Secular Ethics

I have recently been binge-reading through a number of nonfiction books.  The interesting thing is that I never was too fond of reading ever since I was young.  I remember receiving my first C in my 9th grade literature class, largely due to the fact that I never completed any of the reading assignments.  Needless to say that cliff notes never were too helpful in answering those pop quiz questions.

 

After entering the “real world” per se, I finally was able to discover the fun in fiction.  I started by blazing through all of the Harry Potter volumes, and a myriad of suspense (ala Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons), Tom Clancy novels, and a bunch of other random stuff.  However, I never got into reading any nonfiction material.

 

Fast forward to today, I am currently reading The Art of Happiness at Work by the Dalai Lama XIV and Howard Cutler.  I must confess that my attitude towards work generally hasn’t been that great for the past few months.  I would wake up in the morning and find myself dreading to make that commute.  I found this book on Amazon by chance, and I subsequently purchased it without any hesitation.

 

The wisdom that the Dalai Lama shares with the reader is nothing but common sense.  The catch is that we all have a tendency to lose sight of such common sense in the midst of our stressful modern lives.  It is also very easy to forget that the people around you are subject to just as much as, or possibly even more stress than you.  The factor that really resonates with my conscience is that the Dalai Lama is explicit in saying that his words in this book are dictated from a secular ethics point of view, rather than a religious point of view.  All he talks about is his thoughts about being a decent human being.  Religion doesn’t really matter in this context.

 

I’m still only half way through, but I find myself smiling much more than I did before picking this book up.  Whenever a nasty thought starts to materialize inside myself, I am making a conscious effort to withhold my inner peace.  The wonderful thing is that the positive effects of my peaceful conscience are manifesting both inside and outside of my workplace.

 

Namaste, Dalai Lama.  Your words have been a timely wake up call for me.  I very much look forward to reading the remainder of your book.

 

The Art of Happiness at Work

Hello world!

So…

Suddenly I have decided to start a blog.  Aside from  the various SNS sites that I have fiddled around with, this is essentially my first real blog post.  Considering I was introduced to various topics of computer science and engineering  in the midst of the dot-com bubble, I initially found this fact quite difficult to believe.  Initially, it seemed to me like high IT/CS skill levels didn’t necessarily correlate with the likelihood for one to maintain his or her thoughts electronically in the cloud.  It turns out that blogging actually might be a very useful tool that allows one to organize and reinforce conglomerate ideas and thoughts within his or her wetware, which in turn may very well increase his or her proficiencies.  I have been inspired to do just this.

I am also going to make a conscious effort to be more keen on the details that constantly drift around in my every day life, as well as the thoughts and feelings that I have continued to neglect deep within my self.  I consider myself to be more an introvert than extrovert.  I intend to capitalize on this quality to dig deeper into my conscience.  Introspection and Reflection are key themes that I want to write about.

I don’t want to overly invest in attention in maintaining this blog.  I don’t want to sacrifice consistency in the effort of making each post overly bombastic.  I want to persevere in this effort.  I want to succeed.

That’s it for now.  More to follow.