Transforming power of action

The thing to know and remember is the transforming power of some activities. Like workout. Like starting tidying up a space. Like doing a pomodoro. Simple things but they transform you. You become a different you, your thoughts and perspective shift.

What is the objective? Balance or perfection?

For a moment lets consider balance and perfection as mathematical curves. One way to consider it.

The way life works, efficiency and perfection run on a scale of diminishing returns. The returns do pile up but in an ever diminishing fashion. Perfection is the maximisation of the area of the curve. 

On the other hand, balance is perhaps hitting the point where the objective function of two or more such curves can be met. Ideally before the diminishing returns begin to accelerate. There, you find more calm, tranquil being. Not perfect, not completely efficient, but perhaps good in many things.

Perfection has perhaps only one objective function to solve for. While life, and balance has many functions, and the objective is to find that balance which can maximise the area of many of those functions.

The other thing is that the energy spent to chase the curve to its full glory of perfection keeps increasing. As anyone who has tried to take something up from 80 to 100 would have felt, the unit of effort every point goes up. If life were only one thing, perhaps we could all call perfection the objective. But life is many things, and successful objective is one which maximises for balance in many.

In practical terms it means listen to Pareto and what he perhaps distilled in his 80/20. In practical terms, it implies you may not be perfect in anything, but good in many many things.

Life is a multiple function thing at every now. You can still clear off some nows and focus only on one thing and aim for momentary perfection, but for most nows, one perhaps aims for balance.

AI related housekeeping - how to be

About AI and AI Hygiene. There are a lot of positives to work with AI, but at a personal level, keep up the time that you spend on analysis and reading, and thinking and writing – or your time with raw facts as much committed as you go deeper with AI. Just a simple hygiene. There’s a lot of undocumented raw learning that happens when you grapple with something over time. It shapes you as you shape it. Keep that time going. Try not to dilute it. Even as you learn new best practices from AI. Give it time to settle in. Let it teach you newer, better, but then you ‘do’ something of your own with that ‘newer, better’.

Just something to remember and practice. Esp as all our times with AI increase and previous tedious work gets simplified. Sometimes the tedium teaches you valuable lessons which hence, you continue even as you devote new time to AI, safeguard your raw time with things.

A personal, lifelong pursuit

To be wary of both delusion and disillusion. Ground yourself in facts. Understand the background and context if you can. And then, to keep on a simple path forward, one step after next. The best next step and good cheer in your heart. Nothing else matters.

One of my lifelong pursuit is to see the world better and clearer, to see it and know it well. Some of the biggest debates in the world can be disentangled if they can be put in context. Some context shaping books which help include things which draw from facts to paint a picture. And basis that factual picture present their thesis or proposal. Devoid of the factual picture, it is sometimes very difficult to have an independent view and one is open to influence depending on the strength of the argument’s persuasion. Just by grounding in facts, it is like eye cleansing. By having the time and place solidly understood, one can then follow the trail of words better. 

It remains a pursuit, this solid grounding in the atlas and map, the geographical, the physical, say, the numbers of each country, not just the big ones, but the by-the-way ones, the nuanced ones, the next layer of appreciation. It takes time, this building of understanding, a lot of open eyes across books, reports but to see the world clearly, with clean eyes. Narrative is fun too, but the next layer of history, sometimes numbers trace it better than words.  Seeing the world as a globe of countries, and seeing in those countries the different lives lived, allowing all your lived experiences, readings to inform that view… and seeing there the telescoping time. And seeing all the changes that have come to be. It attunes you to a dynamic, growing world rather than a static reality. It makes you see that the world has changed and grown a lot and has capacities to resolve its problems… it brings back faith, if it be lost. 

We see relatively. And though the narrative can be powerful to understand the personal, but for an average person, the relative world that exists at their time in universe needs to be seen clearly. This interest is to be satisfied by a mixed study of narrative (of the orders not recorded by history, of the everyday), of geography, of history, and of the numbers and data collected over time which help define the shape of the world, trade, the large currents that humans can only gasp at, and be carried by. Just to see the world a little better and a little clearer. 

Having the context sorted, the background understood, one is likely to do better justice to any argument.  And going into the personal domain – if life is how we respond to the world, our responses are much more grounded and sorted, and at the end of the day more harmonious and satisfying if the world is seen and known well. 

It is an ideal pursuit, a mountain, if you will. Understanding is an arduous path. And sometimes, holding all the facts together can be difficult. But to keep at it. 

Drawing from the above argument itself, there is an ideal level of understanding, and there is the reality. One works one's way from where one is to perhaps where one should ideally be. So in that context, it is good to know both Plato's ideal state and what exists today in the world, and how the world has shaped itself, and where it is going, and then, perhaps what can be done to nudge it towards the ideal. You get the flow...

A note to self - when you are lost, look for facts. Ground yourself. Begin where you are. And orient yourself forward while comprehending and internalising the past. And figure out the next best step or two, and act on them.

Live up to the beautiful

Live up to the beautiful, rather than putting down the ugly.

Things that are easy to punch, ugliness, unevenness, inconsiderateness, or just a narrow world view, one can get some kind of random ugly victory by continuously punching these things down (like in a muddy puddle), although the point is you get muddied. But the more difficult or the more effortful thing, and perhaps the more important thing to adorn time with is to live up to the beautiful, to keep the illustrious virtue in gaze, and to figure out your next step according to that distant mountain top. And then walk, then look again at that top, and re-determine your next step. And so, between the goal (the excellent, the true and the beautiful), and the first step, or a next step, perhaps a life is lived.

"What the great learning teaches, is to illustrate illustrious virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence.

The point where to rest being known, the object of pursuit is then determined; and, that being determined, a calm unperturbedness may be attained to. To that calmness there will succeed a tranquil repose. In that repose there may be careful deliberation, and that deliberation will be followed by the attainment of the desired end."

Trinity

In Indian mythology, the universe is held together by three sorts of energies/forces/aspects of God. One, creation, creative energy, where form is created from the formless. Second, preservation, maintenance energy. And third, dissolution or back to formlessness. And the cycle keeps repeating.

As a person, a being in this universe, if one is ever lost, perhaps one finds oneself in the throes of one of these key energies. Either creating something, this could include copying a creation, imitating, getting influenced, inspired, learning, growing, imbibing, in daily simple acts like noting down a beautiful poem, or cooking something quietly, or perhaps learning a new word. Or it could be the second act, that of preserving, restoring order or harmony. It could be as simple as cleaning or tidying, restoring balance and order, the maintenance activities, think of it as restoring order. And the third one, I have wondered about it, what sort of dissolution, perhaps that of the self? Something that can absorb you completely so that there is no awareness of a self, where you can dissolve in the activity that you are pursuing, where it is just you and the action, something so absorbing. Sometimes it is found in action, sometimes, in the acts of creation or restoring, sometimes in exercise, sometimes in reading where you enter a new world, or perhaps in sleeping and dreaming where you feed the formless, could be anything, anywhere, where you become one again with the formless. It is from this formless that creation picks out a new form, again and again. 

Perhaps these three simple things, one can find one's orientation and perspective back - create (cook, copy), restore (clean, order, balance, harmony), dissolve (absorb the self completely). 

Something to practice and learn.

Action

"It is easy to sit and keep thinking, it is tough to get up and act."

May be it is the state that I find myself in at times, may be, it is something with the way I'm seeing things at times - a sort of standing glance sweeping long tracts which yields to empty thoughts although which can beguile with plenty of content. Good to see, but if one begins to take that content personally, one can perhaps just sit and mope and stay in those empty thoughts because the thing with sweeping glances is that a life is a small unit. And one cannot put it up all the time to be compared with infinite sweeping. Maybe it is some passing phase where I often need to remind myself to look at what I have rather than... - shouldn't need reminding, should be automatic ideally, the gratefulness for what I have. Maybe, it is just the blues affecting me.

Whatever it is, this thought above, said to me, is a sort of nice way to look at things, a much-needed reprimand. To remember and live by, especially when the thoughts that surround you are blue spirally. One needs to choose the harder thing of action. Any action.

Here perhaps the action from '12 rules for life' - something like look around you, what is bothering you? Can you do something about it? Are you willing to do something about it? Then perhaps do it. 

The only thing I'll change in this is the part about willing, of giving oneself the choice. Sometimes, choice consideration is just glorified idling. Esp in the blue spirally phases of thoughts. Sometimes one just needs to act. And if one does not know on what, then look around, interact with your surrounds, take care of yourself (as you would your friend or person in your charge/care), and take care of your surrounds. Take the tougher path and start doing, acting.

 

Momentum & Flow

Just a little note to appreciate when one has flow and momentum. 

There are times when you are busy and active, there is a momentum in that flow many things get done. Which sometimes a standing start makes the inertia difficult. 

Although it sounds simple, but when one is standing, small things look like mountains. Then to perhaps remember to see only the first step or the next step.

When one is in motion, there is better perspective of things, less thinking, more action - and somehow the flow takes care of stuff, keeps you away from deeper questions whose answers only elude, and make you wish to forget yourself in some motion.

These are notes from a day close to motion, close to flow. Writing this from there. To a self which is sometimes here, standing, sometimes moving. To appreciate and be grateful for the flow - it takes care of inertia if you give in to the flow.

--

Another thought today - to give in and have faith. To stand tall & strong,  

The right balance - slowly & well - to keep moving. 

Practice

A thought from Aristotle:

Moral goodness, says Aristotle, is the result of habit. It takes time, practice, encouragement.

We can perhaps commit to give ourselves the time and practice, and hope that encouragement and guidance finds us.

The other related idea from Yoga philosophy: about practice. Where Aristotle's is an orientation and elevation towards goodness, this one, in the Yoga/ Eastern idiom is about restoring purity that is always inside. Just two outlooks to the same practice towards goodness and purity.

abhyasa - exercise, discipline; in Raja Yoga, this refers to "the (repeated) effort of the mind to remain in its unmodified condition of purity (sattva)." Ramana Maharshi sometimes refers to a spiritual aspirant as an  Abhyasi - i.e. one who practices (uninterruptedly).

Again, the emphasis is on the practice - to again and again restore purity.

**

Tying it further to a not unrelated thought from Plato about beauty.

Beautiful objects have a really important function. They invite us to evolve in their direction, to become as they are. Beauty can educate our souls.

Along with beautiful objects, there are beautiful ways of being, of acting, of doing. In action and being, beauty in harmony, kindness, courage, generosity, calmness, independence, reasonableness, and such other ways of being. And in doing, in very local, subjective ways; in any little action done well, in harmony and fittingness of things - there are ways of doing everything which align with the beautiful. 

To educate and elevate our souls, perhaps when possible, where possible to observe beautiful objects, beautiful ways, and then, by imitating (art), by practicing (art in motion, the ways), by recalling to mind, a practice of sorts.

Perhaps beauty allows the practice (of moral goodness, of purity), a guide, a rail.

**

The idea and hope is amongst these three ideas above, the mind finds its way to the state of beauty, truth, goodness, purity.

Study and practice quality

To study and practice quality. In big things and small.

In high quality or perhaps, excellence, in anything, there seems to be a level of equality, that of truth and beauty. 

The concept is discussed in detail in Zen & the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance. There, this about Buddha/quality/ Tao/excellence:

I disagree with them about cycle maintenance, but not because I am out of sympathy with their feelings about technology. I just think that their flight and hatred of technology is self-defeating. The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or the in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha – which is to demean oneself. 

Quality is less described or inherited in words, perhaps felt or perceived more through osmosis, it seems to appeal to whole senses, has a way of binding everything together positively. As to osmosis, it seems that deep attention and presence is the best approach. To regard, observe quality - simply, to be attuned to it. Anywhere, everywhere - to observe, study and if possible, practice. 

One can begin small, in simple ways and little things.

Anything that is done, can be done well, with care and attention, or in high quality ways. If one likes to write, one looks up to, studies, imitates, learns from excellent, high-quality writings. If one likes to cook, it is the many ways around the kitchen that can be studied. And sometimes, it is not even the same discipline. Sometimes, just observing high quality, excellent stuff or ways in practice anywhere has a way of lifting up the spirit which allows one to engage better, in a high-quality way with whatever's at hand. Hence, to keep seeking quality/excellence wherever it can be found. 

A simple reset

Anywhere, anytime.

Of the many ways to bring oneself back to the moment and focus completely on the task at hand, following ideas from Yoga  (and mirrored in Zen practice as well), something to work on, or to practice whenever one can do it: 

Asana - Steady posture

Pranayam - Steady breath

Dharana/ Ekagrata - concenteration of the mind

Reminding oneself to breathe well, to correct the posture and to concenterate. On whatsoever be the task at hand. If the task is not clear, perhaps to focus on the breathing itself. 

Personal responsibility

The following extract about Alexander.  The context is that Alexander has portioned out or engaged almost all of the royal property to friends to enable them to follow him in his explorations and conquests...

But when he perceived his favourites grow so luxurious and extravagant in their way of living and expenses [...(silver nails in shoes, precious ointments, servants everywhere)...], he reproved them in gentle and reasonable terms, telling them he wondered that they who had been engaged in so many single battles did not know by experience, that those who labour sleep more sweetly and soundly than those who are laboured for, and could fail to see by comparing the Persians' manner of living with their own that it was the most abject and slavish condition to be voluptuous, but the most noble and royal to undergo pain and labour. He argued with them further, how it was possible for anyone who pretended to be a soldier, to look well after his horse, or to keep his armour bright and in good order, who thought it much to let his hands be serviceable to what was nearest to him, his own body, "Are you still to learn", said he, "that the end and perfection of our victories is to avoid the vices and infirmities of those whom we subdue?" And to strengthen his precepts by example, he applied himself now more vigorously than ever to hunting and war like expeditions, embracing all opportunities of hardship and danger...

The sortedness, or clear-eyed appreciation of labour, personal responsibility, good order and the simple adage of applying the self to whatever is nearest, the application being the thing. 

Something to learn and remember, something to practice, something to imbibe.

Slowly and well

The following poem from somewhere. Where the design principles recall to mind the objective, or the guiding light under which to build something, the sky of sorts, this following here perhaps guides the how, the way to approach any build. 

Slow me down, Lord!

Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind.

Steady my hurried pace,

With a vision of the eternal reach of time.

Give me, amidst the confusion of my day,

The calmness of the everlasting hills.

Break the tension of my nerves

With the soothing music of the singing streams

That live in my memory.

Help me to know the magical restoring power of sleep.

Teach me the art of taking minute vacations of slowing down.

To look at a flower;

To chat with an old friend or make a new one;

To pat a stray dog; to watch a spider build a web;

To smile at a child; or to read from a good book.

Remind me each day

That the race is not always to the swift;

That there is more to life than increasing its speed.

Let me look upward into the towering oak

And know that it grew great and strong

Because it grew slowly and well.

Architect's ethos - an inspiration for any build

In my rough notebook, I have noted down some core principles that guide architects & designers. When something is to be built, perhaps one recalls to mind the simplest values:

Durability: It should stand up robustly and remain in good condition

Utility: It should be useful and function well for people using it.

Beauty: It should delight people and raise their spirits.

These words help guide many things. As one builds good habits, or a building, or anything in between, a recalling to mind of some basic thoughts.