0 Accepting Reality Through Meditation

Accepting Reality Through Meditation

(paying full attention to the present)

People don’t want to accept reality. They always want to experience different things other than reality. They run away from reality. It’s easy to do it today, just by staring at the screen so called smartphone. Smartphone has become the opium of society. What is so bad about reality that people don’t want to embrace it?

Reality is always right now and right here. People still do their routines but their minds wander to something else, to edited version of reality, to hyper-reality. They can’t focus and be satisfied with their reality anymore. They turn to social media, games, or music most of the time. Reality is boring, always boring for them. They can’t accept reality as it is. They are like drunkard people, their minds are constantly high and hectic. The minds are not quiet nor peaceful.

Paying attention vs. getting attention

Truly happy people pay attention to the present moment, to the reality, to people in front of them, to the activity they are doing at the moment. It’s always now and here. Such people will love meditation. They are fully present and alive. Most people are just walking zombies. They are not aware of their own minds. They are seeking for attentions. They don’t even know about their feeling—not to mention others—when they are doing things, always busy to get attention.

Since they always experience hyper-reality, in reality, they are unhappy. Reality is boring and tasteless. They always find things they dislike. They complain and feel unhappy most of the time without even realizing it. They need to run away from their own reality. They turn to constant entertainment. Actually, only unhappy people need entertainment. When the sun shines, they complain about the heat. When the rain falls, they complain about the wet and the cold. When they study, they complain about the materials or the teachers. They unconsciously compare the reality to the hyper-reality. So and so, they turn off the reality and turn on the ‘show’ on social media or any other platforms of entertainment in the net.

Happy people love reality. They love meditation that bring peaceful of mind in real life. Meditation is paying full attention to the present, to the life itself.  

Question

   1.      Accepting reality as it is and paying full attention to the present.

A.      meditation                  B. zombie                            C. monkey mind

   2.      Always seeking entertainment, turn off the reality, turn on the hyper-reality show.

A.      happy mind                                B. unhappy mind              C. meditation

   3.      Happy people love this.

A.      paying attention       B. complain                         C. getting attention

   4.      Not paying attention is the sign of happiness.

A.      agree                            B. disagree                          C. no idea

   5.      People who love meditation are…

A.      unhappy                      B. paying attention          C. half zombie

   6.      Most people I know.

A.      meditate                     B. don’t meditate            C. evil

   7.      I love to be.

A.      peaceful                      B. chaos                               C. zombie

   8.      What makes me happy?

A.      smart phones            B. meditation                     C. famous

   9.      What I see in the net and social media.

A.      real                                 B. edited version of life C. never think about it  
10. If lives today,Buddha will love…

A.      being famous            B. meditation                     C. entertainments

0 Temptation always wins over determination

Temptation always wins over determination. Will power doesn't work. Human will power is weak, the environment is strong. Anyone who is close to foods will eat, who is close to turned-on TV will watch TV. Ulysses tied himself on a mast because he knew that he would act differently in front of the great temptation, the Sirens.

"The fittest survives", this expression from Darwin highlights that individual can't escape from the environtment. Environment is alway stronger than will power. If you go to the south pole, you can't survive on your willpower just wearing t-shirt and shortpants.

Most people overestimate their will power over temptation. Such individuals often end up as losers. Anyone who behaves irrationally will not succeed. Their over confidence derives from their ignorance and wishful thingking. For example, most new year resolutions will fail only few months after the new year, most people studying new languages give up after few months or few years, most new business collapse after few months. People are often fail on their diet programs. These things won't happen if we know that we are not as good and as strong as we thought. We need to set the environtment to minimize or even remove the temptations.

Learnt from Ulysses you should set the environment to work for you not against you. If you want to diet, stay away from foods, do not store any foods in the refrigerator, make it difficult to access your temptations. If you want to read more, always bring book everywhere, put away your phones in silent mode, stay away from anything that can distract you.

If you read a lot of books about freewill, you will find great minds such as Spinoza and Immanuel Kant don't believe in free will, your behavior is either the reactions of or caused by the environment, the outsides. If hot you will sweat, if cold you will shiver, and so on. You are not at all bulletproof to temptations, you are open and fragile to temptations. And you will lose. From now on, forget about will power, set the strategy to shape the environment for our benefit.

0 the importance of education

Good morning teachers and friends,

I am very happy to be here today to talk about the importance of education.

As we know that today we can enjoy technology and better living condition because of the human capacity to create and invent new things. With such big brain, human has capacity to build the world become better and better. Thanks to education that today most people can read and share knowledge freely through internet. The importance of education is obvious that no one can deny it. Actually the living standard has positive correlation with the education level, more education leads to more prosper and wellbeing. The challenge is that the gap between countries in the access of education is still high. In this chance I won’t address this problem, I will focus only to the importance of education today and in the future.

As I mentioned before that education has positive correlation with economic prosperity. The more educated a person is, the more chance he has to be successful in any field of his works. Long ago most people worked in rice field as farmers. They used their muscles to do the works. At the time not many farmers had good education. Most people couldn’t read and write. Under such condition, their living situation is stagnant and they often faced big problem when flood or drought happened. They didn’t know what to do. Later on, people had education. They invented machines and better tools to do their works. Soon the living situation changed a lot. Later on, less and less people work in rice field anymore. Machines and modern tools enabled the farmers to work more efficient and effective. Instead, today most people work in providing services. They don’t use their physical strength anymore. They use their brain.

Most work today requires high level skills. This is where education plays its role. In such condition, the more educated you are, the more successful you are. We can easily point out professions such as doctors, politicians, entrepreneurs, and artists that have higher salaries compare to janitors, farmers, or porters. In the level of country, Singapore, a small country has a lot better living condition compare to most countries in Asia and Africa that have less education level. Singapore has very little natural resources but it has high human resources due to better education.

So, it’s easy for me to conclude that education is very importance to anyone, anywhere, and anytime. Therefore it’s very important for us to pay attention to our education. We must prioritize education over anything else, for example entertainment. Let us use our time and money to improve our education, let us play less games and read more books for even better future. Because in the future more and more low skill level works will disappear, if we don’t prepare ourselves with proper education, we will be obsolete and useless, we will be unsuccessful and suffer the consequences.

Thank you so much for your attention.