Bonsai Philosophy and the Karate Kid

(Guess the end of the world was postponed...)

I didn't know when I first saw a bonsai but I have been fascinated by the miniature trees since I was a child. I thought that there was something mysterious about the art but, thanks to the internet, I found out that it was quite easy to do. Of course, the difficult part is finding bonsai materials..

I have been doing bonsai for almost a year now and I got acquainted with a few people who also engage in the art. Unfortunately for them, bonsai is simply a business. They have none or very little knowledge about the history and the philosophy of bonsai, but they are quite knowledgeable in the process of miniaturization and the training of the trees, and they knew local species suitable for bonsai.

After some googling, I found varied methods of making bonsai which are scientific and surgical and is quite "artificial" compared to the methods used by the Chinese and the Japanese.

If you have seen the movie Karate Kid (Ralph Machio and Pat Morita), Sensei Miyagi used bonsai to teach Daniel the art of meditation. 

Sensei Miyagi teaching Daniel how to clip a bonsai. Sensi Miyagi: "Close your eyes, concentrate. Think only tree..."

The joy of bonsai hunting.  Sensei Miyagi with Daniel hanging on a cliff collecting a bonsai tree. I saw the new Karate kid and I was disappointed to see that the bonsai was replaced by a car. I mean...it's all about inner nature and what could be an apt symbol of the self but a tree., but a car being assembled and disassembled...too mechanical for me. Jackie Chan is too physical for my taste, too.

In the movie, Sensei Miyagi takes Daniel bonsai hunting on a ledge of cliff. For the Japanese, bonsai is a highly philosophical and mystical art. The Japanese hunt for unique trees miniaturized by nature hidden among the giant trees and in the crevices of rocks, and the discovery of beauty is the beginning of the lifelong journey of training and the shaping. So, the search for these unique plants takes on a mystical journey of self discovery, a symbolic search for the inner self and the survival against the elements and the training and forming of the tree as the shaping of the self and destiny.

Of course today and in the west, bonsai has become a hobby which is more concerned with the perfection of the tree. It has become a science that involved a lot of surgical like procedures like grafting and air layering the use of stuffs like enzymes and fertilizers and growth hormones. The gist of the art which is patience and waiting, meditation and self discovery, battle with the inner nature is compromised by the obsession with speeding growth and perfecting form

It is worth recalling that the art of bonsai originated with Buddhist monks in China, who gave the growing of trees in trays an almost religious significance.For them it is a way of establishing link between God, creator of  the universe and nature in all its forms including mankind, striving to follow the divine path by controlling the process of growth and form in trees, though on a human scale.(Pessy)

Good Bye Lesson Plans

The traditional lesson plan was finally phased out by the department. Instead of using the lesson plan, we are now using the daily lesson log. Technically, it is still a lesson plan but it is not as detailed as the traditional lesson plans that had been used by generations of teachers. Lesson logs still require lesson plans or teaching modules, pelcs (Philippine Elementary Learning Competencies), books, etc. as references, but they are not to be re-written everyday on the daily lesson planner as was the norm before. So, instead of re-writing all that stuff, we just write the objectives, lesson for the day, references and materials, the method for the lesson, and the number of pupils who have passed the lesson evaluation and the action to be taken for those who did not, whether they are for remediation or whether the lesson is for re-teaching.   New teachers with below two years experience are still required to use the detailed lesson plan.

When I entered the public school system about three years ago, I saw the time and the effort it required for teachers to re-write lesson plans that they (or we) copied either from modules or from old proto-type lesson plans that they (or we) have used for years. Lesson plan writing was simply an automatic effort on the part of the teachers because it was required and was checked on a daily basis, but in reality, there were no real lesson preparationS; it was just copying--the time needed for “real” preparation was taken by the long and laborious time for re-writing lesson plans especially for teachers teaching multiple subjects which in the case of elementary teachers was the norm. And to be fair for the veteran teachers who from experience have memorized their lessons almost to the letter, detailed lesson plans were superfluous. I thought that the effort was a waste of time--time that the teachers could use for materials preparation and/or for reading related and relevant materials about the subject they teach or simply reading for general knowledge which is a must for teachers.

There are withdrawal syndromes, I think, because for almost three years, I got used to writing on my lesson planner on my vacant time. I am also used to seeing teachers head bowed, writing furiously on their planner trying to finish their multiple-lesson plans as early as possible so that they would not have to write after classes.

Anyway, this is the end of an era, I hope, where teachers have to bring their lesson planners, teaching materials, etc. at home to work on them.

 A relaxed teacher is a productive teacher, if I must say so.

Hearse, dreams and blah, blah, blah...

This is how it's supposed to be!

I was motorcycling along downtown Taytay one afternoon when I saw a slow moving Toyota Innova being followed by a group of people some wearing black dresses and most of them were under their umbrellas, many were in tears. Of course, I instantly knew that this was a funeral procession, but I found it weird and hmmm… inappropriate and, to use stronger words, cheap and disrespectful of the dead to use a minivan to transport their remains to the cemetery.

Call me traditionalist but I am used to seeing big, wide bodied, majestic and powerful black station wagons carrying the departed’s remains. The design and the bodyworks of these vehicles radiate grief, solemnity and the macabre and that’s what makes these vehicles special-they symbolize the dignity and the mystery of death. The mere sight of one of these vehicles instantly invokes in the mind a sense of grief whether they are just passing by or on their way to the cemetery.

When I was a boy I had this weird dream. The back of our house was a rice field (now, its a squatter colony) with ipil-ipil and banana trees and the soft fresh air that blew especially during the afternoons never fail to lull me to sleep. The backdoor was open to let the air in and I was lying on a cot when I saw a big black hearse passing by. I was puzzled because there was no road, not even a dirt road there, just rice field with dikes or pilapil. What scared me most was how the hearse traveled as if it was floating on air, so relaxed, so serene.

Of course, afternoons dreams are vivid especially when one falls asleep without noticing it and the line dividing reality from dream was crossed so smoothly that it becomes difficult to tell. Anyway, I rose from the cot making up my mind if what I saw was real or if it was just a dream.

Anyway...

There is culture surrounding these vehicles and with the slow disappearance (or phase out) of these vehicles, I fear the superstitions and the stories inspired by them would also disappear.

I mean I had experiences of cock-fighters (sabungeros) backing out and going home upon seeing these vehicles. They look upon these big black vehicles as an omen of bad luck. How would these gamblers react when they see a Toyota Innova or Mitsubishi Adventure hearse? I mean these vehicles….I cannot imagine…these vehicles are not ominous; they are harmless and they evoke family, outings, fun, even when these vehicles are painted black.  

Hmmmm....times are really changing.

Neglected

Hmmmm…it’s the beginning that’s difficult.

I am thinking about my blog and not having posted anything for weeks makes me feel guilty about it. Somehow, like my fish in my tanks and my bonsais and other plants, I have developed this feeling that my blog is somehow a living thing that requires attention and care.

Hmmm…maybe a symptom of OCD or something,

Anyway, I was thinking…”I haven’t written another stupid thing on my blog and what could be the reason?”

Maybe, I gotten so used to teaching in Filipino that I have forgotten how to use English (bad as my English is, I try to keep in practice by writing inane stuffs on my blog).

Or, this is what I fear, after being swallowed by the “system”-nilamon na ng sistema-I have become a zombie, one of those forlorn, weary, tired, haggard semi-dead human being that goes to school in the morning carrying classroom materials—a zombie bent on doing one thing alone: to drone in the class.  

PBB

I heard from the news that the government is now doing away with the uniform Christmas bonus that amounts to ten thousand pesos which, as have become the practice, was named after presidents like during GMA’s time it was called Glorification something and during President Noynoy’s time was called Pnoy.

Anyway, instead of the uniform bonus, the government will now be implementing the PBB or the performance based bonus. This means that the bonus each government employee could receive will range from the minimum 5,000 pesos to the ceiling 35, 000 pesos. Hmmm…I am thinking that this is an administrative nightmare for the personnel involved in the processing of the PBB. Of course, the positive side is that the incentive would encourage civil servants to perform better but the thing is, I bet that this system could be used by bosses to favor their pets, which is not unthinkable and actually happens.

As a government employee, I am adapting a wait and see attitude. 

Iron Sky

Yesterday I had nothing to do and I envied my neighbors DVD marathoning, so I went to the nearest bootleg dvd vendor and bought a movie collection. I opted for European movies some of which are in Germanic or Nordic languages with English subtitles superimposed on Chinese subs that, unfortunately, gave me headaches for the rest of the day and up to now I still feel a little hangover.

 Anyway, one of the movies I saw was Iron Sky. The US sent space mission over the darkside of the moon. Two astronauts, one a model and the other a real astronaut,  was sent there as a propaganda to boost the re-election campaign of the President of the US, who by the way was a lady with treadmill addiction.  Unknown to the president and the model astronaut, the other mission was to look for Helium 3.

While exploring the darkside of the moon, the astronaut discovered a Nazi base.

The Nazis evacuated to the moon in 1945 and constructed a base. There they continued on their plot to re-conquer the world in 2018.

Anyway, better look for the movie to enjoy it. The movie was low budgeted but it had good CGI effects and the space battles between the Nazi's space zeppelins and saucers vs. the US, Japan, UK etc. space ships was quite entertaining. There was also some racist stuff in the movie which was really inevitable since this was a movie about Nazis.   

There was funny scene about computers. The astronaut was caught and the nazi scientist, who by the way looked like Einstein, took a look at his iPod and asked what it was. The astronaut told him that it was a computer. The scientist laughed and showed the astronaut his computer which occupied the room. Anyway, the ipod was the key to run the space Nazi's giant space warship.

If you're a sci-fi fan and really love movies that doesn't take itself seriously, watch this movie.

Monotheistic polytheism

I have been thinking about God. Being a personal God, that we could relate to literally it is then safe to say that believers have different and may I say individualistic conception and understanding of God that depends upon the individual's need. There this psychological vacuum and this vacuum shapes or influence the conception of God. This is undeniable. The idea of God during childhood is different from that of adolescence, adulthood and old age. Each stage has its own development of the understanding of God and though they may be called developmental, but there is also that element of  conceptualization involved with it--creating personal ideas of God, I suppose it could be called revelation.

What I imagine this to be is that each individual have this doctrinal understanding of God as taught be religious teachers that becomes the framework or the skeleton for the developing idea of God. 

On the theological level we have the doctrine of God's omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, perfection, uniqueness, immutability, transcendence, immanence and all that stuff and fancy words that no ordinary folks ever think about or may not even attempt to understand.  

There's the moral or ethical side of God being good, hates evil, punishes sinners by sending their souls to hell and rewarding the believers by sending their souls into heaven and that good and bad stuff that goes with ethics. 

There's the mythological and anthromorphical side to God like the talking bush (I think 'botanical' is more apt), the story of Noah, Jonah etc. The virgin birth, resurrection, etc. 

There's the historical controversies that killed a lot of people like the trinity (this is not a clear doctrine since this is not clearly taught in the scriptures), the hypostatic-union of the natures of Christ (again, the teachings are implied but not directly taught and I sometimes wonder if the first Christians even thought about these things); the war on the interpretation of the word "body and blood" in the Lord's Supper that also almost split a nation; baptism, clerics, church organization,...etc.

Then there's relational side of God, the master and servant, potter and the pot, father and son (and daughter, may I add). All these things (hmmm...did I forget something?) Ohh, I forgot the prophetic or the eschatogical things but, as complicated as things are already...let's just, let's leave the second coming and the end of the world alone fr the meantime.

As these characteristics or picture of God or idea of God are slowly assimilated in our mind, the idea then becomes too bulky and heavy and I don't think ordinary Christians even knew or bother to think about these stuffs, which, may i say, is very, very understandable.

Clearly many or most philosophers and scientists (may I add theologians who may like to play in theological arena but personally...I mean what can I say to a theologian who thinks of God as the ground of all being but that his foundations are shaken...)  could not accept such a personal being for a God. Which quite understandable because it smacks of polytheism.

Polytheism? yes, this is what I think it is. There's this two level of the understanding of God.

First is what is taught about God by the revelation of scriptures, whatever the scriptures maybe. God is presented together with his characteristics as defined by inspired revelation or the scriptures (or holy books). So, this is the superficial picture of God; the doctrines, the creeds, dogmas, etc. which gives an illusion of uniformity. I call it an illusion of uniformity because, like I said before, these theological concepts are too abstract for the common folks and that's why symbols are used to represent these concepts, but the oversimplification created by the use of symbols created more problems for the church, like the adoration of idols and icons.

The first layer, unfortunately, is superficial and may I add, resides in the cognitive faculty of the mind. This knowledge of God is what gives this idea of  unity or the idea of monotheism--that is worshiping one true God. well, this could be true at this level. 

The idea of a personal God is what gives me some discomfort because in espousing this idea that one an relate to God like relating to a father or a friend etc.somehow creates this secondary understanding of God to which most of the times is a self-ish conception of God. This has become a challenge because the unity or uniformity of God is also being diluted (or even polluted) by the diverse way in which God is being understood and related to.

So, there's this second level of grasping God and at this level, the identity of God is somewhat dissolved in the psychological...hmmm. At this level, we each have our own God--uniform at the top but diverse, different and unique at the personal level.

Of course one could argue that, like in a family, the chidlren have different idea about their father but this does not make the father different for each children. But then again...this analogy is inadequate because fathers are physical beings.

(Why o why do I even think about these things!)

Einstein, God, blah, blah...

I was oft amused whenever I see quotations supposedly made by Einstein about God with the idea or intent that Einstein believed in God, as I would supposed, the Christians conceived God to be. This is kinda weird because Einstein and other thinkers for that matter, who we may assume(d) to profess belief in God do not really believe in the personal God in the tradition of the Judeo-Christian faith.  

The man who is thoroughly convinced of of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of natural events--provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causality seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that man's action is determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, anymore than an inanimate object is responsible for the motion it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behaviors should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

The main source of present day conflicts between the spheres of religion and science lies in the concept of a personal God...

In their struggle for ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God...

The further the spiritual evolution of  mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie in the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. (Ideas and Opinions, Albert Einstein)

Einstein's conception of God is that of Spinoza.s God, impersonal, cool, and that everything is in God and that nature is the expression of God. So, Spinoza's conception of God is antithetical to that of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Cyber-libel thing

Though I’m an internet user, I am not really that interested in the newly implemented anti-cyber crime law because I consider myself a law abiding citizen with no intention of engaging in any cyber crime. I mean, I don’t do hacking, phishing, identity theft, cyber sex, etc. All I do on the net is watch video, listen to music, read and share articles, write badly about some stupid stuff, look for weird things on the net,  etc. I mean these things are harmless and no one, I imagine, would persecute me or other people like me for these things.

But then again, I was watching the news when a lawyer, who opposed the libel clause of the law, explained that even the act of liking or sharing what could be considered as libelous stuff on the internet especially on the social media is tantamount to breaking this law, being a party to the crime. Well, that caught my attention because I and most people share stuff on the net openly without really thinking about whether the stuff shared is true, relevant, nice, okay, morally aligned, politically correct, holly and blessed, etc. 

People share stuffs on the net because they maybe interesting, weird, thought provoking, stupid, gory, yucky,  insane whatever and sometimes people “like” stuff on the internet not because they like what was shared but simply because they like the person who shared and sometimes they do not even bother to view or read what they liked. What is worrying is the thought that I or anyone could be --real or hypothetical—charged with libel for sharing or liking some stuff that friends shared for whatever reasons.

Imagine the thought, even if this is just hypothetical, that I could be or anyone charged libel for writing libelous stuff like saying that Senator ______ ______ is a nincompoomp, ignorant, no good do-gooder, for putting that libel thing in the law. (See I could not even put the senator's name for fear of being charged with libel!)

This is taking the fun out of the internet. I don’t go to rallies and carry placards name calling politicians and I do not do burning of effigies (why are these people not charged with any crime, by the way? They burn things, pollute the atmosphere, cause traffic jams, use children to hold placards etc.). I and many of my countrymen and country women and the youth (the elderly) have the net to express our disgusts,  anger, frustrations,  #(&^()*(^&a***_%$, against the government, politicians, and petroleum companies etc. and  we do not burn paper, pollute the environment, or cause traffic…now internet freedom is being policed.

Of course the Department of Justice assured that what the opposers of the new law are saying would not happen that’s why the word “prima facie” was in there. DOJ can not shut down or persecute anyone without prima facie evidence (what in the world is a prima facie evidence and how could they determine it? Keywords?). Have no fear because the DOJ would not just sweep down on sites or arrest anyone for writing or posting or sharing libelous stuff, there are rules and stuff that has to be worked out.

I don’t know much about these things and I try not to think about these legal blah, blah, blah, and I do see the need for this kind of law but I would sure feel better and freer and safer if the good sneators would just scrap that libel thing because then it would really be…hmmm….hmmm…this is stupid: really be more fun surfing the net in the Philippines.

Blah…sue my neighbor.

Schopenhauer: Will

I have been reading a little about Schopenhauer. I was sort of chipping away at his book, the World as Will and idea. 

Schopenhauer developed Kant's idea of the thing in itself. Kant thought that beyond our perception and experience, there is an underlying reality which is beyond the grasp of our understanding: "understanding cannot go beyond sensibilities." this underlying reality is what Kant called the "thing-in-itself." Simply put, what we see is what our mind make us see. A chair looks like chair to us because that's how our eyes perceive it, and this is how our mind process the perception but the chair is not limited to what we see. The chair has properties that our senses and our mind cannot perceive because of the limitation of our senses and our minds  and we cannot go into the "thing-it-self.". Our understanding is like an a air-jet. The higher the jet fly to the atmosphere, the lesser air it gets and in the process, it will crash and burn. (Heard this from Prof. Cahoone).

Schopenhauer thought that the underlying reality was the will. (Other philosophers, especially the idealist, proposed  mind/s, or ideas, as the underlying reality.)

The Will is the thing-in-itself. Schopenhauer's Will is not the individual psychological will, but a universal metaphysical principle, spaceless and timeless and uncaused, even as Hegel's Reason, as he held, is not merely an individual function. The Will, says Schopenhauer, manifests itself in the individual as impulse, instinct and craving. The Will, again, it is that appears as consciousness and body. Thus the true self of man is identified with the Will.

Everything in the world, too, becomes an expression of the Will. The world is Will and Idea and has no independent material existence. The Will is above the Idea and is the only reality. The Will is blind, unconscious, and the Idea which is conscious is only its appearance in the intellect. We see nothing anywhere except the Will and the body which is the expression of the Will. Right from unconscious matter up to the self-conscious man the Will alone reigns supreme. It appears unconscious in something and conscious in another. It is all strife, activity, yearning that we observe everywhere. Desire is the cause of all things. With the Yogavasishtha, Schopenhauer would say that there is the eye because there is desire to see, there is the ear because there is desire to hear. The body and bodily functions are the expression of the Will. The digestive organs are the objectifications of hunger, the feet of the desire for movement, the brain of the desire for knowledge. There can be no body, and no world, without the Will. Longing, craving, or function, determines the nature of being, of the kind of organisation which becomes the body of the Will. The Will-to-live is the root of all things. It is the cause of struggle, suffering, pain. The Will is the great evil that accounts for the misery of all beings.

Schopenhauer's concept of the Will is fascinating. The Will is the Reality and it is blind urge. Consciousness or intelligence is its phenomenal effect made manifest in higher organisms in order to pave the way for the work of the Will in the world. For Schopenhauer intelligence is not the essential nature of the self. It is only a production of the brain created by the Will for its own purposes. Consciousness is an appearance, Will the Reality which is the immortal force that never dies with the death of individuals, never perishes through change. It may manifest itself in a mortal shape as individuals, but it cannot itself cease to be. The Will is imperishable being. (Swami Krishnananda)

Ran out of fuel

I was on my home for lunch last Friday when my motorcycle conked out. I kick started it, then I heard the engine start and then choked again. I kick started it again and it ran for about a few meters before finally stopping,  for good. I was lucky because I made it a few meters to the Shell station. I pushed the motorcycle  to the pump and then I asked the attendant to fill a hundred pesos worth of unleaded gasoline (which was about a glass of fuel).

An old photo.

I was getting my wallet out of my pocket when the realized that I forgot my wallet; it was still on the table in the house, a few kilometers away. I looked at the gas attendant, gave my riding jacket and told him that I forgot my wallet; I had no money to pay him. I left him my jacket as a security and told him I would be coming back for it. I did not gave him any time to reply; I kick started the motorcycle and rode out of the gas station. After having my lunch at home, I passed by the gas station to pay the gas and then I picked my riding jacket. The attendant smiled and said thanks.

Well, what could I say but welcome.

This was the first time it happened to me, but I think this was the fourth or fifth time my motorcycle ran dry of fuel. Gas is just too expensive.