Deep Breathing

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...