Surviving a current. Once I read this incredible story. Which I do not know from where, but it gives a strong message about the perspective of mindfulness. Story is about a swimmer, I will narrate it with a fresh perspective as I am not entirely sure about the exact location, but I can assure it is real. Floating life "One day I went for swimming in the nearby bay, with my dad. While my dad was relaxing in the sun. I got bored and went for a swim. It was a sunny day and not a sunday. So there were not much people on the beach. The lifeguard was on the watch few hundred meters away. And I was swmiming. I started to float. With the sun bathing my front, I drifted on the cool water, until I realised something was wrong. I noticed I do not hear the sound of the waves. And I looked back, "Oh my god, I was so far away from the beach" Maybe about a mile maybe more. I have Drifted. I did not realise, what happened, as I did not swim. It was ten minutes ago I went for a swim. And second by second I am drifting further away. And I am being washed away from an ocean current. It was slow but steady and strong current. I am threatened with never seeing my father or my family again. It is hardly possible anyone to notice me in the sea, from the beach. As nobody would. Its so far away to see the tiny floating head of mine above the surface, and the lifeguards were not actively watching. "I thought about my options. I can try to swim, and overswim the current. I thought about it. I had time for eternity. Then I realised, that was not a good option. Even an olympic swimmer would not make it agianst this current. So, I decided to float as long as I can. Maybe someone would miss me and start looking for me. Maybe the lifeguard would see me from his little telescope. And I did. I did preserve my energy and contemplated all my life, prayed for god. And the rescue came. Rescue came not from the beach but from the sea. A surfer bike noticed me and came closer to inspect and helped me out of the water and out of danger. If that would not happened, that would have been the end of my short span of life." Why mindfulness has nothing to do with your life. There one strong message about looking at life from the story. I would not advice you on what to do when you are faced with an ocean current. Although this perticular stratergy worked for the guy in the story, it would not be the best option for everyone. And it is unlikely we ever face such a situation. But, what would you do if you are faced with a current that you surely know that you cannot out swim? Ocean : https://unsplash.com/@inghelza Dylan and Catherine Life is like an ocean current. Slowly drifting towards the sea, dragging everyone of us to the bottom over time . This is why Dylon once said, the most scariest thing for him is "The unstoppable march of the time slowly guiding us towards the death". Even if you agree, with me or not it happens. We have two choices to make. One is to be scared like little Catherine. Not about the inevitable march of time, but about the messangers of truth or "Dylan" in this case. We can be scared about everyone who reminds us death. We can be scared about TV advertisements, corpses, war, famine and disease. We can live all our lives with fear and pray. Or other choice is to be mindful. Mindful about the current, the floating life and the meanining of life . Infact mindfulness is just understanding there is no point trying to swim. And exert ourselves. Help is not going to arrive from the beach or the sea, as we all are just floating jelly fish in the current of the universe. We just have to understand it and let it be, as it is. Whe we understand this fact who might know we will float enough time in the universe until we are permenently away from such currents of the nature. So, there is hope after all. And it is effortless. So, mindfulness has nothing to do with your life. Its just letting it float without disturbing the flow.

It is simple. And it is misterious. It is extremely interesting and curious. Why anything is a thing? Why is the sun, the Sun? Not the moon? Why is the moon the moon not a star? Why is a tree a tree ? Not a leaf? Why is a leaf a leaf not a caterpillar who eats it? I assume you are interested. And if you are not I do not invite you to read further than this. There is no point. Minds are not equal. What interests me is not inherently to be interested to everyone. But occationally there are similar minds, hence I invite you to read further nonetheless. Mountain Fiji Mountains and cats I was looking at the range of mountains in front of me. They rise so high into the sky that clouds benind the mountains fail to pass them. They barely fill over the top of some less tall peaks towards me. And for more than thirty kilometers between me and the mountains contains empty space. Looking at this scenary I asked myself why is a mountain a mountain? Not a cat? Or could it have been a cat? I imagine an alternating universe where those hight rising gigantic things which kisses the clouds are called cats. And the white color draping floating things are called mouse. In this alternating universe nobody would laugh at me for saying I was mesmarised by the mouse which kind of drapped over the range of cats. And as you can see that is not an impossibility. If the ancestors who named the mountains if they did it as a cat, and clouds were named mouse, we would be that alternating generation to be using same names, and nobody would laugh at me. In this crazy story of cats and mountains, I am not alone. But I think it is excessive and unnecessary to name things differently. Just the other day I saw this one dude, who had made a blog about universal power. He has made a raidcal approach by naming everything differently. He would name mindfulness -> the pressurisablehog and calmness -> universalchi, etc. And he spoke like a next great philosopher of the era. And I was laughing myself, thinking the deep shit this guy was in. He missed the point. It is not wrong naming a mountain a mountain. And there is nothing wrong group of individuals deciding to name a mountain a tree. Colors This leads us to the question why anything is a thing? Think about it. If we go back in time, anything is a thing for the ease of communication. There was a time in the human history that mountain was not a thing . Then humans named it, most likely over the generations like anything which evolved, languge did evolved like chicken and the egg . And just like mountains everything became a thing. And that is how anything became a thing. For the ease of our communication, and better modelling the otherwise modelless world. However during this process of evolving human consciousness or the information sphere , we forgot the track of the process, and we started to worship gods in mountains forgetting mountains are creations of ourselves. At some point you were born, into this evloving world of human knowledge. And our parents and teachers taught us about mountains and trees. For that matter philosophy was not a common language in schools, as it sound crazy. But without it we are just clueless on anything and everything. We start to belive in a world which merely exsist only as long as the human consciousness prevails, and for this jumble of knowldege, new things keeps on adding day after day. Dreams are created and everyone start chasing them, and we teach our kids same things that we even do not know how to came by into our minds, and I see them cry for things that do not even exist, yet I am unable to tell them. Beach What Can we do about it? So, what is the solution? And as I mentioned earlier, it is not rational to invent and replace the current block of information and words with a new set. It is like trying to re-inventing the wheel. Yet, the solution is mindfulness. To remind ourselves not to get involved in this artistic world of humans greatest creation, and understand the nothingness behind everything we see, hear and feel. Otherwise, we might react, and fear things which are not even there! And sadness is one such thing. Can you name some more?

Previously in the article on modelling the world in a mathematical function, we explained why such a function is a continous one. Here in this article we will discuss some other ways to understand function. As you can see there is a clear link of this with the mindfulness . Mathematical model of the world 1 Imagine a flower blooming. This is something which can be considered a single such function we observe in the natural world. Yet this is not something singular. It has collection of other functions to it. Consider the weight of the flower. The color of the flower. The aroma and the size of it. The abstract function of the blooming flower that see is a collection of similar abstract functions. We can say the "time" is a variable in all of these and so much so similar to a mathematics we can factor out time. Blooming of flower = time( panels +aroma+ color + weight + ....) As you can see each of these small functions themselves are collection of some more smaller ones, in microscopic and atomic subatomic level. When we go more deeper into these abstract levels we understand a blooming of flower is something entirely abstract as we do not end up something real. Model 1 : https://unsplash.com/@sirioberati There are some more facts we have to consider. As time is a variable in each function if time is zero again function entirely becomes zero. But how can time be zero? Imagine you divide the time infinitely, would you end up with a zero instance of time? I can see the similarity of this question with zenos paradoxes. Specially the arrow paradox where solutions suggests that we cannot assume the time is made up of instances. Only when we want to get a meaning that we have to assume time is made of instances. Truly speaking we cannot grasp the meaning of continous time. Mthematical model of the world 2 We can expand our knowledge of this function by elaborating more. Let's look at the world as a collection of all the functions. It would appear as following. World that we see = time ( blooming of flower + geological rock + floating leaf + etc + etc .. ) This is the most likely model that we describe the world with and this function  is the way of looking at the world. This is closer yet still not a complete model of the world. As this model includes everything except the observer in it. It includes every other observer but not the one who is observing. Model 2 : https://unsplash.com/@joshrh19 Consider the following Mathematical model of the world 3 World = Observer . Time ( collection of all the functions ) This is more complete mathematical model of the world. In this function everything is included. Now we can look at some important facts about the world. Just like time, we assume the observer is not a null value. Otherwise the world has no meaning or become a nothingness .  Other important thing is observer is in every other function observed. Just like time. It is the other end of the spectrum. The phone you see, the jug on the table or each and everything would not exist unless it is multiplied by you. Science generally ignores this fact, and only philosophy gives this a value. And hence philosophy is more accurate when it comes to understanding the world. As observer is multiplied by time if the time does not existing neither the observer nor the world or any other function. model 3 : https://unsplash.com/@clemono In mindfulness, we look at ourselves . This existing self which floats through time and ask ourselves what is existing what time. And in any function we try to understand all the components and see whether what meaning is there. And that is the way to dissolve the illusion called life, death and even cancer.

I have been drawing. So delayed writing articles past few days. It was fun, a whole new arena to explore. Of course I loved drawing as a child, yet at some point, I stopped. Not that I did not try to draw again. As I can remember I always had trouble chosing colors. Although I tried to copy draw, it did not represent the reality, as color I have chosen never represented what I see. And I thought this is a problem in judgement. Then I read the book on color theory. And understood that colors do not behave stand alone. It is not single colors. It is the interaction of colors which makes a scene. I learned about hues, saturations, and chromas. Not by definition but by intuition. And with this new knowledge I drew the fan regulator on the wall. Just using a simple paint program on my old samsung phone. It was difficult to draw the edges correctly, however I managed to represent what I see more accurately this time. And following is the image. Fan regulator on the wall Photograph Looking at the world in colors As you can see, it captures the essential details of the image. Although there are so much detail I have used only minimal amount of colors, to represent what is so sophisticated in reality. If we analyse the original image pixel by pixel thre would be hundreds of different colors. Yet, I have only used five or six. And It made me happy doing it. After learning about colors, which is information, I recieved, made me look at the world in a different way. I can give you another example. Look at the following drawing I made, and the original image, and it was done only using three dull colors. I was also suprised how such complicated scenary is abstracted by few colors. More importantly, this is what our eyes have been doing all day. It's my own personal approximation of a world that I see. Just like a monkey seeing its own reflection in the mirror. Lagoon Lagoon Photograph Now when I look at something, I see the colors. I think about how I can draw that. Just like the other day, when I was driving, I saw the sunny lagoon. Bright tropical sun, which is even harder to look at. It is complicated, so much detailed, but eyes, onced used to look at the world in colors, can approximate. And that is what I did in the following image. And I have been experimenting with these colors. Which you also can do if you are interested. Sunny lagoon Philosophy in colors. Now, here is the interesting part. The world I see, did not change. What changed was the information, I had recieved about the world. Just like I bought a new pair of spectacles . Similarly, I am sure, a mathematician sees the world in numbers , a physics student see functions . Did you see Charlie Puth making music, live on the Jimmey Kemel Show? Just with a sound of a cup when tapped with the spoon. It was incredible. And I am sure he hears a melody in every sound! So, if the colors that you see the world, are not bright enough, are not sunny enough and are too sad, I suggest you change your glasses, like I did. So you can see the world in different way. Maybe in a philosophical eye. But do not forget, it is just an image after all, created by the magic of mind. And that is the art of magical mindful living.

Reason 1, Will you ever be rich? First reason comes from simple math. How much money do you need to be happy from your current situation? I am sure you are spending a whole lot of time thinking about this question in your life. Let's look at some numbers. Coral draw I am sure whatever the amount you are thinking in dollars easily comes into the average earnings of top 1% of your society. Now, that there is a problem, as it is likely you belong to 99% of the population. What are the odds of you moving into top 1% of this so called average income category. Very very unlikely. It is a doomed fate for most of the unlucky 99% of us. I am not talking about the ones who are being successful, with constant effort and perseverence, you might. There is no magical formula, it will be a constant push and hard work. Yet you are not guarenteed this is going to work, or stay there once you reach. As you can see, if we tie our happiness with finacial success, invariably lot of our society will become unhappy. As they have shattered dreams at the end of their lives. And the truth is we don't have to. We don't have to tie our happiness with money. After a ll money is just a value we given to valueless papers by social conventions. Instead you can give a value to something else. What about art? What about kindness? What about self discovery? Reason 2: World most happieset person, is he rich? Mattiheu Ricard is considered as the most happiest person in the world. How much money do you think he possess? He owns nothing. I don't think he assoicates ownership to his own robe that the is wearing as He is a french Buddhist monk. Does this really mean the happiness is inversely propotionate to the money? More money some person has less happy they are? Is that the devorce rates of top owners of our country are higher? I would not dare to leave a conclusion as such. Infact we can disscuss this issue in our case scenario next. However, as I can see, happiness having no assoication with money, would be more appropriate, than a positive or negative impact. Lighthouse at night Reason 3: Can you stay happy rich? Imagine you get a 1000 dollars from a lottery. What would you do? If you take a piece of paper and plan, what you would do, you will find out that to do everything 1000 dollars is not enough. What about 1000000 dollars. I am sure you think you would be a lot happier with it. But the problem is, you will feel this as long as you do not have this. Once it becomes something you posess, it would not be enough for your needs, and the mind would move into making it 1000001 dollars instead. And you will find out suddenly there are Lamborginis and Privates Jets that you cannot buy. If you look at this problem, it is exactly like the Jim Carry suggested, about his search for golden globes. Money is a moving target, which we can never reach, and once you do reach, it will move further. Why do you think millioniers want to become billioners and billioners want to race to mars? Exactly, that is because they haven't understood happiness is not in numbers anyway. In conclusion to why money cannot buy happiness In conclusion, we can say that happiness is entirely, inside us. It is not external. You can just be happy, just the way you are . And that is no more illusion than happiness provided by money. I am sure, everyone needs money, cannot become a monk, yet we are going to suffer, if it becomes the source of our happiness. I would rarther, believe, it is coming from innner peace, or truth, or awareness. In that way, the happiness would never dry up in my life. What is your philosophy of happiness? Do you still believe in numbers? Thank you for reading why money cannot buy happiness

Monday Tuesday wendesday Thursday..  back again to Monday. We used to sing all day long. When we were kids. We learned about months of the year, and the colors of the rainbow. It seemed easy to remember when rhymed. And kids have just discovered it is cyclical. It is the same thing starting over. And I having a philosophical and mindful ear and heard it otherwise. What if it is wrong! What if nothing I cyclical? And there are plenty of things to show infact that is the case. Swimming life The case of the days. It is true by convention, we have decided days of a week, to be cyclical. And that is one of the most arbitary and bizarre invention of human kind. Why seven days? We know today never comes back. But we assume Mondays will come. Another week will come. But is it correct way to understand the world? A day would never come back, yet we say it will.  If you go to the space station for a month, you would notice bizzare nature of days doesn't end there. Days are only applicable and make sense to the ones who are on earth. In space you cannot have days, unless you think like an earther, and take your watches there. So when we inhabit Mars, our system would need adjustments to the Mars rotation as well. We can't have earth days on Mars. This simple fact will make us understand, even years and lightyears, seconds and minutes are defined relative to something. Yes, there are days and there are not. Yes, there are seconds and there are not Yes there are weeks and there are not. Can you see the problem, we cannot understand any truth if we chose to believe and live in a lie. Let us understand and observe this truth about non, cyclical nature of time. Or unidirectional nature as scientists call it. Floating life Kids names and adult names From counting days , kids move to a different question. It is amazing how there minds create novelty. And here I am stealing there ideas. It is true, we all steal from our teachers, parents and everyone around us.  So, kids wanted to know about names. Their question went like this. "Dad, was your name the same when you were a kid?" And obviously it is. Then they say "If that is so, then everyone has a kids name". Can you see the similarity. It is just like the weeks of the day. It is like we are reusing Monday. You cannot name all the 365 day's of the year with different names. Nobody would remember as our attention and memory span is very limited. We would have to carry a chart, everywhere if we tried that. Similarly, we cannot use a different name for each day. I cannot be Tom on Monday, Tim on Tuesday. So we use the same name. But this convention hides true fact about ourselves. Infact we ourselves posess an ever-changing function which is called life. Yet using same name hide the fact of changing selves. It should be a different name for each and every second. What about for every millisecond? After all a lot of things about our bodies changes in a micro second. Yet using same name hides this fact. And makes an illusion that something persisted over time. Infact, what was there was ever changing function. Pinnacle - about life and death - philosophy Rowing life We have built a strong base for our pagoda with our argument. Now it is time to add a pinnacle. How about death? Can we understand death with above wisdom? If all what is called life is ever changing function each fraction of time, death is just another arbitary state. It's not you lived and you died. You by your name wasn't there to die. You didn't persist even for a second, its just an illusion created by your name. If you haven't persisted, what is going to die? Can you see how the illusion of death creates in our mind?  If you ask me what is death then, I can only say, it is just life, just different ends of the same stick . Life is death, death is life. And both are creations of our minds. Which we cannot convert to a true meaning .

Why it is suck to be a chicken? I am no vegetarian, neither this article is to make you a vegetarian. Infact it may be the only time that word vegitarian might appear in this article. As it is philosophy we are looking at, we will first learn about why, life of a chicken seems suck. Imagine a chick born in a chicken farm. It starts to live this chicken life in the farm. Of course without any predetors, and taken care of diseases, plenty of food throughout, except maybe a little bit of limited space and freedom, a chicken has nothing to complaint. As that is nothing as expected. Infact if you look at the point of view of chicken the life seems to be a very happy affair in the chicken farm. As long as chicken are not aware of their doomed fate. Let's look at this from the eyes of chicken, as shown in the film Chicken run. Chicken : https://unsplash.com/@dariuscotoi Chicken run film Plot. On a dreary egg farm ruled by the cruel Mrs. Tweedy, a determined hen named Ginger dreams of freedom. Her constant escape attempts fail until Rocky, a boastful American rooster, crash-lands into their coop, promising to teach them to fly (BTW I can think of so many Rockeis). Ginger sees Rocky as their ticket to freedom, but he's a fraud, a circus rooster shot from a cannon. Despite his deception, Rocky is drawn into their plight as Mrs. Tweedy invests in a pie-making machine, accelerating their fate. Ginger and Rocky train the other chickens, facing numerous obstacles, and eventually build a makeshift airplane. In a daring escape, they take flight, leaving the Tweedys and the farm behind, finding a peaceful island sanctuary. Hypothesis. Although it seems chickens wanted to run away from the meat machine, in the movie. Actual chicken do live in the farm relatively happily. Even in the movie, until when all the chicken understood their doomed fate, by information , they lived happily ever after for generations. It seem someone could have avoided the hustle if they do not deliver the bad news. And it is exactly what happens in a modern chicken farm. If animals gain consciousness of what we humans do to them, I am sure no human would walk on earth one day. And we can thank God for that matter. Ironically what can be applied to the chicken can be applied to our lives as well. How can we say we are not implanted souls, in a chicken farm for someones consumption? We call Earth is our home , yet what if it is a gigantic chicken farm where the owners could harvest our souls when we loose it? How sure are we that death is not a creation of the terrestial life. Next generation of a meat machine? Let's put aside the dream, as it is highly unlikely. But the important problem is, we even cannot prove or disprove this kind of illusionary and bizzare question about afterlife even with modern equippment and science. So we are technically blind to the truths of nature . Happy Chicken : https://unsplash.com/@hassanrafi Solution But there is simple truth, a glimpse of hope about the chicken farm, from the same observation we made earlier. And that is the fear, comes from information. All the fear that you gained about the earth being a chicken farm created because of the information I gave you. Which is again not correct. So, it is this story which creates in our minds causes problems, when we hear about chicken farms day after day. Simply saying, one possible solution is to, understand that there is no possible end conclusion that we can come, by arguing with illusions our own mindfulness creates. Maybe it is just a film after all which has nothing to be fear of and no one who is being afraid.

Mangroves on the move. It's been a tiring day for the mangroves. They were on the move by dozens. Just like the jelly fish just like dandelions they are on the move for survival. It's a cruel game unless you change your tactics. Instead putting seeds, thousands of them into the water and make them strand everywhere, mangrove parents have decided it's better if they nature their kids at home. Until they are big enough to live on their own. Until they are capable of making their own roots grow as a source of income to nourish themselves. Then came the flood , which ripped them apart. While mangrove parents were watching their children were dragged by the flood. For days they have been drifting here and there in the lagoon. Desperately trying to find a land to land their young roots. I saw them drifting towards the sea with the low tide. Maybe they have a better chance there. Mangroves on the move Why moving house is so difficult? Migration is a stressful endeavor. Not only for the plants and animals, more often for us. Imagine you are moving from your apartment to a new and better place. Yet still until you settle down it can be really difficult, from choosing what to pack what to discard. How to move with whom. To explore the new environment, new Neighbours, to decide whether to order food or to start cooking from day one. As everything is novel there is a lot to take in. As we are habitual animals, we prefer everything habitual. However, migration doesn't allow us to settle just like when you were a student driver. Change is difficult from sports to lightening. Imagine a child learning to ride a bicycle. For that matter even to swim. Initially it's a struggle. A constant fear of a fall. It's so hard to teach someone how to balance a cycle. If you do not know, the cycle balance itself. It's just when you try to steer that it loses the balance and tip over. But fear doesn't allow the child to let it steer by itself. He tries to balance again and again after so many falls that he learns it is not at all about gripping hard. It's about letting go. Trusting the universe. You may wonder what is the point of a cycle lessons i words? Only if you are a cyclist, you would agree this is true. I am sure similar thing happens any other sports like surfing or curling. After the initial struggle it tends to start to a flow. This is true for even nature. Imagine a dessert which is full of sand dunes. And suddenly there is a rain. And as the rainwater collects, initially nothing would happen. The water would soke the sand, and then it will saturate the sand and start to collect on the surface in little pools. And after a while it will start to flow. And these small water flows will connect each other and will make a stream. If given enough rain this stream will start to change the terrain and leave its mark even on the dry dessert. The fact is flow is a natural state of nature. Migration is like the rain in the dessert. Initially you would not know where to go and how to go there. You would flatten out and disperse your energy everywhere to see your options. And then when the pressure builds up you will start to follow the options and naturally after a while it will start to shape your future in a predictable manner. Like a child who has trust in his cycle you would be able to join the natural flow. Lightening - main beam and roots -https://unsplash.com/@smcauliffe If you would not believe me, ask from the lightening. Have you seen lightening in ultra slow motion? Shutter speeds of our cameras are so fast that nowadays our equipment provides us opportunity to become quicksilver just like that. I will describe it for you if you haven't seen that. First the supercharged particles peep down from the clouds. As they go down, they initially do not know where to hit, so they make little branches like tentacles of a jelly fish, blistering intricate patterns from heaven. Then one finds a path with least resistance and in a flash, everything discharges through this path in supersonic speed. And that is amazing to watch. How to make migration easy? I can give you a list of ten difficulties to make you understand why moving houses is so difficult. In fact, google suggests me to do just that. Followed by ten steps to overcome those difficulties. However, I would not do that mistake. I would just open your eyes into a natural world with chaos and show you how to find your Loranzo attractors so you can start flowing back again. Just like a stream, just like lightening or like a mangrove on a beach. And once you know its natural and inevitable that it happens, it would be just a waiting game. With a little bit of positive psychology, you may speed up the process even. PS: 1. I watched the movie migration the other day, an animation movie about a family of birds who happened to be Migrating! Amazing, and I would say you will find more insights about difficulties of moving a house in this movie than any other sources of information. Specially if you are about to move your house. 2. Literally you can move your house. And I have seen instead of moving houses some traditional people just carry their wooden house from place to place. Maybe living in a caravan is not bad after all. 3. You may find it helpful the rule of best choice if you are looking for a new house. -> Picking up corn problem Birds in migration

This article contains no medical advice. This is personal perspective of myself only. It is always recommended medical treatment, over some random blog post for clinical Depression! When you are depressed. If you are a leaf, when you are depressed, You may feel like stagnating in pools of calm. If you are a mountain, when you are depressed, You may feel like cold, dark night in a winter storm. If you are a tree, when you are depressed, You may feel like you are suppressed by the Giant Canopy above, And never see the sunlight. If you are a flower, when you are depressed. You will feel you wither when all the bees are gone, left alone to fall down used, abused. If you are a man, or a woman, depressed. You may feel like, there is nothing to smile, no hope, no future. And I will be there for you If you are depressed. To help you to smile at a buzzing bee, and wind at your forehead tossing your hair. I will show you the golden fish, swim in the clear water, when you sink into the bottom of the river I will show you the beauty of a snowflake, when it is shined with the starlight in shimmery color I will find a hole in the tree wall to reflect just enough light for you to hold on till your roots gets stronger And show you the life, you help created, in a fruit, in a seed Just before you wither and disappear There will be so much, for us to laugh about, if you are mindful Hopes, smiles and purpose will reappear. https://unsplash.com/@zhenh2424 Have you felt like nothing is working in your life? I have, felt exactly the same for some time. As I was looking for unanswered questions of why we are doing what we are doing? Simple questions like, why should I eat, and maintain the body? Why should I work and earn money? Who am I in the first place? Why am I protecting myself from anything, when I even do not know who am I? And these are philosophical questions. They seem random or even stupid for some, as we all have our own answers to them, at least what we believe is true. Yet it all seems to be subjective than objective. Hence, I find no value in these answers, as I should find answers myself. I am not sure how much you enjoy the philosophy, not a lot of people does understand it is a must. Understanding life, why mindfulness is the key. In understanding anything I follow the Richard Ferman philosophy. If you know it, and only if you know it well, you will be able to teach it to a kid. Imagine you try to teach some Nietzsche philosophy to a kid. If you try to read an online article about Superman philosophy and Materialism, and try to teach a Kid, you will start to realize you do not understand a F---in thing about philosophy. So, I keep gaps. When I do not understand I leave it a gap. Until one day, I understand it. Even if I could not It doesn't matter. I think complexity we create in the subject of philosophy is an artificial show off than trying to understand life. This is why I take a practical approach to philosophy. And Mindfulness is the key for everything. Look at life, Look at a mountain. Can you understand what is a mountain? If you are a geologist, you would understand the mountain from its origin. If you are a mountaineer, you would understand the mountain, from its anatomical features, and difficulty in climbing. If you are an artist, you would understand the mountain in its pure beauty. If you are a goat, the mountain will be your home. But, if you are a philosopher, you will have imagination to understand the mountain in all different point of views of the above and more. And more importantly if you are mindful, you will have answers to the questions, like why a mountain is a mountain, not a river, or the sky. Why you even see a mountain, and why you cannot feel your feet when you look at the mountain. You will be able to answer question like why a mountain is taller than you? You will have an answer to every question you can ever ask about a mountain, as you know, how this Object of mountain generated in your mind in first place. And that can only be seen by mindful eyes. https://unsplash.com/@thkelley If you are depressed- be mindful- Be mindful even if you are not However, it is not an easy task. Mindfulness takes time to grow. If you let the seed of mindfulness grow, and water it with enough kindness, and belief, it will start to grow into a wisdom tree. And in times of depression, it will make you understand and face it, without running away. And in times of happiness and glory, it will make you a humble human being like a bamboo, as you understand what is meant by being in the world. As we all are part of the universe and born from the star dust, we would start to pay a little bit more attention to fellow human beings and animals. And when you do this, and be mindful daily, even a little breeze tossing your hair, will make you smile. As it is a reminder that you are just universe. Stuck at 3 The fan regulator on my wall Haven't been used for a while Stuck at 3, Just like me Maybe it is depressed after all Fan Regulator

Jumanji plot Have you watched the movie? It is about a magical board game which unleashes a world of adventure on siblings Peter (Bradley Pierce) and Judy Shepherd (Kirsten Dunst). While exploring an old mansion, the youngsters find a curious, jungle-themed game called Jumanji in the attic. When they start playing, they free Alan Parrish (Robin Williams), who's been stuck in the game's inner world for decades. If they win Jumanji, the kids can free Alan for good -- but that means braving giant bugs, ill-mannered monkeys and even stampeding rhinos! Boardgame: https://unsplash.com/@kimibmoon Rules of the game. Rules of the game were simple, when you roll the dice, you move forward. And when you fall into a trap, you will need help from your friends. The objective is to reach the middle of the board and shout "jumanji" so you are out of the horrible dream! Rules of soccer Do you know anything similar? I am sure you have played some game after all. Let's imagine Soccer. You get 11 payers for a team, why? Don't ask me that's how it is. Two teams two goals, and you cannot touch the ball with hand. But head is ok! And the ground is square, a foul is a yellow or a red card. Why not blue? Don't ask me. And it is easy to understand the whole thing is imaginary. All the rules of the game are imaginary and if FIFA wanted it, they could have changed it to brown and a blue card instead. Although the rules of the game and game itself is imaginary, soccer is not unreal after all. And there are big stadiums, fans all around the world, events, clubs, a whole culture around it. And some people become so good at it and have done this their entire lives. And some become goats (Like Christiano Ronaldo) while others become gods (Like Maradona). So much so for an imaginary game. Soccer : https://unsplash.com/@vikramtkv Rules of any game At this point I can tell you that, every game we play from childhood to the Olympics are imaginary. The rules that we agreed upon are imaginary in nature, and as you can understand changes from time to time. Infact 10000 years ago, majority of the games that we play today were never even heard of. Game of life . A gigantic Jumanji Let's say you are an American citizen. Living your entire life in Arizona, you have been following a set of local rules, and national rules. How about these rules? Do you see any similarity? From simple things like taxes, driving license, mortgage laws, to complex rules of how to establish a co-operation in your district, you follow a set of rules. And who, when and how these things were made? Have you ever questioned this? We just learn the rules and play the game until we finish all our lives allowed without even knowing the objective of life. And that is sadly the truth about most of our good Samaritans. We just play the good citizen, not knowing it's all imaginary game, or we take radical route and break the law, still not knowing it is all imaginary. And we call success when we increase our favorable numbers , whatever it means to us. It can be a number in your bank, calories you burnt, or number of cows in your farm. And some are stuck in science, or math. And expect it to uncover truths. Thinking that the nature's rules are written in the numbers or in words. But mind you the nature has been there long before math and science. And it seems nature function without rules, ethics or numbers. Nature doesn't care you understand it or not. Just a neutral nothingness . Game in Africa: https://unsplash.com/@mirapolis Only when we travel to the space and look at ourselves from the top, we can understand the world is just another giant Jumanji. Some play the UK version of it, and they have better chance of winning. Some play communist version of it in China or Russia. Some play under dictators , crazy dudes who manipulate rules, to satisfy their own needs. Some play the God's version. Some play the poor version. Some are stuck in continuous loops of suffering without ever having a chance to learn the game without a proper education. Some gets promoted to make the rules, sometimes in the house, as a father. Sometimes in a classroom as a schoolteacher. Sometimes in a factory as a CEO. Have you ever thought about this? How far deep are you lost in this jungle of Jumanji? And what is the compass you could use to understand all of this and get out safely by breaking the illusion. Some say its wisdom. Some say its philosophy. Some say its mindfulness . How do we exactly know it's not another level of the same game? Next-> about the jungle

Following article is not brand promotion. Purely hypothetical discussion on Coca-Cola label. Interactions of color by Josef Albers. Recently, I wanted to start painting again. And I remembered my raw painting skills were never sharpened enough. Still crude, hence I struggled in choosing colors. So, I decided I should read about colors, learn about their interactions, and I was interested in the book by above name. Which essentially teaches how colors, and more importantly how our perception of colors is different from person to person. I only read first two pages of the book and realized how insightful the book is! It's all about mindfulness of what we see! Which I have written over and over again in my book and blog. I will summaries few fundamentals of the colors that we see along the way but first let's look at a Coca-Cola label. Coca-Cola : https://unsplash.com/@picoftasty Philosophy in Coca-Cola label I am sure half of the world population have seen a Coca-Cola label. Including pigmies in Congo jungle. That is how far this brand has reached. Can you imagine the label? Its red color, right? But how much red is it? Is it the red color of a bright sky you saw yesterday afternoon? Or is it the red color of a pound of flesh ? Or a glass of wine . As you can see there are thousands of red color shades. You may be thinking of any color right now. Let's do some more mental experiments on this. Let's imagine you were given a red color spectrum . From light red to dark red changing hue and saturation. Even if 1000 people pointed out the Coca-Cola red, after seeing a same label shown to them, they will point out at different colors in the spectrum. There are some other ways to see the spectrum of colors the Coca-Cola label poses and see fundamental errors in our perception. How about looking at the Coca-Cola label throughout the day. You can keep a bottle at your window and still photograph this from morning till night. Is it the same color you, see? Can you see the problem? When we say Coca-Cola label is red color, we assume that it is some red color on the label itself. Yet, when we see the same label changes its color depending on the time of the day and lighting, or even the angle we look at it, we can see we have never seen same color ever. It is not the same red that see even if you stare at it for hours. As after 100 years of staring you would notice it is not even red anymore. Interaction of colors : https://unsplash.com/@davidpisnoy What do these observations tech us? How about following facts. Colors that we see are in spectrum, and it is impossible to label all of the shades of colors Just like there are infinite number of numbers between 0 and 1 there are infinite number of shades of red between any two shades of red. There is no singular color red which we can point out. Even in something like a regular Coca-Cola label, there are infinite number of colors. When we look closely, we can see colors are created in our mind, at the time of observation. This is why two colors can look same although it is not the same that we see, it's just imagination! The book is about colors, so it keeps on talking about applications of these observations for colors. But as you can see this is a problem for anything that we measure for that matter. Generalization of philosophy of Coca-cola label How about temperature? What about time? How many shades of flavors a slice of bread would have? Doesn't it depend on the time of the day? How much you chew? And amount of salt that the Baker did put in it? Can you see there was never any bread taste twice the same? But we know, bread as bread taste and mango and mango taste. Only a real Ratatouille (Not the dish but the mouse in the film) would say which bread came from which bakery. And this fact leads to another important conclusion which helps in our mindfulness practice. Which is, Ratatouille : https://unsplash.com/@elmartinbaron Although our sensations cannot grasp there is an inherent error when we say Coca-Cola label is red, and bread you ate for lunch tasted exactly like yesterday, fundamentally they are wrong statements, yet we agree as a society to ignore the errors in our perception, so we do not sound insane. But remember the facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored . What have you been doing lately with colors?

This is the second attempt at answering the same question, 1 year apart. And with more wisdom gained it is going to be comprehensive. Let's dive in. Mindfulness, is it meditation? It is a yes and no answer. Mindfulness by definition invites us to be aware of our awareness. Or in simple terms, let us observe the observer. In meditation we focus on some object. Outside or within us. To calm ourselves which is a form of sustained awareness. Of course we cannot do that without being aware of ourselves. On the other hand, as Mindfulness let us observe ourselves during which we might see ourselves focusing on different objects. Hence it is yes and no. In meditation object matters, in mindfulness any object would be fine. Mindfulness is kind of meditation, and not at the same time. meditation Little bit of history Meditation is a common practice in Eastern and western spiritual seekers. They saw the benefits of it and taught commoners how to do it. They taught us how to be happy just looking at drifting clouds , or flowing stream . So, most of the time meditation is seen as a solution to a problem. Just like any other solution. Let's look at some problems to understand pattern and what is the problem meditation try to solve. When you are hungry you search for food. When you don't have food, you buy some with your money. When you don't have money, you do a job. When your job doesn't pay enough money to quench your cravings, you learn a new skill When you don't know which skill you want to learn you try few of them When you get stressed, you watch TV or binge eat When you are more stressed, you run a marathon or exercise When you are even more stressed, you go to a therapist, or do yoga and mediation And when you are broken, you take medication. That is the traditional approach to any problem. In life this is what we do. But sometimes it becomes overwhelming for unknown reasons. And we need to calm down. More than ever when we are detached from the environment, we feel the need to connect. We need to look inside ourselves to identify what went wrong with our judgements in right and wrong. So, meditation have evolved as a method to close this gap between our expectations and reality. In fact, meditation is considered a solution a lot of human problems and it seems to be working! When you struggle with sleep When you are stressed or anxious To control anger Just before landing a plane, or pull the trigger to kill a terrorist Meditation can improve your brain function. Food on the table Epidemic of meditation. More problems we have which are mental in nature, more and more people are seeing the meditation as a solution. It's because of benefits of meditation. But there is another school of thought about meditation. It doesn't answer to fundamental questions that Eastern and western philosophers and even common men like you and me tried to answer. What is the meaning of life ? Who am I ? What is happiness ? Why anything is a thing ? What happens when we die ? What is living ? What is time? Can you answer these questions with meditation? I don't think so. Not even if you started meditation from the day 1 you were born till you die. So, meditation is not a solution to some problems. That is where mindfulness is different. It is the solution to every problem! It is the art of investigation the problems of life itself. Mindfulness the solution to every problem Mindfulness is the tool we use to answer such simple yet fundamental questions about life. As we are stuck in our own subjective realities , there is no other option as the knowledge about a single self cannot come from another self. It's like tasting salt. You know what salt taste like right? But can you ever know what it tastes like for me? Or anyone else? Similarly, we are stuck in our own realities, hence investigation of life depends on one person and one method only. And that is called mindfulness. And mind you it is not pseudo-science. It is true science at its best. It's just using scientific method to investigate self. As all the problems arise from things, mindfulness is the tool to understand things about things. So, mindfulness is not watching the breath. Its investigating what is breath. It is also investigating who is breathing, when and where all these phenomena of watching the breath is happening? Is it happening in the last second? Next second? Or this second? If then what happens, when this second becomes next second? What binds a second to the next? Is it same breath or new breath? And who said time is measured in seconds anyway? Observing the banana leaves wave in the wind can create more happiness than a million dollars. Paradoxes of life. : https://unsplash.com/@maite11 Can you see the problem? And the depth? Let's tap into mindfulness today, to investigate phenomenon of life