23.9.08

Failure

Ashley Montagu:

The deepest human defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.

Edward de Bono:

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

Elaine Maxwell:

My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man's doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny.

Elbert Hubbard:

A failure is a man who has blundered but is not capable of cashing in on the experience.

George Bernard Shaw:

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.

George Bernard Shaw:

My reputation grows with every failure.

George Bernard Shaw:

My reputation grows with every failure.

Havelock Ellis:

It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success.

Herbert B. Swope:

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try to please everybody.

It's a Wonderful Life:

Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis:

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much.

James Russell Lowell:

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.

Jessamyn West:

It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

John Dewey:

Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.

Kin Hubbard:

You won't skid if you stay in a rut.

Laurence J. Peter:

There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.

Lloyd Jones:

Those who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try nothing and succeed.

Madame de Stael:

The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes.

May Sarton:

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

Mother Teresa:

Keep in mind that our community is not composed of those who are already saints, but of those who are trying to become saints. Therefore let us be extremely patient with each other's faults and failures.

Oscar Wilde:

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Paulo Coelho:

But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for.

Pearl S. Buck:

Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.

Peter Drucker:

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Rabindranath Tagore:

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

Ralph Ellison:

Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Do not waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Robert F. Kennedy:

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

Robert Frost:

The best way out is always through.

Samuel Goldwyn:

You've got to take the bitter with the sour.

Samuel Smiles:

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.

Samuel Smiles :

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Thomas Alva Edison:

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Thomas Fuller:

No garden is without its weeds.

Wallace Stegner:

Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.

William M. Winans:

Not doing more than the average is what keeps the average down.

William Saroyan:

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

Winston Churchill:

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

Applied Maths

============ ========= ========= ========= ========= = Some practical maths for dummies:

3 powerful equations,

2 extremely powerful postulates,

Equation 1

Human = eat + sleep + work + enjoy

Donkey = eat + sleep

Therefore,

Human = Donkey + work + enjoy

Therefore,

Human - enjoy = Donkey + work

In other words,

Human that don't know enjoy = Donkey that work

============ ========= ========= ========= =========

Equation 2

Men = eat + sleep + earn money

Donkeys = eat + sleep

Therefore,

Men = Donkeys + earn money

Therefore,

Men - earn money = Donkeys

In other words,

Men that don't earn money = Donkeys

============ ========= ========= ========= =========

Equation 3

Women = eat + sleep + spend

Donkeys = eat + sleep

Therefore,

Women = Donkeys + spend

Therefore,

Women - spend = Donkeys

In other words,

Women that don't spend = Donkeys

============ ========= ========= ========= =========

To Conclude:

From Equation 2 and Equation 3

Men that don't earn money = Women that don't spend.

So, Men earn money not to let women become Donkeys! (Postulate 1)

And, Women spend not to let men become Donkeys! (Postulate 2)

So, we have?

Men + Women = Donkeys + earn money + Donkeys + spend money

Therefore from Postulates 1 and 2, we can conclude,

Man + Woman = 2 Donkeys that live happily together!

22.9.08

Suffering

Suffering is part of the divine idea.
The Truth of Suffering The Buddha's discovery of the solution to the problem of suffering began with the recognition that life is suffering. This is the first of the Four Noble Truths. If people examine their own experiences or look at the world around them, they will see that life is full of suffering. Suffering may be Physical or Mental. Physical Suffering Physical suffering takes many forms. People must have observed at one time or another, how their aged relatives suffer. Most of the aged suffer aches and pains in their joints and many find it hard to move about by themselves. With advancing age, the lderlyfind life difficult because they cannot see, hear or eat properly. The pain of disease, which strikes young and old alike, is unbearable, and the pain of death brings much grief and suffering. Even the moment of birth gives pain both to the mother and to the child that is born. The truth is that suffering of birth, old age, sickness and death is unavoidable. Some fortunate people may now be enjoying relatively happy and carefree lives, but it is only a matter of time before they, too, will experience suffering. What is worse, this suffering must be born alone. Mental Suffering Beside physical suffering, there are also various forms of mental suffering. People feel sad, lonely or depressed when they lose someone they love through separation or death. They feel irritated or uncomfortable when they are forced to be company of those whom they dislike or those who are unpleasant. People also suffer when they unable to satisfy their limitless needs and wants. Happiness in Life When the Buddha said that there is suffering in life, he did not deny that there is happiness also. On the contrary, he spoke of many kinds of happiness such as the happiness of friendship, the happiness of family life, and so on. But all these kinds of happiness are impermanent and when one loses them, one suffers. For example, one may like a pleasant and charming person and enjoy his or her company. But when one is separated from that person, the happiness turns into suffering. One suffers because of one's attachment to pleasures that do not last. People often remain unaware of the inevitable sufferings of life because they are distracted by temporary pleasures. Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result. Experience is the extract of suffering. Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning. “The superior man is distressed by the limitations of his ability; he is not distressed by the fact that men do not recognize the ability that he has.” “If you suffer, thank God! -- it is a sure sign that you are alive.” We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full. Character cannot be developed in peace and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. “He who suffers much will know much” We are never ripe till we have been made so by suffering. Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead. Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. We cannot live, suffer or die for somebody else, for suffering is too precious to be shared. “Suffering is the price of being alive, and it is music and singing and art that has helped me live through some of the most difficult things that have happened to me”

21.9.08

Pain: Do I need to experience it to understand it?

With the passage of time
“But it pains when I move the arm” “Don’t worry Mrs. Sagar, it will improve with the passage of time” In the afternoon when I was in my retiring room, I wondered how easy it is to say, “It will improve with the passage of time.” What about the person who is actually bearing the pain? Only he or she knows the pain.
Pain……What is this?????
Pain, in the sense of physical pain, is a typical sensory experience that may be described as the unpleasant awareness of a noxious stimulus or bodily harm. Suffering, or pain, is an individual's basic affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm.Suffering may be qualified as physical or mental. It may come in all degrees of intensity, from mild to intolerable. Factors of duration and frequency of occurrence usually compound that of intensity. In addition to such factors, people's attitudes toward suffering may take into account how much it is, in their opinion, avoidable or unavoidable, useful or useless, deserved or undeserved.All sentient beings suffer during their lives, in diverse manners, and often dramatically. As a result, many fields of human activity are concerned, from their own points of view, with some aspects of suffering. These aspects may include its nature and processes, its origin and causes, its meaning and significance, its related personal, social, and cultural behaviors, its remedies, management, and uses. Pain is such an uncomfortable feeling that even a tiny amount of it is enough to ruin every enjoyment. Pain is life -- the sharper, the more evidence of life. The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body. There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer --committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear. "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." "The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain." Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria. There is no coming to consciousness without pain. He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.