Struggling with Meaninglessness

Some interesting thoughts from Buddha regarding religion and humanity … derived from Tripitaka

1. Religion is necessary for a free society.

2. Religion should relate to facts of life and not about God, Soul, Earth or Heaven.

3. Man and mortality should be the centre of religion.

4.  Real religion lives in the heart and mind of man, not in Shastra (scriptures).

5. The function of religion is to reconstruct the world and to make it a happy place.

6. Everyone has the right to learn. Learning is as essential to human as food.

7. Learning without character is dangerous.

8. Nothing is infallible. Nothing is binding forever. Everything is subject to examination and inquiry.

9. Nothing is final. Nothing is permanent. Everything is subject to change. Being is always Becoming.

10. Everything is subject to the law of causation (cause & effect).

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.

Preceded by perception are mental states.
For them is perception supreme.
From perception have they sprung.

All mental phenomena are preceded by mind,
Mind is their master,
they are produced by mind

- Buddha

(Some philosophy from Pain I wrote few weeks ago : Instinct Saturation)

Pain after single-handedly destroyed Konoha village and defeated Naruto said …

PAIN : My goal is something not even master Jiraiya could achieve. I told you before …Through justice, I will bring peace to the world!

NARUTO : Peace? Justice? You’ve gotta be kidding me .. You’ve gotta be freaking kidding me!

PAIN : Then what do you think?

NARUTO : I want to defeat you and that’s the true meaning of bringing peace to the Ninja world!

PAIN : I see .. that’s wonderful … that’s justice. But my family, my friends  … my village.. were all destroyed too. Do you really think the Ninja of the Konoha are the only ones who allowed to talk about peace and justice?

NARUTO : … What do you mean?

PAIN : The land of Konoha have grown too big.

You see, countries have war either to protect their own interest or to gain something over other countries. But the war battleground always took place on small village and small land. And each time, our small country was laid waste and the people left impoverished. After many wars, country with big land stabilized. And our small country was left to bear the wounds and damage of the war. 

NARUTO : …

PAIN : We both want the same thing. We both want the peace master Jiraiya spoke of. You and I are no different. We’re both working on our own justice. The justice I meted out against Konoha , is exactly the same justice you are trying to mete out against me. Everyone feels the pain of loss. We know both the feeling of pain.

You are working for your own justice, and I for my own. We are just ordinary people driven to revenge in the name of justice. But if revenge is called justice, then justice breed even more revenge. And eventually this became a chain of hatred.

Living in the present, aware of the past, predicting the future, this is what it means to know history. Through history, we cannot help but to know that people can never understand and care for each other. The world of Ninjas is ruled by hatred. So, how would you build peace in the face of this hatred? Let me hear your answer ..

Naruto : I … don’t know …

PAIN : I created Akatsuki in order to break this chain of hatred.  I will build a powerful weapon that is able to to destroy an entire land in an instant. The world will know the true pain, and the fear of pain will put an end to war. It will lead the world to stability and peace. 

NARUTO : That’s not real peace. It is nothing but a lie!

PAIN : Human are stupid. If I don’t do this, there will be no peace at all. Eventually, time will pass and the pain will heal. The dictator’s power will weaken and people will begin fighting again. This time, they will use the weapon themselves and once more know the true pain.

And for a short time, peace will come again. It will give birth to short periods of peace within this endless chain of hatred.

That Is My Wish…… Now, I Can See Peace …

NARUTO

————-

In Japanese manga/anime, it is pretty common that a villain is philosophical and the line between Good and Evil is often blurred (just like Death Note and Monster anime). Sort of a paradox of morality. I’ve written something similar about the paradox of morality here more than a year ago – Pessimism : Dark Side (I reread the post and realized the English is kinda bad, lol).

To summarize the conversation above, Pain knew that the world operates by ‘the chain of hatred’ where people will keep on fighting each other in the name of justice. And he knew that justice is something very subjective – everybody thinks they are at the good side fighting for a cause. By looking at the history, Pain understood that there was a never a period of peace in the Ninja world because people never bother to care and understand for each other. People always want to fight for their own self-interest or group-interest. By creating a huge weapon which has strong destruction ability, only then it would stop people from fighting and bring peace to the world.

And why did he destructed Konoha village? For 2 reasons:

1. Konoho is one of the biggest village in the world and he believed there always the tendency for big and powerful land to ‘bully’ or assault the smaller and weaker country. He believes the balance is essential to prevent this ‘bullying’ to take place.

2. Instilling fear and pain. With fear and pain, people will be reluctant to war because they know warring and fighting each other only will bring more misery.

Pain believes the chain of hatred will never be broken because people will eventually forget about the history after several generations. People can’t feel the fear and pain their grandparents experienced and will become oblivious of the feelings. Hence, Pain wants to create something which will periodically bring a period of peace in every cycle of this endless chain of hatred. And that was his wish.

Oh well , in some ways, Pain kinda reminds me of Qin Shi Huangdi …

Many years ago, I remember reading a comic about workplace (presumably Dilbert?). It says something like this – If you want to gain promotion fast at your workplace, pretend to be busy and make your table to be as a messy as possible. Workers who are perceived to be hardworking tend to get promoted easier.

I did not really take it seriously that time and just treated it as mere comic.However, I realized the comic actually has some truth in it.

What I noticed recently in many organizations is managers tend to have a maximizing-mindset. It doesn’t matter how many hours you’ve spent working or how many tasks you have completed on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday but if you’re seen to be doing nothing on Friday, managers will have the tendency to chuck something for you to do even if it is just an insignificant task. They want employees to be busy. They want to maximize every single drop of employee’s sweat.

By the law of Karma every positive/negative action will attract a similar reaction or energy. Therefore, if the manager always have the intention to fully maximize the employee’s time, then the employee, in return, will want to take back their time from the manager – by being lazy, not motivated to complete their work or … pretending to be busy.

Before we go further, let’s imagine two scenarios where the culture of pretending to be busy DO NOT exist :

Scenario A : Mr. X have done all his two days of task on Thursday and so he is free on Friday. The manager see Mr. X lazing around his working table doing nothing. The manager chucks in more task for him to do. Mr. X feels unfair because his effort of completing all the tasks by Thursday is rewarded with more task.

Scenario B : Mr.X have not completed his two days task yet but he is already given more tasks to do by the manager. Mr.X feels exploited since the manager is not giving him any room to breathe.

At the end of the day, this will bring a lose-lose situation. The employee is not happy because the manager keep maximizing them. The manager is not happy because the employee is not busy enough.

And that’s when pretending to be busy is a solution – A perfect solution. The employee is happy because they are given less work when perceived to be “busy”  and the manager is happy to see his subordinates are “busy” doing work.

HOW DELUSIONAL! Delusion makes people happy! And I know it is nothing new.

Adding to the point above, to a typical mind, pretending to be busy is so much more desirable and motivating especially when the paycheck is by duration (monthly). In other words, it doesn’t matter how much work you do because the monthly paycheck is already static. There’s no extra incentives or motivation for doing more work.

I have never deliberately act busy before but I can guarantee this pretending to be busy tactic will work in many organizations because most typical managers have this maximizing mindset. So how can organization prevent this culture of pretending to be busy from spreading? The solution is to balance the Karma. To balance the Yin Yang. To balance the seesaw. Balance.

• Managers must throw away their maximizing-mindset and become more task-oriented or result-oriented. Eg. If the employees finish their weekly task by Wednesday, and if there’s nothing important left for them to do for the entire week, then let them off by Thursday and Friday.
• Provide alternative incentives/motivations apart from the monthly paycheck. Eg. Give tasks to employees based on their strength and let them enjoy the task process. Give them some recognition, etc.
• Managers must sincerely appreciate the work and contribution of their subordinates. Appreciation and positive feelings are contagious. Positive action/energy attracts positive reactions.

I believe there are still many more other ways that we could do to balance things out.

PS: Well, actually I’m just exaggerating to use the word Karma. But I think it is cool to use the concept along.

For the past 8 months, I’ve watched every single moment of Rafa winning …

   The French Open Roland Garros 2008 Grand Slam Champion,

   June 2008 (Clay court beating Federer)

   Wimbledon Championships 2008 Grand Slam Champion,

   July 2008 (Grass court beating Federer)

   Beijing Olympics 2008 Gold Winner,

   August 2008 (Hard court beating Gonzalez)

   The Australian Open 2009 Grand Slam Champion,

    January 2009 (Hard court beating Federer)

OK, I admit I missed the first 3 rounds of The Australian Open since I was working during the weekday afternoon. But I was following the live score all the time OK!

All the best tennis matches that I’ve watches so far came in these 8 months -

1. Rafael Nadal vs Roger Federer @ Wimbledon Final 2008

2. Rafael Nadal vs Roger Federer @ The Australian Open Final 2009

3. Rafael Nadal vs Fernando Verdasco @ The Australian Open Semi Final 2009

4. Rafael Nadal vs Novak Djokovic @ The Queen’s Final 2008

OK, I’m biased here because it is pretty obvious I will not put it in the list if Rafa has lost any of the games above. Who cares.

I feel sorry looking at tearful Roger. But I really hope Roger will win   the history-breaking 14th Grand Slam or possibly 15th soon. But well, if only he could find a way to beat the unstoppable Nadal that is.

Cheers to the King of Clay. To be honest, Rafa is still not as good as Roger in terms of technique yet. But Rafa’s physical fitness, mental strength and the never-give-up attitude is unmatched by any athletes in this world.  He is the ‘Moving Wall’. He is only 22 and I’m sure Rafa will soon transform to King of Tennis in few years time. Oh well, he IS the number 1 in the world now anyway. I’m looking forward to more heart-stopping and adrenalin rushing games from these 2 players in the future.

For now, Vamos Rafa!

I have not been writing any fresh original essays since 30th December – (The Big Elephant), and it actually kinda frustrates me …  You know, the feeling of the brain being lazy and clogged up and refuse to think for such long period of time. But after a good one week break, I finally feel re-energized and fresh again .. for now.

So, this essay of mine is slightly inspired by the anime/manga Naruto (all time best manga, in my opinion) by Masashi Kishimoto. I have been following this manga for 7 years! (430+ episodes to date and still running). From the outside, it may just look like a typical fiction manga but actually the whole story is pretty much inspired with philosophy of Ninja and some other classical Japanese philosophy.

Obviously, Naruto is the protagonist of the story and the villains are a group of S-Class ninja organization called as Akatsuki. Read the quote below:

Konoha is far from godless. They view their previous generations (ancestors) as heavenly beings and act with the ‘Will of Fire’ as their main ideology… although you could say it’s just another excuse to fight and war.

Religion, ideals, resources, land, grudges, love, pride … any trivial reasons that motivates people to action will eventually breed war. The reason can be thought up after the fact, but war will never cease to exist.… because human nature consistently pursue strife and struggle. What people truly want is to fight.  – Pain, leader of Akatsuki (when responding to Hidan, an Akatsuki ninja who called Konoha people, the village where Naruto came from, as godless infidels.) 

“What people truly want is to fight”.

If the statement above is true and can be applied to our real world, then why has war lessen over the years? Why most people today detest war?  I’ll attempt to tackle this question.

My Theory on why War has lessen.

It is true that people are still dying from local war today especially in the middle east region but on a global scale, war between powerful nations have already ceased since the Vietnam War days in the 60/70s. In other words, we are already in the state of global peace for almost 40 years now. But let’s ask a simple question – What drove people to war in the first place? Why throughout the history of humanity did we get ourselves involved in constant fighting and conflicts?

First of all, I believe it is safe to say that fighting and warring is a male thing. Essentially, this aggressive behaviour is driven to feed one major basic male instinct – Competitiveness. If you branch out this competitiveness instinct, many other typical traits will appear to be obvious such as – territorial (by dominating and occupying others) , recognition (by seeking status, power and fame), ideals, and a whole long list of other behaviours – Hence, our motivation to fight and war.

However, as we could expect from this impermanent world, things evolve. It is pretty obvious the world as we know today is very different from the world we had 40 years ago in terms of culture advancement. And I believe the evolution of world technology and culture has saturated this element of competitiveness which constantly drove humanity to war previously. I do not have rich vocabulary in me, so I will just call this phenomenon as Instinct Saturation.

How Instinct Saturation Works?

I truly believe there are some emotions (depending on individuals) that need to be consistently fed. These emotions are like gluttony-monsters. If not fed well, these ‘hungry’ emotions will rebel against us by giving us the feeling of deprivation, agitation or some kind of withdrawal. Among the emotions that need to be consistently fed, as I could think of, are boredom, love, lust, excitement, emotional-security, and competitiveness.

So, in the olden days, how do people feed this emotion of competitiveness? Yes, as I’ve said earlier, we fight and war to feed this emotion. This is also partly due to the emotion being directly tied to the environmental condition during the old days when people lived in the state of poverty or semi-poverty where most common people do not get to eat and live comfortably. Therefore, once the common people was psyched up by the country leader’s propaganda (usually emphasizing on Injustice and Evilness inflicted by enemy to psychologically push people’s hot button), common people will go to the battlefield and fight, preparing to risk their life to win the war in exchanging the opportunity for better life (that’s why military leaders always inspire people to fight for future generations). That’s how people unleash their competitiveness. It might not seem rational or logical, but hey this is how emotion works. Just like what Pain said – “The reason can be thought up after the fact”

But that was 40 years back and beyond, back to thousands years ago. Back then, life was tough. Today, life has become much easier due to the rise of standard of living. Most people get to eat and live comfortably well today. Therefore, there’s not much to gain from going to war but instead there are plenty to lose.

But more importantly today, we have more modern alternatives to feed our competitive desires and saturate our strong competitive instinct. For instance, we have PC games and console games where we could unleash our competiveness by attempting to win game challenges. Then we have satellite, where sports are broadcasted live all around the world and allow fans to support their favourite sports teams or person (piggybacking on the sport team’s success to fulfill our competitive desire). Also our competitiveness has already been saturated by business corporations where we have now shifted our competitiveness into our work and organizational role. And we have many other social activities which could also very well saturate the instinct.

In others words, our competitive aggressive behaviour which was like a hot orb previously, ready to pounce on any opportunity to fight and war once psyched up, is already saturated and dispersed by many form of ‘distractions’.

Today, as humanity evolved, the hot orb in us begin to saturate, and we became a little bit ‘Buddha’ (peaceful). We start to realized how stupid war is once we stop attaching ourselves to that intense emotion and see the big picture a little. However, I’m sure the people in the past will thought war was the right thing to do. I will give an analogy – think back on the dumbest or silliest thing you did when you were a teenager. Now that you think back, you may wonder why did you made such action which clearly embarrassed you. But back then in that heat of the moment, you most probably think what you did was the right decision.

So What?

Personally, I’m a huge fan of Rafael Nadal and I would never miss his games whenever he plays with a top player. Then on a random day, while watching Nadal’s game, I asked myself a question – What do I gain by spending hours of watching Nadal and tennis in general? Apart from the satisfaction of watching Nadal winning, what else do I gain? Absolutely nothing. I will not become a great tennis player by just watching him. He will not share with me his prize money if he wins the tournament. My kung-fu will not improve after watching his game. I will not become famous by supporting Rafa – I’m just one of the million fans. So what is exactly the rationale of me becoming a fan of Rafa? Think properly – None. Only some temporary satisfaction.

Then I realized there are many things that we do everyday which is also pretty much meaningless. Why do people watch TV series? Why do people play computer games or console games? Why do we play sports with friends? Why do people eat snacks? Why do people go to shopping centers and aimlessly walk around? Alcohol? Cigarettes?  Why do I like reading manga and Naruto?

Are there any rationale in the sense it will gives us very clear tangible benefits in indulging these activities?

Alas, I realized all these trivial things that we do everyday is meant to saturate our core instinct.