Shambhala, The Sacred Path of the Warrior - Chogyam Trungpa

Some unknown gut instinct drew me to take this book off the library shelf. (I've always liked to read about spiritual stuff, so it's not out of the ordinary that I've picked this book.) I really enjoyed reading this. It was thoroughly inspiring, refreshing and has made a tangible (and quite likely, long-term) impact on my life.

The book essentially advocates the "way of the warrior", a symbolic and ideal way to live one's life that's based on ancient Tibetan / Buddhist principles. It advocates a raw, truthful and ego-less approach to life, for one to be fully open, conscious and exposed to life in it's full brilliance. Through this, one will be able to live fearlessly and bring greater good to the rest of the world.

There are a few major points about the philosophy that are worthy of writing here.

First, if I'm not interpreting / generalising it too widely, the Tibetan / Buddhist (as far as this particular branch is concerned) / Zen view towards goodness is not extrinsic but intrinsic. To discover true human goodness, one does not look for answers or exhortations from scriptures or tomes (though they are useful as guides). The answer lies within oneself, and comes through disciplined meditation and introspection. This intuitively makes quite some sense to me, and I think I'll try to ingrain regular meditations into my life. (Had stopped for a long time.)

Second, there is a significant focus on the concept of being "centred". Meditation focuses and disciplines the mind, and creates a sense of awareness that pervades through one's life. This is a source of strength that will allow one to live with more presence, and deliberateness. This concept of deliberateness has come at a very timely point. Increasingly I've been finding myself to be constantly distracted, to be thinking of B when doing A, thinking of C when B comes, and when C has arrived my mind is already thinking about D, E and F. I'm missing out the full brilliance of now, the precise instant where my future joins melds into my past. (Apparently, when one has become skilled enough, one can then appreciate the world properly through the five senses because one has learnt to observe without judgement. Not there yet, man.) Worse, I'm often doing things without thinking.

Third, this flows directly from the second point. We often become victims of habits because we stop being conscious of what we are doing and thinking. And gradually, we drift further and further away from realising the full potential of what we can be. In addition, I sometimes think that all the mindless distractions are but results of us being afraid of the silence and what the introspection might lead us to find out about ourselves. I noticed that after I've stopped my endless and mindless iphone surfing, I actually feel alot more attuned to who I am and what I'm doing, and I experience more moments of calmness and alertness. The obsession with activity and being occupied actually diminishes my quality of life. It's like scratching away at a scab - it feels really good for now but in the long term, the wound doesn't heal.

This sums up my attempt at understanding my spiritual side more. There are alot more deeper philosophical issues in the book that I do not yet understand, but I hope to be able to someday. p.s. The more I read, the more I think that Buddhism / Zen is alot about studying and understanding the mind.

Rework - Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

A fellow traveler and friend from my workplace passed me this book to read. It was a great read. Straight to the point but full of words of wisdom.

There are too many to be summarised here. (The book itself is already a summary.) But here are the ones that really resonated with me.

1. Start making something NOW rather than just keep talking about it
2. No time is an excuse - the real reason if one thinks and prioritises one's time properly is that this particular thing is not important enough
3. Making the call is making progress, and be ready to make small decisions that brings one closer to the goal each day
4. Distractions are nemesis to productivity - we really need to change the way we work and function nowadays. I actually enjoy getting distracted at times, which is bad. We need to create white spaces - long stretches of uninterrupted time to think. Each time I do that I really do get good ideas or breakthroughs.
5. This one is really interesting - hire good writers. The writer says that people who can write well have a clear mind, can communicate, can empathise and understand what people want, and know what to omit. Honestly, I do feel that my mind has been sharpened by years of writing in the service. Glad for it.
6. Send people home on time.
7. Inspiration expires - so if you have an inspiration, the right time to do something about it is NOW.
   

The New Asian Hemisphere - Kishore Mahbubani

Took a really long time to finish this. Partly because there are alot of arguments packed into each page, and partly because I was working myself a little too hard at work.

But finally! Finally I managed to cross the last page and by then I had forgotten most of the issues stated in the early part of the book. All in all, this was a rather harsh critic of the West and its institutions. There were moments in the book when I cringed, despite being a bystander to the criticisms. In scanning the book a second time, the key learning points that I managed to glean are as follow:

1. End of Western domination of history. This is the period when the western domination of the world history ends and the oft-mentioned rise of the rest begins. However, the improvement in the lives of millions across the world is actually beneficial to the West, as more people join in as global citizens with an interest in ensuring world peace and security. The discomfort to the West is that the relative superiority of the West will inevitably also be diminished.

2. Different layers of freedom. The West had been harping on the issue of freedom of speech, and appear to fail to understand that there are other forms of freedom that Asia has fought hard and achieved, which are in fact more important than freedom of speech itself. Freedom from want (food and basic survivability), security (risks to national and security safety) and freedom to choose one's employment are major advancements that people in the rest of the world are more concerned with at this point in time.

3. China has great potential ahead. It applies the principle of meritocracy ruthlessly in the CCP, in the same way as top companies do in MNCs, which has led it to accumulate top leadership talent in the government that has propelled China forward. It's society might be closed but people have open minds and are ready to find ways to move ahead in a pragmatic way. It has also demonstrated great finesse and acumen in furthering its geopolitical interests in the region and the global stage.

4. Current leadership gaps in the world. We need a strong leader or an institution (i.e. the UN) to bring the world forward in resolving issues facing all of us. However, the West had been unable to make good progress in areas such as the Middle East conflict, bringing down trade barriers, resolving global warming and nonproliferation of nuclear technology.

This short summary is doing a disservice to the breadth and depth of content in the book, but captures what struck me the most when I was reading the book.