A Gift to My Children: A Father’s Lessons for Life and Investing

A Gift to My Children: A Father’s Lessons for Life and Investing

By Jim Rogers
ISBN: 978-0-470-74268-6
Paperback; 106 pp.
US$16.00/S$26.70 including GST;

Available at all major bookstores

What makes for a successful investor? And more importantly, what makes for a happy and meaningful life? According to legendary investor Jim Rogers, the road to financial success and the road to happiness are one and the same.

Rogers co-founded the phenomenally successful Quantum Fund, which in ten years delivered a return of 4200 percent. He retired from Wall Street at the age of thirty-seven, and continued to manage and invest his own funds with great success.

A Gift to My Children marks his effort to share his wisdom and insights about finance, investing, and life in general with his two young children. It is anchored by the two basic rules Rogers invests and lives by:

The first is that you have to see the world up close if you're going to understand how it works.

Rogers begins with exhortations to work hard, think critically, trust your own judgment, and work to identify your passions and dreams beyond simply making money.

The second is that you must always question conventional wisdom, as many of his most successful investment strategies and ideas have resulted from swimming upstream.

Rogers is also a big proponent of the idea that it's essential for young people to study history and to experience world's culture first-hand through travel.

Rogers reveals how to learn from his triumphs and mistakes in order to achieve a prosperity:

(1) Trust your own judgment

(2) Focus on what you like

(3) Be persistent

(4) See the world

In December 2007 Jim Rogers and his wife Paige Parker and their two daughters, 7-year-old Hilton Augusta, nicknamed Happy,and 3-year-old Beeland Anderson, sold their New York mansion for USD16 million and moved to Singapore so that Happy can learn Chinese in a Mandarin-speaking environment.

Jim is quoted as saying: "If you were smart in 1807 you moved to London, if you were smart in 1907 you moved to New York City, and if you are smart in 2007 you move to Asia." In a CNBC interview with Maria Bartiromo broadcast on May 5, 2008, Rogers said that people in China are extremely motivated and driven, and he wants to be in that type of environment, so his daughters are motivated and driven. He also stated that this is how America and Europe used to be. He chose not to move to Chinese cities like Hong Kong or Shanghai due to the high levels of pollution causing potential health problems for his family; hence, he chose Singapore.

Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with legendary investor George Soros in the 1970s, has repeatedly said he believes China will be the next great country in the world.

"The best gift we can give our children is to let them learn Chinese and prepare them for the future," he tells The Straits Times, while carrying the baby in his arms.

Soon after Happy was born in 2003, they hired a mainland Chinese nanny in New York to teach her Mandarin. They also have a live-in nanny from Ningxia province here in Singapore.

This explains why the little girl is able to speak the language fluently, without the jarring accent that many non-native speakers have.

In fact, she is so confident in the language that she sang a Chinese song for the reporter and recited the national pledge in Mandarin, stumbling only towards the end as she forgot some parts of it.

"I like both Chinese and English lessons, but I like Chinese more," she says in Mandarin.

Her baby sister is also having an early start in learning the language--the nanny plays her Mandarin songs every day.

In the past few years, they have visited Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong many times to look for the perfect school for Happy, before deciding on Singapore.

"As much as we want to be in mainland China, the pollution there that you read about is real," says Parker.

"Singapore doesn't have that. It also has an extraordinary health-care system and great schools, and it's a wonderful place for a family."

Rogers says many people felt they were making a big mistake when they announced that they were uprooting to Asia.

"They thought we were crazy, because we were doing it voluntarily. Many people thought we moved to China. They don't know that Singapore is not China," he says.

"Some people told me I was smart to do it for my children, but they couldn't do it themselves."

Their plan is to "stay here forever, unless something else happens", he says, adding that he hopes to travel around China one day with his daughters as his interpreters.

When asked what his net worth is--believed to be billions of dollars--he replied: "I'm sorry, but I can't answer that."

After a pause, he adds, tenderly: "My net worth should not be measured in monetary terms, but it should be measured in how good a father I can be."

ABOUT MBA

Jim Rogers: I said before that one of the bubbles I see in the world is tertiary education in the United States. It’s bankrupt financially and probably other ways besides financially. Business school is basically a waste of time. Most of what you learn is inaccurate and incorrect. Learning things like efficient market theory and some of the other gibberish that they keep putting out and Black Scholes…

All that stuff is totally wrong.

Those poor kids who’ve spent a couple hundred thousand dollars going to business school – not only have they spent a lot of money, but the stuff they learned was wrong. It was inaccurate. Yes, it’s got to change. It’s got to change dramatically.

I certainly was telling students not to go to business school. If you want to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars, I would urge you to go down and short soybeans one day or start your own business. I tell you, you short soybeans a couple of times, you’ll learn more doing that than you could in 10 years at business school.

If you spend your time and money in the real world, you’re probably going to learn a whole lot more than what you would at business school, most of which is wrong.

To give you an idea, in 1958 America graduated 5,000 MBAs a year. In 1958, America was the richest, most powerful country in the world. There wasn’t a number two. Now we produce over 200,000 MBAs per year, and that doesn’t include all the MBAs in other countries. There are tens of thousands in other countries. Everybody else has jumped on this MBA bandwagon.

So MBAs are a dime a dozen at a time when finance is coming under more and more pressure from governments economically, financially and every other way. So MBAs are a terrible waste of time, energy and money. You should take your couple hundred grand and start a business. You’ll learn a whole lot more even if you go bankrupt and lose everything, then you will at business school.

I tell people frequently not to get an MBA but to become a farmer or a miner or whatever. I’m dead serious about it. People have no concept of history. Nobody bothers with history. Everybody thinks history started the day that they could start watching television or read the newspapers, but that’s not the way the world has ever worked. So finance is under great bubbles. There are great places to avoid going forward. The United States is certainly in decline. The U.K. is going into decline. European countries are in trouble.

Some of the little anecdotes:

"Always eat something before you go shopping in order to prevent yourself from purchasing things that you don’t want or just to satisfy particular cravings that you have at the time."

I would say one lesson we all need to learn is that after you’ve had a great success, you really should be very worried. Let’s say you sell and say you’ve made 10 times on your money. You should be extremely worried. You should close the curtains, not read, look at the TV, or anything because that’s when you’re full of hubris, arrogance, confidence. You think, “God, this is something easy,” and you’re desperate to jump around to something new. You should do your very best to avoid making another play until you’ve calmed down a lot. Just wait. It’s a very dangerous time.

You have to figure out a way to control your emotions and deal with your emotions if you’re going to survive.

The problem is we all think we need to jump around all the time and be jumping in and out.

Patience is what most investors need to learn. You don’t have to be doing things all the time. Most of the time the best thing is to do nothing. You just sit with what you have as an investment and let it ride or sit and wait until you see someone sitting in the corner.

One of the best things a person can study is history. Everybody – I tell students all the time what should be studied and I tell them to study history and philosophy, which they of course hate. They say, “Oh no, I want to be rich.” I say, “If you want to be rich you should study philosophy because history will teach you that everything is constantly changing.” No matter what it is you know today, it’s going to be totally different in 10 years whether it’s your life, your friend’s, your job – who knows?

One needs to understand this about everything one is looking at today in your business, in your personal life, in your professional life. That’s one of the most important lessons that people have to learn because the world – and life – is very unstable, even though we all think we have a stable life.

Everything changes. It has changed and will continue to. The way you become successful is to understand that and capitalize on it.

A New Way of Thinking (Part 1)

SOURCE: From the Book 'A New Way Of Thinking, A New Way Of Being - Experiencing The TAO TE CHING by Dr Wayne W. Dyer

Severe Crisis to force Change

We have been taking a system operating past its capacity and driving it faster and harder. No matter how wonderful the system is, the laws of physics and biology still apply. And those laws are telling us that we, as an endangered species, cannot continue on the path we are on.

The problem is that it is very difficult to get those inhuman beings to appreciate and undertake the change we now need without an even bigger crisis than what we are already experiencing. History indicates that we don't accept large-scale change easily, especially when this change challenges the accepted behavior and beliefs of those inhuman beings.

It generally takes a severe and fatal crisis to overcome such resistance. Unfortunately this means the crisis will have to be very large and completely undeniable before the society respond.

So when the crisis is big enough to force change, it will also have great and unstoppable momentum. As a result it will be far more damaging, irreversible damages, and the impacts will continue to worsen long after we had restored order and acted on the causes.

This is why it is doubly urgent for our leaders and We the People to heed our warning and develop a more sustainable way of creating harmony with our natural world - and to begin doing it now, while we have a chance to do it in a reasonably orderly way. If we wait for our Pearl Harbour, we will make the scale of the problem so obvious to all and it will be too late as the impact and disruptions by then will likely to be unimaginable.

There is no longer just a social issue as how we respond now will decide the future of our nation and the human civilization of this land.

There is no one else; there is no other time; it is us and it is now!

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Adapted from:

Hot, Flat and Crowded
by Thomas Friedman

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Barack Obama: Audacity of Hope (Part 2)

OBAMA: The Audacity of Hope

"One thing I've discovered as I get older is that you have to do what is satisfying to you. In fact that's one of the advantages of old age, that you've finally learned what matters to you. It is hard to know that at twenty-seven. And the problem is that nobody else can answer that question for you. You can only figure it out on your own."

"I am getting to an age where I have a sense of what satisfies me, and although I am perhaps more tolerant of compromise, I know that my satisfaction is not to be found in the glare of television cameras or the applause of the crowd. Instead, it seems to come more often now from knowing that in some demonstrable way I've been able to help people live their lives with some measure of dignity.

"Benjamin Franklin once wrote to his mother explaining why he had devoted so much of his time to public service: 'I would rather have it said, He lived usefully, than, He died rich.'

That's what satisfies me now - being useful to my family and the people who put me where I am, leaving behind a legacy that will make our children's lives more hopeful than our own."

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When I read those passages from Obama's book, I thought I was the man myself. Ya, I now feel that way too. Age had caught up with me and youth had passed me by. I now need to do what really satisfies me, not just doing things just to earn some money. There are two fundamental things that is far more important to life - values and ideals.

In Obama's words: "If I am wiser, it is mainly because I have traveled a little further down the path I have chosen for myself, and have gotten a glimpse of where it may lead, for good and for ill."

Ya, I think I am far wiser than I was before. The journey of my life had been rough and painstaking. I had toiled for decades, achieving nothing, except for the last few years where I was greatly blessed. Today, I had some success to savour and feel good. God willing I hope to continue with what I am doing for another few years where I can contribute back to the society - to do thing that are useful to my family and the people who helps to put me where I am now, and most of all, to those who needs my help and assistance. I hope to be able to leave behind some kind of legacy that will make my children's lives more hopeful than my own.

Life, afterall, is about achieving something satisfying.

This too is my Audacity of Hope!

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Learning from Barack Obama

BARACK OBAMA The Audacity of Hope

"We have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done."

_______________________________________________________

When I decided to run for the United States Senate (Senate seat for Illinois in 2004), I wasn't so sure of myself. I had preserved my independence, my good name, and my marriage, all of which, statistically speaking, had been placed at risk the moment I set foot in the state capital.

But the years had also taken their toll. Some of it was just a function of my getting older; each successive year will make you more intimately acquainted with all of your flaws - the blind spots, the recurring habits of thought that will almost certainly worsen with time, as surely as the hitch in your walk turns to pain in your hip. In me, one of those flaws had proven to be a chronic restlessness; an inability to appreciate, no matter how well things were going, those blessings that were right there in front of me. It's a flaw that is endemic to modern life and one that is nowhere more evident than in the field of politics. Whether politics actually encourages the trait or simply attracts those who possess it is unclear.

Someone once said that: "Every man is trying to either live up to his father's expectation or make up for his father's mistakes."

I suppose that may explain my particular malady as well as anything else.

In any event, it was a consequence of that relentlessness that I decided to challenge a sitting Democratic incumbent for his congressional seat in the 2000 election cycle.

It was an ill-considered race, and I lost badly - the sort of drubbing that awakens you to the fact that:

"Life is not Obliged to Work Out as you'd Planned."

A year and a half later, the scars of that loss sufficiently healed, I had lunch with a media consultant who had been encouraging me for some time to run for statewide office. As it happened, the lunch was scheduled for late September 2001.

"You realize, don't you, that the political dynamics have changed," he said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

We both looked down at the newspaper. There, on the front page, was Osama bin Laden.

"Hell of a thing, isn't it?" he said, shaking his head.

"Really bad luck. You can't change your name of course. Voters are suspicious of that kind of thing. Maybe if you were at the start of your career, you know, you could use a nickname or something. But now ..." His voice trailed off and he shrugged apologetically before signaling the waiter to bring us the check.

I suspected he was right, and that realization ate away at me. For the first time in my career, I began to experience the envy of seeing younger politicians succeed where I had failed.

The pleasure of politics began to pale against the meaner tasks of the jobs: the begging for money, the long drives home and clipped phone conversation with a wife who had stuck by me so far but was pretty fed up with raising our children alone and was beginning to question my priorities.

I began to harbor doubts about the path I had chosen. I began to feel, after years of commitment to a particular dream, after years of waiting, to realize that it's gone just about as far as talent or fortune will take me. The dream will not happen, and I now faces the choice of accepting this fact like a grown-up and moving on to more sensible pursuits, or refusing the truth and ending up bitter, quarrelsome, and slightly pathetic.

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Despair - I'm not sure I went through all the stages prescribed by the experts. At some point, though, I arrived at acceptance - of my limits, and, in a way, my mortality. I refocused on my work in the state senate and took satisfaction from the reforms and initiatives that my position afforded. I spent more time at home, and watched my daughters grow, and properly cherished my wife, and thought about my long-term financial obligations. I exercised, and read novels, and came to appreciate how the earth rotated around the sun and the seasons came and went without any particular exertions on my part.

And it was this acceptance that allowed me to come up with the thoroughly cockeyed idea of running for the Illinois Senate seat in 2004.

An up-or-out strategy was how I described it to my wife, one last shot to test out my ideas before I settled into a calmer, more stable, and better-paying existence. And she - perhaps more out of pity than conviction - agreed to this one last race, though she also suggested that given the orderly life she preferred for our family, I shouldn't necessarily count on her vote.

I let her take comfort in the long odds against me.

********************************************

In 2000, Barack Obama was unsuccessful in his bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

On March 2004, Barack Obama won the Democratic primary election to become the States Senator of Illinois.

On February 2007, Barack Obama began his run for the US Presidency. He later beats Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party presidential primaries.

In the 2008 United States General Election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain.

On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States.

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Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current president of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office, as well as the first president born in Hawaii.

Obama previously served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.

Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for United States Senate in 2004. His victory in the March 2004 Democratic primary election for the United States Senator from Illinois brought him to national attention. His prime-time televised keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 made him a rising star nationally in the Democratic Party. He comfortably won election to the U.S. Senate in November 2004.

He began his run for the presidency in February 2007. After a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. On October 9, 2009, Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.[4]

Paradox: Marriage of Romantic Dreams & Money

Smart Girls Marry Money:
How Women Have Been Duped Into The Romantic Dream--And How They’re Paying For It.

Authored by:
Elizabeth Ford and Daniela Drake

Women can't have it all - they can't have romantic life and all the money they wanted, at the same time, sleep with the same man in the same bed, performing the same art, with the same passion.

The thesis - that money and the marrying of it is essential for women, because, given the current working culture, women are rarely able to earn as much as men, and should their marriage fail it is a fact that women rarely bounce back, professionally or financially, as easily as men, nor even romantically. Most men becomes richer after divorce.

In recent research by Professor Stephen Jenkins, director of the Institute for Social & Economic Research, it was reported that 5 years after divorce, men were 25% richer, whereas women has less money than they did pre-split. Professor Jenkins conclude that until true equality exists in the labor market and in the way people come out of divorce, women remains at a disadvantage.

Smart Girls Marry Money was written by Daniela Drake and Elizabeth Ford. Elizabeth is a single mother, whose husband traded their marriage for a younger model - a chick 15-years younger than her. She swears she is not bitter; it's just that if she knew then what she know now, there's a lot of great and essential things she would get from that man she married. "I can attest from almost marrying someone for love (who also happened to HAVE money), there’s no way to prevent or take the burn out of being left brokenhearted, " she added.

MC: You're both accomplished working women, but you're telling us we should marry for money. What gives?

FORD: The juggling act required to be a successful woman, to be a good mom and to be a careerist, makes you want to say, "Screw it, I should've married money."

MC: So you're saying we should quit our careers?

FORD: You should definitely keep your job. But we haven't climbed the ladder as far as we should have. We have to keep that in mind when looking for a partner, and steer clear of seductive slackers.

Miss Drake divorced her first husband because she felt that passion and love were gone from their relationship. She said: "Things might have been different if I'd known then that LOVE is TRANSIENT, that it doesn't exist, that a lack of it is not a reason to get out of your marriage." He first husband has now gone on to be quite rich. She remarried and is now happily married.

So, why does society applaud a girl who falls for a guy with big blue-eyes yet denounces one who chooses a rich-ugly man? After all, isn’t money more a reflection of a man’s values and character?

Smart Girls Marry Money challenges the ideals and assumptions women have blindly accepted about love and marriage—and shows how they’ve done so at their own economic peril.

In their book, Elizabeth Ford and Daniela Drake use cold hard facts and true stories to present a compelling case for why mercenary marriages make the most sense for future happiness.

Smart Girls emphasize on "Female “empowerment” - women working hard to look sexier than ever, while demanding more than their fair share financially. Yet sadly, statistics prove that: not only do women continue to earn far less than their male counterparts, they also suffer far more economically when marriages fail. Ford and Drake think it’s high time that women get their heads out of the clouds and start caring about their own security—the kind that can be measured in dollars and common sense.

In a straight-talk tone, the authors serve up an intriguing strategy for how women can truly “have it all": that sexual fulfillment is dependent on discovering yourself through masturbation; that it is imperative to marry young, while you have the seductive powers of the sexually attractive and fecund; that women must be aware that men are prone to trading up once women no longer have the great skin or looks; that sleeping with your boss is fine if you can do so without harming your feelings or prospects.

According to Merryn Somerset Webb, the editor-in-chief of MoneyWeek, "Even really smart women are victims of their own Cinderella Syndrome." Webb wrote "Love is Not Enough" after her husband asked her: "How do you intend to keep yourself in old age?" "I said, 'I'll share your money. To which he replied, 'No. Sort your own finances out." In the "Marrying-Money" agrument, Webb says, "It's all very well, as long as the money you marry don't leave you on your own in a poor financial position. Marrying money isn't a solution - it is not emotionally satisfying. Marriage is exhausting enough with someone you love - imagine doing it with someone you don't. I don't think people would marry purely for romantic love."

The book would surely spark conversation and controversy, Smart Girls Marry Money intends to empower women with a new way to take control of both their economic and romantic lives.

While the book is intended for the audience of "young supple beauties squandering their hotness," there is good news for single women whose "sell date is long overdue": Women over 40 "may still avoid working until you drop dead." (review by Bonnie Goldstein of doublex.com)

Read: timesonline

Life's Lesson: Experience & Control

The more we plan our steps, the more chance there is that we will go wrong, because we are failing to take into consideration four things:

1) Other people (2) Life's teaching (3) Passion, and (4) Calm.

The more we feel we are in control of things, the farther off we are from controlling anything. A threat does not issue any warning, and a swift reaction cannot be planned like a Sunday afternoon walk.

Do not allow your supposed experience of life to transform you into a machine.

Often what we call experience is merely the sum of our defeats. Thus we look ahead with the fear of someone who has already made a lot of mistakes in life and we lack the courage to take the next step.

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Extracted from Paulo Coelho's book, "Like the Flowing River

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Story of a wise man in the city of Akbar

A wise man moved to the city of Akbar. No one took much notice of him, and his teachings were not taken up by the populace. After a time, he became the object of their mockery and their ironic comments.

One day, while he was walking down the main street in Akbar, a group of men and women began insulting him. Instead of pretending that he had not noticed, the wise man turned to them and blessed them.

One of the men said:

"Are you deaf too? We call you the foulest of names and yet you respond with sweet words!"

"We can each of us only offer what we have," came the wise man's reply.

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I have a lot to learn from this wise man. I will pray for courage and strength to apply this lesson in my life.

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Story extracted from Paulo Coelho's book, Like the Flowing River

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The Story of a Bird & Eleven Minutes of Love

Once upon a time, there was a bird. He was adorned with perfect wings and with glossy, colorful feathers. He was a creature made to fly about freely in the sky, bringing joy to everyone who saw him.

One day, a woman saw this bird and fell in love with him. She watched his flight, her mouth wide in amazement, her heart pounding, her eyes shining with excitement. She invited the bird to fly with her, and the two traveled across the sky in perfect harmony. She admired and venerated and celebrated that bird.

But then she thought: He might want to visit far-off mountains! And she was afraid that she would never feel the same way about the other bird. And she felt envy, envy for the bird's ability to fly.

And she felt alone.

And her thought: "I'm going top set a trap. The next time the bird appears, he will never leave again."

The bird, who was also in love, returned the following day, fell into the trap and was put in a cage.

She looked at the bird every day. There he was, the object of her passion, and she showed him to her friends, who said: "Now you have everything you could possibly want."

However, a strange transformation began to take place; now that she had the bird and no longer needed to woo him, she began to lose interest.

The bird, unable to fly and express the true meaning of his life, began to waste away and his feathers began to lose their gloss; he grew ugly; and the woman no longer paid any attention, except by feeding him and cleaning out his cage.

One day, the bird died. The woman felt terribly sad and spent all her time thinking about him. But she did not remember the cage, she thought only of the day when she had seen him for the first time, flying contently amongst the clouds.

If she had looked more deeply into herself, she would have realized that what had trilled her about the bird was his freedom, the energy of his wings in motion, not his physical body.

Without the bird, her life too lost all meaning, and Death came knocking at her door. "Why have you come?" she asked Death. "So that you can fly once more with him across the sky," Death replied.

"If you had allowed him to come and go, you would have loved and admired him even more; alas, you now need me in order to find him again."

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The above are Extracted from the book:
Eleven Minutes
(p215-217)

by Paulo Coelho.

Eleven Minutes tells a story of a young girl who falls in love at the age of eleven and discovered that sex actually only takes eleven minutes.

In her odyssey of self-discovery, the girl has to choose between pursuing a part of darkness, sexual pleasure for its own sake, or risking everything to find her own 'inner light' and the possibility of sacred sex, sex in the context of love.

In this gripping and daring novel, Coelho sensitively explores the sacred nature of sex and love.
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Notable notes:

It is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love.

Perhaps love really could transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly.

In the search for happiness, however, we are all equal; none of us are happy.

"I have discovered the reason why a man pays for a woman; he wants to be happy."

Everyone needs to earn money, but not everyone chooses to live on the margins of society.

More Experience, Earn Less: Prostitution isn't like other businesses: Beginners earn more and more experienced earn less. Prices went down as the woman's age went up.

Customer Satisfaction / Quality Management: "When your client comes, you must always groan as if you were having an orgasm too. That guarantees customer loyalty." Buy Why? "They're paying for their own satisfaction." "A man doesn't prove he's a man until he is made to believed that he can pleasure a woman. And if he can pleasure a prostitute, he'll think he's the best lover on the block; and he will start to admire his dick."

Men are very strange: They can beat you up, shout at you, threaten you, and yet, they are scared to death of women really. Perhaps not the woman they married, but there's always one woman who frightens them and forces them to submit to her caprices.

Men are very strange: It was the woman who would have felt ashamed for being unable to arouse them, but, no, they always blame themselves. Perhaps not the woman they married, but always one woman who frightens them and forces them to submit to her caprices.

For a night? Now come on, you're exaggerating. It's really only 45 minutes, and if you allow time for taking off clothes, making some phoney gestures of affection, having a bit of banal conversation and getting dressed again, the amount of time spent actually having sex is about Eleven Minutes."

Eleven Minutes! The world revolved around something that only too Eleven Minutes. When the moment came to go to bed with someone, Eleven Minutes later it was all over.

Civilization: Something was very wrong with civilization, and it wasn't the destruction of the Amazon, rainforest or the ozone layer, the death of the panda, cigarettes or prison conditions, as the newspapers would have it. It is precisely that thing: sex.

Men and women may withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness.

Freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly.

You can't mend a broken heart?: In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel.

How can you mend a broken heart? In love, no one can harm anyone else; but I'm not sure when that love is lost thereafter.

Ownership & Possession: I am convinced that no one can loses anyone, because no one owns anyone.; no one possesses anyone else. Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever will finally come to realize that nothing really belongs to them.

Beauty is Money: So many pretty girls let themselves be seduced by the illusion of easy money, forgetting that, one day, they'll be old and will have missed out on meeting the love of their life. Beauty is like the wind; beauty, my dear, don't last.

Heart or Body or Both: Those who touched my heart failed to arouse my body, and those who aroused my body failed to touch my heart.

Don't Play-Play: When it comes to seduction, feelings and contracts, one should never play around.

Wisdom: "My dear, it's better to be unhappy with a rich man than happy with a poor man, and over there you'll have far more chances of becoming an unhappy rich woman."

Love is tangible and measurable: "I didn't love your father at first, but money buys everything, even true love."

Exit Strategy: No one knows what life is in store for us, and it's always good to know where the emergency exit is.

Women wants three things in life: adventure, money and a husband.

I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of pleasure and treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life.

Being young inevitably means making mistakes; that's what all drug addicts says too.

Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone. From that point onwards, things change ... and what happens before - the attraction that brought them together - is impossible to explain and sustain.

Don't think how to do; Just do it: Not everything in life is a matter of what position you adopt when making love, and that any variation usually occurs naturally, without thinking, like the steps in a dance.

Wisdom of a woman: "I allowed myself to fall in love for a simple reason: I'm not expecting anything to come from it."

Love or make? "Everyone knows how to love; but not everyone understands how to make love; the majority of us have to re-learn because there is a connecting thread. Our bodies must learn to speak the language of the soul, known as sex, and that is what a woman can give to the man who gave her back her soul, even though he has no idea how important he is to her life. That is what he asked for, and that is what she would give."

No one can know how to humiliate another person if they themselves have not experience humiliation.

Wise man says: Human beings weren't made solely to go in search of wisdom, but also to plough the land, wait for rain, plant the wheat, harvest the grain, make the bread, and have sex.

Witholding the object of desire: Real love has nothing to do with imagination. We will discover it when a chain of events provoked by the energy engendered by love - courtship, engagement, marriage, children, waiting, more waiting, getting old, retirement, illnesses, the feelings that it is far too late. Sexual energy comes into play before sex even takes place. The greatest pleasure isn't sex, but the excitement of the thoughts of it. And then you awaken desire by not immediately handing over the object of that desire.

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N/B: Not everything quoted above are absolutely Coelhos'; there're quite some other Paulos around.

N/B: Not me!
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The Story of Athena

No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind the door;

No one sacrifices the most important thing she possesses: Love;

No one places her dreams in the hands of those who might destroy them.

No one, that is, but Athena!

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"If a man we don't know phones us up one day and talks a little, makes no suggestions, says nothing special, but nevertheless pays us the kind of attention we rarely receive, we're quite capable of going to bed with him that same night, feeling relatively in Love. That's what women are like, and there's nothing wrong with that - it's the nature of thje female to open herself to love easily."

--- Deidre O'Neill, doctor.

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"... my heart struggled vainly not to allow itself to be seduced by a woman who don't belong to my world.

"I applauded when reason lost the battle, and all I could do was surrender and accept that I was in Love. That love led me to see things I'd never imagined could exist - rituals, materialization, trances. Believing that I was blinded by Love, I doubted everything, but doubt, far from paralyzing me, pushed me in the direction of oceans whose very existence I couldn't admit.

"I'm finally coming to accept that I was only a temporary inhabitant, there as a favor, like someone who finds himself in a beautiful mansion, eating exquisite food, aware that this is only a party, that the mansion belongs to someone else, that the food was bought by someone else, and that the time will come when the lights will go out, the owners will go to bed, the servants will return to their quarters, the door will close, and he'll be out in the street again, waiting for a taxi or a bus to restore him to the mediocrity of his everyday life.

"I'm going back, or rather, part of me is going back to the world where only what we can see, touch and explain makes sense.

"I also know that, at night, another part of me will remain wandering in space, in contact with things as real as ..."

---Heron Ryan, journalist

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The above are just a few lines from the book "The Witch of Portobello", another great story book written by Paulo Coelho, and it is the kind of book that will transform the way readers think about Love, passion, joy and sacrifice.

The Witch of Portobello is a story of a girl by the name of Sherine Khalil who later changed her name to Athena, a mysterious young woman born in Romania, raised in Beirut and living in London. Her life is told by many who knew her well, or hardly at all.

For those reading enthusiasts who prefers to read a story that is structured from a beginning and expecting the last chapter to be the conclusive ending of a tale, then you would be disappointed, as the book is structured in which each chapter consists of a testimony or statements related by an individual who knew Athena, telling their personal experiences and knowledge of Athena.

My Rating: I prefer Coelho's Like the Flowing River, The Alchemist and The Pilgrimage. This book is somewhat similar in styles with Coelho's Eleven Minutes and Veronika Decides to Die.

Story: Banana Lesson

This was the conversation between a monk and Isabella.

Monk: "Did you know that bananas can teach you the meaning of life?"

The monk then took out a rotten banana from his bag and threw it away.

Monk: "That is the life that has been and gone, and which was not used to the full and for which it is now too late."

Then he drew another banana, which was still green.

Monk: "This is the life that has yet to happen, and for which we need to wait until the time is right."

Finally, he took out a ripe banana, peeled it, and shared it with Isabella.

Monk: "This is the present moment. learn how to gobble it up without fear or guilt."

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Extracted from Paulo Coelho's book, Like the Flowing River

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Next News: Chinese New Year celebration


HERE'S TO THE YEAR OF THE OX:

Kelantan Menteri Besar Datuk Nik Aziz Nik Mat joining his Chinese friends in a yee sang toast to mark the Chinese New year during an open house he attended today.

Yee sang is considered a symbol of abundance, prosperity and vigour to the Chinese.

-- NST pix by Fathil Asri

Link: NST




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Story: Only one Chance or will there a 2nd Chance?

The Story of the prince of Thing-Zda

Around 250 BC, a certain handsome prince of the region of Thing-Zda was about to be crowned emperor; however, according to the law, he must first had to get married.

Since this meant choosing the future empress, the prince needed to find a young woman whom he could trust absolutely. On the advice of a wise man, he decided to summon all the young women of the region in order to find the most worthy candidate.

An old lady, who served as a servant in the palace for many years, heard about the preparations for this gathering and felt very sad, for her daughter nurtured a secret love for this prince.

When the old lady got home, she told her daughter and was horrified to learn that she intended going to the palace.

The old lady was desperate.

"But, daughter, what on earth will you do there? All the richest and most beautiful girls from the court will be present. It's a ridiculous idea! I know you must be suffering, but don't turn that suffering into madness.

And the daughter replied:

"My dear mother, I am not suffering and I certainly haven't gone mad. I know that I won't be chosen, but it's my only chance to spend at least a few moments close to the prince, and that makes me happy, even though I know that a quite different fate awaits me."

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Second Chance: The story of Antonio

I was walking along the Gran Via when I saw a woman - petite, light-skinned, and well-dressed - begging money from passers-by. As I approached, she asked me for a few coins with which to buy a sandwich. I was used to beggars wearing very old, dirty clothes, and so I decided not to give her anything and walked on. The look she gave me, however, left me with a strange feeling.

I went to my hotel and suddenly felt an incomprehensible urge to go back and give her some money - I was on holiday, I had just had lunch, I had money in my pocket, and it must be terribly humiliating to have to beg in the street and to be stared at by everyone.

I went back to the place where I had seen her. She was no longer there; I searched the nearby streets, but could find no trace of her. the following day, I repeated this pilgrimage, again and again.

From that day on, I slept only fitfully. I returned to my country and told a friend about my experience. She said that I had failed tomake some very important connection and advised me to ask for God's help. I prayed, and seemed to hear a voice saying that I needed to find the beggar again. I kept waking up in the night sobbing. I realized that I could not go on like this, and so I scraped together enough money to buy a ticket back to Madrid in order to look for the beggar.

I began a seemingly endless search, to which I devoted myself entirely.

I had been back to Spain several times since, and I know that I will never meet the beggar again; but I did what my heart demanded.

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Lessons Learned:

We may not get what we wanted but we are in control of what we can do, and the outcome is not for us to decide. If we had one chance, whatever the outcome it may be or what we may presumed, let's not lose that one chance, for we may not have another.

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Adapted from Paulo Coelho's story in his book, Like the Flowing River

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Story: The Well of the Desert's Tears

A missionary who, as soon as he arrived in Marrakesh (in Morocco), decided that he would go for a walk every morning in the desert that lay just outside the city.

The first time he did this, he noticed a Arab lying down, with his ear pressed to the ground and stroking the sand with one hand.

'He's obviously mad,' the missionary said to himself.

But the scene was repeated every day, and after a month, intrigued by this strange behavior, he decided to speak to the stranger. With great difficulty, since he was not yet fluent in Arabic, he knelt down by his side, "What are you doing?"

"I'm keeping the desert company and offering it consolation for its loneliness and its tears."

"I didn't know the desert was capable of tears."

"It weeps every day because it dreams of being useful to people, and of being transformed into a vast garden where they could grow cereal crops and flowers and graze sheep."

"Well, tell the desert that it is performing an important duty," said the missionary. "Whenever I walk in the desert, I understand man's true size, because we are compared with God. When I look at its sands, I imagine all the millions of people in the world who were born equal, even if the world has not always been fair to all of them. Its mountains helps me to meditate, and when I see the sun coming up over the horizon, my soul fills with joy and I feel closer to the Creator."

The missionary left the man and returned to his daily tasks. Imagine his surprise when, next morning, he found the man in the same place and in the same position.

"Did you tell the desert everything that I said?"

The man nodded.

"And it's still weeping?"

"I can hear every sob. Now it's weeping because it has spent thousands of years thinking that it was completely useless and wasted all the time blaspheming against God and its own fate."

"Well, tell the desert that even though we human beings have a much shorter lifespan, we also spend much of our time thinking we're useless. We rarely discover our true destiny, and feel that God has been unjust to us. When the moment finally comes, and something happens that reveals to us the reason we were born, we think it's too late to change our life and continue to suffer, and, like the desert, blame ourselves for the time we have wasted,"

"I don't know if the desert will hear that," said the man. "He's accustomed to pain, and can't see things any other way."

"Let's do what I always do when I sense that people have lost all hope. Let is pray."

The two men knelt and prayed. One turned towards Mecca because he was a Muslim, and the other put his hands together in prayer because he was a Catholic. They each prayed to their own God, who has always been the same God, even though people insist on calling him by different names.

The following day, when the missionary went for his usual morning walk, the man was no longer there. In the place where he used to embrace the earth, the sand seemed wet, for a small spring has started bubbling up there.

In the months that followed, the spring grew, and the inhabitants of the city built a well there.

The Bedouin call the place "The Well of the Desert's Tears".

They say that anyone who drinks from its water will find a way of transforming the reason for his suffering into the reason for his joy, and will end up finding his true destiny.

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Extracted from the book, "Like The Flowing River" by Paulo Coelho.

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Of Enough Love & the Prayer

There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer,
no disease that enough love will not heal;
no door that enough love will not open;
no gulf that enough love will not bridge;
no wall that enough love will not throw down;
no sin that enough love will not redeem. . . .

It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble;
how hopeless the outlook;
how muddled the tangle;
how great the mistake.

A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all.
If only you could love enough you would be the happiest and most powerful being in the world.

-- Emmet Fox

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The Prayer

Lord, protect our doubts, because Doubt is a way of praying.
It is Doubt that makes us grow because it forces us to look fearlessly at the many answers that exist to one question.
And in order for this to be possible ...

Lord, protect our decisions, because making Decisions is a way of praying.
Give us the courage, after our doubts, to be able to chose between one road and another.
May our YES always be a YES, and our NO always be a NO.
Once we have chosen our road, may we never look back nor allow our soul to be eaten away by remorse.

--- Paulo Coelho


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To Everyone,

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

To the Chinese,

GONG XI FA CAI!

To my children,

LET'S CELEBRATE!

The Story of the Pencil

A boy was watching his grandmother write a letter. At one point, he asked:

"Are you writing a story about what we've done? Is it a story about me?"

His grandmother stopped writing her letter and said to her grandson:
"I am writing about you, actually, but more important than the words is the pencil I'm using. I hope you will be like this pencil when you grow up."

Intrigued, the boy looked at the pencil. It didn't seem very special.
"But it's just like any other pencil I've ever seen."

"That depends on how you look at things. It has five qualities which, if you manage to hang on to them, will make you a person who is always at peace with the world.

"First Quality: you are capable of great things, but you must never forget that there is a hand guiding your steps. We call that hand God, and He always guides us according to His will.

"Second Quality: now and then, I have to stop writing and use a sharpener. That makes the pencil suffer a little, but afterwards, he's much sharper. So you, too, must learn to bear certain pains and sorrows, because they will make you a better person.

"Third Quality: the pencil always allows us to use an eraser to rub out any mistakes. This means that correcting something we did is not necessarily a bad thing; it helps to keep us on the road to justice.

"Fourth Quality: what really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So always pay attention to what is happening inside you.

"Finally, the pencil's Fifth Quality: it always leaves a mark. In just the same way, you should know that everything you do in life will leave a mark, so try to be conscious of that in your every action."

Source:
Paulo Coelho
Like The Flowing River (page 10-11)
2006
HarperCollinsPublishers, London

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Review:

This is a fantastic book by Paulo Coelho. I recommend those who loves philosophy and humanity to spent time reading this book.

Like The Flowing River is an intimate collection of Paulo Coelho's reflection and short stories. The stories relates to the philosophy of life, our destiny and choices, of love and his thoughts and reflections that explores the journey of life in search of its true meanings.

Other good books from Paulo Coelho are: The Alchemist, The Pilgrimage, Eleven Minutes and The Zahir. Some of the other books that did not interest me are: The Fifth Mountain, Veronika Decides to Die, The Devil and Miss Prym, Manual of the Warrior of Light, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept and Valkyries.

I have yet to read "The Witch of Portobello" which I bought on 14th September 2007. I will finish it by this week.

***

A Book that's good to read

The Secret
by Rhonda Byrne
2006, Atria Books
available at MPH Bookstore
RM79.90

This is a good book to read.

The Secret unveils the knowledge of ourselves and how we could understand the hidden, untapped power within us.

The Secret contained wisdom from teachers such as Bob Proctor, Dr Joe Vitale, John Assaraf, Dr John Demartini, Dr Denis Waitley, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Lee Brower, Marie Diamond, Mike Dooley, Bob Doyle, Hale Dwoskin, Morris Goodman, Dr John Hagelin, Bill Harris, Dr Ben Johnson, Loral Langemeier, Lisa Nichols, James Ray, David Schirmer, Neale Donald Walsch, Dr Fred Alan Wolf, Dr John Gray and Jack Canfield.

The Secret is about the law of attraction. Everything that's coming into our life we are attracting into our life. And it's attracted to us by virtue of the images we're holding in our mind. It's what we're thinking. Whatever is going on in our mind we are attracting to us.

Go and get one of this book at the bookstore. it is value for money. But I prefer the DVD copy which is also available at MPH; however, the DVD could cost around RM130.

This book was introduced to me by my student from CatLand. Watch the DVD!

The Importance of Living

Lin YuTang

The Importance of Living

Cultured Lotus, 2001

(First published by The John Day Company, Inc 1937)

‘The Importance of Living’ by Lin YuTang is a personal testimony, a testimony of his very own experience of thought and life. The main ingredient of his thought is matter-of-fact prose (the ordinary language people use in speaking or writing), natural leisure discourse. Lin YuTang called his writing, a “Lyrical Philosophy” to express his thoughts which is based on highly personal and individual outlook. It lays no claim to establish eternal truths.

When I started reading this book, I was jolted when I read a passage he wrote in the Preface: “I am not deep and well-read. If one is too well-read, then one does not know right is right and wrong is wrong.”

I pondered hard to discover what Lin was trying to express. I am still puzzled and blank.

In the Preface, he expressed his philosophical limitations and said he had not read John Locke or David Hume or Berkeley, and had never taken a college course in philosophy, but only read life at first hand. His sources of knowledge comes from: Mrs. Huang, an amah in his family, a Soochow boat-woman, a Shanghai street car conductor, the cook’s wife, a lion cub in the zoo, a squirrel in New York, a deck steward, and all news in boxes. That’s his source of philosophy of mankind.

While I continued reading, I gather that, Lin had being quoting various sources from (1) Chinese Philosopher & Poets such as: Su Tungpo, ChuangTse, Mencius, Confucius, TseSse (Confucius’ grandson), LaoTse, Po Chuyi, Yuan ChungLang, Chang Tai, Tu ChihShui, Li ChowWu, Chang Chao, Li LiWeng, Yuan TseTsai, Chin ShengTan, Tao YuanMing, Li Mi-an; (2) Western & Greek Philsophers such as: Thomas Hobbes, Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Plato, Dr Alexis Carrel (Man, the Unknown), Clarence Day (This Simian World), Lord Balfour, Omar Khayyam, Mussolini, William James, James Harvey Robinson (The Mind in the Making), Shakespeare, Aesop, Chaucer, Swift, Anatole France, Einstein, Newton, Hans Christian Andersen (The Mermaid), Kaiser Wilhelm Hodenzollern, Hitler, Hegel,Walt Whitman (Democratic Vistas), Napolean, Marx, Stalin, Emerson, Amiel, Joubert, James Bryce, George Santayana, and so many, many, more.

The writings in this book covered wide views on human awakenings, views of mankind, animal heritage, human dignity and life’s enjoyment, the importance of loafing, celibacy and sex appeal, enjoyment of nature, culture and travel, man’s relationship to God, and the art of thinking.

This philosophical book is a difficult read. You have to have passion and yearnings to want to learn and find out more about the philosophical views of mankind, in particular, the wisdom and thoughts of a Chinese philosopher; otherwise, you would throw the book away.

In Lin’s own words, “I am only interested to present a view of life and of things as the best and wisest Chinese minds have seen it and expressed it in their folk wisdom and their literatures.” It was surely an idle philosophy born of an idle life which evolved with the time.

I love it when he said that “The Chinese philosopher is one who dreams with one eye open, who views life with love and sweet irony, who mixes his cynicism with a kindly tolerance, and who alternately wake up from life’s dream and then nods again, feeling more alive when he is dreaming than when he is awake, thereby investing his waking life with a dream-world quality.

A “Dream-world” quality, what a nice phrase

Dr Lin was born in Changchow in the Fukien province of China on Oct 10th 1895, son of a Christian Minister. He was raised as a Christian, but soon abandoned Christianity for the old Chinese Pagan religions of Taoism and Buddhism, only to rediscover Christianity later in his life.

He took his degrees in St. John's (Shanghai), Harvard, and Leipzig. He was a teacher at Tsinghua University, Beijing in 1916-1919; married and went with his wife to Harvard in 1919 where he studied Comparative Literature under Bliss Perry and Irving Babbitt until 1920. They then moved to France, where Dr Lin worked with the YMCA for Chinese labourers at Le Creusot, 1920-1921. He studied at Jena and Leipzig (where he received his Doctorate) 1921-1923; was Professor of English at Beijing National University 1923-1926 and Dean of Women's Normal College in 1926.

It was in 1937 that Lin first published the book The Importance of Living. It was pure philosophy, and an ancestor of modern "self-help" books, and it achieved instant fame in the United States.

Though Lin's subsequent works contained many philosophical ideas, The Importance of Living is the only one of his books dedicated solely to the mystery of life and the secret to living it successfully.

In 1959, at the encouraging of his wife, Lin attended the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. The minister's sermon about eternal life left Lin curious and intrigued, and he began to return "again and again." After some time, he said:

"The scales began to fall from my eyes. I no longer ask, 'Is there a satisfying religion for the modern educated man?' I know there is. Returning to the Bible, I have found in it not merely a record of historical events but an authentic revelation that brings God, through Christ, within my reach. I have returned to the church. I am happy in my accustomed pew on Sunday morning. I believe we go to church not because we are sinners, and not because we are paragons of Christian virtue, but because we are conscious of our spiritual heritage, aware of our higher nature and equally conscious of our human failings and of the slough of self-complacency into which, without help from this greater power outside ourselves, we so easily fall back…. Looking back on my life, I know that for thirty years I lived in this world like an orphan. I am an orphan no longer. Where I had been drifting, I have arrived. The Sunday morning when I rejoined the Christian church was a homecoming.

The result of Lin's conversion was a book, From Pagan to Christian. It is a text that provides valuable biographical information, and a detailed discussion of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, with a final discussion on why he finally chose Christianity. He asserts that no person can rightly claim to have "a monopoly of truth," and spends much of the book pointing out the qualities of other religions.

Lin Yutang died in 1976 and was buried at his home in Yang Mingshan, Taiwan. His old home has now been turned into a museum, which is run by Soochow University.

Chapter 1: The Awakening

I like to share some of his thoughts about mankind. In the first chapter ‘The Awakening’, Lin said that, “It is generally known that the Chinese mind is an intensely practical, hard-headed one … and profoundly sensitive, profoundly poetic and philosophical. It was evident that the Chinese as a nation are more philosophic than efficient, and that if it was otherwise, no nation could have survived the high blood pressure of efficient life for 4,000 years. 4,000 years of efficient living would ruin any nation, says Lin.

Lin expressed: “In the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, while in China, the insane are so unusual that we worship them, as anybody who has knowledge of Chinese literature will testify.” (Hahahaha, I truly love this phrase.)

In Lin’s thesis, Mankind seems to be divided into idealists and realists, and idealism and realism are the two great forces molding human progress. The forces of idealism and realism tug at each other in all human activities, and real progress is made possible by the proper mixture of these two ingredients, so that the clay is kept in the ideal pliable, plastic condition, half moist and half dry, not hardened and unmanageable, nor dissolving into mud. Some countries are thrown into perpetual revolutions because into their clay has been injected some liquid of foreign ideals which is not yet properly assimilated, and the clay is therefore not able to keep its shape.

A vague, uncritical idealism always lends itself to ridicule and too much of it might be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginary ideals. If there were too many of these visionary idealists in any society, revolution would be the order of the day.

Human society would be like an idealistic couple forever getting tired of one place and changing their residence regularly for the simple reason that no one place is ideal and the place where one is not seems always better because one is not there.

Very fortunately, man is also gifted with a sense of humor, whose function, is to exercise criticism of man’s dreams, and bring them in touch with the world of reality. It is therefore important that man dreams, but it is perhaps equally important that he can laugh at his own dreams.

So then, wisdom of the highest level of thinking consists in toning down our dreams, or idealism with a good sense of humor, supported by reality itself. That is to say, Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom.

The Dreamer says: “Life is but a dream.” The Realist replies: “Quite correct. And let us live this dream as beautifully as we can.” But the Realist is a poet and not a business man, who is like an old man running his finger through his flowing beard, and speaking soothingly. And the dreamer is a peace lover, for no one can fight hard just for a dream. He will be more intent to live reasonably and well with his fellow dreamers.

But the chief function of realism is the elimination of all non-essentials in the philosophy of life, holding life down by the neck, for fear that the wings of imagination may carry it away to an imaginary and possible beautiful, but unreal, world.

The problem of life for the Chinese is the impatience with metaphysics and the pursuit of knowledge that does not lead to any practical bearing on life itself. It also means that every human activity, whether the acquiring of knowledge or the acquiring of things, has to be submitted immediately to the test of life itself and its subservience to the end of living. The significance is that, the end of living is not some metaphysical entity – but just living itself.

Therefore, the philosophy of the Chinese becomes a matter of direct and intimate feeling of life itself, and refused to be encased in any system. For there is a robust sense of reality, a sheer animal sense, a spirit of reasonableness which crushes reason itself and makes the rise of any hard and fast philosophic system impossible.

Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism are robust, yet common sense dilutes them all and reduces them all into the common problem of the pursuit of a happy human life. The mature Chinese is always a person who refuses to think too hard or to believe in any single idea or faith or school of philosophy whole-heartedly. When a friend of Confucius told him that he always thought 3-times before he acted, Confucius wittily replied, “To think twice is more than enough.”

The final product of this culture and philosophy is that, man lives a life closer to nature and close to childhood, a life in which the instincts and the emotions are given free play and emphasized against the life of the intellect, with a strange combination of devotion to the flesh and arrogance of the spirit, of profound wisdom and foolish gaiety, high sophistication and childish naiveté.

This philosophy of life is characterized by: (1) a gift for seeing life whole in art; (2) a conscious return to simplicity in philosophy; (3) an ideal of reasonableness in living. The end product is, strange to say, a worship of the poet, the peasant, and the vagabond.

Man’s dignity consists of the facts that which distinguish man from animals. First, man has a playful curiosity and a natural genius for exploring knowledge; second, that man has dreams and a lofty idealism (often vague, cocky & confused); third, that man is able to correct his dreams by a sense of humor, and thus restrain his idealism by a more robust and healthy realism; and finally, that man does not react to surroundings mechanically and uniformly as animals do, but possesses the ability and the freedom to determine his own reactions and to change the surroundings at his will.

Somehow, human mind is forever elusive, uncatchable and unpredictable, and wriggle out of materialistic dialectic that crazy psychologists and unmarried economists are trying to impose upon him. Man, therefore, is a curious, dreamy, humorous and wayward creature.

The Scamp as Ideal.

My faith in human dignity consists in the belief that man is the greatest scamp on earth. Human dignity must be associated with the idea of a scamp and not with that of an obedient, disciplined and regimented soldier.

In this present age of threats to democracy and individual liberty, only the scamp and the spirit of the scamp alone will save us from becoming lost as serially numbered units in the masses of disciplined, obedient, regimented and uniformed coolies. The scamp will be the last and most formidable enemy of dictatorships. He will be the champion of human dignity and individual freedom, and will be the last to be conquered. All modern civilization depends entirely upon him.

I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living, and I call no man wise until he has made the progress from the wisdom of knowledge to the wisdom of foolishness, and become a laughing philosopher, feeling first life’s tragedy and then life’s comedy. For we must weep before we can laugh. Out of sadness comes the awakening and out of the awakening comes the laughter of the philosopher, with kindliness and tolerance to boot.

This world is far too serious and being far too serious, it has need of a wise and merry philosophy. The philosophy of the Chinese art of living can certainly be called the “gay science”. After all, only a gay philosophy is profound philosophy; the serious philosophies of the West haven’t even begun to understand what life is. To me, the fundamental view is that, the only function of philosophy is to teach us to take life more lightly and gaily than the average business man does. The world can be made a more peaceful and more reasonable place to live in only when men have imbued themselves in the light gayety of this spirit. The modern man takes life far too seriously, and because he is too serious, the world is full of trouble. We ought, therefore, to take time to examine the origin of that attitude which will make possible a wholehearted enjoyment of this life and a more reasonable, more peaceful and less hot-headed temperament.

This is perhaps the philosophy of the Chinese people, a philosophy that transcends these and other ancient philosophers, for it draws from these fountain springs of thought and harmonizes them into a whole, and from the wisdom, it has created an art of living in the flesh, visible, palpable and understandable by the common man.

(The above is only chapter 1. I will cull some of the interesting thoughts and essays later).

Man's Search for Meaning

I love books; all kinds of books - Novel, Classics, Fictions, Project Management & Strategic Management, Philosophy, Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, Religions, Political Science & Conspiracy Theories, Law & Jurisprudence, Biographies, Feng Shui, Information Technology & Globalization, Accounting & Finance, Health & Nutrition, Jokes, Mahathirism & Paklahism.

But only few books leaves profound thoughts on me, and this one, Man's Search of Meaning by Viktor E Frankl (Beacon Press, Boston, 1959, 2006) is one of them.

The Forward penned by Harold S. Kushner sums up everything. In Harold’s words, "if a book has one passage, one idea with the power to change a person’s life, that alone justifies reading it, rereading it, and finding room for it on one’s shelves. This book has several such passages." I agree wholeheartedly!

In this book, Frankl described poignantly those prisoners who gave up on life, lost all Hope for a future, and inevitably died. They died less from lack of food or medicine than from lack of Hope.

But Frankl discovered an enduring insight, in that, “forces beyond our control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” In Frankl’s words: “You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you feel and do about what happens to you.” “ …that we can never be left with nothing as long as we retain the freedom to choose how we will respond to a suffering."

In his thesis, Frankl examines his and the many prisoners’ experiences at the concentration camp, and observed that there are three phases of the inmates mental reactions to camp life: the period following the admission; the period when he is well entrenched in camp routine; and the period following his release and liberation.

The symptom that characterizes the first phase is shock. Auschwitz is the name that stood for all that was horrible: gas chambers, crematoriums, massacres, terrible and immense horror.

Newly arrived prisoners experienced the torture of other most painful emotions, all of which he tried to deaden. They were disgusted with the ugliness which surrounded them.

Days or weeks passed, and the prisoners soon passed into the second stage of his psychological reactions, for they did not avert their eyes any more. By then their feelings were blunted, and they watched unmoved and unconcerned.

Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that once could not care any more, were the symptoms arising during the 2nd stage of the prisoners’ psychological reactions, and which eventually make them insensitive to daily and hourly beatings. This insensibility of the prisoners soon surrounded them with a very necessary protection shell. Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: preserving one’s own life.

The daily ration consisted of watery soup given out once daily, and a small crump of bread. The diet was absolutely inadequate, taking into consideration the heavy manual work and constant exposure to the cold in inadequate clothing. When the last layers of subcutaneous fat had vanished, they looked like skeletons disguised with skin and rags, and they could watch their bodies beginning to devour them. The organism digested its own protein, and the muscles disappeared. Then the body had no power of resistance left. They were, but a small portion of a great mass of human flesh, of a mass behind barbed wire, a mass of which daily a certain portion begins to rot because it has become lifeless.

In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the life in a concentration camp, it was still possible for spiritual life to deepen, Frankl said. On one of those morning march to work site, a thought of his beloved woman came to mind that transfixed Frankl: for the first time in his life he saw the truth, the truth that, LOVE is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.

It is from then that Frankl understood, how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, in the contemplation of his beloved.

For Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases, somehow, to be of importance. There is no need for him to know whether she is still alive at all; for nothing could touch the strength of his love, his thoughts, and the image of his beloved. "Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death".

This intensification of the inner self helped him to find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence, by letting him escape into the past. When given free rein, his imagination played with past events, his nostalgic memory glorified them and assumed a strange character. These memories could move one to tears.

As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before. Under their influence he sometimes even forgot his own frightful circumstances.

Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self preservation. Humor, more than anything else, can afford aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation. The attempt to develop a sense of humor is an art of living. It was possible for the prisoners to practice the art of living in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipotent.

The 3rd stage of a prisoner’s mental reactions is the psychology of the prisoner after his liberation. In the morning when the white flag was hoisted above the camp gates after days of high tension, the state of inner suspense was followed by total relaxation. But it would be quite wrong to think that the prisoners went mad with joy. “Freedom”, they repeated to themselves, and yet they could not grasp it. They had said this word so often during all the years they dreamed about it, that it had lost its meaning. They could not grasp the fact that freedom was theirs. They had literally lost their ability to feel pleased and had to relearn it slowly.

One day, after the liberation, Frankl walked through the country past flowering meadows, for miles and miles, toward the market town near the camp. There was no one to be seen around; there was nothing but the wide earth and sky and the larks’ jubilation and the freedom of space. He stopped, looked around, and up to the sky – and then he went down on his knees. At that moment there was little in mind – always the same: “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space.” How long he knelt, he couldn’t remember.

But from that day onwards, his new life started. Step by step he progressed, until he again became a human being.

Frankl’s experience at the concentration camp serves as the existential validation of his doctrine, Logotherapy, which seeks to convey the message that life holds a potential meaning under any condition, even the most miserable ones.

Frankl has this to tell us readers: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."

Frankl approvingly quote the words of Nietzsche: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.”

In writing this book, Frankl states that he is not writing an account of facts and events at the concentration camp but rather of his personal experiences, experiences which millions of prisoners have suffered time and again.

In attempting a methodical presentation of the subject, it was difficult, as psychology requires a certain scientific detachment. But does a man who makes his observations while he himself is a prisoner possess the necessary detachment? Such detachment is only granted to an outsider, but that outsider is too far removed to make any statements of real value. Only the man inside knows. His judgment may not be objective; his evaluations may be out of proportion. This is inevitable. Attempt to avoid personal bias may be made but it is real difficult of a book of this kind.

This book taught me some great lessons, and it is profound knowledge. I will search for meaning in life, and to live life to the fullest. For what I had conceived from the knowledge imparted unto me, no power on earth can take from me; not only my experiences in life, but all trials and tribulations that I had journeyed through, whatever great thoughts and failures I have had, and all what I had toiled, all these will not be lost, though it had past, for it will be brought back into being.

I had been through, is surely a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.

I hope you readers will enjoy it too.

Those interested to read more