Rain rain go away Come again another day.. Truth is as a kid; I really loved the rain. Only when the life started to happen the rain became a problem in life. I will dig my memories and display them here. Once again to savor the moments. I never thought I would miss the monsoon. And the puddles it generated along the way to the school. Those dark big clouds and drops size of pearls. I miss you rain.. I miss you the most. We used to live in a small one storied house with three or four rooms. Obviously, we had a roof. A roof means lot of things when it rains. At the beginning there would be big drops of rain, size of grapes! slam on the roof makes noises, then it levels down when drops are smaller. Rain combined with wind is making symphonies of their own. When the rain is heavy small holes in the roof start to bring the rain into the home, so we had to check them and confine them with buckets before it makes puddles inside the home. Suddenly gutters on roof were filled with water, and they start to flow down on the dry ground, or into the drain if there is one, creating a little waterfall of its own. Luckily, we didn't have pipes bringing all the way down to the drains. It was a bliss to see gravity in action. That was the best part! when it was water brought to our home, without any effort, and created a waterfall, it's time to have shower! We didn't have waterpipes and showers inside the home those days. We as children were very happy. But I can remember we were not allowed to shower on the first rain of the season. Those were the happiest showers anyone could have. When we were very small, we jumped into a large pot which collects water under the waterfall. But when we were getting bigger when we were not fit enough to go in the pot, we directly took the shower from the waterfall. I still can remember the cold; thud it creates on the top of my head even after decades. Yet the best part of it is we had a free run in the playground when it rains. Heavy rains created temporary pool nearby playground which becomes slippery. It will be flooded in few inches by the rain. A perfect playground to do natural water sliding. Now I think I am scared of doing that again, at least not without fear of thundering. Luckily, we didn't know about risk of it those days. And it never did happen. When we grew, schooling happened and suddenly rains became less joyful. The balance later moved into it becoming a nuisance. But it was the same rain. Same puddles which we enjoyed stepping into. Became unavoidable aftermath and burdens after rain. As stepping on them would make socks wet from shoes, which were leaky. So, the charm of the rain was painted over by troubles of life. Now when I think about it, I realize, it's the same rain, same puddles, only things which has changed is my knowledge, and views about it. What can I trade to be back there on those free feet and free mind? What do the rain mean to you? Thank you for reading Puddles of life - rain rain go away You may also like to read Near death experience in an airplane Golden hours Rush (poem)

It is a painful subject to talk about it, the pain. However, it is essential and practical to know because a life without pain is only an unrealistic dream. Here I am trying to talk about mental pain, and in its worst form. It is totally from my experience as I am not referencing any books or articles. So, there can be a subjective bias to it. Hence your comments are always welcome. What is the worst kind of pain? The worst kind of pain is when you care about someone, and you cannot share it. That is too general a statement, and I can show you it applies to variety of situations. We are a social species. We have sense of ownership and relationship to all others around us. That's why we are worried about someone else being killed in a battle in somewhere distant in the world. Even these feelings are spread across other animal species as well. However, when we feel attachment to someone and if we cannot show it to them, we feel pain. It may be very subtle or if your sense of attachment is larger, pain will be greater. And trust me it can be overwhelming in some cases. Loss of a loved one - you cannot ever meet them to show, how much you care. Relationship breakups- especially if you are still caring it can be more painful to one than the other. It may be fine if you can express it some way. But sometimes situations do not allow us to express our grief. Following analogy helps to understand. Imagine yourself diving off a ship with a cannon ball on your hand, you will start to descend so fast into the sea, as the cannon will drag you faster. What would be the outcome, inevitably after a certain depth, there will be no chance of coming back ever into the water. Only way to survive is to release the cannon first. Then hopefully you can swim back to the surface. However sadly, you are the only one who can do that as you are the one who is holding the cannon. Now I have given you the answer to how to overcome such a pain. It's not a matter of guilt. It's a matter of survival. Only way is let it go. Easier said than done when you do not know how deeply you are in love with the cannon. But wisdom will help one day if you are aware of it. Remember it, Loose the cannon, before it is too late. Because after some depth you will never make it to the top alive even if you lose it. Thank you for reading worst kind of mental pain and how to overcome it. You may also like to read Are we prisoners of our mind. What I have learned from listening to the same song.

Let us discuss immortality. To make it interesting let's imagine you are already immortal. We will go through simple scenarios to understand this. First of all, it is clear that nothing we have seen so far around us seem to last forever, everything seems to be changing at least over billions of years, although difficult to see in our eyes or during our lifetime. Even the mighty Sun and moon. If we are immortal, we will have to live through the lifetime of earth and beyond. When the earth is destroyed, we will be swung into the atmosphere. There is no need to eat, as even if we do not, we wouldn't die. There would be no need of water or oxygen to sustain the life, as immortal life is sustained by itself. We can drift in the atmosphere until eventually the sun also at the end of its life and collapse into a black hole. If the sun collapses, we will be in a complete darkness. After some billions of years in darkness we will forget we have seen light. There would be no difference of living and not living as there is no change. Both living and non-living will overlap each other if there are no conscious thoughts. It is not difficult to understand as our thoughts are always linked to the stimulations that we get, when there are no stimulations, thoughts will cease. Now, let's imagine you are not sucked into the black hole. You stay on earth doing ordinary things. Would you? There would be no need to do a job. There would be no need to create more and more immortal people (birth) as nobody is going to die. There would be no need to do anything. Even you don't have to travel. At least there is no rush. You have time. When you are immortal outcome for you is fixed. So, whatever you are going to do is not going to change the outcome for you. There would be no need to measure the time as even time would be valueless, when it is present in abundance. Really speaking there is no value in anything in such a world. As nothing is going to change your outcome. In such a world what would you do? When there is no death, there would be no need of thinking about it. So, nobody would think about it. You would no longer depend on physical laws, gravity and magnetic forces cannot have effect on you, otherwise you would not be immortal. Let's stop our thought process in here, for a while and discuss why we should discuss about immortality. You may have different ideas about immortality. Kindly let me know if you do. Yet if above is true you would understand that immortality when taken as itself reduces the boundary between life and death. Immortality is not itself aversion of death. Immortality is aversion of life as well. Immortality is not itself aversion of pain. Immortality is aversion of happiness. There is no immortality without sacrificing what we are already attached to, either pain or sadness, thoughts or silence. Thank you for reading. What will happen if I am immortal? (Immortality) - A life in a black hole. You may also like to read Story of a gentle giant - A tree A talking tree thought experiment.

In an earlier article I have shown that how we are tricked by phone apps into a continuous loop of stimulation and response cycle. They have hacked our own data to reinforce our habits. If you would like to read about it the article is listed down. However, I will give a summary of the main ideas to elaborate how we can hack this into our study programs. In summary hooked is a method used by programmers to develop a habit-forming product (app) Main steps are as following with example for each step. Cue -> notification Routine-> click on it. Reward-> new information, photos Saved value->our interactions which are saved, likes, photos, tweets etc. It is really effective. However, we can use same smartphone app to create a habit cycle for studying. As an example, there are already apps like Pomodoro (time management schedule to break 25min work with short or long breaks) and habit trackers. Although they lack last step of saving data, it can be useful for someone who is really enthusiastic. For a lazy guy like me, it loses the interest after some time. So, for my last exam I used a different app to regulate my study schedule. The app is Forest app. It is simply an app which grows a tree for duration of your pre-defined study period. (No they didn't pay me for writing this :) ) Following are the steps I used to plan my study day. My study periods are either 20min or 30min. I start growing a tree at the beginning of each session. I rotate my topics after each study period and take a short break. And I noticed the efficacy has markedly improved when I used the app. As objectively I see there is a forest growing each day, I really wanted to make a better forest than yesterday after each day. And more importantly it uses all the steps in a hooked method. And it can be used offline. Studying became a game! I noticed they even have a chrome extension. Hmm.. that should work fine. I will stop the article here and I can assure you I have tried many other fast learning tricks and habit-forming tricks in the past. (trust me I have read many self-help books) As you are I am exhausted. As we are not machines, what operates in my machine may not be best for you. So, give it a go. If you are getting results get hooked. Otherwise, feel free to let it go. Thank you for reading. Pomodoro and Growing Trees- How to hack smartphones for study. you may also like to read - Who is the greatest teacher- metacognition- self learning. Phone addiction - how we get hooked.

Reading a textbook is an essential skill anyone who is trying to master in academics should have. It may be any of the fields. Textbooks will provide a comprehensive understanding about a subject. In this article I will discuss how to use blooms taxonomy to read a textbook. However, first I will discuss fundamental differences of a textbook and a novel. And some interesting facts. Next, I will introduce you a technique not mine, but with some links. If the methods, you are using now are more productive you can skip the whole article. Also, it won't harm a little bit of experimenting. Textbooks are different from a novel from following features. But not limited. Usually, they are bigger. Covers a subject comprehensively, with technical terms diagrams examples. More difficult to read and to comprehend. Dull and boring unless you are having some kind of a disease (otherwise you are normal) Yet you know the value of reading a textbook. If you can read and understand a textbook on your own. There is no need to go to lectures ! Having said that, it is difficult. Lectures help. You will know why. Simply because repetition is the key and learning the big picture helps. Let's go to the technique. For that you need to know something about blooms taxonomy. If you don't know anything about blooms taxonomy read this article. You can skip the first part about pyramids. Following diagram is the summary of blooms taxonomy. Following is the summary of the textbook reading technique.- a chapter turn pages. read chapters headings. anything catches your eyes. turn to the end, study some questions, read summary. turn pages again, read bold prints. turn pages again, read anything you understand. Now, you can make notes re read or engage in whatever way you like. You can combine this with time management with forest-app. More articles about study techniques found here. Remember, reading a textbook is like marriage. Once you are committed, you will have a relationship with it. Like in a good relationship, way to make it work is by keep reading it again and again. You will become wiser by the day. So, don't forget to touch it daily. Thank you for reading, how to read a textbook- blooms taxonomy in action.

Imagine you are a patient, with your doctor who recently declared you a diagnosis of a cancer. Now it is diagnosed, and you explore options with the doctor. If you were given two options as following, Option A -you will have 80% survival at 5 years if you choose this option. Option B -you will have 20% mortality at 5 years if you choose this option. Even if you were given no other details, although mathematically two options given are essentially having same outcome, it has shown that we tend to choose the first option only because the second option is framed, in terms of risk than the gain. The reason for this is we as humans tend to be risk aversion (when focused on gains) Similarly consider following example. 100% chance to earn $500 with 0% risk of loss 100% chance to earn $1000 with 100% risk of losing 500 People tend to choose the first option although both of them are equal outcomes. The explanation for this kind of behavior is due to Prospect theory, in simple terms, Humans tend to value losses more than gains (B >A in the graph). ($1000 has a less value when it is gained than it is lost, psychologically in our mind) The following graph simply analyses the main arguments. What is the importance of knowing this in our daily life? Imagine you have lost your wallet on your way to the market. You lost $200. The pain you feel may not be proportional, it is more than you are paid $200 less in your monthly salary. Knowing this will reduce the pain. (similarly gains will initially create more psychological value, you will feel happier if you were given 200 when you have no money, than when you already have 200: A> C) Think twice before you blame someone on a small lose, is it an exaggerated response which can have consequences later? You may be tricked by someone when they frame things emphasizing the benefits and more than risks, especially when they have similar products. Or they can elaborate more on risks when they want you to avoid. When you are making important financial decisions, it is important to analyze all the scenarios of gains and losses. You might need help. Thank you for reading Prospect theory in decision making. You may also like to read - Question a missed opportunity to question itself. Kites that fly and do not.

I was falling asleep on a chair the other day when I had thoughts like these. Happiness, hmm... It seems like something which a mind creates, To survive harsh reality from life. So, there is some hope, We wouldn't collapse from exhaustion. A mechanism of survival To spend a century forgetting hardships A great invention of nature to trick me to forget life as it is. Happiness... A virus Guard from my mind. Another program to counteract, Sadness.. anyone survive in a world without happiness? It is a good question to ask. Once we understand a world without happiness, we would be able to identify where this genius invention of nature comes from. Hence, we are closer to understand and define it. What if there is only sadness? It is true that we all seek happiness since we were born. Let it be satisfaction we get from quench our thirst, crave of taste. Happiness also comes from some deep desires for praise and praiseworthiness. But what will happen if there is no happiness in the world? Can you imagine such a world? It is obvious in such a world you would be labelled as depressed. As definition of depression itself includes lack of feeling happy. If it is no happiness, we would even give up on eating. Who knows we will all be malnourish and be wiped out of the surface of earth in no time. Imagine we all are infected with a covid virus which destroy dopamine system in our brain. It would kill faster than any other illness which weakens our immunity, as it will knock down our main driver for our work. That there is our definition for happiness. Happiness is the driving force of our survival. It is the source of our virus guard for inevitable doom otherwise. What produces happiness? It is clear that from above that happiness is created by our own mind. It is really unclear whether it is an entity by its own. As when you remove happiness what is left is sadness and depression. Not everyone would like to see happiness be defined as above. As knowledge of it itself may reduce chances of being happy. However good news is these programs are already coded in our brain so we could not re-program them. You would still feel happiness. Even reading this article, if you looked at it deep down creates a sense of accomplishment, which generate some of it. But you would never do the mistake of looking for it where it cannot be found when your wisdom is grown enough. Imagine a child in an African country. It seems they suffer a lot when we see it from here from our affluence point of view. However, if you would really live with them for a day, maybe they do create happiness on their own, in their relative world. They may be feeling happy when they get a piece of bread or a bottle of dirty water from a deep earth hole. Just enough happiness to sustain the life. Thank you for reading Will anyone survive a world without happiness? (definition) You may also like to read Singer's famine relief argument Mindfulness - a definition

This article is a follow up to the Objects of mind mental representation, where I have discussed some of the characteristics of mental objects. Here I will try to understand how our values are generated. Following is a poem about our values. Happiness Quantifiers - from the book what is time. We are in the land of Quantifiers they shouted, We measure our distances, we measure our weights, We measure our time, and we measure our speeds, We measure our heat, and we measure our energies. And when we get together, we talk about our measurements. We talk about the speeds of our cars. We chat about the calories we consume. We argue about the wages we are paid. We fight about the boundaries and land. We laugh about pink and white dresses. And we teach our children to measure on their own. That's all what we do. If you have followed the thought process of mental objects, previously I have discussed everything which comes to our consciousness is represented by our mind by mental objects. Same physical object is represented by different mental imaginary by different people in deferent ways. More importantly our values are attached to the mental objects. You would say, no, our values are in the physical object itself. Let's understand this. Example Imagine you are trying to sell your car. You are the first owner of the car. You try to sell it for good money; however, nobody wants to buy it. After few months of trying, you give up. You give up to a salesperson to some relatively low price than you have initially imagined. You think it is worth more than that and it is surely. Few months later you see your car outside a shopping complex, and you meet the new owner. With a casual talk without telling anything, you ask how much he pay for the car. And he gives a value which rolls your eyes. Shamefully you go away thinking you missed the opportunity to earn some more cash. What happened? It happened as the price was not in the car, the price was attached to the mental object of the car. Really speaking there is a branch of finance which is called behavioral finance as the real-world decisions we make are inherently attached to the values of our mental objects. Not only in finance, but we can also generalize this idea to any other value given to mental objects, if you closely think about it, whenever we create a mental object, we give a price tag to it. It may be a religion, mathematic equation, a goal for next year, a relationship or friendship. The following characteristics of mental objects are also applicable to these price tags naming, values are unique to each individual. values change over time. What is the Advantage of knowing this? I would say it is essential to understand where our values come from as each and every action and decision making, every and gain and loss in our lives come from values we assign. Hence the happiness as well as sadness, pain and pleasure inherently bound to the values. Anyone who wish to live a mindful life, this information may help to overcome some of the problems if not all. Thank you for reading Where do our values come from? - mental representation. You may also like to read A talking tree thought experiment. Praise and praiseworthiness - drivers of a moral society

What is selfishness? In the Merrium Webster dictionary it is defined as, the quality or state of being selfish: a concern for one's own welfare or advantage at the expense of or in disregard of others: excessive interest in oneself. We blame others for being selfish. And often we look at ourselves and feel bad about being selfish. But selfishness, is still a mystery, after reading the article you would gather around enough knowledge about to live with it than feeling guilty. Consider following examples. Imagine you in these situations and think whether you feel guilty feeing of selfishness. Imagine an airplane advertisement which request you to put on face mask yourself first in case of an emergency before attending to your child. Imagine a businessman who buy rice harvest from village farmers and stores it until prices goes up and makes a profit out of it. Imagine your friend who recently broke up with the partner is carrying on his/her activities without any remorse. Imagine you are in a wrecked ship, it is sinking, you try to save your life racing against others jumping into a boat. How would you react to those situations? Would you feel that those people in above situations are selfish? How would you react if you were in such a situation? Would you be selfless? Now, let's go through above scenarios to understand selfishness. Why does airplane advertisement ask you to put on your mask first, before your loved ones. It cannot be just because you are more important than your child. We might label such an action as selfish, if taken in isolation if not backed by evidence. Obviously, chances of both you and your child making it alive are higher if you first take care of yourself first. It is selfishness, in its mildest form doing good. What about the businessmen? Surely, he does not care about giving farmers a fair value. He is solely focused on his growth in wealth. However, it is evident that harvest like rice doesn't come in abundance throughout the year. Someone have to store it and distribute when there is no harvest. This will prevent famine and hunger. Really speaking, civilizations may have not progressed in the past, if it is not for storage of food. Does that mean selfishness is essential for future of development? Selfish acts of individuals have done more to prevent poverty and famine in the civilization than donations - Adam smith. How about your selfish friend? Would you rather be with a depressed friend who cannot get over with guilt and sadness, or with a friend who is always happy no matter what. Yet you would judge them as heartless and selfish? The final example is very difficult to explain, only one who have been in such situation, would know what you have done. When it comes to life and death, it is very unpredictable what we would do. I really am not sure whether I would be a saint or a selfish. Yet how can we judge. We can imagine, but that is not the truth. But how can anyone else judge, when they are not in the same situation? Conclusion It is absurd to think about everyone to be selfless if we are aiming for a better civilization as selfishness itself is a driving force for survival of individual hence the society. Thank you for reading "Is being selfish a bad thing?" You may also like to read A question/problem is a missed opportunity to question itself. spectrums of nature

Once a wise man said, if you are a human, either you should be wealthy or attain peace with spirituality. Recently I had a question from my friend, who asked me, Imagine you can start your life back again with all the knowledge you have now, vs having a million dollars. It let me think, my answer was well, I would choose million dollars. Then I thought about it over days and came to conclusion that I would do otherwise. Here I will discuss a life if I would get a million dollars now, vs, If I restart life with knowledge. And my conclusion. What will happen If I get a million dollars. Currently I do not have anything to invest a million dollars. So, I will have to discuss with some investors how I am going to invest that money. I am not stupid to think spending a million dollars in rest of my life would do any good to me or anyone around. It is clear I can quit my job and even without investing I would be able to live reasonably well. There will be a lot of work to be done to keep the million dollars safely or maintain as it is over time. This will be an additional work to my current job. Buying car, a house, or a boat would not be a great way to spend it either. Essentially, I would not quit anything I am currently doing now. Think about it, it will be an additional work to keep it safe, and it will give me more responsibility and more chances for me to lose it as well. There will be a lot of unnecessary attractions in the form of, taxes, friends, salesmen, more troubles. More importantly a million dollars cannot buy me happiness, love, caring friends, peace. No what it can do is just buy materialistic things. It is clear, I know why it cannot. When I think about the life backwards, it is clear I was happier when I was a child. When I didn't have desires for money, houses cars or even wealth. It was a small world with a rubber ball and pieces of wood and imagination. Happiness is there by itself. Matters are complicated now, and a Million dollars is going to complicate it too. On the other hand, If I could restart my life, I could have made better choices. When I chose at school. When I chose in the university, when I chose in life. Or I could have not chosen at all. I could have, chosen so I have better chance ending in happiness. These choices could have made me a millionaire by itself. With the momentum, that million dollars is going to create more happiness than the Million I am going to receive today. It is more likely to remain, and I would have more idea what to do with it. Even If I didn't, I would have ended with more peaceful solidarity. In conclusion, it is evident for me I would choose my knowledge and opportunity over a million dollars today. But what is the advantage of thinking about the million dollars which I do not have now! If you regret, not having a million dollars, like me earlier, you do not have to. Knowledge, time and happiness are more important than a million dollars. It is true, although at the first glance it doesn't seem so. After all what we are going to buy with a million is happiness. Second important thing I noticed is I am already having knowledge attitudes and happiness which is worth more than a million dollars, even if I cannot go back to the past and make it a start, what about future. I can choose more wise choices for the future; it doesn't matter I would or not become wealthy. I can choose to be happier! Would you? This is the poll I ran in my twitter profile. It was almost a tie. Although it was biased towards the latter choice. Thank you for reading: What is it like to become a millionaire? You may also like to read: Worst kind of mental pain and how to overcome it. A talking tree thought experiment.

You would not believe me when I say the nature is really beautiful and not. But, not only me Robert frost once said, but the nature is unforgiving and cruel. The interview is there on the internet, you may have a look. Would you believe Robert Frost, who had an eye for the beauty and a great admirer of nature to utter such words about our beautiful nature? The full moon in the cloudless sky Casted a silver reflection over the lagoon at night "The beauty of the nature", my friend sighed. He was happy content, delighted and satisfied. Then with a shudder, a cry of a mama bird pierced the darkness, And I sighed. In his interview Robert frost, says the nature is cruel giving the above example. He says the nature is cruel, as he heard the cry of the bird whose nest have been invaded and her sons and daughters are eaten alive by the snake. What would be our reaction if it happens to a human family? Maybe it really happened, before we became civilized. Maybe it will really happen if we let the nature to do its own control over us without our own rules. But why we were always taught that the nature is beautiful, kind and loving? Did our teachers teach that to us or is it just our own imagination? Birds sing, Lions are brave, butterflies are beautiful. We were taught from our childhood. We were never taught the birds cry of hunger, to share a worm. Lions are cruel killing their own pups, while butterflies try to hide from birds with their wonderful colors to trick to not being eaten alive otherwise. Nature may be cruel after all. But what use we will have if we label nature as cruel. I will be less popular among, millions who believe otherwise. Maybe I can change a million minds to think that the nature is cruel. But, I would not make that mistake. I would not label nature as beautiful as I labeled in the past. I would not label nature as Robert Frost did. I would refuse to label anything and just let it be as it is. True nature. Without judgement. What would you think about nature? A Poem From One line She heard the crows calling each other for the feast To offer one piece for each From the dead crushed beast She walked down the lane Heard a nightingale singing Fighting over a dead worm She was angry and bursting Beauty Is Not in Cover is a verse shaped FromOneLine Thank you for reading, Nature is really beautiful, or is it? Robert Frost. You may also like to read the secret garden and Robin. Leading and following the rule of the nature.

Have you ever visited Michelangelo's famous statue David? It fascinates me how a human can create intricate details on a heartless stone that can still prevail over centuries, to tell us a story. It is not only true for Michelangelo, but there were also a plenty of talented human individuals, in the past and will be there in the future, so our lives are never monotonous. How are sculptures made? Building from nothing There are two ways to build a sculpture. The more common and frequently used way is to make a mold first and pour some material. Or similarly we can build a frame and stepwise make the sculpture by adding more material and shaping it. We can call it building out of nothing. Whenever we think about building something we tend to think about this method of adding things to previous base. Carving out of something The opposite way of creating a sculpture is by carving. It is somewhat similar but this time you are carving out unnecessary parts of previous chunk of material. It may be a marble, a concrete or piece of rock. Chip by chip. It seems that it is more difficult and delicate procedure as you have to know exactly what to remove. Removing too much, one hammer strike too strong can destroy years of work and make it a piece of failure. You may wonder what this has to do with mindfulness. I would say everything. This is a great analogy to understand our mindful practices. Whenever we think about mindfulness, we tend to think like a building out of nothing method of a sculpture artist. We try to create something out of whatever we have. We try to create a peace. We have high hopes. Yet, mindfulness is like creating the statue of David by Michelangelo. Think about it. Statue of David was already in the giant piece of marble. All Michelangelo did was remove all pieces of marble which did not belong to "David". Similarly. peace and everything we try to achieve are already inherently present within ourselves. Sadly, it is all covered by unnecessary pieces of marble. So, it is a slow process and intricate process to take out all the unwanted marble to bring out the "David" within us. The stone was carved chip by chip, by Skillful hands of immortal artist It wasn't clear Until he declared, An angel was born to averse, the feted darkness of the city square. Heven was hidden in a heart of a stone. Every eye jumped in a gaiety tone. Angel still prevails artist long gone. Thank you for reading. Statue of David - Michelangelo- mindfulness You may also like to read: near death experience in an airplane What will happen If I am immortal?