What is Man?

What is man?

Man is that force which ultimately cancels all tyrants and gods. He is the force of evidence.

-Albert Camus

A Passing Thought: A Need for Ethics?

Without ethics, life may look very much like Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, "nasty, short and brutish" (The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, 2009). Ethics serve as the framework for which behaviors are based. Ethics could perhaps be defined as a habit or disposition-guiding humankind's actions (Beckner, 2004). This framework allows for the collaboration and the functioning of societies as a whole. Without an ethical platform from which actions and behaviors can be coordinated a virtual "war against all" (The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, 2009) may ensue. No mechanism would exist to regulate interpersonal misunderstandings and human engagement.

The unseen benefit of not having a binding ethos from which societies operate is that it would allow for unbridled creativity and divergent viewpoints to emerge. Viewpoints, which are often suppressed, as they do not conform to the prevailing modes of thought. Where do you stand on the issue?

 

Reference:

Beckner, W. (2004). Ethics for educational leaders. New York: Allyn & Bacon.

The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes( 2009). Retrieved July 12, 2009 from http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/leviathan-contents.html

 

Adversity

Face adversity promptly and without flinching, and you will reduce its impact. Never run from anything and never ever quit.

-Winston Churchill

Power of the Pen…

With the swiftness of blades slashing through like wintery winds, the pen caresses the page and wages war against non-existence.

It will be more.

The shore of destiny's dream can be found between the margins and the seam.

A slow stream of consciousness can turn imagination into a torrential downpour.

Even more, it ignites the minds of those beat down by time, chance and unfavorable circumstance.

The pen can bend conditions to suit one's need or greed.

Whatever reality one wishes to feed.

Mills End

Spent a few hours at Mills End coffee shop, my usual spot was a bit crowded. This Saturday is a beautiful one. As I gazed out the large, glass windows a world of human activity was underway. People coming and going on the light rails, families were strolling down the street enjoying the day in sun. The town of Tempe was almost festive in its vibe. The passing of life's moments engaged in the act of living how perfect that was, life un-conceptualized, unbounded by ideas of what it is supposed to be. Life was just life, expressing itself through the activity of its being. Perhaps there exists a degree of wisdom in this.

The Strength of One’s Convictions

It is 10:51 on a beautiful Phoenix night. I sat on my patio thinking about a book I read entitled the Five Rings; this book was written by the legendary Samurai Miyamoto Musashi. A passage stood out to me from this warrior's treatise, which emphasized the importance of living by the strength of one's convictions. "The strengths of one's convictions", these words resonated continuously with me as I pondered their importance. I contemplated the meaning of conviction and it settled upon me that this concept essentially forms the guidelines by which one lives his or her life.

Taken to a deeper level, one's convictions influence the manner in which one views the world. The perception one has of life and reality is guided by the governing rules of one's conviction. Paradigms are molded by conviction. If one were to change their convictions, one will in essence change their paradigms. Questions worth noting are how does one come to adopt certain convictions and not others as well as what mechanisms reinforce deeply held conviction. I crave ice cream so as I indulge my sweet tooth I will contemplate these remaining questions on another night…

The Power of Conviction

Today was a busy day, comprised of interviews and prepping for upcoming leadership development programs. A thought that I could not help but contemplate through the day was that leadership is based significantly on the willingness of a person to live by the strength of one's convictions. Paying mere lip service to this reality is entirely different from living its precepts. The mettle required to tie one's success in life to one's fortitude of will appears to be substantial, however not an impossible goal. Now the question is how does one go about getting this done?

Cultivating Resilience
Challenging curriculum and educational strategies nurture the seed of resilience within learners. Cultivating environments which require learners to think in critical ways provides them a solid foundation from which to address life’s challenges. Problem based learning (PBL) is a powerful tool in an educator’s arsenal.

Excerpt from: The Power of We

You have not ended your sorrow, and you want to find enlightenment.

You can sit in the right posture with your back straight, breathing correctly, do pranayama and all the rest of it for the next ten thousand years, and you will be nowhere near perceiving what truth is, because you have not understood yourself at all, the way you think, the way you live. You have not ended your sorrow, and you want to find enlightenment. You can do all kinds of twists and turns with your body and this seems to fascinate people, because they feel it is going to give some power, some prestige. Now, all these powers are like candles in the sun; they are like candle light when the brilliant sun is shining.

Krishnamurti in India 1970-71 - 55

The Brink of Knowledge and Learning

Tranquil cords drip endlessly from fingertips caressing passionate strings of heartfelt sentiments, condiments of the soul. Foretold moments of majesty between valleys of melancholy, it is folly to believe that an escape lies in wait. For more is in store beyond what we might call the brink sink not into an endless abyss, but link to all that exists in time. Sublime destinies are one in the same, one in the vein. Beyond perception's veil, she sets sail upon the stream of intuition and feeling, struggling to understand this thing called life. She reveres its majesty yet she knows she is more…beyond the shore of infinity's embrace; she sets pace with the pristine and the timeless….

Can one not exist with the other?...

Can one find peace in the midst of discomfort? Is it possible to find a state of joy in the center of pain? Does the presence of one mean the nullification of the other? The mature mind may be the one which views the two realities as coexistant and embracing them both as such.

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To understand one habit is to open the door to understanding the whole machinery of habit

So, I must first understand the futility of resistance or effort in breaking a habit. If that is clear, what happens? I become aware of the habit - fully aware of it. If I smoke, I observe myself doing it. I am aware of putting my hand in my pocket, bringing out the cigarettes, drawing one from the package, tapping it on my thumbnail or other hard surface, putting it in my mouth, lighting it, extinguishing the match, and puffing. I am aware of every movement, of every gesture, without condemning or justifying the habit, without saying it is right or wrong, without thinking, 'How dreadful, I must be free of it,' and so on.

I am aware without choice, step by step, as I smoke. You try it next time, that is, if you want to break the habit. And in understanding and breaking one habit, however superficial, you can go into the whole enormous problem of habit: habit of thought, habit of feeling, the habit of imitation - and the habit of hungering to be something, for this too is a ha bit. When you fight a habit, you give life to that habit, and then the fighting becomes another habit, in which most of us are caught.

We only know resistance, which has become a habit. All our thinking is habitual, but to understand one habit is to open the door to understanding the whole machinery of habit. You find out where habit is necessary, as in speech, and where habit is completely corruptive.

Krishnamurti Collected Works, Vol. XIII - 204

The Germ of Defeat

The mature mind knows that the germ of defeat lies in every selfish thought.

-Charles Haanel

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Train the mind by training the body

It is midnight I am still up……

My body still aches from the jog I went on previously in the day. As I ran, my mind thought about the conditioning regiments athletes put themselves through. These regimens are often discussed as not only a conditioning of the body but of the mind as well. The fact that rigorous training builds mental toughness is almost axiomatic in the sports realm. The ancient Samurai Musashi identified that the reason warriors are fierce is because their training is fierce.

In the education realm, we would call this "toughness", persistence. Persistence is a person's ability to identify and see a task through to its completion. Many factors come into play when identifying people with high levels of persistence. One major factor contributing to persistence is an individual's level of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is one's perceived ability to control the direction their lives take. A person with a high level of efficacy will persist longer through adversity than someone with a low level of efficacy. Physical training can help to increase a person's perceived level of self-efficacy as people gain much of their perceptions about efficacy through the interpretation of physical stimuli. Training one's ability to manage, control and interpret physical stimuli through exercise will in turn influence one's ability to enhance perceived levels of agency.

Old Habits

Old behavior patterns die hard. Best to redefine how you engage life's situations through the adjustment of your mindset. Assess the perspective you have about your histoy. Also assess the traditions you hold dear and the symbolism you integrate into your life. Are these things in line with your desired path? All three elements will help you transform your circumstance.

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A State of Mind

I sat in contemplation today thinking about the role mindset plays in how we interact with the world.

A mindset of ownership and responsibility will yield different behaviors, than a mindset of one trying to get by in a world created by others.

Change the mindset and you change the behavior. The trick is that all of your habits and routines must reflect the new state of mind. Habits are the indicators and reinforcers of our current internal condition.

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Emotional resilience is a necessary component of success. Emotional resiliency allows one to learn from mistakes and adjust the approach. It is an overriding belief in success that turns obstructions in the road, into building blocks to future success. A true leader is well aware of the fact that the difficult in not synonymous with the impossible.

Excerpt from: Way of the E-lightened Mind

When you are aware that you are transformed, you are not.

A man who says, 'I know' is the most destructive human being because he really does not know. What does he know? So, when you are conscious you are transformed, when you are aware that you are transformed, you are not.
-Krishnamurti, Collected Works, Vol. VIII - 5

Microphone Check….

On a napkin she entices life into rhythmic forms and swarms of conceptualized feeling.

The ceiling, of which she has yet to find, intertwined within the fibers of dead trees bleed emotion.

Oceans of each would not even capture a blink of the most high so with the passion of many she fruitlessly tries to reflect but a piece of what will never cease not even within the immensity of time.

She sits at the bar contemplating coffee creations and whatever else happens to come to mind.

She primes the mind on instrumental renditions of hip hop greats and so she strives to capture infinity in just one take.

For the sake of art and for art's sake, she captures the moment with a taste of sweet words.

Dig it…

Because I feel what is what.

And I do what is and what.

Could I see that reality is only what I perceive it to be?

In the pitter of pattered beats I run towards ecstasy towards dreams towards me.