Das Ziel meines Blogs, auf Deutsch

Mein Blog geht um "das ehrliche Leben," das, was ich durch meine Erfahrungen gelernt habe. Manchmal schreibe ich über Philosophie, und erzähle auch ab und zu Geschichten aus meinem Leben. Das Ziel ist nicht etwas Kluges oder Interessantes zu sagen, sondern mich mit den Lesern durch meine Worte irgendwie zu verbinden. Ich glaube, wir haben alle dieselben Sorgen, dieselben Ängste, dieselben Wünsche... aber die amerikanische Kultur ist so, dass wir nie miteinander darüber reden, und deshalb fühlen wir uns ganz allein. Ich will diesen Irrtum, diese falsche Vorstellung, aufklären.

Coincidences or Lucky Accidents?

I try to follow my intuition at all times. If my gut doesn't tell me what to do, then I know something is wrong. Usually it's that I don't have enough information to make a good decision.

I think this is why I love coincidences so much. I suppose whether coincidences are actually meaningful in any way is a mystery, but how do you explain that strange and unique feeling you get in your heart when they happen? When you notice a coincidence, your reaction is unlike any other. Are the events in our life ultimately objective or subjective?

In Psalm 46 of the King James Bible, published in the year that Shakespeare turned 46, the 46th word is "shake" and the 46th word from the end is "spear." Isn't that WEIRD?!

I choose to believe that when a coincidence invades my life -- large or small -- I'm in the right place at the right time. It's a kind of signpost. I first encountered (and became mildly obsessed with) this theory of synchronicity after I read James Redfield's book, The Celestine Prophecy. It's easy to make a good decision when a coincidence occurs because that's the purpose of coincidence: to point us in the right direction. There's something there I need to take advantage of. Every time you turn towards something, you turn away from something else. But how do you best decide which way to turn? Some people think I'm crazy for not thinking through my options more thoroughly, but usually my thought process is subconscious. My intuition brings to light the decision I would arrive at anyway, after long, troublesome hours of contemplation. And I have never been steered astray by this gut of mine. What I've discovered is that the more often I take advantage of whatever coincidences have to offer, the more often coincidences happen to me. I'm living well. But if I ignore the signpost and let opportunity pass me by, then life just marches on like it always does. I want my life to be special, but that involves taking risks and chances and leaps of faith.

If there's even an inkling that "this might not be a good idea" in my mind, I won't do it. I hate regret because it makes you live sorrowfully in the past. This is not to say I have never made a bad or just plain wrong decision. But on those occasions, I learn from my mistakes and grow out of the experience. I choose not to dwell on the past and consider all the other myriad choices I could have made. What's done is done. That's a pet peeve of mine, when people can't let go of something they've done or someone else has done in the past. You can only affect the present, so if you're going to make any headway or solve any issue, you won't succeed by dwelling on what already transpired. You have to move ahead and fix the way things turned out -- and THAT is within your power. I hardly ever think about the way things might have been.

We all must agree, though, that everything happens for a reason. This is true of our world whether or not you choose to ascribe mystical significance to those reasons. In the end, everything is conditioned. Nothing is uncaused. Every action has a reaction, and the interaction of all action in the universe, while complex, is thus not chaotic. Everything is connected in a delicate balance.

All of this sets me up to discuss another topic at a later time: fate. If a coincidence is simply a confluence of events (events bumping into other events due to the complicated web of interaction in the universe), are they inevitably going to happen, or do we have a say in the matter? Could our own decisions be fated?

If you're interested, you can read more here: 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200407/the-power-coincidence 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ambigamy/200911/everything-happens-reason-simple-phrase-opens-worm-can-wonder

Fear and Truth

In a 2005 Gallup poll, a national sample of adolescents between the ages of 13 and 15 were asked what they feared the most. The question was open ended and participants were able to say whatever they wanted. The most frequently cited fear (mentioned by 8% of the teens) was terrorism. The top ten fears were, in order: terrorist attacks, spiders, death, being a failure, war, heights, criminal or gang violence, being alone, the future, and nuclear war.

I fear sometimes that I lost my religiosity for the wrong reasons, that God and Jesus really are the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that I am jeopardizing my soul's eternal well-being by my agnosticism. I fear that eternal judgment may well exist.

I worry that I should be setting my sights higher than being a humble (yet noble) teacher. I am very conflicted about this. People have told me that they "can't wait to see [my] name in lights someday" since I was a child, and my friends and family always said that I had the potential to cure cancer or end world hunger or do something really incredible. But I've always felt like the incredible things start with something small, and I enjoy having a small effect on a lot of people. In 50 years, my students will (hopefully) remember me, their crazy Chinese teacher. That's powerful stuff. And if they go on to do quote-unquote "amazing" things, I will have had a part in all their success. Another part of me thinks that I should be doing those great things. Just what they are remains a mystery at this point, because the definition of success and greatness is so relative... What, exactly, does 'incredible' mean? At the same time, I also have the feeling that I am on the path towards greatness. If my experience has taught me anything, it's that being on the right path is sometimes enough. You don't have to go searching for the opportunities because they'll come find you if you're open to them. Put your desire out into the universe, and you will be answered. Is it really that easy? Well, if you want something that badly, then every decision you make (whether obviously or obliquely related to that desire) will bring you closer to your goal. Everything you do is tied to it. That's why it's so important to figure out what you want, even if it changes. You can't go through life not knowing what you want, for then you'll wander aimlessly. Follow the signposts, the coincidences, and you'll end up where you're meant to be.

I fear losing sight of what's really important. If you haven't read or seen the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder, you should do so immediately. I'm resolved to read or see that play at least twice a year for the rest of my life. Act 1: Daily Life. Act 2: Love and Marriage. Act 3: Death and Eternity. It's a play about seeing your life from a future perspective, about living your life one day at a time, considering each new day as your last, and truly appreciating and taking advantage of your time here, the people you meet, the experiences you have. Life should be valued, "every, every minute." Most people don't realize life while they live it. "The saints and poets, maybe -- they do some." What amazing gifts life and consciousness are! What amazing gifts family and friends are. But do I really think about that all the time? I think I should, and I fear I don't enough. Like everyone else, I get wrapped up in other things ... selfish things ... and I make silly decisions based on silly reasoning. I fear that one day I will regret not being able to be a true Buddhist about life, so I really want to reach Nirvana soon! I'm on my way. I should talk to my family every day. I should write long emails and have long phone conversations with people I care about as often as I can. I should visit friends and be an active communicator. I should tell people how much they mean to me and how lucky I feel to know them. I should take time at the end of the day to do a self-examination and relive my life, analyze my interactions with people, and regroup. But culture and misplaced values and pleasure of the moment get in the way. So in a way, I see living in the moment as a paradox, and I fear not being able to balance the paradox properly.

I fear that I'm not being healthy enough (eating right, exercising, etc.) and that I'm going to pay for it later.

The most important thing in life to me is that I never lose sight of these fears ... discarding them because it's easier to forget about them than it is to grapple with them. In other words, the most important thing to me about life is the truth. Genuine honesty. And sometimes the truth is hard to understand. Sometimes the truth doesn't make sense. Sometimes the truth isn't fair. Sometimes the truth takes a long time to accept. Sometimes the truth is hard to find. But "the Truth shall set you free." In truth is peace. I believe, for example, that if you can truly put yourself in someone else's shoes, you could never be angry at them. Wars would cease. But accepting other people's truths is very, very difficult. So I search not only for my own truths, but for other people's, in the hopes that I can see the world from many different perspectives. I love the idea that God is God because he sees the world through every single eye that has ever existed, exists now, and will exist in the future. That's why he's omniscient... that's why he's omnibenevolent... and that's why he's omnipotent. If everyone on earth prayed for the same thing at the same time, it would happen! So when people talk about seeing the world through God's eyes, I think they actually mean through others' eyes. And NOT through your eyes through other people's eyes (like what would it like for ME to be you for a day), but actually BEING someone else. But if everyone 'wants' peace and happiness, why do these tenets escape us most of the time? Because we're unwilling to let go of our own personal truth and admit that other people might be right. I think disagreement is fine -- and totally natural -- but judgment is not. And humans feel the need to judge others' truths as lesser or just plain wrong. This is exclusionary and narrowminded.

I think everything I enjoy doing, I enjoy because it taps into this idea of truth seeking. The books I read, the movies I watch, the conversations I have, the people I meet, the places I go, the subjects I teach... Buddhism, yoga, eastern philosophy, meditation... Making real connections with people means discovering their personal truths and respecting them and discussing them and pondering them. That's the marrow of life. That's what get's me up in the morning.


http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/

Choose love!

I always used to find love songs and love poems cheesy. I used to ask myself, "Why do artists and great minds spend so much time pondering this 'love' thing, trying to put it into words?"

Well, then I fell in love, and I realized exactly why. Love is ineffable. It's so unbelievably powerful. It's magical. It changes you. I mean, I had known the love of family and friends, but this strange emotion was something otherworldly. I could hardly do or think about anything else. I was dissecting everything. Everything else in my life (work, friends, hobbies) took a back seat. I became a communication addict. An extremely impatient one. Love is very time-consuming. I don't mean to claim that I am a poet or any sort of great mind, but I eventually found myself contemplating love continuously. I would try for hours to try to express my feelings in a specific and sensible way. I was reading love poetry voraciously, listening to cheesy love songs and actually EMPATHIZING with them, beaming and sighing! Gross, right?

Why is the urge to express love so strong?

From what I've gathered, a primary motivation we humans have in life is to expand our selves and to increase our abilities and effectiveness. We are inherently social creatures, so naturally we do this in conjunction with (and thus in relationships with) other people. Love is particularly exhilarating because not only do we discover the potential of self-expansion for ourselves, but there's also another person who's interested in working with us, investing in our own self-expansion, who finds us attractive enough to spend copious amounts of time with. It's an infinite feedback loop, and it's thrilling. Love is selfish; we become obsessed. Love is wonderful; it makes us feel good. Love is enticing; life seems more beautiful.

But love never creates pain. Attachment, expectation and needing the other are the cause of that pain. It's easy to love those who give us what we want. It's much harder to continue loving once things get tough. That's why, in the end, it's a choice. I vow to pursue love all my life. It makes life worth living. Neither career nor money nor success nor any other goal can hope to compare with what love has to offer.

I wrote this once: "Days are so much longer with you in them; time seems to elongate because I will it to, because i want more time to think about you, to spend with you, to hold you... If I know what love is, it is because of you."

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. (Ingrid Bergman)

Love makes mutes of those who habitually speak most fluently. (Madeleine de Scudery)

You know you're in love when you see the world in his eyes, and his eyes everywhere in the world. (David Levesque)

Love feels no burden,
thinks nothing of trouble,
attempts what is above its strength,
pleads no excuse of impossibility...
It is therefore able to undertake all things,
and it completes many things,
and warrants them to take effect,
where he who does not love would faint and lie down.
Love is watchful and sleeping, slumbereth not.
Though weary, it is not tired;
though pressed, it is not straitened;
though alarmed, it is not confounded...
 
- Thomas A. Kempis