Peace comes from within

"Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without"  (Siddhartha Gautama Buddha)

ikigai - Living Your Life's Purpose

The Japanese concept of Ikigai (‘ee key guy’), from the island of Okinawa, is about finding the reason for one’s being. It is about attaining happiness in doing what you love and living a long, happy and purposeful life.

Certainly, it is not that simple to achieve. For example, the combination of what you are good at and what you can be paid for usually becomes your profession. However, if you do not like your job, there will be a feeling of emptiness and dissatisfaction. Ikigai is accomplished when one is able to fuse the four following requirements:

Do what you love

Do what you’re good at

Do what you can be rewarded for

Do what the world needs

According to Tim Tamashiro, the author of “How to Ikigai: Lessons for Finding Happiness and Living Your Life's Purpose”, this can be achieved by starting small and doing it part-time. Keep doing your regular job, but also invest time in learning and doing things that fulfill the above essentials. This will give you an opportunity to convert that part-time ikigai to a full-time one down the road.

Image compilation: Bing Creative Commons

"Know that the whole creation is an imagination ..."

“ Know that the whole creation is an imagination, and that you are an imagination in that imagination, and that whatever you think is an imagination, in that imagination, in that imagination ”

Ibn 'Arabi (1165 – 1240)

Ibn Arabi, the 12th century Sufi mystic from Moorish Spain is considered as the greatest of Islamic metaphysical thinkers. He traveled throughout the Islamic world of his time and wrote extensively on metaphysical subjects. 

I read his above quote on imagination nearly two decades ago and wrote it in my diary. There is still a strange feel to it. What was he talking about? He considered the knowledge attained through reason as inferior to the one coming directly from God and acquired through mystic training. So it is plausible that it is about the mind of God and the whole of creation coming out of His imagination.  But remove that context and these lines may also look akin to the present-day speculation about the whole creation living inside a gigantic computer simulation…

In his book Futuhat-e-Makkiyya (The Meccan Revelations), besides elaborating his Sufi doctrine, he also mentions visiting several alien worlds in visions or dreams. He names great cities, having technologies far advanced to the ones that existed in his days…

Was he speculating like ancient Greek thinkers on the subject or was there a proto science fiction writer or a dreamer at its heart...?

Darkness and Light

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when an adult is afraid of the light."

Image by Dania

(The above quote is usually attributed to the great Greek philosopher Plato 428-348 B.C.E., but it is probably from the book 'The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari' by Robin Sharma)

The Happiness of Fish and Butterfly Dreams

Great Chinese philosopher and mystic Zhuangzi was walking along river Hao with his friend Huizi when he said, "See how the fish come out and jump around where they please! That's what fish really enjoy!"

Huizi too was a logician philosopher so he replied, "You're not a fish - how do you know what fish enjoy?"

Zhuangzi said, "You're not me, so how do you know I don't know what fish enjoy?"

Huizi said, "I'm not you, so I certainly don't know what you know. On the other hand, you're certainly not a fish - so that still proves you don't know what fish enjoy!"

Zhuangzi said, "Let's go back to your original question, please. You asked me how I know what fish enjoy - so you already knew I knew it when you asked the question. I know it by standing here on the bridge of Hao river."

It may seem that the master Zhuangzi was playing with the words but apparently Huizi decided to keep quiet. After all, it was Zhuangzi, who once dreamt of being a butterfly. In his book, he wrote:

"Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering here and there, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Zhuangzi. Soon I awaked, and there I was, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man." 

This fourth century B.C.E. philosopher believed in the Daoist practice of observing the natural world and learning from it. He was also a lifelong skeptic, so his observations make sense in that context. At another place he wrote:

"During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called absurd, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night."

The butterfly dream by Lu Chih (1496-1576) 

There are only two questions really worth asking ...

... But the point, what I've got it down to, is there are only two questions really worth asking. "Why are we here?" and "What should we do about it while we are? And to help you, I've got two things to leave you with, from two great philosophers, perhaps two of the greatest philosopher thinkers of the 20th century, one a mathematician and an engineer, and the other a poet.

The first is Ludwig Wittgenstein who said, "I don't know why we are here. But I'm pretty sure it's not in order to enjoy ourselves." (Laughter) 

And secondly and lastly, W.H. Auden, one of my favorite poets, who said, "We are here on earth to help others. What the others are here for, I've no idea." (Laughter) (Applause)

An excerpt from TED Talk by John Lloyd - An inventory of the invisible. Filmed at TEDGlobal in July 2009.

The Purple Thread

Epictetus was a second century Greek philosopher. He considered philosophy as a way of life rather than an academic matter. According to him, human sufferings arise when we try to control what is beyond our power and ignore what is within our reach. In one of his famous sayings, he compared people who fit in to the white threads of a dress. Such people are virtually indistinguishable from one another. He wanted to be a purple thread – “that small and shining part which makes the rest seem fair and beautiful”. “Why then”, he asks, “do you want me to be like the many? And if I do, how would I still remain purple?”

So which is better? Being peculiar purple or a predictable pale? I think that everyone should try to achieve a level of excellence in his or her favorite pursuit. Being different from the norm is good as life’s splendor comes from its diversity. Besides purple is one of my favorite colors.

On facing death

"Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not. The absence of life is not evil; death is no more alarming than the nothingness before birth." 

I was reading an article about ancient Greek philosophers a few days ago when I came across these lines by Epicurus. The ideas of this 3rd century B.C. philosopher were indeed unique. To him, the purpose of philosophy was to lead a happy and tranquil life with freedom from fear. Living such a self-sufficient life surrounded by good friends was considered the ultimate achievement by his school of thought.

God’s view

     I was standing at the edge of a wheat field in rural Attock. Crop was waist high and wind rushing through its spikes was creating a strange melody. Suddenly I looked down and found a line of worker ants busy in routine foraging activities. They seemed unperturbed by human activity in the vicinity. I wondered whether these are conscious about their place in this little patch of dirt. Can they understand about what is going on around them? Then I thought we humans might seem like these tiny ants to the higher powers in the universe. A supreme God, gods, ancient alien races or other powers might consider us as unremarkable as ants seem to us. Would we ever be able to rise above our puny existence and converse with gods? Would ants be able to communicate with us someday?

there are only ten millions ways ...

     According to the Abrahamic theistic traditions, life is considered a straight line. No turning back or restarts are possible. However, one can always change its direction at any given time through meditation and introspection. On the other hand, in certain eastern religions, life works in a circle. One is supposed to born again and again based on his or her experiences and deeds in previous lives. But the aim is always to break free from its circle and go beyond that. Still, no restart from zero and control over destiny is possible.

     In the scientific realm, Time Travel seems an exciting possibility but it may be decades if not centuries away and the time travelers of future are not willing to disclose its secrets yet. Once it is invented or discovered, the human race will have to tackle different time paradoxes and its other manifestations.

... On the other hand, reading or writing a revitalizing piece of prose, composing or listening to some enchanting melody, helping someone without the need to be recognized or rewarded, unraveling or understanding some riveting philosophical problem, falling in love without trying to triumph over and to be content even if it remains unrequited, making a new discovery or solving a long standing mystery, ... in all such endeavors we human experience feeling of transcendence and going beyond ourselves. It is like the feeling of being born again or to be fully alive.

... and there are only ten million ways to achieve that kind of feeling.