Man, the media just will not stop about reporting Tiger Woods. Ah, so typical.

As all of us hearing about the news, it is so easy for us to judge, to criticize, and to draw defaming conclusions about Tiger Woods. It is soooooooooo easy for us to call him immoral. What’s the fun in that? So instead of all that, let us look at the news from another angle.

Let’s say you were in the exact positions of Tiger Woods. With his great golf skill, fame, money, look… and thus finally [and most likely] the admirations of many ladies. Given all that, and then given the opportunities, to sleep and have affairs with beautiful women. And perhaps sometimes seriously seduced. Can you with utmost honesty answer that you would not had done the same?

Now, you do not really NEED to answer that. And you may think I am, but I am not trying to defend Tiger Woods either.

But if you answered with “NO!!” right the way, you probably hadn’t given it sincere thought and thus miss the point of what I wanted to say.

The point I am trying to get at is the why for which we need to ask ourselves such question.

And this is not so different than the question, “What is the sound of a one-handed clap?”

Reality is actually very simple. It is so simple that almost all of us miss it all the time.

It is simply the experience of being in the now. Really, indescribable. Once you start describing it, it is no longer. However, continuing from past post “A World of Patterns and The Limit of Language”, patterns are a necessary facts of the human life for convenience, for communication.

Most fundamentally, we can view everything as a play between 2 sides of a coin (or more eastern and traditional, the symbol of Taichi including the yin and the yang).

The key to remember, is that it is ONE coin. But we forget, so we play against ourselves saying, “crap, the head is going to beat the tail”, or vice versa. So it is said, we live among illusions [that we created].

Thus, once you have full realization of the said key, you can see through illusions and learn to observe the play between 2 sides of the same coin. And ultimately, begin to see through most things in life. What you do with such realization, it’s your choice.

Two points to be taken as to how we get lost in illusions.

1. We mistaken all the complex, artificial patterns that are derived from two sides of the same coin, or the coexisting opposite yin and yang, are indeed reality itself.

2. We forget the two sides are indeed the same coin, or that yin and yang exist only because of each other. Or put another way, we believe the seemingly opposing forces are mutually exclusive when they are really two of the same thing. And then we tell ourselves, “Uh oh, we cannot let tail wins. We must beat the other side”.

The results are — We forget reality. We desire illusions. Furthermore, we desire to make illusions real and permanent. And we desire so badly that we’d do anything, leading ourselves into a incessant losing proposition. And we feel unfulfilled and insecure.

Some of us had taken sides with the head, and some of us had taken sides with the tail. Now we battle each other. Over and over and over.

Imagine we keep this up, what happens to the coin? And what do you think will happen after what may happen to the coin? If you can sense the answer, you are getting warmer.

Today’s post is brought to you from my good friend D, who originally wrote it as an email to a friend. Personally, I love it. I hope you enjoy it too.

I wanted to share with you a story and a lesson I learned. This is a rare letter. It does not require a reply, nor any thanks. Just attention for a few moments.

A man was walking his path. Few days after leaving the comforts of his house he came to the bank of a river. He stood there for a few days drinking its fresh water, eating its fish, sleeping on the soft dry sand of the bank. But to continue his journey he had no choice but to cross it, since there was no bridge in sight.

So, one day, he decided to do so.

As he stepped into the ice cold water, his legs and feet start to hurt. The current was very powerful and he was submerged several times by the force of it. As he struggled not to drown, stones and sands were painfully hitting his body. As he started to lose his strength and thought all hope was lost, two men on the other side of the bank came to his help, throwing him a rope and probably saving his life.

With his body still battered by the crossing, shivering from the cold, sore and exhausted by the sincere effort, the traveler stopped and turn back and stare at the river. Looking at its tumultuous waters, he said “thank you”.

In the short path of our life’s, sometimes, we face adversities. We have to cross rivers. There are two choices we can make.

We can either be angry at the river because its a river. Curse its existence and its choice of path. We can decide to believe that the suffering that it gave is fruitless and meaningless. In such a case, as we are presented with many rivers to cross, life becomes a continuous source of endless hanger, pointless pain and consuming frustration.

On the other hand we can choose to notice the gifts the rivers carry. Often we drink its water and eat its food. More importantly, as we face hardship we have the opportunity to understand who we really are. What are we made of, our strength, the meaning of courage and our weakness. Each time a river is crossed, we grow stronger and wiser. The path of life becomes easier. What are rivers for some, become small creeks to us, and they don’t bother our minds as much. In the moment of hardship, when all hope is lost we have a rare opportunity to see who really is next to us. The people who genuinely care for us, who selflessly help, and who can love without reserve and without the desire or need to be rewarded. In such a case, life becomes a continuous source of blessings and joy is behind every struggle.

One day, not too long ago, I too was in a very frustrating situation. I felt betrayed, and humiliated. The hate for a person and bitterness of her actions was devouring my days. I did not enjoy that state of mind so I asked a friend for guidance.

He asked “Are you starving?”
“No, not really” I replied.
“So you must be really really thirsty?”
“…No, not at all” I replied again.
“Well, then it must be you have not been sleeping for days”.
“I am not sure why you say that, but I slept fine” I said.
“So are you really so fragile?…. It is what it is. If you really understand the source of it, you can only smile and move on.”

Suddenly I realized I was not fragile. My disappointment with others was misplaced expectation and, in a way, it was funny as asking a dog to be a cat. So, I smiled and moved on.

How do we create a perfect software product in no time?
(Inspired by some Dilbert moments in work meetings… though essentially, that is what managers, executives, and other so-called leaders want and ask for [implicitly] these days. Oooooh, if only they can get it.)

Some of the answers I got… (thanks to my friends)

• hahaha you write one line of code…hello world and that’s it *ROFL*
• not sure, probably the same way we fly without wings
• in the design….you state that your goal is to create an imperfect software product..and therefore it is perfect by definition
• tell ur bosses to wait til we die and go to heaven first
• Buy it from Japan.
• – fix the requirements and don’t change them
  – agile software development
  – reasonable sized team (I’d say about 5-10 people, but it depends on the size of the project)
  and the last requirement
  – STOP MESSING WITH THE ORIGINAL REQUIREMENTS
• answer is simply stop writing becase “in no time” means only crap can be created

What’s you answer? Go.

In computer science, divide-and-conquer is a common technique applied in both practical programming and abstract algorithm to solve complex problems efficiently. In other words, a complex problem is continuously and/or recursively broken down to simple workable chunk to be managed, manipulated, and calculated individually, and finally re-combined to get a solution for the original problem. What a wonderful tactic!

Well well, does that sound kind of familiar? Maybe. Maybe not. I find it quite similar to the way we do things in life.

As humans, to make sense of life, to navigate through human community/society, and also for convenience, we break down reality into small chunks.

In nutshell, with our scientific mind, our logical mind, we analyze reality, break it down into “things” and give “things” names through words/language. As society and civilization become more and more complex, so more “things” and words are developed, and we begin to put many “things” and words together to develop patterns.

So in the beginning, there is reality but no thing.
Then we created things with language.
Then we create patterns of life with things and language.

And as days go by, we create more and more things, more and more words, and more and more patterns. And we are still going at creating more!

Patterns are like boxes.

So now, we are all given birth, and as we grow up, our parents and society would put us in boxes… and we grow up to put ours in boxes (perhaps some newly created ones)

Oh, you must be an upstanding citizen. Patriot who protects the countries. Muslim who worships Allah. Christian who preaches in the name of Jesus. You must be successful. You must make others happy. You are to love your parents. You should never lie. You must not have sex before marriage. You must obey the filial piety according to Confucius. You will become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, hedge fund manager or whatever. Work hard and you will succeed. Eat non-fat and you will be healthy. You need to get married, have a family, and have kids. Max out 401k and IRAs and you can retire. Oh my oh my! Boxes!

So you may be thinking now, “Are you saying we need to destroy and abolish “things”, words, and all patterns of life?” My answer is, “No”.

So what am I trying to get at?

My point is we are missing the point of living the whole way along. It is almost like we used divide-and-conquer without ever re-combining the simple workable chunks, but instead, keep on dividing the chunks into smaller chunks… On top of that, we completely forget the original problem we wanted to solve.

Surely, we all choose to live however we want. Here, I am entertaining the idea that there could be a more favorable experience of living. More specifically, to get better in touch with reality, and hence lead to the result of being able to find harmony with ourselves and our environment.

We have forgotten that we had created things, words, and patterns from the very beginning to navigate reality but they are not the reality. Yes, they are now part of our human reality but still, not THE reality.

Think of it this way, when you see a banana, you can call or think of it as banana. But if you don’t know the word, “banana”, is the banana still reality, or is it not?

You know it.

Reality is more than just words and patterns. When we lack the words and patterns to label and define parts of reality, it does not mean it is not reality!

And so we miss the point.

Us modern people since industrialization, let our logical minds completely dominate, to the point where, words and patterns ARE reality. When reality is something outside of the realm of our words and patterns, we get completely insecure and to make us feel alright again, we invent new patterns to try to force things the way we like, and if unsuccessful, we twist and bend words to conceal and cover the reality. That is, in a most simple example, we would deny a banana is there if we lack the word to call it.

As such, we are often either in denials, or in complete ignorance of reality to do what we need to do as real solution.

We take our patterns too literally. We take ourselves too seriously. Seriously!

Therefore, instead of tips, techniques, or methods, I write what I do here — mostly for my own enjoyment but also — it will be much more substantial for each of us to shift our fundamental attitude of life, of reality to bring about real change.

If I shall put it more strongly, beyond the limit of our rules and language, lies truth and enlightenment.

The one crucial step, to mature as a human being, to become wise, and probably even to enlightenment (if you are so inspired) is to learn the patterns but be able to set them asides, knowing that they are artificial.

Do no abandon words and patterns. Do not fight them. To make use of the patterns (as our original intent of creating them), we just need to re-understand them as patterns. As invention for our own convenience, words and patterns — developed through thoughts and conveyed by words — make good servants but poor masters.