Asian internet disruption: a foretaste of things to come?

A 7.1 Richter scale quake in Taiwan has damaged the undersea fiber optic cables, and has left many people in various Asian countries with only email services.

Many businesses relying on the internet, such as internet cafés are losing money every day. One could imagine what would happen if something similar happen to America and Europe; Asia is still relatively new to the internet, yet so many people are dependent on it.
Students complained, they could not do their homework. People could not book their flights online. Communication using instant messaging are down. Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and similar services are not available. Without VOIP, telecommunications suddenly become very expensive.

Amidst these limitations, I was surprised to find out that using one particular ISP, some sites were much faster than normal. I downloaded some MIT open courses yesterday, it was a breeze, like using broadband without a broadband. It was probably mirrored somewhere near to my home, and because so many people stop using the internet, I had the bandwidth practically for myself.

The disruption is variable, some countries/ISP suffer less, and can recover faster. In the worst case, more than one month will be required to get back to normal.

Although the internet doom has been predicted and warned by many, it is surprising how little redundancy was built into the system, and how vulnerable the system is.

Good bonfires, or actions that leave no trace

"When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself" Shunryu Suzuki

Generally, when we act or think, there is a trace left in our minds. "This is what I have done" or something like it. We become attached to the trace, which is not necessarily the same as what actually happens. Suzuki Roshi used the following example: "When we become old, we are often very proud of what we have done. When others listen to someone proudly telling something which he has done, they will feel funny, because they know his recollection is one-sided." The consequence is: "Moreover, if he is proud of what he did, that pride will create problems for him. Repeating his recollections in this way, his personality will be twisted more and more."

A good bonfire will burn completely, a smoky fire will not. We should act like a good bonfire, burning ourselves completely without expectations of reward for our actions.

Often, some commercial bodies try to teach meditation, with promises of achieving something like power, better health, longevity, riches or some other fantastic skills. Naturally we then meditate with the hope of getting a pay-off somehow. But this very hope will ruin the effort from the beginning. If we remember the bonfire analogy, we should be able to distinguish the genuine from the fake teachings.
Another common characteristic of fake teachings -- apart from the above and being excessively commercial -- is lulling us by taking us to beautiful places and situations, or even to distant planets, by means of hypnosis and visualization. Such is contrary to the "here and now" principle, and the principle of always staying embodied and grounded in our bodies, even when our minds reaches to infinity. Not being grounded can easily take us to day dreaming.

If we meditate like a good bonfire, even one moment could be sufficient. "Here and now" is a single point in the space-time dimension.
Concentrating on a single point, without wandering to other times, past or future, and to other places is the essence of meditation.

Suzuki - Roshi said: "Each one of us must make his own true way, and when we do, that way will express the universal way. This is the mystery. When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything. When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything. So when you try hard to make your own way, you will help others, and you will be helped by others. Before you make your own way, you cannot help anyone, and no one can help you. To be independent in this true sense, we have to forget everything which we have in our mind and discover something quite new and different moment after moment. This is how we live in this world."

It is the same with our actions, if we really burn ourselves completely, even if what we do is "just" cleaning dishes or wiping the floor, there is an infinite potential.

"True being comes out of nothingness, moment after moment. Nothingness is always there, and from it every thing appears. This is the true joy of life" Shunryu Suzuki

Beginner's Mind

Two Suzukis went to the West, and brought Zen with them. Daisetz Suzuki is perhaps the better known of the two, he was a prolific writer on Satori and Zen generally.

Shunryu came to the US a little later. In contrast to Daisetz who was from the "sudden" or Rinzai school, Shunryu was from the "gradual" or Soto school, being a spiritual descendant of Dogen Zenji, the master who founded Soto Zen in the 13th century.

When mistaken for the other Suzuki, he would say in his modesty, "No, he's the big Suzuki, I'm the little Suzuki."
Shunryu wrote very little, but one of them -- 138 pages -- "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" is a real gem, a product of a beautiful mind.
I am not a Zen practitioner, but I regard the book as one of the best on Buddhism.

Beginner's mind is a favorite expression of Dogen Zenji. Richard Baker, heir of Shunryu, gives an example of Beginner's mind when writing calligraphy, "The Zen way of calligraphy is to write in the most straightforward, simple way as if you were a beginner, not trying to make something skillful or beautiful, but simply writing with full attention as if you were discovering what you were writing for the first time; then your full nature will be in your writing. This is the way of practice moment after moment."

Apply this to all walks of life, and you basically achieve your beginner's mind.

"In
the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's
mind there are few"

It sounds very simple. Obviously, a chess master would consider only a few alternative moves, but would analyze them deeply. A beginner considers many moves, which experts consider stupid and reject them straight away. Because a beginner considers so many moves, he or she doesn't have time to go deeply. So here it seems that the expert is doing a more effective search.

This applies to many other areas as well, expertise in programming, in finance, in cooking, etc are all valuable.
Shunryu was not saying that we should not become experts. What he meant was, that at any time, experts should be ready to become beginners again.
We should not make anything into a dogma, something absolute.
Everything, including Buddha's teaching are just guidelines. The first rule of Engaged Buddhism says:
"Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. Buddhist systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth."

We easily become prisoners of habits, not always "the seven habits of highly effective people", but more often than not, prisoners of bad habits, prisoners of the viruses in our minds.
We become not only experts in our fields, but also experts in self delusion, experts in rationalizing and self-righteousness.

Even when our expertise is useful, e.g in mathematics, it is often good, from time to time, just to forget what we know, and learn from the beginning again. We will have a fresh way of looking at things, and perhaps discover new things.

In an earlier post in my blog, I use the analogy of a debug mode when meditating. In normal mode, we can be experts, but in debug mode, we are beginners.

The above is perhaps the surface meaning of Shunryu words, but there is also a deeper meaning. When we are not just newbies, but a really absolute beginner, we are empty. And emptiness means infinite. Empty means empty from self, and in that condition, you are one with the universe, you have the original Buddha mind, and therefore has infinite potential.
The beginner's mind is then also a mind of compassion, always true to ourselves and in sympathy with all beings.

I apologize if I have misinterpreted Suzuki Roshi's teaching in any way.

Memes as software

Earlier in this blog, I suggested that memes are software classes and patterns with emotional attachment .
I feel somewhat guilty because I have since neglected this topic.
Actually I have been reading books and articles about memes, and still doing so. A recent book by Kate Distin, The Selfish Meme: A Critical Reassessment published by Cambridge University Press, is very interesting.
Kate Distin took Dawkins, Dennett, Susan Blackmore, etc to task on many issues.

I am not ready yet to comment on this book, although this post can be seen as a partial answer to some of the questions.

Dawkins described memes as "a unit of cultural inheritance, hypothesized as analogous to the particulate gene, and as naturally selected in virtue of its phenotypic consequences on its own survival and replication in the cultural environment".

Ideas, fashion, tunes, skills, catch-phrases, story themes are meme examples.

Like genes, memes are information. In the case of genes the carrier is the DNA, in the case of memes, the carriers are our brains, computers, internet, books, libraries, customs, folk tales etc.

However, we need to distinguish between carriers (storage of information) and the survival machines of the memes.
The meme survival machine is ourselves (people and animals), since we have the initiative to propagate the memes, thus infecting others.
The case of computers and internet is not so clear, at the moment, I tend to think that they are not meme replicators, they replicate based on programmed instructions written by people. They do not have the choice, which meme to adopt, or which meme in their memory to pay attention to.

However, it can not be excluded, that with advances in artificial intelligence and artificial life, computers can become independent
meme survival machines.

For the sake of argument, let us just say here that survival machines are people and animals, and carriers of meme information are people, computers, books, etc.

This distinction is what prompted me to say that memes are software with emotional attachments. With so many memes floating around, competing for space in our brains, the binding between memes and ourselves is very important. Why are we attracted to some fashion, and not by others, and how do we choose the movies we want to watch? Attachment is the determining factor, memes cannot simply be neutral brain software, but software with attachment, which has strengths differing from person to person. Even in the same person, the attachment strengths vary all the time.
Hence, perhaps, when we can build emotional machines, they will become meme survival machines.

Attachment can be subtle and unconscious, without the survival machines being aware of it. Therefore, I believe that mindfulness training is very important to have some control over what goes on in our minds.

The other big question, what kind of software is a meme? Somebody suggested, they could be if-then rules.
I think that memes embody properties, procedures and relations, and such software entities are known as classes (abstract), objects (less abstract), patterns (collection of classes and objects in some relationship).

Let us consider some examples.

A tune or bird song has a procedure (or code for musical annotation) for singing the song.
Making origami is an object with attributes and the folding instructions.
The Romeo and Juliet story theme is a meme, copied in many different variations. This is a pattern of classes and objects: Romeo, Juliet, parents, other people, relationship between Romeo and Juliet, and relationship between the two families, and the story script which is a procedure.
Looking at memes in this way, makes it easy to see how variations come about.
The pattern can be very abstract or they can be less abstract by fixing some of the values. In some variation, the ending can be a happy ending, the feud between the families can be replaced by warring countries, etc.
The Romeo and Juliet story meme itself can be generalized as great love stories.
Variations of the story include: Daphnis and Chloe, Aucassin and Nicolette, Harlequin and Columbine, Pyramus and Thisbe, Hero and Leander, Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere, Troilus and Cressida, Héloïse and Abélard, Dante and Beatrice, Petrarch and Laura, Antony and Cleopatra, and many more.
Another meme over used in many films is the lost/changing identity meme: amnesia, Jekyll and Hype type of double identity, etc.

The point I am making, is that meme as software, particularly as classes, objects and patterns, tell us a lot about memetic operations of variation: abstraction, instantiation, changing of attributes, procedures, relations.
At the same time, we can understand how memes combine to form bigger memes. The lost identity meme can be embedded in a bigger meme by combining with the find identity meme.

Happiness Formula Discovered?

While on the subject of happiness (see Happy Planet Index and Happiness by Lama Gendun Rinpoche), I found some other interesting views, one of them is a claim of a formula of happiness. The magic formula is:

Happiness = P + (5xE) + (3xH)

where P = Personal characteristics, E = Existence, and H = Higher Order needs, with E and H given weights of 5 and 3 respectively. P is the outlook on life, adaptibility, and resilience. E relates to health, financial stability, and friends. H is self-esteem, expectations, ambition and humor.


The formula was invented by Pete Cohen, with it you can measure your happiness by answering this set of questions:

1. Are you outgoing, energetic, flexible and open to change?
2. Do you have a positive outlook, bounce back quickly from setbacks and feel that you are in control of your life?
3. Are your basic life needs met, in relation to personal health, finance, safety, freedom of choice and sense of community?
4. Can you call on the support of people close to you, immerse yourself in what you are doing, meet your expectations and engage in activities that give you a sense of purpose?

Each question has a score of one to ten, questions 1 and 2 is for P, question 3 for E, and question 4 for H.
Don't forget to multiply E and H by 5 and 3.

I can't help feeling that the formula and questions are too simplistic, but let us assume that it is only a first approximation, and as such it can sometimes be useful, e.g for guide in self-improvement.

When it comes to happiness of the many, or happiness of countries, we have seen how The New Economics Foundation defined the HPI index.

A World Economic Forum in Davos tried to find out why ("when a whole society gets richer, there is no overall increase in happiness")? An opinion stated was: Money may make you happier, says Lord Layard, but when you judge your wealth (and thus your happiness) you measure it against the people around you. Even worse: Western societies make this "terrible error" of telling people they should work ever harder to compete. What a waste, says Lord Layard (possibly tongue in check) and suggests that only higher taxes can force people to stop competing and restore a healthy, happy work-life balance.

This opinion, that paying more tax makes us happier, is unlikely to be shared by many people.

The other BBC article : Path to true happiness 'revealed' is more down to earth, it shows how happiness only needs simple things like switching off the television.
It enumerated 10 steps to happiness.

The 10 steps to happiness

1. Plant something and nurture it
2. Count your blessings - at least five - at the end of each day
3. Take time to talk - have an hour-long conversation with a loved one each week
4. Phone a friend whom you have not spoken to for a while and arrange to meet up
5. Give yourself a treat every day and take the time to really enjoy it
6. Have a good laugh at least once a day
7. Get physical - exercise for half an hour three times a week
8. Smile at and/or say hello to a stranger at least once each day
9. Cut your TV viewing by half
10. Spread some kindness - do a good turn for someone every day

This view of steps to happiness is consistent with the spirit of Hale Dwoskin & Lester Levenson's book Happiness Is Free: And It's Easier Than You Think!

Lama Gendun Rinpoche's advice in the last post gives a deeper spiritual strength. E.g laughing is good, but we don't need to force ourselves to laugh, just be natural. Striving for happiness is just a dog chasing its own tail.

Happiness by Lama Gendun Rinpoche

Lama Gendun Rinpoche was a Tibetan monk born in 1918, respected for his embodiment of kindness, compassion and simplicity. About his life he said: "I don't have a life story, I've drunk tea and eaten tsampa".
Below is one of his famous poems, in English and German.

To know more about him, visit his web site and download the Mahamoudra book

Happiness cannot be found through great effort and willpower, but is already present, in open relaxation and letting go. Don't strain yourself, there is nothing to do or undo. Whatever momentarily arises in the body-mind has no real importance at all, has little reality whatsoever. Why identify with, and become attached to it, passing judgment upon it and ourselves? Far better to simply let the entire game happen on its own, springing up and falling back like waves-- without changing or manipulating anything-- and notice how everything vanishes and reappears, magically, again and again, time without end. Only our searching for happiness prevents us from seeing it. It's like a vivid rainbow which you pursue without ever catching, or a dog chasing its own tail. Although peace and happiness do not exist as an actual thing or place, it is always available and accompanies you every instant. Don't believe in the reality of good and bad experiences; they are like today's ephemeral weather, like rainbows in the sky. Wanting to grasp the ungraspable, you exhaust yourself in vain. As soon as you open and relax this tight fist of grasping, infinite space is there--open, inviting and comfortable. Make use of the spaciousness, this freedom and natural ease. Don't search any further. Don't go into the tangled jungle looking for the great awakened elephant, who is already resting quietly at home in front of your own hearth. Nothing to do or undo, nothing to force, nothing to want, and nothing missing---- Emaho! Marvelous! Everything happens by itself. -Lama Gendun Rinpoche

German Version:

Glueck ist nicht zu finden
durch grosse Muehen und Willenskraft.
Es ist schon da,in offenem Entspannen und Loslassen.

Muehe dich nicht.
Es gibt nichts zu tun oder aufzuloesen.
Was auch immer gerade in Koerper und Geist aufsteigt,
ist nicht wirklich von Bedeutung.
Es hat wenig mit der Wirklichkeit zu tun.
Warum willst du dich damit gleichsetzen und daran haengen,
und Urteile ueber dich und andere fallen?

Lass lieber das ganze Spiel in Ruhe geschehen,
Wie Wellen taucht etwas auf und verschwindet.
Aendere nichts und manipuliere nichts.
Schau,wie alles vergeht
und wieder auftaucht,wie von Zauberhand.
Immer wieder und ohne Ende.

Nur unsere Suche nach Glueck hindert uns am Sehen.
Wie einen strahlenden Regenbogen
versuchen wir es zu haschen und fassen es nie,
einem Hund gleich,der den eigenen Schwanz jagt.

Auch wenn es Glueck und Frieden
nicht wirklich gibt,als Ding oder Ort,
sie sind immer da,in jedem Augenblick.

Glaube nicht an die Wirklichkeit
guter oder schlechter Erfahrungen.
Sie sind wie das Wetter von heute,
vergaenglich wie ein Regenbogen am Himmel.

An dem festhalten,was unfassbar ist,
bringt nur vergebliche Erschoepfung.
Oeffne deine Faust und lass los,
und es glbt unendlich viel Raum,
offen, einladend,wohltuend.

Nutze den Raum,diese Freiheit
und natuerliche Leichtigkeit.
Suche nicht weiter.
Begib dich nicht in den dichten Urwald
auf der Suche nach dem grossen erwachten Elefanten.
Er sitzt schon gemuetlich zu Hause
an deinem Herd.

Es gibt nichts zu tun oder zu lassen,
nichts zu erzwingen,nichts zu wollen
und nichts zu verpassen.

Emaho! Wie wunderbar.
Alles geschieht von selbst.


-Lama Gendun Rinpoche

A simple systems thinking model of corruption

In my earlier posts, I have discussed the application of systems thinking to the traffic and the terrorism problems. Here we look at a simple model of corruption and bribery.

For an explanation of the notations used, please refer to Gene Bellinger's website

The corruption discussed here refer to a public service, not to a private corporate environment, but the results would be transferrable with minimal adjustments.

It is pointless to argue which started which first, the corruption or the bribery. In systems thinking, we are not looking for blame.

In the above diagram, we see many reinforcing loops, corruption increases public service degradation, which in turn increases bribery, and both increase special favors, which increase state losses (eg state tax income). The public service degradation increases public dissatisfaction, and indirectly to public pressure for change and controls in terms of law, law enforcement, transparency, as well as social control.

In the diagram , we see that only the variable control has a negative effect on corruption and bribery.
Unfortunately, these causal links have delayed effects in them (the equal sign across the arrow in the diagram), which means that they happen much slower than the more immediate effects of corruption and bribery.
State losses also pressurizes the government to take actions. Thus apart from social control, control is mostly a government business, and slow reaction of the bureaucracy is quite well known.

Sometimes, public pressure is only felt at election times, which occurs periodically every five years. The control of government by the parliament could be more effective, but only if the parliamentary members are not players in the corruption game themselves.

As stated in the earlier post, the systems model is never complete, the above diagram does not show how corruption escalates upwards sidewards, and downwards. By embracing more and more people to join the corruption game, they protect themselves. A corrupt judge cannot pass a neutral decision on a corrupt tax official.
We have already mentioned above, the possibility of collusion of parliamentary members.

Meanwhile the moral fabric of society is broken down as corruption spreads everywhere.
Actually social control could be very effective, particularly in traditional societies where (public) shame is considered very important, sometimes leading to resignations and suicides of officials implicated in corruption. But other societies have developed less and less feeling of shame and honor, perhaps by thickening their skins.

There is no easy solution in systems thinking, in this case a systemic plan of action is required in many fronts at the same time, forming anti-corruption communities and pressure groups, electing a clean government, teaching better ethics in schools and elsewhere, etc. The important point is that, if we are a member of such a society, we have to have a commitment to want to change and resist the decay of the moral fabric, and to consider the problems as our own responsibility.

Web 2.0: just a way of making money or a new collective intelligence?

The "father" of Web 2.0, Tim O'Reilly, was recently asked in an interview by the Spiegel magazine, whether he is sick of the term Web 2.0. His answer was yes and no, yes because the term has been used or misused so many times in the last two years, and no because he believes Web 2.0 is really a new form of collective intelligence and "wisdom of the crowd".

Then the topic moved to whether Web 2.0 (and Business 2.0) is just a way of making money out of other people's unpaid work, or whether there is something really important happening here. If you think of mashups and micro-content, the general idea is to aggregate content or micro-content from other sites into your own, easily and automatically.
This can be done very nicely, eg. by combining Google maps with restaurants databases, or collecting news and blog feeds, and republishing.

"Oh, it's not just about mashups, it really is about this idea of harnessing collective intelligence" Tim O'Reilly

Tim O'Reilly believes the business model is fair enough, and people don't object to having their contents mashup-ed, just as open source software contributors are quite happy to contribute source code in return for the side effects of their contributions, monetary or otherwise.
What really interested me is the idea of a collective intelligence or "wisdom of the crowd". In artificial intelligence, there is branch called swarm intelligence. It is defined as

"Swarm Intelligence (SI) is the property of a system whereby the collective behaviours of (unsophisticated) agents interacting locally with their environment cause coherent functional global patterns to emerge. SI provides a basis with which it is possible to explore collective (or distributed) problem solving without centralized control or the provision of a global."

Swarm intelligence is part of complexity studies, where the emergent complexity arises out of simple interacting agents. One application of swarm intelligence is the Ant Colony Algorithm, where the ant model is used to solve optimization problems such the shortest path and the traveling salesman problem.
The ants would communicate by leaving pheromones on their trails, the most frequently used trails are the ones marked by the most pheromones.
The algorithm is flexible enough to solve dynamic problems, where the problem changes with time, such as in traffic congestions. This flexibility is accomplished by a forgetting mechanism, namely the pheromone evaporation.

In human societies, networking is certainly not a new thing, but the deliberate efforts in collective intelligence combined with web technologies such as Web 2.0, resulting in Wikis, Mashups and internet social networking is until recently, a new phenomenon.
On Dec 3, 2006, the New York Times carried an article "Open Source Spying" which described the dilemma of intelligence agencies. Their technologies are geared toward a a cold war confrontation, and is way behind for dealing with terrorists who are already adept at making use of internet networking. The suggested solution is collective intelligence using Wiki etc., to make collaboration and analysis easier and more effective. The mechanisms used in Google and Wikipedia could be used to establish credibility of news items. The problem is the intelligence is now shared like open source, and it runs counter to the basic instincts of intelligence bodies.

Links:

• O'Reilly's What Is Web 2.0?
• Wikipedia on Web 2.0
• Image of the mind map of Web 2.0 memes
• The leading Web 2.0 explanations
• Mashup business model
• Business Week blog on mashups
• Monster Mashup
• Daily Mashup: from Yahoo news, del.iciou.us and Flickr
• CNN Money Business 2.0
• Scientific American Swarm article
• A brief presentation on swarm intelligence
• Ant Colony Algorithm

Man vs Machine: Deep Fritz beat Kramnik

Chess machine Deep Fritz has beaten chess world master Vladimir Kramnik 4 - 2 in a six round Man vs Machine duel in Bonn.
After a blunder in the game 2, where he overlooked a mate, Kramnik needed a victory to draw the match 3 - 3. He played aggressively in the last game, using the Sicilian defence as black. It was a calculated risk that didn't pay off, Fritz outplayed Kramnik, and force him to resign on the 47 th move.
Earlier man vs machine duels with Fritz against Robert Hübner, Vladimir Kramnik and Garry Kasparov ended in draws.
Deep Fritz has a rating of about 2790.

"Fritz punishes you immediately"
Talking to the Stern magazine before the match, Kramnik said, "I have discovered a few tiny weaknesses, and I will try to play on them. Fritz is much stronger than its predecessor in Bahrain."
Fritz is now looking at eight to ten million positions per second, Kramnik at just one. But human beings know how to distinguish between good and bad moves. When he sees a position Kramnik is able to rule out 99.9 percent of all possible continuations, because they are incongruous.
He can concentrate on the three of four best moves.
"I have to strive for positions in which I can make use my advantages. However, in our training games, which were played at faster time controls, Fritz usually won."
On his chances in this match: "The day will come when we will no longer have a chance against computers. If I indeed manage to beat Fritz in this match it will probably be the last time that a human being wins against a computer."

Links:
More on the match: Official match site
Download games in pgn format
Annotatation by Yasser Seriawan: game 1
Game 6 with pictures
Man Machine matches
Computer Chess background
Chess software

Rumi's Guest House and Vipassana

The Guest-House This being human is a guest-house Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. Rumi: Say I Am You, (transl.John Moyne and Coleman)

The guest-house is a good metaphor when we meditate, it illustrates the concept of Bare Attention, just noting everything without judging. Like the host of the guest-house, we welcome any thought, sensation, feeling and perception which appears during meditation, but we do not dwell on them. In meditation circles, the motto is:

Let it come, let it be, let it go!

In Vipassana (insight) meditation, we selected an object of meditation, most commonly it is our breath. As we observe our breath, our mind can be still or agitated, impatient, anxious, etc. In addition to the inner chatter, various disturbances come form the outside.
All of these, we note, but let them go as soon as possible, and return to our object of meditation.
Sometimes, the disturbance is very strong, and no matter how we try to return to the object of meditation, the disturbance would not go away.
For example, a pain in the legs could demand so much of our attention. In such a case, if the disturbance would not go away, we make them an object of meditation, for example by realizing that it is a manifestation of the truth of Dukha, and after a while the attention grows weaker, and we can return to the original object of meditation.

All these happen in a very relaxed state of mind, without any use of force.

Perhaps this is the reason why many people find Vipassana meditation relatively easy to practice, what we do is just go with the flow, but never losing ourselves in them, always going back to the object of meditation.
The object of meditation is our guide, without it, we will just jump around like a monkey.
Instead, always returning to the object of meditation, is a powerful, no-coercive way to take control of our minds.

Our minds are said to be chaotic and uncontrollable and full of mind viruses, which try or already have taken over the control.
Meditation seen in this way is a method of controlling chaos. So, let it come, let it be, let it go!


Note: sometimes, pain in the legs arises from an incorrect posture, in which case, we can correct and continue meditation.

Some of my favorite quotes: Einstein

Here are some of my favorite quotes,I will start with Einstein, and will continue later with Dogen, Shunryu Suzuki, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dhammapada, Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, Rumi, etc If you ask why Einstein, here is one possible answer.

"I like quoting Einstein. Know why? Because nobody dares contradict you." Studs Terkel, Guardian interview (March 1002)

Actually, Einstein was my hero when I was in school and at the university. Later I have other heroes, but I still admire Einstein.

Subject: Religion "I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." (In response the telegrammed question of New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in (24 April 1929): "Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words." Einstein replied in only 25 (German) words. Spinoza's ideas of God are often characterized as being pantheistic.) "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." "The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism." "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms." "I am a deeply religious nonbeliever.... This is a somewhat new kind of religion."

Comment: For one like myself who comes from the Buddhist side, it is comforting to know that someone from the side of science came to the same conclusions.

Subject: Self "The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self." "The fact that man produces a concept "I" besides the totality of his mental and emotional experiences or perceptions does not prove that there must be any specific existence behind such a concept. We are succumbing to illusions produced by our self-created language, without reaching a better understanding of anything. Most of so-called philosophy is due to this kind of fallacy." "A person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of their superpersonal value."

Comment: not quite as strong as the doctrine of no-self, but definitely in right direction

Subject: Understanding & Science "The hardest thing to understand is why we can understand anything at all." "A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it." "Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." "One thing I have learned in a long life: All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have."

Comment: Science remains our precious tool for truth seekers

Subject: Simplicity and Complexity "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction." "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."

Comment: This is a little different from the discussion of simplicity and complexity in my post, "The Yin and Yang of simplicity and complexity". There I discuss seeing simplicity in complexity, and complexity in simplicity. Einstein talks about, making or fabricating systems, which should be as simple as possible as in Occam's razor. Another similar saying (stated first by Alan Kay?),is: "simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible". This last one is very useful when developing software systems, particularly with regard to user friendliness.

What is 10 out of 10?

Some people have asked me what the blog title 10outof10.blogspot.com means? See for example, the Unintended Consequences blog.
The quick answer, is, it was chosen because all the good names in Blogger were taken, and I had to resort to mixed alphanumeric characters.
The name functions as a personal reminder for me, 10 out of 10 means success, but we should be mindful not to fall into the vanity and ego trap. This is a sort of checkpoint (see "In praise of slowing down") in debugging our minds.
Going further, it is my reminder of the non-self characteristics of all things.
But why only remind in the case of success, not in the case of failure?
Actually both are reminders, however, the human nature is such that failure is already a powerful reminder, success makes us forget.