Happiness...?

I was having a conversation with someone about my beliefs on life and spirituality and the question of what I look forward to came up and more precisely what my doctrines are for life and of course my belief particularly on faith. So my answer which has always been my answer for quite a number of years was that I believe in living life for the sole purpose of obtaining happiness, quite a vital principle of the Buddhist philosophy, or atleast that of the Dalai Lama and his teachings on Tibetan Buddhism. But that answer wasn't very clear and I guess it is a bit vague in what exactly is happiness, and it seems like it's really not a very fulfilling goal. So I'm going to try to express what I mean by happiness in writing and perhaps it may help me better articulate it through speech. Ok, well when you speak to a lot of individuals about their faith and beliefs they always say that at the end of their life they hope to have accomplished things and if they have done anything that may have harmed another person or thing that they have atoned for their sins. But living a life where the ultimate goal is achieving some sort of gift or praise seems to me like you are only following rules but not living. Living should be about learning and growing and understanding. And that's this idea of happiness, and to me happiness means that I've learned all that I've had the capability to learn, that I've not led a life where I've interfered too greatly, in a negative sense, with the life of another individual, that I've grown far greater not in a physical sense but in a mental sense, and that I've tried to understand what I've lived and how others have lived to be more cognizant of why certain people are and perhaps learn how to understand them. I also believe that happiness implies that you take away this idea of hope, we as humans are hoping that one day our time will come when all our life will have meaning, but I think that's more of a selfish attitude, and though it may be fulfilling to have hope, it's a very narrow minded goal which for some reason there is a unforeseen event we may loose our hope. Now perhaps if we see all events as having a purpose then that has far greater meaning then being in the mindset of the hope for a change and ultimately having grown from the past. I also think that we all try to, as a friend of mine once said, "sell our selves", in many ways through life, that we are our own ultimate salesmen, we want to look good on a date, we want to make a good impression when we meed someone, we carry out a formality when confronting, but the Dalai Lama said that he is one that does not believe in formality but rather in the idea of connection, when you take formality too seriously you don't make the connection which is just communication with another individual. And by being formal we sell our politeness. Now I'm not saying walk up to someone naked but rather the focus should be more on communication rather then the act of following a proper rules of engagement for communication, which may lead you to miss a connection. Ok, so I side tracked there a little but, so what am I getting at, well... ultimately I want to say that my goal is know that I have expressed myself and communicated to the best of my abilities without being too overt. And that I'm happy about the events of the past, or fulfilled. In a sense enlightened about what it means to live a life. Ok, it's late and I should sleep now but I will expand more on this subject later...

finally watched 'Cloverfield'

I went to watch the largely hyped new movie, 'Cloverfield' this weekend and I'm mixed about how I felt about it, one thing I can say is it's quite original not in the sense of the plot but in the way that the movie was directed and shot. This concept of bringing the homemade video phenomenon that's exploded onto the internet and turning that idea into a mainstream movie was well done. I have to give Matt Reeves and Drew Goddard credit in changing the way movies are shot. But the whole movie had the elements of The Blair Witch Project, Godzilla, and the plethora of films that followed 9/11. I guess in one way showing this films in theaters shows that the events of 9/11, were what they were, tragic events of the past and just like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan following WW2 and the subsequent release of Godzilla several years later, Cloverfield ironically seems quite reflective. Anyway overall I say it's a good film and a nice modern day vision of Godzilla instead of another "Gozdilla vs. ".

why cremate?

In many of the Dharmic faiths particularly Hinduism it's common to cremate the body of the deceased once they have passed away. I Know that fire is considered sacred but I've never really gone into any depth to learn why it's important to cremate the body once someone has passed on. So after doing quite a bit of searching and not coming up with anything more then how the ritual is performed by who and when, typically it's performed by the closest relative of the deceased and must be performed within 6 days of the deceased's passing, the only exceptions being priests and infants; interestingly priests are buried in the lotus position. So why cremate? well I came across a few pages that sort of gave an explanation and here is my interpretation of what I've learned, it all goes back to the idea of the soul being something separate from the body and with each reincarnation the soul uses the body as a shell to take the form once the previous body has passed on. When a person dies, and the body is cremated the body is no longer sacred since the soul has left the body to be reincarnated into another life-form. Another reason, mostly from Hindu culture, is that by cremating the body that the soul once occupied, it helps the soul to release any attachment it may hold to the body in which it was a part and helps to transition the soul into it's next life, or eventually to Moksh, the eternal liberation of the soul from having to recur into a new life. Quite interesting. Now to start learning about why the rituals upon death came about in othe religions, mainly the Abrahamic ones.

Sources:
http://www.deathonline.net/disposal/cremation/hindu.cfm
http://www.learnnc.org/lp/multimedia/4281
http://www.giftofireland.com/Religionandcremation.htm

chimps evolving faster then humans

I was reading through some of the discovery magazine articles on animal intelligence and came across an article about how the genes of chimps are evolving at a faster rate then those of human beings. The article also stated that this rate of change doesn't imply that chimps are going be gaining on humans in terms of intelligence, but the scientist involved in the study believes that the reason that the chimps genes are evolving faster is because there is fewer interaction among the genes. But I still think that even with 100's of years of homo sapien existence we still have yet to evolve into a species that can interact on a more diplomatic scale. We tend to resolve through violence and hatred rather then through words and compromise. The one thing that troubles me the most is the justification of murder through the use of a divine power, that killing humans of another faith is acceptable because certain individuals believe that it's an action that will be forgiven because the people being killed are not of the same faith, I find that to be the most unintelligent way to live. Anyway getting off my soap box here I still think that humanity needs a evolution in culture and understanding, we are all intelligent yet we seem to carry out actions that make us seem barbaric and primitive.

A brand new year...

It's officially 2008 and we have left behind the year 2007, but the past year will definitely not be forgotten, many things happened, great scientific discoveries to political mischief and mayhem, there were breakthroughs in stem cell research and we even learned that our primate counterparts not only have a better memory but are also capable of developing tools. There was a massive campaign towards the green side, everyone from news stations to prominent figures pondered or tried to come up with a way to teach people how to live a life with a smaller carbon footprint, progress was made at the climate change conference in Bali, while at the same time developing countries have started to build more coal plants to help sustain their growing economy. We saw NBC and Yahoo! start a green campaign by introducing more content to the public to help explain their need to reduce waste and the need to improve energy usage for a more sustainable world. We also saw the release of the new Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicle from Honda called the FCX, while at the same time we learned about the setback of the release of the Tesla Roadster due to software glitches in the transmission system. But besides the topics in the Global warming front we also continued to see the disasters in the progress towards a more peaceful world. Violence broke out in Kenya disputing the results of the election. The assassination of Benazier Bhutto in Pakistan as well as the earlier protest by Pakistani lawyers over the state of emergency declaration from Musharraf, which led to state wide unrest and countless arrests, but perhaps it helped spur the shedding of the military uniform by Musharraf. Even with that momentous action there is still a dark cloud hanging over the political future of Pakistan as the parliamentary elections are set to take place in the coming month. In neighboring India we also heard about the talks regarding the Indo-US nuclear pact, we also saw the victory of the BJP party in Gujarat. But we also saw the violence between Hindu's and Christians in eastern India, the cause of which is still unknown with claims of attempted attacks of leaders by one side. Regardless, the year 2007 saw many things pass some more enriching then others but as many conflicts that may have arisen we saw the attempt at trying to alleviate them. But as I look back the question still remains what is the meaning of peace? As I put the question in the back of my mind I still stand in awe of the events of the past year and here's wising everyone a prosperous and peaceful 2008.