mind of a man – his courage and hope, or lack of them – and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect. Where there is a dream of a future, and when this faith in the future and the will to live had become paralyzed, the body will fell victim to illness and the voice of a dream will be right after all.<br /><br />Therefore, any attempt to restore such a man’s inner strength had first to succeed in showing him some future goal. Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a WHY to live for can bear with almost any HOW”, could be the guiding principle. We had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.<br /><br />These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way. Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. Life does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete. They form man’s destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situation in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. At other time it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross. Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand.<br /><br />When a man finds it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.<br /><br />Once the meaning of suffering had been revealed to him, Frankl refuse to minimize or alleviate the tortures by ignoring them or harboring false illusions and entertaining artificial optimism. Suffering had become a task on which he did not want to turn his backs. We had realized its hidden opportunities for achievement, the opportunities which caused the poet Rilke to write, “Wie vie list aufzuleiden!” (How much suffering there is to get through). There was plenty of suffering for Frankl to go through. Therefore, it was necessary to face up to the full amount of suffering, trying to keep moments of weakness and furtive tears to a minimum. But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. Only a few realized that.<br /><br />A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the WHY for his existence and will be able to bear almost any HOW.<br /><br />Each of us had to ask himself what irreplaceable losses he had suffered up to then. Whoever was still alive had reason for hope. Health, family, happiness, fortune, position in society – all these were things that could be achieved or restored. After all we still had all our bones intact. Whatever we had gone through could still be an asset to us in the future. Nietzsche said: “That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.”<br /><br />For no man knows what the future would bring, much less the next hour. But we knew better than, with our experience of life, how great chance sometimes opened up, quite suddenly, at least for the individual, for this was the kind of thing which constitute the “luck” of individual.<br /><br />For what you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you. Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we had suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being and perhaps the surest kind.<br /><br />Man’s Search for Meaning<br /><br />Frankl’s doctrine of Logotherapy focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on man’s search for such a meaning that is, striving to find a meaning in one’s life. Frankl’s experience in Auschwitz concentration camp let him to experience his key idea, that is, life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Sigmund Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning, that the greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. Frankl concedes that in the bitter fight for self-preservation, man may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal.<br /><br />Successful businessmen who upon retirement may have lost all zest for life, for the fact that, their work had given their lives meaning, without it, they spent their time at home, depressed, with nothing to do, no challenges, and no more meaning in life. They soon died.<br /><br />Human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death. Frankl saw 3 possible source of meaning: in work, in love and in courage during difficult times. Suffering in and of itself is meaningless unless we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it. We must not lose hope but should keep our courage in the certainty that the hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity and its meaning.<br /><br />In writing this book, Frankl states that he is not writing an account of facts and events at the concentration camp but rather of his personal experiences, experiences which millions of prisoners have suffered time and again. It is about the inside story of a concentration camp told by one of the survivors. It is not about the great horrors within but about the multitude of small torments.<br /><br />For Frankl, it was easy for the outsiders to get the wrong conception of camp life, a conception mingled with sentiment and pity. Little does he know of the hard fight for existence which raged among the prisoners? This was an unrelenting struggle for daily bread and for life itself, for one’s own sake or for that of a good friend.<br /><br />In attempting a methodical presentation of the subject, it was difficult, as psychology requires a certain scientific detachment. But does a man who makes his observations while he himself is a prisoner possess the necessary detachment? Such detachment is only granted to an outsider, but that outsider is too far removed to make any statements of real value. Only the man inside knows. His judgment may not be objective; his evaluations may be out of proportion. This is inevitable. Attempt to avoid personal bias may be made but it is real difficult of a book of this kind.<br /><br />It never occurred to Frank that this book could become a success as he had intended to publish anonymously so that it could never build up any reputation on the part of the author. When the manuscript was completed, Frankl wanted it an anonymous publication but it would lose half its value, and that he had to have the courage to state his convictions openly. However, success follows you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it. We can be said to be indebted to the 2nd World War for enriching our knowledge of the psycho-pathology of the masses, for the war gave us the war of nerves and it gave us the concentration camp.<br /><br />Frankl had always advise his students not to aim at success, for the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. We can let it happen by not caring about it by listening to what our conscience commands us to do and go on to carry it out to the best of our knowledge. Then we will live to see that in the long run, for success will follow precisely because we had forgotten to think of it.<br /><br />This is a great lesson for me, and it is truly profound knowledge. I will continue to search for meaning in life, and to live life to the fullest. For what I had conceived, from the knowledge imparted unto me, I now know that, no power on earth can take from me; not only my experiences in life, but all trials and tribulations that I had journeyed through, whatever great thoughts and failures I have had, and all what I had toiled, all these will not be lost, though it had past, for it will be brought back into being.<br /><br />I had been through, is surely a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.<br /><br />This book, ranks as one of the most profound lessons I had learnt about the meaning of life.<br /><br /></div>Maverick SMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871611453372513136noreply@blogger.com0