"Happiness lies in every moment in time."
Simple Bear 20.03.2013.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Being a leader
"All of us are born leaders; we lead ourselves."
Simple Bear 18.03.2013.
Where are you leading yourself now?
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Confessions to-be-made
Confession pages are now the craze online. As I was reading the true, fake, warm, fuzzy, perverted, and funny posts on the pages, I had this thought in mind, I think everyone should have their own confessions page perhaps in the form of a diary etc. We should start writing about our deepest fears, desires, stories about the world in which our mind had gleefully made up for us. After a while, when we look at the ‘confessions’ that we made, we may break into smiles at our funny antics, thoughts or shake head at our ignorance, anger, greed. I enjoyed the times when I read old blogs, letters that I wrote when I was younger than the present. It allows retrospection, allowing one to face up to one’s dark and light, without the possibility of the mind to deceive oneself by denying the memories of the thoughts, emotions and interactions with our world. It is, in Singaporean lingo, in ‘black and white.’
Perhaps, on a metaphysical level, we are ‘writing’ confessions all the time in the ‘cognitive page’. Think about a thought, a memory that you had a while ago about someone, something, changes in the situational conditions in which you are in. Awareness allows us to ‘read’ our confessions, and sometimes, we laugh over stupid thoughts and reactions that we have, in retrospection, in response to now, seemingly insignificant changes.
Now please excuse me, I have a confession to make.
I have an ego. it seems so real to me.
My friends do remember to stash your confessions diary away in a secret hiding place, and its location can only be found by deciphering encrypted messages in a treasure map.
May all be well and happy
Simple Bear 13.03.2013.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Freedom of Death
"Freedom to die is no freedom at all."
Venerable Heng Sure (in his song, Yasodara)
For those who are interested, the song can be found here: http://www.dharmaradio.org/paramita/songs_notes02.htm
This part of the lyrics strucked me when Venerable Heng Sure sang the song, Yasodara on Saturday.
Freedom of death is an illusionary freedom, for death is certain, we can have no free will over death. We may have the delusional assumption that we can choose death but death had already chosen us from the day we were born. The shackles of negative karma that binds us to the prison of Samsara; we are charged with unwholesomeness and perhaps, doomed to eternity, wasting lives after lives in this wretched living hell that we created for ourselves.
The key to freedom is in our mind; only we can free ourselves, there is no one binding us to us other than ourselves.
Freedom is a gift and death, a choice we need to make now and beyond, if beyond ever exists.
Simple Bear 11.03.2013.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
A Simple Sharing: Money & Happiness
Below is a write up of a sharing that I prepared for a class next week.
A Simple Sharing: Money & Happiness
A very good evening to my dear brothers and sisters, today I am going to share about the relationship between money and happiness. As the saying goes, “money can’t buy us happiness”, we may or may not agree with this notion. Today in contrary to the saying, I am going to share a little bit on the utilization of money to well, in a mundane sense, buy us happiness.
Michael Norton, an associate professor of business at Harvard once said, “If you think money can't buy happiness, you're not spending it right.” So now the next question is how do we spend our money right to get happiness? Research had shown that when we spend money on two types of ‘expenditure’, we experience higher level of happiness as opposed to purchasing material desires. What exactly are the two types of ‘expenditure’? They are (a) experiential and (b) pro-social purchases.
The first type of expenditure is experiential purchases; the level of happiness experienced is much higher in comparison to material purchases (Carter & Gilovich, 2010; Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003; Van Boven L. , 2005). What do I mean by experiential purchases? Imagine spending money on a beach resort stay with your loved ones in the Maldives. And imagine spending the same amount of money on a branded bag. Which purchase will make you feel happier? Of course some of you may disagree with me and prefer the bag to the resort stay but it is ok as long as you are happy.
The second type of expenditure is pro-social purchases; the level of happiness experienced when we spent money on others is much higher in comparison to spending money on oneself (Dunn, Aknin & Norton, 2008). Imagine spending money to buy a present for your parents, your boyfriend, girlfriend. And imagine spending the same amount of money on an expensive dinner for yourself alone. Which purchase will make you feel happier? Imagine again, spending money on donations to the disadvantaged, to purchase a few packs of tissues from an elderly and compare it with spending the same amount of money to purchase a pair of shoes for oneself. What is your choice?
Happiness, lies not, in how much we earn but how we spend what we earn. Again, happiness is a very subjective concept and not all of us may agree on the same conceptualization. It is ok, as long as you are happy. At the end of the day, I want to leave everyone with this quote from Simple Bear, “happiness is an experience, not a possession.”
Thank you everyone for your time and attention. And have a great evening.
References
Carter, T. J., & Gilovich, T. (2010). The relative relativity of material and experiential purchases. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 98 (1), 146-159.
Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M (2008). Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness. Science , 319 (5870), 1687-1688.
Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2003). To Do or to Have? That Is the Question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 85 (6), 1193-1202.
Van Boven L. (2005). Experientialism, materialism, and the pursuit of happiness. Review of General Psychology , 9 (2), 132-142.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)