On Love

Like happiness, I think there are two kinds of love: the usual love that is in relation with others, and liberated love that goes beyond relations.

Love in the conventional sense is in relation with others. I think it is true that love is blind. Our minds become trapped emotional connections to the person, and in extreme cases, become obsessed. Love for our friends, family, lover, far away celebrities... The other becomes a central part of our lives. We may start to desire attention and acceptance, or want to become like them. Because love is in relations to others, we compare ourselves to others, and envy may arise. Love can easily turn to hatred.
Hatred is perhaps the same as love; we love and hate because our lives are trapped in emotional ties (obsessions) with others. Love and hatred are emotions that are dependent on others.

True love, though this is an ideal, is a liberated love that is independent from relations to others. It is love that radiates from within, and reaches people without being uneffected by relations to others. Perhaps this form of love transcends human relations.

On Happiness

True happiness is acceptance and appreciation of everything.
It is the absence of hatred, envy, and desire, and a detachment from expectation.

I desire love, acceptance, fun, mercy... and I am 'happy' becuase I am blessed with these things, at least for now. But this 'happiness' is very unstable, because it loses ground as soon as I am denied of my desires; they have a potential to turn my life into 'unhappiness'.
Both 'happiness' and 'unhappiness' derive from others. I am living in a 'human' relation, where I basically compare myself to others and shape my values and ideas in response to others.

'Happiness' and 'unhappiness' are always in relation with others;
If I cannot get what I desire, desire will turn to envy and ultimately to hatred. How happy is a life of hatred and anger?

Even if current desires are met, new desires will arise, and I will be locked in a cycle of desire. I desire in hopes of gaining 'happiness', but it would inevitably lead to 'unhappiness'.
So maybe I should put a brake on the cycle of desire. I will say: I am content with the life I have now, and I desire no more.

But the world is always changing, and the 'happy' life that I am leading may suddenly be reversed. Death of others, for example. Or the loss of objects that give me 'happiness'.
I expect the world to be the same tomorrow though. I expect to wake up to see my parents, go to school, talk to friends, run down bakayama and say "what a great day it is!" However, when my expectations, the source of my 'happiness', are betrayed, I will no doubt be plunged into a pit of 'unhappiness'.
Because of this instability, 'happiness' that is reliant on others is a fragile flower.

Happiness that is innate is then accepting and appreciating the world as it is. It is liberation from desire, expectation, and 'human' relations. It is embracing change and not comparing but being one with others.

In that sense, I cannot say that I am truly happy.

Strength and Weakness

I have much trust in people, but that trust is not absolute.
I am strong when I have faith, but weak when I can no longer trust,
when I betray faith and start to suspect.

My weakness lies in my inability to be liberated from the abovementioned betrayal.
My strength lies in my will to be liberated from this.

Forgiveness

In my middle school years, my best friend and I were always up to no good.
We played pranks on people at school.
We had fun doing them; it was exciting and they were all harmless small mischiefs, and we never got caught by our teachers either (all my classmates knew that we were the pranksters though).

One day though, we pulled a (then seemingly harmless) practical joke, which turned out to be really terrible.
I did not see how serious it was at first, and neither did our prank victim.
But when the teachers saw it, they were absolutely horrified, and started a search for who was responsible.
My classmates (rightfully) put the blame on the prankster duo, but my friend ‘betrayed’ me and I was about to become the only culprit.

The headmaster’s interrogation started.
Out of fear of punishment, I then passed the blame over to an imaginary figure from the ‘Swedish side’ of the school.
I lied, desperate to convince the headmaster of my innocence, and I managed to fool her, or so I though. I was let off without any punishment or blame.

But my headmaster had seen right through my lie, and had decided to believe that lie, and believe in me. I soon realised this, that I was forgiven, and cried at how foolish I had been.

My prankster friend came to apologise many times before my ‘revelation’, but I did not forgive him.
I felt betrayed and angry.
But when I discovered that I had been forgiven by the headmaster, I forgave my friend too, and we swore that day that no more pranks would be done (although that promise was broken pretty soon).

New National Anthem for Japan

I hope this isn't too crude.

Proposal for a new national anthem:

Title: Nation of a Proud Patriotic People
(abrev. PPP, which also happens to be the bleeping sound for sensorship in Japanese)

♪Oh, Japan, Japan
How we do love thee.
and oh how we embrace the symbols of thee!

♪We could never imagine
flinching at the sight of the flag of the rising sun
in our neighbour's yard!

♪Nor could we ever imagine feeling,
if not completely disgusted, at least slightly uncomfortable
at the sound of "the Imperial Reign."

♪We most absolutely understand
the significance of the Emperor,
and the reason of his existence, by all means.

♪And we solemly swear
that we are singing this song out of free will,
and not being forced to do so by the Board of Education!

♪Such proud patriotic people are we,
We the Japanese! And it isn't ironic at all
that we had to chuck the old anthem away!

Original Sin

I am not a believer of God, but I do recognise the significance of faith and the power of God in the lives of many people in the world. The Bible is one of the things I can't dismiss as religious nonesense, and I try to make sense out of it, and also try to explain 'God' in my own terms.
So here my focus is on original sin. Oh yeah, read at your own risk. I am not liable for any offence I may cause.


I was strolling in the ICU forest the other day, and I stumbled across a strange tree bearing strange yellow-green berries. I looked at it and I was like: whoa, the forbidden fruit of knowledge! I don't usually think in biblical terms but that day the forest had an air of lost paradise, which reminded me of course of the garden of Eden.
So when I saw the tree of knowledge, I tried eating the fruit, in homage to Adam and Eve and to annoy 'God' if he were watching (which he apparently is).
Oh, and of course it was some silly imaginary serpent who made me think that way.

The fruit, by the way, tasted aweful, so I spat it out immediately, but it made me think, why would eating the fruit be such a sinful act?


God told them not to eat it, but they ate it, and that signified disobedience or betrayal of God, so it meant damnation, am I right?
But for me, servitude, to God or to anything else, is never a things I value. This explanation for me is a victory for humanity-- a revolutionary liberation from authority. God put free spirit in humans, so it is natural for them to pursue it.

Maybe doing something wrong while knowing that it is wrong is sinful. If so, God goes too far to punish them. Maybe Adam and Eve are sinful, but I cannot understand how their babies will be born with sin. Because God, there is such thing as original innocence.

And again, apparently, God is a god of love and mercy. If that is true, surely he wouldn't mind if his creations betrayed or lied to him. God should forgive them, should he not?

Original sin.

I then realised that Eve, or Adam, couldn't sin alone. (Of course, me eating the berry is not a sin either.) Original sin is perhaps a sin that is in relation to others.

This was the first time humans began blaming others for the sake of themselves. Adam says Eve is bad. Eve says the serpent is bad.

The original sin is perhaps human nature of measuring, comparing, and judging others in the world in order to make sense of ourelves. When blame is put onto others, we feel lightened, but it is at the expense of the suffering other. We put value on things, and a value is like a blame. It is comparing others with ourselves or with our set of values, saying this is good, this is bad. Such a world is ugly, and unfortunately, such is the world we live in.

God didn't drive humans out of paradise -- human nature of original sin turned the world from a mythical harmonious paradise to a world of differences, categorisation, and inequality.

So how do we liberate ourselves from 'original sin'?

Time

Can somebody explain what time is?

Time is something I ponder about a lot.
What is it, this time?

I hear that it is a modern concept. Time as absolute, sequential, linear, and relative.
But maybe we are just perceiving time. Maybe time exists only in our minds.

Time and history and memory are closely linked, are they not? What if our memory is making us think that we are travelling through time? What if our world, our history and memory, is constantly being restructured in our minds, so it feels like there is a past, present, and future?
Maybe the past and future are happening in the same 'time' as the present.

What a strange thought that is.

But what is time, I wonder.