Deep Breathing

Reading the book entitled " Mind, Language and Society " by John Searle, I had a chance to reflect again on the mind/body problem. Usually and traditionally in the field of philosophy what is called the mind/body problem is the ever discussed issue. That is to say, whether our consciousness is a kind of independent, substantial entity that can exist as it is without any external supports, or it is a just what is called "the ghost of the machines" – the peripheral illusion that easily disappears when the external support such as body (brain) does not exist. In short, the question was whether our human consciousness exists independently or it is just a reflection of our human bodily function. For many years a lot of thinkers and philosophers are discussing this issue in one way or another. And another variation of the mind/body problem is the question to ask whether or not what we see in our consciousness is really a true reflection of the so-called "external...

The trainings in Japan have been completed and the other necessary preparations for the project seem almost complete. This means that the project is ready to be "live." For any kind projects, when you are implementing them, you need the careful preparation and then once you can see the preparation is well-done, as scheduled, you or someone else has to give a go-signal -- the project is going to be live. But, sometimes or most of the times we may encounter the unpredictable difficulties or troubles. The more the project is novel and challenging, the more often we may encounter such cases. Some consider this tendency stressful, while others can enjoy it as something exciting. In my case, which type do I belong to? Am I enjoying something unpredictable as something exciting and challenging? Or, am I being stressed by these things? Probably the answer is, as I always say, the combination of things -- I am enjoying and yet at the same time being stressed. One of the disadv...

As repeatedly mentioned, so-called business process outsourcing is one of the strategic approaches to generate demands in the third world countries. These countries used to provide cheaper factory laborers. That is why; a lot of industries used to build their factories there. It is a common sense. While this trend continues even nowadays, the more prominent one is the attempt that business process as such is going to be handled in these countries. There are two reasons for this tendency. The first is that in our computer age networking systems have been incredibly advanced and achieved the real-time global infrastructure such as internet based communication; and international courier services have been also incredibly sophisticated. In such futuristic circumstance it seems that we do no longer feel any distanced inconvenience or difficulty for our communication. In short, we can experience the worldwide wholeness simultaneously in both mass media and business networking. Not only h...

It has been almost one month since I stopped writing in this blog. Although there are many reasons and unexpected busyness for this. The mainly reason is probably the change of my job. If you read my previous blog entries, you can see I have been working in certain outsourcing company. And just a few weeks ago I was finally able to leave this company, though the turnover has not been completed. As everybody knows, the change of one's own job or resignation is a kind of big event, if not frustrated, in his or her life physically and psychologically. I submitted my resignation to the company almost several months ago, and yet due to lack of the replacement I had to have remained in the position until recently – a few weeks ago. During such extended period I started my blog diary, and then as you can see in my previous blog entries, during this extend period I was also involved with some other activities such as CMMI presentations , Spiral Dynamics related translations, and even t...

Today's entry is inspired by the question that was given by a friend of mine who visited my blog. Is it true that while happiness comes from outside, joy is from inside; while happiness is depending on the external circumstances and may not last persistently, joy can remain whatever his or her external situation may change as it is from inside? That is an interesting question. I understand the point and agree that there are two kinds of positive feeling -- one is something that comes from inside and the other is from outside. I am not sure if the former can be signified as "joy" and the latter as "happiness." But it seems to me that your signification can be helpful to explain each other's difference. For example, when we say that we seek for our happy lives, it seems that we always tend to pursue something external as if a typical happy life can be made of only the external factors such as beautiful houses, higher educations, promising jobs, compatib...

Have never thought of meeting again those adolescents whom I met a week ago during the debut party ; probably because I wrote about them in this blog or maybe because of some other reasons I do not know -- I was lucky to meet again their young vital spirits. As I wrote in the previous blog entry , contemplating upon life in meeting those angles is one of the good opportunities that I rarely have. Thinking about them can remind me of the time when I was just in their age (around seventeen or eighteen years old) and that inevitably reminds me of a sort of transformation that takes place from their age to my age. It is said that most of the so-called transformation of consciousness happens and completes by the age of twenty five or thirty; and until around fifty or sixty, one experiences the so-called translation alone, but no longer transformation. The transformation is the vertical deepening or escalation of consciousness level -- a kind of qualitative change of wisdom, while the tr...

Since we are surrounded by several kinds of writing task, once we have gotten busy with some writings such as emails, articles or business letters, we have missed some other wrings such as blog diary, private poetry and so on. In my case when I have received a lot of emails, then sometimes I have spent most of my writing time just to reply to them. Of course it is also enjoyable in one way or another. One interesting thing is that such email responding task tends to come to me not randomly but more "periodically." I do not know why, but it is like this: When I receive emails, I receive them more and more at the same time; and I get busy to reply to them. On the other hand, when I receive very few emails, I really tend to receive fewer. It seems that there must be a weird law behind – if I generalize it, looks like when you are busy, you tend to get really busier and busier, while when you are not so busy, you are not really so busy. If I use somewhat a silly example, ...

Visited my friend and attend the birthday party held in his house. He is also a student of community development. He can be also called Mr. O, but different one from another "Mr. O" who was mentioned in the other journal entry , though both know each other very well. It was not his birthday party, but the eighteenth birthday of his acquaintance; he offered the venue for her since his house is quite spacious. In this country your eighteenth birthday has the special meaning that you can be or have to be the responsible member of the society you belong. They call this occasion "debut." This is probably similar to the case that Japanese young people celebrate the January 15 of their twentieth year -- Seijin-no-hi . But, in Japan this celebration has been meaningless year by year. As every year reported, if you go to this celebration in any municipal halls as an observer, we can surely witness the noisy crowd of irresponsible young "adults" who seemingly ha...

What postmodernism has exposed is that there is no such thing as truth. What is called or recognized as truth is just a discourse derived from the particular context. Everything has been contextualized; hence everything is interpreted depending on each specific context. The positive side of postmodernism is that so-called marginal cultures or values are no longer oppressed or "marginalized." Relativism and multiculturalism have emerged. What is oppressed or alienated as "something wrong" has been re-appreciated. While people has started blaming the negative side of modernism such as materialism, rationalism, capitalism, destroying natural environment, or what is represented as Western rationalism and materialism, etc. in the post-modernism they have begun to appreciate that which is regarded as non-modernism or non-Western such as Oriental traditions, tribal cultures, tribal artifacts, and alternative values (that which used to be underground). Thus, since e...

Let us accept first the truth that everyone has his or her Personal Legend. This word came from The Alchemist . Personal Legend means that everyone's life must be meaningful and have the purpose in one way or another. There is no such a thing as meaningless life. Just everything has its own purpose to be here in this world, so does everyone in his or her life. Once we truly see God, we can also recognize that nothing is meaningless; everything and everyone are meaningful even including evil ones. Even if a newborn infant has passed away right after seeing the world just for a few hours, then his or her life was still meaningful. God has the reason for doing so. Only our eyes have limited and cannot see the Personal Legend of that newborn-passed-away baby. Suppose you have accepted the truth that everyone has his or her Personal Legend and you also have your own. Then, the problem is not the question whether or not there is the Personal Legend, but how to search and find your own...

While writing is one of the most interesting activities that only human can do and enjoy, it is also true that we tend to be reluctant when we start writing. Even I myself sometimes experience such kind of procrastination. Usually the more I consider writing as something important, the stronger such reluctance, hesitation, procrastination tend to become. The typical example is writing dissertation. It is not as easy as writing the journal entry. Sometimes I wish I could write the articles just as I write my dairy. On the other hand, it is also true that even my diary tends to be like the articles in terms of contents and length. It is because I consider any kinds of writing as the activities that bring me to the sate of flow as I explained in " Messengers ." Whether they are just journals, articles or emails to my friends, once I have entered the state of flow, it seems that I can no longer stop writing until a certain length of content comes out that convinces my "m...

Today's entry is extracted from my reply to one of my friends who gave me a very thoughtful comment on my blog diary. I would like to post it by omitting the privacy related portions: Thank you for your detailed comments on my blog diary. I am very happy to know that you have been reading them. I also believe that your workshop must be successful. For me, it was a good coincidence that while you were conducting the workshop, I was also conducting the CMMI presentation . My experience on CMMI had really given me a valuable insight . I am glad that I could share them with you through this blog to some extent. As you commented, the good thing in keeping this blog is that it can place me in the position that I really write as I breathe . Whether I like it or not, since it is my diary, a kind of moderate obsession on writing has been installed in me, then I feel I have to write something daily or at least every other day. Although the pathological obsession should be avoided, keep...

Your enthusiasm is not what you can squeeze out by your will-power. While sometimes it is, but mostly the other way around. Your enthusiasm is that which can give you an incredible will-power, not vice versa. And if so, where does your enthusiasm come from? Sometimes it comes from your ego (the desire to get the external approvals) and sometimes from your recognition of what is truly called for. The latter is what we signify literally as "Calling." It is not that you call for yourself but that someone else calls for you in your mind or consciousness. That is why; it is also called "inner voice." And the true inner voice is different from what we call inner chatting. Actually one of the most difficult things is how we can recognize the true inner voice in our contemplation and differentiate from the false one. Because of our consciousness, unlike other animals, we tend to think too much when we do something. Like our decision, when we decide to make any action, w...

While revising the world of The Alchemist , the following sentence impressed me: "When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision." Reflecting on this sentence, I just wonder how many times I have ever decided in my life. Of course we can say that it is countless. Life is a collection of countless decisions from tiny ones to something really crucial determinations for your path. As for tiny ones, you have to make numerous decisions every morning when you wake up something like what kind of breakfast you should have; whether or not you should have breakfast; whether you should pay an electric bill today or tomorrow. It seems that such tiny decision does not affect your life at all. But who knows? If you change the place (restaurant or cafeteria) for your breakfast, then you might meet someone who will be your life time partner. Or, the worst tragic case -- you...

It is said that when you love your neighbors and when your love is really true or the love of Agape, you do not expect anything from them in return. Such true and ideal love is always the form of "giving" rather than "receiving" or "expecting." In the same way, both appreciating and understanding should be the form of active not passive. This means that if you know the value of appreciation and understanding, what you have to do or what you are required to do is appreciating and understanding your neighbors, but not expecting to be appreciated or understood by them. It is a kind of divine requirement; hence, it seems that following and practicing such requirement or principle rigidly is quite difficult or else one of the hardest challenges that our ego has encountered. Moreover, we can say that to follow and practice this principle, our ego or egoistic separate self becomes one of the annoying obstacles. Indeed, because of our ego, we cannot simply foc...

Had dinner with friends of mine and watched movie – its title is " I, Robot ." Though it looks like one of the computer graphic action based Hollywood movies at once and it does actually, the story seems profound on which you can have a certain philosophical reflection. It is because the story itself is based on the same title of the famous science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov . This is the story about robots. In the near future (2035) the company named USR (US Robots) can have produced the robots that can work for us. They can do almost all of human manual works more effectively and more obediently based on the three laws of robotics: 1) A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. ...