-Hari ini anak buah aku lahir ke dunia. Sekarang aku masih tak tahu siapa nama dia; itu tak penting buat ketika ini. Apa yang penting, hari ini hari yang mulia.
-Apa yang aku buat di sini?
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
Membakar Kitab
-Semenjak kebelakangan ini, ada sahaja isu yang melanda negara Malaysia. Sekarang ini, timbul satu cerita konon-kononnya Ibrahim Ali dari PERKASA nak membakar kitab Injil Melayu yang ada tertulis kalimah Allah. Hee hee hee.
-Aku kadang-kadang seronok juga tengok perangai politikus-politikus Malaysia ini, terutamanya politikus Melayu. Mereka selalu cakap bukan main besar, atas isu yang tak penting sama-sekali. Siapa peduli kalau Injil Melayu letak kalimah Allah? Melayu saja yang peduli. Walhal mereka bukannya baca kitab itu. Buat apa bising-bising tentang satu kitab yang kau cakap penipuan belaka? Kalau letak kalimah Allah pun, Injil tetap Injil: dia takkan tiba-tiba menjadi buku sihir yang memurtadkan ribuan umat Melayu (bukan umat Islam; Melayu saja yang boleh kena sihir macam itu).
-Melayu cakap yang kalimah Allah itu milik umat Islam sahaja. Kita mencuri akidah orang Yahudi boleh pulak! Senang hati suka rasa saja pergi cakap Tuhan Bani Israel itu tuhan kita sekali. Konon itu Tuhan bercakap dengan kita, cakap dia sudah putus asa sama Bani Israel; pasal itu cari kaum lain; Tuhan yang macam ini, Tuhan yang berputus asa ini, kamu ambil sebagai Tuhan?
-Aku kadang-kadang seronok juga tengok perangai politikus-politikus Malaysia ini, terutamanya politikus Melayu. Mereka selalu cakap bukan main besar, atas isu yang tak penting sama-sekali. Siapa peduli kalau Injil Melayu letak kalimah Allah? Melayu saja yang peduli. Walhal mereka bukannya baca kitab itu. Buat apa bising-bising tentang satu kitab yang kau cakap penipuan belaka? Kalau letak kalimah Allah pun, Injil tetap Injil: dia takkan tiba-tiba menjadi buku sihir yang memurtadkan ribuan umat Melayu (bukan umat Islam; Melayu saja yang boleh kena sihir macam itu).
-Melayu cakap yang kalimah Allah itu milik umat Islam sahaja. Kita mencuri akidah orang Yahudi boleh pulak! Senang hati suka rasa saja pergi cakap Tuhan Bani Israel itu tuhan kita sekali. Konon itu Tuhan bercakap dengan kita, cakap dia sudah putus asa sama Bani Israel; pasal itu cari kaum lain; Tuhan yang macam ini, Tuhan yang berputus asa ini, kamu ambil sebagai Tuhan?
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Open Mind
-What the fuck does that phrase mean? No one has ever had their minds literally opened, you can only open your brain out-which doesn't help open your mind, it just exposes your brain and may result in death, or at least some gruesome injury. No, mind and brain are two different things that, despite the fact that they are essentially intertwined with each other, is still different; forget the common utterances of common people who say of idiots as having no brain; they're actually referring to the state of mind, but saying that one has got no mind is also untrue in a literal understanding, since having no mind means you're dead-but as some religions hold that your soul preserves your mind, which means that your mind is as immortal as your soul, so your death might not necessarily mean the disappearance of your mind, and it is more appropriate to say that mind is only absent when the soul is also absent, that is the state of neither living or dying, or might I say an inorganic state.
-But of course we are not entering a discussion in which people try to define what soul refers to-Leibnitz has done that in his treatises concerning monadology-, but rather I would rather talk about the openness of mind in a conventional sense; that is, a state where one is willing and able to input any information into his mind without having a preset reaction set for any information that his mind receives; or rather more simply, not having a prejudiced state of mind. Open-mindedness is a hard state of mind to perpetuate in any given setting; All of us have some mechanism that prevents us from dangerous things, be it objects, individuals or ideas; and this mechanism works as a kind of censor board, the 'self censor' that prevents us from having a totally open mind, regardless of our best conscious efforts. This mechanism is created in an early formative age, at a time when it is essential for us as children to input things into our mind, and in order to make sure we don't go against the community, for our own safety, our subconscious works to suppress our ego, and this self-censorship is one of the mechanisms involved in the process.
-Thus, by the time you're a teenager, most of the time, people are already having prejudices. That is normal, nobody will question too much; for it is safe and comfortable to be having prejudices, as you know who to love and who to fear-and hate. As we are by nature a predatory, resource-gathering species, these feelings-love and hate-are very important, as they define our behavior in a lot of ways; They make us humans. Open-mindedness is not something that comes directly out of nature ready-made; it is something that develops out of this prejudice, as we input more information into our minds naturally, to discover the world (and the discovery of the world, or the Other, lead to us discovering and defining our Selves), and it can be said that prejudice comes before open-mindedness-prejudice has to come first.
-But prejudice doesn't come as something that is a priori either; what is first there is plain emptiness, an emptiness where even the Self is not properly developed; the Self has to acquire the essence of being Self from obtaining information from the Other (moms teaching their kids language is a fine way of demonstrating this concretely), and in this state the mind, being of a dark, formless nature (quoting from the Torah, as in the beginning of Genesis) is open and willing to receive any command from the Other (in a Quranic fashion, 'Kun fayakun', or Biblical fashion, 'Yehi Or Vayehi Or')-and thus this emptiness, being the default state, can be said of as the real open-mindedness. But nobody in their adulthood has this open-mindedness anymore, and attempts at reaching it can be disastrous, although for some enlightened minds who are able to reach it, the results are an extreme, unspeakable joy, being Heaven or Nirvana itself.
-But of course we are not entering a discussion in which people try to define what soul refers to-Leibnitz has done that in his treatises concerning monadology-, but rather I would rather talk about the openness of mind in a conventional sense; that is, a state where one is willing and able to input any information into his mind without having a preset reaction set for any information that his mind receives; or rather more simply, not having a prejudiced state of mind. Open-mindedness is a hard state of mind to perpetuate in any given setting; All of us have some mechanism that prevents us from dangerous things, be it objects, individuals or ideas; and this mechanism works as a kind of censor board, the 'self censor' that prevents us from having a totally open mind, regardless of our best conscious efforts. This mechanism is created in an early formative age, at a time when it is essential for us as children to input things into our mind, and in order to make sure we don't go against the community, for our own safety, our subconscious works to suppress our ego, and this self-censorship is one of the mechanisms involved in the process.
-Thus, by the time you're a teenager, most of the time, people are already having prejudices. That is normal, nobody will question too much; for it is safe and comfortable to be having prejudices, as you know who to love and who to fear-and hate. As we are by nature a predatory, resource-gathering species, these feelings-love and hate-are very important, as they define our behavior in a lot of ways; They make us humans. Open-mindedness is not something that comes directly out of nature ready-made; it is something that develops out of this prejudice, as we input more information into our minds naturally, to discover the world (and the discovery of the world, or the Other, lead to us discovering and defining our Selves), and it can be said that prejudice comes before open-mindedness-prejudice has to come first.
-But prejudice doesn't come as something that is a priori either; what is first there is plain emptiness, an emptiness where even the Self is not properly developed; the Self has to acquire the essence of being Self from obtaining information from the Other (moms teaching their kids language is a fine way of demonstrating this concretely), and in this state the mind, being of a dark, formless nature (quoting from the Torah, as in the beginning of Genesis) is open and willing to receive any command from the Other (in a Quranic fashion, 'Kun fayakun', or Biblical fashion, 'Yehi Or Vayehi Or')-and thus this emptiness, being the default state, can be said of as the real open-mindedness. But nobody in their adulthood has this open-mindedness anymore, and attempts at reaching it can be disastrous, although for some enlightened minds who are able to reach it, the results are an extreme, unspeakable joy, being Heaven or Nirvana itself.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
1/2/2013
Today was fun. I spent time with my friends for 5 years; we zigzagged around the old city of Kyoto. It rained a bit, but we still managed to have some fun. Nope; we had a lot of fun, eating delicious food, sharing umbrellas (we had to buy them again; how many umbrellas does one need to buy?), photo session; yeah, it's a lot of fun.
But on the way home, one thing becomes apparent; this fun that we've shared won't last forever. We said goodbyes and good night to each other, the day ends, what we did became a memory, condemned to a perpetual state of being in the past; something that you can't rewind, repeat, or go back to. Our friendship becomes a memory too; friends forget each other sometimes, for every human has a limit (I read that it is on average, 150 relationships per person) on how many relationships can he/she maintains in a single moment; and this means that every time a person moves on to establish a new relationship (friends, families, lovers, all that usual thing), there is going to be a relationship that will be sacrificed, for the brain automatically removes that relationship, demotes the status of that relationship to mere 'memories', And thus the relationship is removed from the mental capacity of the brain, and it ceases to become a relationship.
That is a natural thing; to nurture friendships and forget some of them along the course of us living our lives. But right now, as I turn 23, nearing the end of my time in Osaka University (if Reality allows it, I will graduate on 2014), I increasingly think of all the relationships I have nurtured, all the people I have known, cared for and loved.
I just don't want to let them be mere memories. I need them; I need them all, but I also understand that I have to move on, be an adult, man up, sober up, face the Reality and in the process, I may have to decide whom I have to demote to mere 'memories'.
Shitty. Just pure bullshit. Reality forced this on me; Be an adult, say farewell to your friends, go face your future alone. Crap. Just unacceptable. I'm not ready. I'm never going to be ready.
But tomorrow becomes today. Like the fucking Passage of Time cares about your readiness. Age is a just number, alright; but you growing old, that's real. You're going to die; that's real. There's going to be a lot of farewells; that's real. You must accept it. So do I.
With this tone, I begin the new year. 2013. Bring it on.
But on the way home, one thing becomes apparent; this fun that we've shared won't last forever. We said goodbyes and good night to each other, the day ends, what we did became a memory, condemned to a perpetual state of being in the past; something that you can't rewind, repeat, or go back to. Our friendship becomes a memory too; friends forget each other sometimes, for every human has a limit (I read that it is on average, 150 relationships per person) on how many relationships can he/she maintains in a single moment; and this means that every time a person moves on to establish a new relationship (friends, families, lovers, all that usual thing), there is going to be a relationship that will be sacrificed, for the brain automatically removes that relationship, demotes the status of that relationship to mere 'memories', And thus the relationship is removed from the mental capacity of the brain, and it ceases to become a relationship.
That is a natural thing; to nurture friendships and forget some of them along the course of us living our lives. But right now, as I turn 23, nearing the end of my time in Osaka University (if Reality allows it, I will graduate on 2014), I increasingly think of all the relationships I have nurtured, all the people I have known, cared for and loved.
I just don't want to let them be mere memories. I need them; I need them all, but I also understand that I have to move on, be an adult, man up, sober up, face the Reality and in the process, I may have to decide whom I have to demote to mere 'memories'.
Shitty. Just pure bullshit. Reality forced this on me; Be an adult, say farewell to your friends, go face your future alone. Crap. Just unacceptable. I'm not ready. I'm never going to be ready.
But tomorrow becomes today. Like the fucking Passage of Time cares about your readiness. Age is a just number, alright; but you growing old, that's real. You're going to die; that's real. There's going to be a lot of farewells; that's real. You must accept it. So do I.
With this tone, I begin the new year. 2013. Bring it on.
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