Standing on the commanding tower
With edges of the world beneath my feet
My tongue fills with flame of battle calls
- 12月 15 週二 200921:19
The witch and the vagabond
Standing on the commanding tower
With edges of the world beneath my feet
My tongue fills with flame of battle calls
- 12月 01 週二 200921:55
I exist as I am - (on Whitman's wits)
"I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if e ach and all be aware I sit content.
One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait."
— Walt Whitman
- 11月 24 週二 200921:10
Human History: A Story of Civilizational Race
Writing history is like keeping our collective
human diary. It keeps records of the goings-on in the world in a vertical
manner. Horizontally, the fate of human beings also interlaces hopelessly
together, as the Chinese would have it, “The whole body is disturbed by the
pulling of one single strand of hair.” However, putting the matter in its
perspective, the case is far from just the pulling of one strand of hair, it seems,
but the whole bundle of them. So the best way of writing our human story should
incorporate time and space. In this essay, I would like to discuss the history
of human kind with regard to the unfoldment of world civilizations both in time
and in space, and hopefully by doing so, we could reach depth.
- 11月 24 週二 200921:07
Battle cry against cruelty
A spot of human stain smudged on a dirty window pane
Murky shadow cast thru an unintended tangled chain
Murky shadow cast thru an unintended tangled chain
- 11月 22 週日 200912:01
Endless suffering, human desire
Just another day’s gone by
With no amount of hope in sight
With no amount of hope in sight
- 11月 22 週日 200911:49
One Mid-April Night Serenade
Cool breeze blowing in the night,
It’s a cloudless mid-April state of mind
It’s a cloudless mid-April state of mind
- 11月 22 週日 200911:43
Taoist notion of human freedom
Once
a master was asked whether human beings have free will. The master then
told the disciple to raise any one of his feet, the disciple raised his
left foot as was told. The master asked him, did you have free will in
choosing which foot u could’ve raised. The disciple answered, “Yes, I
had the total freedom as to which foot I could’ve raised, and I raised
my left one. I had the total control over them, hence I own my
freedom.” Upon hearing this remark, the master went on to have the
disciple, again, raise any one of his feet. This time the disciple had
no ability in raising either one anymore .”
This
simple anecdote tells us that we sometimes are blinded by our seemingly
infinite choices of bounded variables. We think we own freedom, yet in
reality we are constrained by our very choosing of so-called freedom of
choice.
a master was asked whether human beings have free will. The master then
told the disciple to raise any one of his feet, the disciple raised his
left foot as was told. The master asked him, did you have free will in
choosing which foot u could’ve raised. The disciple answered, “Yes, I
had the total freedom as to which foot I could’ve raised, and I raised
my left one. I had the total control over them, hence I own my
freedom.” Upon hearing this remark, the master went on to have the
disciple, again, raise any one of his feet. This time the disciple had
no ability in raising either one anymore .”
This
simple anecdote tells us that we sometimes are blinded by our seemingly
infinite choices of bounded variables. We think we own freedom, yet in
reality we are constrained by our very choosing of so-called freedom of
choice.
- 11月 22 週日 200911:02
The Thailand Odyssey
It
is not quite an overstatement to say that human nature has often been
sanctified as holy and benign in many works of spiritual literature and
holy books; and it is usually depicted as distinct from the lesser
animal heritage. The Christian myth likes to celebrate the dawn of
human birth as divine occurrence, set to work by the Lord’s urge to
create. And we are, thus, created in His image as perfect gestalt, not
one ounce of improvement can be added. Confucius and Mencius believed
that human nature is basically good. The allegorical water’s tendency
to flow downward etched deep memories in every Chinese’s collective
consciousness. The modern Cartesian notion of the west, on the other
hand, works on the assumption that humans are rational beings, capable
of cool-headed, unbiased calculation. However, hard-wired in the human
brain, lying deeply, and enveloped within layers of outer cortices, is
the reptilian part of our human inheritance. Homo sapiens have evolved,
it seems, not out of primordial, innocent angels, but out of their
primal animal ancestry.
Thailand
is a country blessed with tropical milieu. And since places with
tropical climate are typically endowed with myriad of natural
sceneries, produces and wild lives are abundant in this country.
Durians, bananas, watermelons, monkeys, elephants are tourists’
everyday encounter. One of the traveling sites of my tour of this
exotic Indo-China land was a visit to the crocodile swamp. The swamp is
a place where tourists can pair into a group of 5 to 6 in a boat,
forming a croc-fishing expedition. And as a city-slicker from
sub-tropical island of Taiwan, I eagerly jumped in the croc-fishing
boat, attempted to safely enjoy being a day of Mr. Crocodile in the
wild.
is not quite an overstatement to say that human nature has often been
sanctified as holy and benign in many works of spiritual literature and
holy books; and it is usually depicted as distinct from the lesser
animal heritage. The Christian myth likes to celebrate the dawn of
human birth as divine occurrence, set to work by the Lord’s urge to
create. And we are, thus, created in His image as perfect gestalt, not
one ounce of improvement can be added. Confucius and Mencius believed
that human nature is basically good. The allegorical water’s tendency
to flow downward etched deep memories in every Chinese’s collective
consciousness. The modern Cartesian notion of the west, on the other
hand, works on the assumption that humans are rational beings, capable
of cool-headed, unbiased calculation. However, hard-wired in the human
brain, lying deeply, and enveloped within layers of outer cortices, is
the reptilian part of our human inheritance. Homo sapiens have evolved,
it seems, not out of primordial, innocent angels, but out of their
primal animal ancestry.
Thailand
is a country blessed with tropical milieu. And since places with
tropical climate are typically endowed with myriad of natural
sceneries, produces and wild lives are abundant in this country.
Durians, bananas, watermelons, monkeys, elephants are tourists’
everyday encounter. One of the traveling sites of my tour of this
exotic Indo-China land was a visit to the crocodile swamp. The swamp is
a place where tourists can pair into a group of 5 to 6 in a boat,
forming a croc-fishing expedition. And as a city-slicker from
sub-tropical island of Taiwan, I eagerly jumped in the croc-fishing
boat, attempted to safely enjoy being a day of Mr. Crocodile in the
wild.
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