Discovering my Tao

Today I had my schedulled 6 monthly followup appointment with my doctor. Fortunately all numbers turned out to be good and I was happy. It seems like finally I have figured out how to keep my blood pressure and sugar on track. Few years back due to job uncertainity and other related tensions, it started reflecting in my blood pressure and sugar. Things seemed to start going out of control little to early for my age. My doctor would give me a hard time each time I saw her for physical. Then I started working with myself. Physical workout and mind training helped, but I had to customize quite a bit before I got the result I wanted. These days insurance companies have lowered the numbers for tolerable blood pressure and sugar levels and so if somebody wasn't diagnosed for high blood pressure or sugar until yesterday would suddenly find oneself in pre-hypertesion or pre-diabetic category. I had to patiently work with myself in terms of workout, eating habits etc. until I got the results I wanted. Fortunately my doctor was patient enough not to put me on medication right away. I went through cycle of ups and downs to finally arrive at a workable solution. Patience is the key. For a person who is living a normal life, usually small changes or fine tuning is needed. No radical changes in lifestyle would be needed unless one is living quite unbalance life. With small changes in my lifestyle I still enjoy my drinks and desserts on weekends and I also enjoy my workout. So my findings are that for something to work one has to have patience to experiment with it, maintain balance avoiding any kind of excess and finally feel good about it. It has to fit with one's lifestyle pattern - such as job, family needs etc. Then only one will be able to keep up with it, otherwise either one won't be able to continue or feels lot of friction trying to keep up with it. That is the way of Tao. It's different for everyone and left for one to figure out. When one is living according to Tao, life is easier. When one is living against Tao, life is difficult. Tao is like flowing water. It is difficult for one who tries to go upstream but easier for one who is going downstream. The whole thing is choosing the right direction. Then it is practically effortless because water itself will carry one. It is out there but left for everyone to discover for themselves...

Wednesday - November 17th, 2010

It has been a long day at work, trying to understand code without any documentation. It is multi-threaded application and several things are happening simultaneously just like in real life. Understanding this code is quite a bit of mental exercise - exercise in imagination. Because when a multi-threaded application is running, it comes to life as in 3-D, while what we program is in 2-D. Now that is when I am writing the code. You can imagine how it would be for me when I try to understand someone elses multi-threaded code without documentation reading disjoint pieces of code. And it is not just that, I am supposed to solve a problem because original people are no longer available. I am not complaining, but sometimes it gets little challenging. Like today me sitting with my head in my hands. Yet I enjoy my work very much. Even small breakthrough gives a great satisfaction. It gives a great pleasure to look back and see a piece of code smoothly working. In fact I get same kind of satisfaction looking at the lawn I mowed freshly or after tidying up a messy room. I think knowing what makes one happy is the key to a life what one could call successful. As per me happiness at work is very important, since work takes up major slice of our grown up life and it feeds many of our needs.Perfection at work needs perfection of mind.And what is a perfect mind? It would mean lot of different things to different people.For me, mind is a kind of tool one would use in daily life to get around, do things, find answers, make choices etc. But when the days work is done one should be able to shut off the mind. It is not easy to shut off the mind though. Meditation is the key to do that, but it is not easy to meditate. One of the ways to meditate is to watch our breath. If you have tried to do that, you will know that the moment you focus on breath, it becomes deliberate. It is no longer natural. You are not supposed to interfere with the breath, just watch it as per theory. For me all sorts of things happen when I try to do that. First the breath does not remain natural, secondly boredom sets in. Mind is just not used to not doing anything. It wants to be constantly thinking, worrying, fantasizing or something similar. So while I seat doing my finger poses or Mudras in the morning, I want to use that time for meditating, watching breath. But mind immediately becomes busy strategizing for the day. I have been trying to change the hard ingrained habit of the mind but with no substantial results at the moment. There is no use in forcing mind, it has to come to rest on it's own. Suppressing doesn't work with mind. So I am going with the flow.

Tuesday - November 16th, 2010

Today we moved to new work location. Not far from our previous location, at the most a mile away but a bigger building. So most of the time went in reorganizing and arranging. As I mentioned earlier, we work on vehicle diagnostic systems, so we need to be next to the vehicles all the time. This place has a huge garage - bigger than a basketball court. I am sitting right next to the garage but fortunately garage is heated so no worries for the winter, otherwise I would be freezing due to cold drafts whenever someone opened the door. This huge garage kind of reminded me of my first job out of college, where I worked on aircraft diagnostics and had to be in an aircraft hanger many times. Now we follow agile methodology of software development here and so have a open floor plan i.e. no cubes. I was barely settling and someone asked me how do I like the new place. It's a very common question and I gave common answer, but in my mind it started a chain of thoughts. One has to change workplace, residence etc. many times in life willingly or unwillingly. Mind has a tendency to get used to surroundings and wanting to be in comfort zone for most people and I am one of them. But life has made me change my workplace, residence many time and most of the times unwillingly. Each time I get used to something and try to cling to that, I am thrown off. It's like I am being taught a lesson that I shouldn't get attached to anything. Each time I was forced to move or change I used to get disturbed a lot. But things are getting better - I mean I still have to move or change but my response is getting better. You may say I am getting used to change and you may be true up to a certain degree but it has also brought within me the quest for an unfettered mind.

To be continued ...

Monday - November 15th, 2010

As I mentioned yesterday night, I was thinking about how to enhance my career in software development last night when I went to bed, I woke up with an idea. It's not a new one. We all have done it in our schooling age. It's about repeating something over and over again until the thing becomes part of your nature. Repetition is applied to gain perfection in areas such as martial arts, music etc. But one may find it rather dull and uninteresting to apply it to enhance programming skills. Because mind needs novelty. It gets bored of doing same thing over and over again. So although I would be working on repetition outwardly, I would also be working on fixing this tendency of mind of getting bored. I am already working on my 3rd grader son to improve his math skills through repetition. Each week for 5 day in morning he is given a set math problems, although the problems are different, the pattern remains the same until he is ready to go to the next level. No brainer right? But the challenge comes with an adult like me when I try to ingrain something by repetition in an area like programming. Normally one would think repetition is against creativity, but then explain this to me - how come artists are still creative when they have been drawing same lines or playing same notes and practicing same thing over and over again? So I am sure there is more to it than appears to be. And I am willing to find out. After all this is my journey towards an unfettered mind and I have to be my own teacher. So I would be working on the outside such as my programming skills, but also at the same time I would be working on my mind. I would like to talk more about unfettered mind and my desire for it the next time.

A Sunday as it happened to be ...

The day began as a gray, cold morning ... kind of foreboding to the winter that is approaching fast. As I sat in my bed, doing my daily ritual of mudras or finger poses, my mind created a snapshot of what I would be doing today. Of course this does not mean that I able to spend every day in my life the way I want it. Sometimes it gets close and sometimes I am thrown off completely. And I like it that way. There is always a thrill in unknown. Now these mudras are very interesting, they help me in centering. We all know that maintaining center of gravity helps us retain balance of our bodies. In the same way centering of mind helps us retaining balance of our minds and saves us from getting totally thrown off mentally or at least that has been my experience so far. So as I sat doing mudras, I laid out a plan for today. Which was - continuing my reading of 'Zen and the art of making living' by Laurence G. Boldt, calling my parents who live half a world apart, picking up leaves fallen from trees as winter is approaching fast, doing laundry for the house and spending some time with my older son, particularly watching old star trek episodes which he lot. As it turned out, I was able to accomplish each of those planned tasks. It was one of those rare days at the end of which I could happily say ... a day spent well. Now this was the story in the foreground.

I am done with all the house chores, it's 11:45 pm now I have time for myself. Except for the few pages I read from 'Zen and the art of making living', I haven't had much chance to concentrate on my career plans today. This is happening a lot in my life these days. Although I am very disciplined, I am unable to schedule any activities to enhance my career. I am into software programming and it is one of the fields that requires you to keep upgrading all the time. At one point of time in my life, I was very passionate about programming but past 10 years of programming for financial industry, I have been steadily loosing my interest in programming. Until my this new latest job in vehicle diagnostics ... I am feeling that my passion is returning. So I am hoping that I would do at least something tomorrow that would help my career. I will sleep over that thought and hopefully I will have some plan tomorrow morning ... Good Night!

After a long time ...

It's been a long time since I wrote, but I guess that's how my life has been during past year. Ups and down in life affect state of mind. And that's exactly why my journey towards un-fettered state of mind. It has been quite a year in terms of professional life. My eternal quest towards ideal job for me. I like the new job I am doing now. It's been always a question - should I do what I love or should I love what I do? Probably it is question for many. Some are lucky to be able to make a peace with it but for me it is not so easy. At least with this new job I am one step closer to my dream ...