I stumbled on the acronym of LAB: Learn and Build. By nature I am a learner - my whole life has been driven by learning and figuring out things I am interested: computer, Economics, math, physics, etc. What I am lacking is consistent building things, too often I give up once I think it is good enough, not pushing …

Read More

Lojong - Norman Fischer Based on Norman's interpretation of lojong, I have developed a habit of writing out them whenever I feel like I am off the track. It works every time, amazingly. Train in preliminaries: life is precious; death is right here; watch your karma; Dukkha is the way of life - embrace it and enjoy the …

Read More

As I grow older, there is one thing I need to constantly reminder myself: "You don't know a shit, just shut up and learn something. Take care of yourself and your family first, and besides that, if you can be somehow useful to others, that's probably the best you could do as a fellow citizen. At a bare minimum do …

Read More

Some things I believe about the education system Parents say they care about learning, but credentials are really what they value. Education should feel more like a video game than a movie. The current system forces kids to sit back and listen. Better to gamify the experience and make it interactive. Poor pedagogy is a …

Read More

One of the slogan of lojong that speaks right to me is Work on your biggest problem. I know very well my biggest problem: distraction. Whenever I am aware of it -- of course this is a big if, I find myself caught in the middle of sort of distraction. It seems this is a hopeless for me, not much progress despite years …

Read More

Now it is at the height of summer and I play quite a bit tennis around this time of the year, and usually this is when I make some progress with my game -- when you hit a lot balls, you will figure something out. A couple years back I was working on my footwork, especially the split steps, which I still consciously …

Read More

Tennis is quite a big part of my daily life -- not only do I play tennis a lot, I am also very addicted to getting better all the time: I am shadow swinging my stokes all the time, practicing my split step while walking, and watching a lot Youtube videos to improve my game. In a sense my attachment to tennis is just …

Read More

I get up quite early and morning hours are my best hours. This is a habit I developed during the days I tried to get my Ph.D. finished while working full time -- it's out of necessity actually. Unlike doing coursework, the research phase of a Ph.D. program needs a lot focus to dig into the papers, and I always have …

Read More

One of the Five Hindrance is doubt, which can be the biggest, yet most subtle block to one's practice. My personal take is that doubt is related to lack of confidence or faith in one's innate goodness or capacity. There are a few reasons why doubt is such a hindrance to our spiritual practice: The simple truth is that …

Read More

This is not the first time that I realize that I had abandoned the habit of writing everyday for a long while. Being an optimist, however, I always look at the brighter side of things: at least I've not completely given up writing in my heart, just like my everyday sitting practice -- I might not have time to meditate …

Read More