Faith and Truth

Faith without basis is not faith at all. It's called capitulation to the dark forces of the distant, distinct past when Man barely learned about bipedalism. Faith must be based on sound facts and solid reasoning, not on wishful thinking. There are two types of people: one relies on soothing, unsubstantiated fairy tales as a crutch to cope with the terrors of living. The other, somehow always in the minority, makes full use of their faculty of ressoning, looks at life squarely and tackles all of its problems by their own efforts without going through the farce of prayers and invocations of a fictional being.

Recent postulation was made concerning the surviving communist regimes in China, Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba that they are wily and stubborn and that they would not voluntarily institute reforms to head off the kind of revolts and uprisings which are raging across Norrh Africa and the Middle East. While this reasoning had some merit, it wasnot irrefutable because nothing is impossible and beyond reach as far as human affairs are concerned. That's the beauty of being human. We are not merely physical objects which are subject to immutable physical laws. We are beings with free will. Once we are determined to bring changes no matter what the costs are, changes will occur. Until 1989, nobody would imagine the Soviet Union would swiftly disintegrate and Eastern European states would become democratic societies in our life time. Humans are beings of momentum and imitation. Revolutionary winds of change are blowing across North Africa and the Middle East. If Saudi Arabia undergoes a regime change, after Bahrain and Yemen, the winds of change will reach China and Vietnam. The fates of Vietnam and China are intertwined. It is inconceivable that a regime change in Vietnam takes place without having a similar process in China, and vice versa. For the sake of our country, we prefer the change takes place in China first in order to minimize the loss of lives and properties in Vietnam. In the mean time, we must be ready for the change and use it to propel our country to much needed progress and modernity, and not for internal squabbling for the spoils of power. Vietnam and the Vietnamese people have to be above all parties and individuals.

Wissai

Grief and Peace

Death comes to all of us. Death has many forms. Too often we only think of one form: the day the heart stops beating in us or in the person who is dear to us. We rarely think the end of a romance, a love, a marriage as death in disguise, but it is and sometimes it gives rise to more intense grief than the loss of a life. You once grieved and you grieved for an awfully long time for a romanticized love and then an infatuation. Now looking back, the grieving process was your way of saying goodbye to a long adolescence and idealism. You don't love them anymore. They now seem too small, too common, too predictable. They are not like you at all. So you stop loving them and the grieving period is over.

Are You on Fire?

 
Self Portrait
 
It doesn't interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.
I want to know if you belong -- or feel abandoned;
If you know despair
Or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need to change you;
If you can look back with firm eyes
Saying "this is where I stand."
I want to know if you know how to melt
Into that fierce heat of living
Falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing
To live day by day
With the consequence of love
And the bitter unwanted passion
Of your sure defeat.
I have been told
In that fierce embrace
Even the gods
Speak of God.

~ David Whyte ~

It does not matter to me if
You believe in God.
No, not anymore.
What matters is whether
You're on fire
With your beliefs,
And the relief such a fire would bring
To your soul;
Whether it has burned away all your impurities
And all you have left is love
In your heart.

It does not matter whether
You continue loving me,
But whether your love
Has changed you and me
For the better.

Roberto Wissai

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Magic of Words

To read his words is to see how he thinks, to watch his mind at work. The rage and the loneliness are the fuel, the restless mind is the talent, but the sentences he taught himself to construct, by trial and error, by repetition and borrowing, they are the magic in print and they are the sword that he uses to cut through ignorance and phoniness.

He read last night about Mike Tyson and a gorgeous-looking female porn star. They both read philosophy and adore Nietzsche. All suffering souls discover Nietzsche sooner or later. Like him, they were attracted to the abyss and self-destruction. Like him, they didn't give in to nihilism. They eventually said yes to life, to the will to transcend and transform. And like him, there's a certain narcissism in everything they do. The truth of the matter is the first love and infatuation one must have is oneself. It's far healthier than self-loathing.

Wissai

Rivalry and Maturity

No, you are not going to comment and prove the other is a despicable fake. You will walk away and concentrate on your mission of self-improvement. You have the free will to be morally what you want to be. You must keep your contempt in check, even with despicable cowards and phonies. They should not occupy your mind. After all, they are scums and dregs of society, rubbish and filth and garbage that inevitably appear after an event of human mass gathering.

Remember, there is strength in silence. Silence is the conservation of energy. Speech is the dissipation of energy. What you need to do is to stay connected with the master in you. Through him, you learn about the mastery of the art of living. A man must be the master of himself, of his emotions, of his feelings, of his desires and aversions. Silence, even under provocations, is the first step of self-mastery. After all, you have read the trash presented as "thoughts" of others. Every dog wants to bark. Every rooster wants to crow. Every human wants to say something, no matter what is said makes sense or not. The impulse to make one's presence known;to leave a mark, a scent; to assert oneself; to claim one's territory; to jostle for a place in the sun, is strong. However, stronger men of will turn their backs on all that and keep their mouths shut, first with a smile on their faces, but as time goes by, the smile fades away and slowly is replaced with impassivity and then serenity. Their mind is not rippled by behavior of lesser men, of monkeys and dogs. Their mind is flat and smooth like a lake in a windless early dawn when the sun just barely appears on the horizon. A pontificator who pontificates on everything is an ignoramus who carries a deep inferiority complex inside him. Speak only of what you really know. And only sparingly.

Wissai

Incipient Feelings of Love

He looked at her eyes. She shyly averted his gaze. He said softly, so what do you think of what I just said. She kept looking down at the ground, blushing, and breathing hard. Finally, she said, I don't know, I am confused, I am not sure, I need to go home now. Sure, he said, I'll escort you home.

So that was how it happened. He remembered the scene. It never left his mind. It has stayed on after all these years, after the war, after the divorces, after all the recurrent dreams, simply because it was so beautiful a scene, despite all the mistakes he has made, all the relationships he has gone through. Yes, he no longer loves her. He would not come over and say hello if he happens to run into her, but memories about her have a way to live on. Everything he does now, every effort he makes to improve himself, gets its impetus from her, from the pains, the sorrows brought on by her betrayal after a wonderful three-year odyssey of first love, at least on his part. Love is short. Memory is forever.

The Sounds of Flute, Violin, Saxophone, and Piano

You are no musician. You wish you were. You keep telling yourself you would learn music before you die so you could set some of your words to music. Anyway, here are your impressions or rather, your vibrations when you hear the sounds made by the following musical instruments

Flute:

A wind instrument. In the right hand, we have a sound that is haunting, lingering, and floating forever in the air till your soul transformed by the sound.

Violin:

A string instrument, similar in effects to the flute, but more varied and intense due to the stronger vvibrations of the sound.

Saxophone:

Another wind instrument, and the most passionate and intense sound of all. The best time to hear it is at night. That's when we know Man is an emotional being and he communicates his emotions more than just through verbal language. Contrary to the staccato sounds produced by instruments of percussion or simple, primitive pattern of rhythms produced by drums, he somehow finds ways how he feels by blowing air into a brass instrument that magnifies the sounds and carries far into a distance in the stillness of the night. It's difficult not to have all the molecules of our beings stirred up when we hear the wailings of a saxophone.

Piano:

The granddaddy of all musical instruments, capable of evoking feelings of serenity, sadness, light-hearted joys, and unrestrained flow of ecstasy. It is a complete instrument thanks to simultaneous production of different notes.

All societies make music, just like all humans are endowed with language. While language is a barrier from one narion to another, music transcends human barriers and unites us and reminds us that we are all related and can understand one another and that indeed of all creatures and beings on this planet, we are an epitome and an exception.

Wissai