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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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As I get deeper and deeper into Haskell and functional programming, the fundamental principles of FP starts to make more sense to me, and a light bulb goes up in my mind: actually there is a deep connection between them and one's spiritual practice. The first one I made such a connection is laziness. If you really …

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