A brief on relegion and philosophy

These are complex topics, I probably would talk about these in more than one writing. Today, I'd just touch on a very simple guidline that I adopted for my ownself pertaining to religion.

Recently there was a discovery on n early Christian manuscript "The Gospel of Judas" which I read from TODAY newspaper. That prompted me to find out more about "Gnostic". And in the search for that, I found these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Philosophy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism


In my circle of friends, colleagues and family, almost all except my youngest brother think that philosophy is NOT important, and has no practical value. Most of them don't really bother about some fundamental questions like "what's the meaning of life? what's the purpose my life? have I given the best out of my life?, etc. etc." To me such questions are so important, so I wonder why some people just prefer
to spend all their time with their family or work, and never bother to ask such questions and try to find out the answers. My conclusion is: maybe our brain is wired differently - somehow. Btw, just take a look here for the "technical" explanation on philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Philosophy

Let's talk about religion. Many think that their religion is the only one that is correct and true; but many also think that religion does not matter, they are all the same, they basically teach us to do good thing and should NOT do bad things.

I am one of those who think that right religions are the same. To me, the most basic fundamentals for a RIGHT religion is: it should teach people to do good things! Apart from that each religion can have it's own beliefs, but as long as they teach us to do good things, they are the RIGHT/GOOD religions.

Well, it might seem easy to determine whether a religion is a GOOD or RIGHT religion. But hold on, it depends. It depends on how do you define "Good" and "Bad".
To me, what is "Good" is things/acts that are less selfish (or not selfish). Something that we do NOT to gain benefit for ourselves, but for the benefits of others. Something that we sacrifice without hoping anything in return.

But BEWARE, we must be completely HONEST with ourself when doing such judgement, because too often, deep inside we are actually doing things that we like or for our own benefits, but we try to fool ourselves (consciously) to think that those are NOT selfish acts.

In conclusion, I would say that GOOD religion is the one that teaches us to be a LESS selfish person, the one that teaches us to break all the sufferings brought by our own selfinish. Note, I said GOOD or RIGHT and I don't mean TRUE, because NOBODY will be able to prove all the beliefs scientifically - as all of us are "INSIDE the box", so how can we complete prove if those religion believes are true or false. This is where faith plays the most important role. But I dun want to delve into the issue of faith now. Maybe next time...


God bless you.

Success

I'd like to talk about success this round.

Most of us want to be successful. Many of us, who do not consider ourselves as a sucessful person (yet), are striving to be successful. Well, some who do NOT have the courage to success, will simply kill their dreams and try to be contented (may be by saying "I'm a simple person, I'm happy with what I have now"). I see people who killed their dreams as people who do NOT have courage, people who are afraid of challenges, people with tonne of excuses for NOT performing to their best possible.
My message to these people is: "Wake up, you are not a simple person and you are wasting your life if you do NOT try to give the BEST out of you. Be courageous!"

For those who are like me, trying to give the best out of us, I have few words of caution too: "do NOT be attached with the RESULTs that we are trying to achieve". There is no need to feel disappointed when you did not achieve your results. Pause, relax and try again. Never give up.

That's why it is so important for us to do/work according to our PASSION. When you do what you are passionate about, there is NO such thing called "failure" - you will always be successful, you will always win - because you ENJOY the journey, and the destination becomes secondary. The best scenario of course is to achieve the results we want, but REMEMBER,in reality results are affected NOT ONLY by our own efforts, but also but many EXTERNAL factors that are NOT in our control. When the results are not as what you are expecting, take them as NEW challenges and continue to ENJOY the NEW JOURNEY to success.

So, do NOT define success as "the result", but define it as "the JOURNEY"!


I'd like to close this with a quote from Booker T Washington (1856-1915):

"I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles overcome while trying to succeed."



see ya next time :)