Mengstupiditis

All I ask for is 62 billion dollars to buy Disney

2011-11-29T16:08:00.000-08:00

Not too long ago, I met with a bunch of nice people from Merrill Lynch. They said if I hired them as financial advisors, I'd get preferred treatment if I ever needed a loan. So I asked for a loan of $62 billion to buy Disney. They didn't even bother to process my application.

Don't ever trust the bankers who tell you that you are their preferred customer. Sure, they promise the sky, but when you actually ask to borrow $62 billion to buy Disney, they'll just ignore you.

One moment of insight into impermanence

2011-11-20T11:29:00.000-08:00

The Buddha said to Anathapindika:

“In the past, householder, there was a brahmin named Velama. He gave such a great alms offering as this: eighty-four thousand bowls of gold filled with silver; eighty-four thousand bowls of silver filled with gold; eighty-four thousand bronze bowls filled with bullion; eighty-four thousand elephants, chariots, milch cows, maidens, and couches, many millions of fine cloths, and indescribable amounts of food, drink, ointment, and bedding.

...

“As great as all this might be, it would be even more fruitful if one would develop a mind of loving-kindness even for the time it takes to pull a cow’s udder.

"And as great as all this might be, it would be even more fruitful still if one would develop the perception of impermanence just for the time it takes to snap one’s fingers.”

Bodhi, Bhikkhu (2005-08-10). In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon (pp. 178-180). Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.

Resource allocation fail at a Japanese restaurant

2011-11-04T08:33:00.000-07:00

I remember going to a ridiculously expensive Japanese restaurant in Las Vegas. Usually, I only want to eat sushi at Japanese restaurants but we ended up also ordering noodles because the sushi was insanely expensive while the noodles dishes were merely ridiculously expensive.

After we ordered, the sushi arrived almost immediately, but the noodles took forever to arrive. Long after we'd finished our sushi, there was still no sign of noodles. That was especially strange since the 3 sushi chefs were just hanging around not doing anything. I joked that it must be one of those comic situations where 3 sushi chefs were just hanging around while 1 noodles guy was feverishly working at the back.

Of course, like most things I joke about, this one turned out to be true. As we were leaving the restaurant, we peeked into the kitchen and there was literally one guy feverishly cooking noodles while the 3 chefs outside were still idling.

It was obvious to me what the boss should have done. Obviously, he should have made the noodle guy work harder.

At this moment, I am not suffering

2011-10-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

(Image from liquidsculpture.com)

A couple of days ago, while I was drinking a glass of water in my kitchen, a powerful thought suddenly arose in my mind and refused to go away. That thought was:

"At this moment, right here, right now, I am not suffering."

The thought that immediately preceded it was remembering my first meditation teacher, the late Godwin Samararatne, one of the great lay meditation teachers in the world during his lifetime, but mostly unknown to the world.

A number of us suspected that Godwin was not just an "ordinary" great teacher, we suspected that he may be enlightened, in the Buddhist sense of the word. Every time that topic came up, though, he would brush it aside with humorous humility. For example, he would say that, "I don't know what an enlightened being looks like, but I know he doesn't look like this", then pointing to himself. And then everybody would laugh.

One time, in private, my friend who was hosting Godwin kept pushing that question. As usual, Godwin kept brushing it aside humbly, but my friend would have none of that humility BS, he just kept asking. Finally, Godwin paused, and then with a serious expression, he said, "Let's put it this way, I have no more suffering."

I remembered that, and then a thought occurred to me that even though I was not free from suffering, I had the next best thing, which was that at that very moment, I was not suffering.

That thought was so powerful it kept reoccurring in my mind. Every now and then, the thought would re-arise that says, "At this moment, I am not suffering." Every time that happened, I returned to peace.

We may be able to frame a practice around this powerful idea. After all, maybe freedom from suffering is simply not suffering at this moment at every moment indefinitely. This suggests the practice that begins with recognizing when I am not suffering right now, understanding the conditions that enabled it, and then cultivating those same conditions for the future. Allow me to write my suggestion in verse:

Temporarily free from greed,
Temporarily free from hatred,
Temporarily free from grasping and aversion,
At this moment, I am not suffering.

Cultivating generosity, to be free from greed in the future,
Cultivating kindness and compassion, to be free from hatred in the future,
Cultivating wisdom, to be free from grasping and aversion in the future,
I create the conditions for non-suffering in the future.

In giving, in loving and in meditating,
I free myself.

Nothing the Buddha hasn't already said, but slightly reframed in a new context.

How to Chase away your customers

2011-10-17T23:31:00.000-07:00

I recently opened my first account with Chase Bank. As part of opening that account, I made an initial check deposit. Today, I received a letter saying that deposit is on hold because "the deposited check is not consistent with the account's normal deposit activity."

This is an initial deposit in a brand new account, it is 100% (1 out of 1) of the account's "normal deposit activity". Duh!

It gets worse, the letter includes nonsensical statements such as this (referring to the deposit): "If the item is returned to us unpaid, your account will be charged for the amount of this item." Huh?

And the comedy continues. The signature area of their credit card seems to be coated with some chemical that makes it impossible for pen ink to stick, so I could not sign the card with any of my pens. Ironically, the credit card is branded as "Ink". It should have been "No Ink".

I'm now seriously concerned I let this institution handle my money. This bank seems to have trouble even with foundational probabilistic reasoning (such as 1/1 = 100%). I probably should have known better than to hand my money to folks who brand their credit cards "Ink". Jeez. Then again, you would think that if their branding was this bad, they must be good at something else. Besides, I'm too lazy to change banks or move my money out. My laziness is Chase Bank's friend.

How am I? I am happy and at peace

2011-10-12T12:49:00.000-07:00

Whenever people asked me, "How are you?" I used to have one of two frequent responses:
- "I am fine."
- "Busy, busy."

I found both responses to be unsatisfactory. So recently, I decided to change my response to, "I am happy and at peace" whenever it is true. And since I am happy and at peace a lot, thanks to my years of mindfulness training, even when I'm busy and feeling overwhelmed (which also happens a lot), it is fast becoming my default response.

To my surprise, I found that response to have a big impact on others. Some people tell me that when they hear that response, they immediately also feel happy and at peace. Wow. The simple act of articulating your own inner well-being can inspire others. Very cost-effective.

I also discovered that responding that way has an impact on me. When I stop saying, "I'm busy, busy" and start saying "I'm happy and at peace", my frame of reference changes. I stopped seeing my being as an island of peace surrounded by a sea of busy-ness, and started seeing it as an island of busy-ness surrounded by a sea of peace. The circumstantial situation is unchanged, but the mind frames it differently, and that change in framing alone changes the mental and emotional state. It makes the mind perceive the peace more easily than it usually does, and what the mind can perceive easily, it can indulge in easily. So mind changes its indulgence from busy-ness to peace.

I hope you too are happy and at peace, my friend.

I'm Still Thinking Different, Steve

2011-10-07T10:11:00.000-07:00

I have always thought different. I have always been different. I am the crazy one, the misfit, the rebel, even by Google standards. Eric Schmidt half-jokingly wagged his finger at me and called me a "troublemaker".

In retrospect, I think I have been so successful in my life because I thought so differently. It has not been easy, however. Thinking different means you never really fit in. It means nobody can really understand you, ever. It is very lonely here. Once you are here, there are only two paths. One is a slow, lonely path towards some form of self-destruction. The other is to let go of your ego and dedicate whatever talents you may think you have towards the service of greater good. I chose the second path. I thank the Buddha everyday because his teachings gave me the capacity to make that choice.

Given this context, many years ago, I watched a "Think Different" TV ad commissioned by Steve Jobs which obviously reflected his own personality. It touched and inspired me like no 60-second video ever did.

Here is the video and the text:

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify and vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as crazy, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

Thank you, Steve. I'm sorry I missed the chance to meet you. You will always be an inspiration and a hero, and this world will miss you very much.

A Jolly Good Mantra in the Heart Sutra

2011-09-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

The Heart Sutra is one of the most popular scriptures in all of Mahayana Buddhism. I have a theory that the secret of the Mantra in the Heart Sutra is jolly goodness.

My morning alarm ringtone is a Chinese-language recitation of the Heart Sutra. Hence, I wake up most weekday mornings meditating on the Heart Sutra. That way, I can at least claim to be a Buddhist on (most) weekdays. More importantly, though, it gives me a chance to get into a good meditative state right before I begin my day.

I find the Heart Sutra ideally suited for accompanying my first morning meditation, mostly because it is so short (at only 260 Chinese characters). More importantly, though, the Heart Sutra is a literature of the prajna paramita group of Buddhist scriptures, which for the uninitiated, means that everything in it is simultaneously the most absurd nonsense and the most exalted truth at the same time. For example, it says things like, "Form is Emptiness, and Emptiness is Form", and "There is no suffering, no wisdom, no attainment whatsoever."

It is all utter nonsense. It begins to make sense, however, when the mind enters the state of "no self". "Self" is a mental construct that the mind continuously creates in reaction to thoughts and sensations. When the mind reaches a certain threshold of calmness, however, the formation of "self" becomes weak, sometimes the sense of "self" is not formed at all. Even in the weak version of "no self", prajna paramita begins to make perfect sense.

That is why I like to do this meditation as the very first thing in the morning, when the mind is clear from being freshly awake and well rested, but is still subtle enough that self-formation is weak. This mind is most receptive to the prajna paramita. The highest wisdom. Or whatever nonsense it's called.

The final phrases in the Heart Sutra is a mantra. In the Chinese version, that mantra is left untranslated, it is merely transliterated from its original Sanskrit. Why? Because according to the Chinese translators, the mantra is so profound that it cannot be translated and that the mere sound of the mantra is sufficient to bring the mind into a deep samadhi followed by awakening.

Probably true, but I'm an engineer, so a thousand years of Chinese wisdom is not enough to stop me from at least trying. Call me a fool. Anyway, here is the mantra in its original Sanskrit:

Gate gate.
Pāragate.
Pārasaṃgate.
Bodhi svāhā!

And here is my own translation of it:

Let’s go, vamonos.
Beyond the limited mind.
Everybody let’s go.
Welcome to enlightenment!

One morning, while sitting in my bed in stillness meditating on the mantra, I figured something out. My mind was in a lighter mood than usual, and in that mode of extra jolliness, I realized that this is a jolly good mantra. It does not work if the mind approaches the mantra in seriousness, it only works if the mind approaches it with jolliness and humor. If you approach thinking the mantra is funny, then upon contemplating the words, the mind suddenly opens up to awakening and compassion.

I suspect this was the original intention of the wise person who wrote that mantra, but nobody got the joke.

Good Morning, Thug

2011-08-28T06:14:00.000-07:00

I just had one of those ironic experiences that are funny in retrospect. I was in Berlin to speak at the World Peace Festival. While I was at a subway station, a thuggish big blonde white guy tried to intimidate me into giving him money. He got uncomfortalby close to me and growled something in German. I smiled back and said, "Sorry, you speak English?" With a heavy German accent, he said, "Money!" I pretended I didn't understand, smiled at him, an said, "Ahhh… good morning." He growled again, "Money!" And again, I said, "Yes, good morning." He gave up, growled something in German, and walked away. Ironic that this happened on the day before I spoke to an audience about world peace.

I don't know what the full take-away is, but I think one lesson is that it is always good to be kind, often good to be unintimidated, and sometimes, you need to do both simultaneously. Kindness and fearlessness is a powerful combination. Hence, some combination of training your body at the gym and training your mind on the meditation cushion is good.

Sand Mandala FAQ

2011-07-04T19:39:00.000-07:00

Back in December 2010, we had a group of Tibetan monks make a sand mandala at the lobby of Building 43 in the Googleplex as an art and cultural exhibition. Many Googlers did not know what a sand mandala was, so I had to put up a FAQ. Some of you may find it useful, so here it is:

Sand Mandala FAQ

Q: What is a sand mandala?
A: A traditional Tibetan art form for blessing the earth. Monks create an intricate pattern out of colored sand over 5 days. At the end, the mandala will be destroyed to signify impermanence of all things (sort of like writing code).

Q: When will the closing ceremony be?
A: The closing ceremony is planned for 2pm Friday. That gives everybody enough time to head to TGIF and get drunk after enlightenment.

Q: Can I take pictures?
A: Yes, you can take pictures of the mandala, monks, and anything else, including the occasional ninja that likes to stealthy appear at mandala-making events. You may take videos too.

Q: Can I ask for pictures with the monks?
A: Sure, I don't think they mind. Good karma goes well with good camera.

Q: What if I have questions for the monks?
A: The monks' driver is a Tibetan guy called Tenzin who speaks English. You can ask him anything. He is easy to narrow down because only about half of all Tibetans in the world are named "Tenzin" (including the Dalai Lama and one of his brothers).

Q: Can I bring my friends?
A: Definitely. Even if your friend is a mandala-loving ninja.

Q: How do you plan to protect the mandala during construction and breaks?
A: Our original plan was to hire a bunch of kung-fu monks from Shaolin, but that didn't work out. So we plan to put stanchions around the mandala, and ask people to control their destructive urges until after TGIF. We are aware that stanchions are not as cool as kung-fu monks from Shaolin, but they are somewhat cheaper.

Q: Can I make a donation?
A: Yes, just give money to the monk at the table and take whatever souvenior you like.

(No Tibetan lamas will be harmed in the making of this mandala)

Product review: Star Cruises SuperStar Virgo

2011-06-23T07:52:00.000-07:00

Summary: Very disappointing. A lousy cruising experience on a badly-managed ship.

Details:

I love cruising, but I didn't always feel this way. About 15 years ago, I took a cruise on a Star Cruises ship and did not like the experience at all. I decided then that I didn't want to cruise ever again. Many years later, I took a Holland America cruise to Alaska. I liked that experience so much I decided I wanted every vacation from that point on to be a cruise! The difference between the 2 cruising experiences was like night and day. Since then, I've been on many Holland America cruises and enjoyed every single one of them.

A few days ago, I went on a cruise with Star Cruises again, mostly because we wanted to cruise from Singapore with the extended family and there wasn't much of a choice. It was a ship called the SuperStar Virgo, supposedly the best ship in the Star Cruises fleet. That, plus the fact that the company had the last 15+ years to figure out how to run a cruise line, I figured it can't be that bad. I was quite wrong.

Some of the major problems I encountered, in no particular order:

- Management is a fail. Embarkation was a noisy and chaotic mess. Disembarkation was even worse. On a Holland America ship, they ask you for your preferred disembarkation time and then assigns you a time to disembark. You get to stay comfortably in your stateroom (with food) until disembarkation. On the SuperStar Virgo, they ask you to leave the stateroom at 1pm (for a 3:30pm disembarkation), and then at 3:30pm, everybody disembarks all at once. The result is highly predictable: thousands of annoyed people crowding the common areas for hours, and then a long, noisy chaotic mess as they all try to disembark at the same time. After almost 20 years of running a cruise line, you'd think somebody in management would have figured out something as simple and obvious as orderly embarkation and disembarkation. But noooo...

- There are environmental issues I cannot pinpoint. My wife had an allergic reaction to our stateroom, she became physically ill everytime she was in it. My daughter reported that part of her sofa-bed smelled like somebody puked on it. Out of our party of 19, at least 3 suffered symptoms of bad food poisoning during the cruise. A lot of it made sense when I learned after the cruise that 100 people suffered serious food-poisoning on the cruise just before ours (news link) on the same ship. It smells like another management fail.

- Food is supposed to be one of the major attractions on a cruise, but here, there is another series of management fails. The food is uninspiring, but it gets worse: You cannot bring food from a restaurant to your room, you cannot visit more than one restaurant per meal (eg, you cannot have Chinese food at the Pavilion and then go upstairs for coffee or ice-cream after that, and you have to pay for the coffee at the Pavilion), and room service costs extra (if you can find the room service menu in the first place). The correct reaction of a frequent cruiser to all these silly food restrictions should be: WTF? I get the impression that management doesn't care about customer happiness.

- The ships feels a lot more crowded than what I'm used to. I think they pack many more people into the same space than Holland America does (but I can't tell for sure because, unlike on a Holland America cruise, Star Cruises did not provide us that information).

- The cruise itinerary was a fail. When you think of Phuket, what comes to mind? Sun, sand and sea, of course. The ship arrived at Phuket at 7pm (just before sunset), and left at 3am, leaving no opportunity at all for sun, sand nor sea. Fail. Snorkeling was not available the entire cruise even though we were in a prime snorkeling region in warm waters. Fail.

- On a Holland America ship, you take for granted that every staff member you meet will go out of their way to be friendly to you (eg, the cleaning staff took the time to teach my daughter to fold towel animals). On the Virgo, I felt like the staff tried to be friendly but many disliked their jobs too much to do it well. They remind me of the fight attendants on United First Class (domestic, the attendants on United international flights behave very differently). When service staff visibly dislike being there, it's a severe management fail.

- More evidence that management doesn't care: They didn't even bother to send out a satisfaction survey. In contrast, Holland America seems almost pathologically obsessed with satisfaction surveys. (In one of my early cruises, I complained about the lack of green tea on board, and then green tea was available on my next cruise! Apparently, somebody in Holland America took my opinion seriously.)

The question I ask myself is: How can a cruise line fail in so many ways and still appear to be so successful? The first possible reason is that they are largely the only game in town. Other cruise lines like Holland America and Royal Caribbean do ply these waters, but only infrequently. If you want to cruise here in June, you're more or less stuck with Star Cruises. The second possible and more likely reason is this ship is primarily a gambling ship. I got the impression from talking to the frequent cruisers on board. Their main entertainment on board is gambling. Gambling is, for them, necessary and sufficient entertainment. In fact, the entire cruise line started as a side venture of a gambling empire, so this makes a lot of sense. The third and saddest reason is Asians in general are used to receiving a low quality of service. One glaring exception is airlines, where for example, the service on economy class on Singapore Airlines is better even than United First Class (domestic). But outside of those glaring exceptions, Asians generally receive much worse service than their Western counterparts and most of them are not aware that they can get much better.

I hope the CEO of Star Cruises Ltd (now called Genting Hong Kong), Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay, is reading this. This is a cruise line with a lot of potential and I hate to see all that potential go to waste. If the cruise line is financially successful even with all the above problems, it will surely be even more successful once all the problems are addressed. Tan Sri Lim is obviously a highly capable businessman, I think he will be able to quickly improve everything once he is made aware of the problems.

Do the right thing, wait to get fired

2011-06-18T18:29:00.000-07:00

New Google employees (we call "Nooglers") often ask me what makes me effective at what I do. I tell them only half-jokingly that it's very simple: I do the Right Thing for Google and the world, and then I sit back and wait to get fired. If I don't get fired, I've done the Right Thing for everyone. If I do get fired, this is the wrong employer to work for in the first place. So, either way, I win. That is my career strategy.

I discovered where I got this rebel streak from only very recently. I realized I inherited it from my dad, which was very strange to me because when I was growing up, I perceived my dad as an establishment figure, part of the very establishment I was rebelling against, so it was a severe cognitive dissonance for me to think of my dad as a rebel. But rebel he was.

My dad started his career as a child laborer (yes, one of those millions of faceless children in developing countries you read about occasionally on National Geographic), but by mid-career, he rose up the ranks to become one of the most senior military officers in all of Singapore. I recently learned that one reason he was so successful was because he was unafraid to speak the unpleasant truth to his superiors to their faces, including Defense Ministers and Prime Ministers. Near the end of his military career, one of his superiors asked him what made him so effective. My father replied, "It's very simple. Everyday on my drive home, I would pass by HDB flats (public housing in Singapore) and I would always take an extra look at them. Why? Because after you fire me, that is where I'd live."

Some day, when you reach my old age, spend some time talking to your father about his career, you may be pleasantly horrified to discover how much you are like your father.

Vesak Day thoughts: Eager to return to my spiritual roots

2011-05-17T09:45:00.000-07:00

I hope my work in the corporate world will be done fairly soon. I hope that my first book, once published, will help people worldwide incorporate wisdom and compassion practices into their own lives and workplaces, in their own ways. I hope that the momentum generated will allow the work to move forward without me.

I am eager to return to tending my spiritual roots fairly soon. I cannot serve humanity in ways I feel called to without first deepening my practice. I need to, at the very least, master all 9 stages of Shamatha, and that is only the beginning. Only by deepening my own roots can I aspire to be a big tree to provide shade for many others.

On this Vesak Day, the day for remembering the birth, enlightenment and passing of Buddha (a man so dear to me I endearingly think of him as "The Old Man"), I promise myself that as soon as I can, I will return to dedicating myself to Dharma and the perfection of wisdom and compassion, for the sake of service.

My friends need a really smart and compassionate engineer

2011-04-10T11:09:00.000-07:00

I do not usually post job ads on behalf of my friends, but I will make this one exception for Dave and Greg. The main reason is they are trying to create a compassionate company.

Dave and Greg, each a highly intelligent man with a life-time track record of success, are founders of a tiny start-up called "Think Now". They are trying to create technologies for personal growth. That is exciting in and of itself. Even more exciting is the company's Prime Directive. When they invited me to be an investor, I insisted that the company adopts this Prime Directive: "This is a compassionate company." Honestly, none of us has any idea what that means, but I want to at least codify the intention and then figure out the details as we go along. It is important to me for a company focused on personal growth to walk its own talk, hence compassion must be its key corporate value. They enthusiastically agreed and I became their first major investor and adviser (I call myself their "Deli Lama", since I don't do anything except eat).

We all agreed that a company's culture is the key to its success. A company's culture is often created in the image of its founders and early employees. Hence, we feel that all early employees must not just be extremely smart and capable (like the founders), they must also be compassionate (again, like the founders).

Anyway, here is the ad Dave sent to me:

=====

Think-now is a new company building applications that are fun and drive personal growth. We are seeking a creative, lead software engineer with experience developing Android and iOS applications. Besides extensive experience writing code, applicants should have high personal integrity, awareness, mindfulness and compassion. You will join an experienced team motivated to make a significant impact in the lives of many and create an extraordinarily valuable company. Think-now’s founders have deep experience in neuroscience, business, psychology and altruism (the fun kind). Please send applications to job@think-now.com.

International Golden Rule Day

2011-04-06T13:10:00.000-07:00

I am deeply honored that TED chose to post my talk on ted.com on April 5th, International Golden Rule Day.

http://on.ted.com/Meng

My talk at Wisdom 2.0 Conference 2011

2011-03-23T14:45:00.000-07:00

I gave a short speech titled "Wisdom for Love and Profit" at the Wisdom 2.0 Conference in February 2011.

Wisdom for Love and Profit by Meng Tan from Wisdom 2.0 Conference on Vimeo.

Before that, I also spoke as part of a panel at the same event with a few of my dear friends.

Applied Wisdom Practices from Wisdom 2.0 Conference on Vimeo.

Overcoming hindrances in 5 easy steps

2011-03-07T22:22:00.000-08:00

The "Five Hindrances" are mental states that hinder progress in meditation. They are:

1. Sensual desire.
2. Ill-will.
3. Sloth and torpor.
4. Restlessness and worry.
5. Doubt.

That's not to say that these are "good" or "bad" states of mind, just that when you're trying to meditate, these things sort of get in your way. So a skillful meditator learns to overcome them.

It turns out that the 5 steps to overcoming hindrances during meditation are hidden in plain sight right in the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha's lecture on what we know as Mindfulness practice, one of the most important and most read of all discourses by the Buddha. The 5 steps are:

- Know when the hindrance is present.
- Understand the conditions that cause the hindrance to arise.
- Know when the hindrance is not present.
- Understand the conditions that cause the hindrance to be abandoned.
- (Therefore,) Understand the conditions that cause the hindrance to not arise in the future.

Simple and beautiful.

Thanks to Shaila Catherine for pointing this out in Google this evening. I'm often impressed at how amazing she is as a teacher.

Someday, I want to read the Satipatthana Sutta in its original Pali. I don’t think there is any substitute to reading an important text in its original language. As a wise man once said, “You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.”

The bodhisattva with six-pack abs

2011-03-04T14:16:00.000-08:00

Friends, I would like you to meet Maitreya the bodhisattva. In Buddhist mythology, Maitreya is supposed to be the Future Buddha. Buddha 2.0, if you will. The representation you see above was created in the 1st century CE from the region of Gandhara, in present-day Pakistan.

The Maitreya represented here is a fully enlightened being, perfect in wisdom and compassion. You can tell because he has a halo and an urna, the thing between his eyes representing his magical third eye. More significantly to me, he has long flowing hair and a mustache, signifying that he is of the real world and is fully engaged in the real world. He is a worldly being who is fully enlightened at the same time! I find that idea very attractive.

But wait, it gets better. Notice that Maitreya is dressed in princely robes and wears the jewelry of a prince, meaning he is financially quite well-off, to say the least. Best of all, he is physically very fit. Just look at his abs, he has six-pack abs! How many enlightened men do you know have six-pack abs? The Dalai Lama? I don't think so, dude.

The first time I saw this representation, I was instantly and irresistibly drawn to it. It represents everything I aspire to be in this lifetime: an enlightened multi-millionaire, one who reaches perfection in wisdom and compassion, with six-pack abs.

When I grow up, I want to be a laughing buddha

2011-01-31T11:29:00.000-08:00

I think humor should be an integral part of one's spiritual practice. The part to enlightenment is fraught with difficulty, it is important to be able to laugh all the way on that journey. Humor is also a great vehicle for transmitting both the speakable and unspeakable teachings. The better you can make them laugh, the better you can help them learn.

Given that context, when I grow up and eventually become a buddha, I want to be a laughing buddha. I want to be the type of buddha whom other buddhas want to go to when they need a few good jokes. I imagine conversations like this:

Some other buddha comes to me and ask, "Hey, I'm scheduled to deliver a heaven-shaking lecture to a bunch of Great Brahmas. Nice Gods, but kind of a serious bunch. Do you have any jokes I can use to lighten them up?"

And I would say like, "Dude, why are you asking me? Just go Google it. Besides, remember you are a buddha, you are omniscient, you already know EVERYTHING!"

Other buddha: "I know you would say that."

I would then realize that since there is no separation between self and other, that mildly clueless buddha is also me. D'oh!

Change must come from within

2011-01-30T12:29:00.000-08:00

The Mountain View Mobile Library comes to Google every week. It is a large converted bus that parks in our carpark, but they also set up a table just outside the bus to handle the extra human traffic.

One lady tried to pay a library fine at the table and the library employee told her to pay inside because they can only make change inside the bus. And I said, "That is what the Buddha taught." They both looked at me like, what?

I pointed to the bus and said, "Buddha says, change must come from within."

Because I am a doctor

2011-01-28T11:20:00.000-08:00

My goal in life is to create the conditions for world peace in my lifetime, and to do so by making the benefits of meditation accessible to humanity. I tell that to a lot of people. I am amazed how few people actually ask me what I think of my chances of success. Truth be told, I think my likelihood of success is zero, or if I'm very lucky, a very small positive number very close to zero.

I do it knowing my likelihood of success is zero or very close to zero. One reason is this is such an important goal that any non-zero probability is worth pursuing. Another reason is even if I'm only very partially successful, it will help a lot of people. The world population is about 7 billion, if I'm only 1% successful, my work can benefit 70 million people, and if I'm only 1% of 1% successful, that is 700,000 people I can benefit. That is still a lot of people.

I think the real reason I do it is simply because it is what I do. That is it. I am reminded of a Zen story:

There was a military doctor in ancient China who served during war. He was a hardworking doctor and treated many soldiers. But after a while, he made a very disturbing observation. He realized that soldiers he treated would either get injured again, or die in battle. Hence, he began to feel that nothing he did for the soldiers was of any consequence. He started asking himself over and over, "Why am I doing this?".

After a while, he suffered a nervous breakdown, deserted the army and escaped to a Zen monastery where he learned Zen. After many months of meditation, he finally figured out the answer to his question, and happily returned to treating the troops.

Finally, somebody asked him, "So you figured it out? Why are you doing this?". And his answer was, "Because I am a doctor".

Wanted: A literary agent who probably does not exist

2011-01-25T09:29:00.000-08:00

Now that I'm done drafting my book and Colin is almost done with the cartoons, it's about time we seek a literary agent. I've been debating with myself whether I want to hire one (the best thing about debating with myself is: I always win). My current decision: I should try to find that very special someone before I decide to go it alone.

The person I'm looking for is so special he/she probably doesn't exist, but I figured it's worth putting the word out. Here are the qualities in the literary agent I'm looking for:

- First and foremost, you must aspire to "save the world". In doing your job, you are motivated to serve the greater good more than anything else. My goal is not to sell a book, my goal is to create the conditions for world peace in my lifetime and everything else I do is just a detail, including selling my book. I am not looking for a co-worker, I'm looking for a partner for world peace.

- You must be compassionate. Compassion defines your being. However, you must be compassionate in a way that makes you highly effective and successful at what you do. A good example of such a person is Stuart Diamond, master negotiator and author of Getting More. Stuart is very good at what he does. For example, he was the one who famously resolved the Hollywood writers' strike. Better still, his negotiation techniques are based on compassion: seeing the other parties as human beings, understanding and serving them while creatively helping them to make the pie bigger for everyone involved.

- You must "get" Mindfulness and Emotional Intelligence. You don't just understand these topics, you understand them enough to know their implication for world peace. You understand things so deeply the word Dhamma ("Universal Law" or "Phenomenon") means a lot more to you than its dictionary definitions.

- You must be willing and able to think in non-traditional ways. For example, you must be generous enough to give away your crown jewels for the benefit of greater good, but do it so skillfully that it profits you greatly. A prime example of this is Google, of course. We give away extremely valuable services, motivated mostly out of our desire to serve greater good of humanity, but also in a way that helps us make a decent living.

- You must have an impressive track record. You must have successfully represented best-selling authors, for example. I'm not just looking for someone to represent me, I'm also looking for a teacher, someone to learn from.

- Last but not least, you are open to the possibility of charging me a lot less than the standard rate of 15%. Why would an impressive and successful professional like you want to work with someone like me for a large discount? If you already know, you are probably the one I'm looking for.

I don't expect you to exist. But if you do exist and are interested to work with me, please ping me. I'm at jollybodhi@gmail.com.

No more cmtan@serve.com etc

2010-12-11T10:45:00.000-08:00

My cmtan@serve.com address, an email address I've been using since 1995, no longer works. This is because my long-time webhost, Datarealm, decided to pull the plug on the serve.com domain. My new email address is jollybodhi@gmail.com. Some of my friends have been calling me 欢喜菩萨 ("huan xi pu sa", meaning the jolly bodhisattva), so I thought "jollybodhi" seems kind of appropriate in a fun way.

This change also impacts my Buddhism website, which used to be at www.serve.com/cmtan/buddhism, but is now at whatdoyouthinkmyfriend.com. I honestly have no idea what to do with the website now. When I started it in 1995, it was one of very few websites on Buddhism in the world and a key pioneer of Dharma on the web. It was, at its time, the only website in the world presenting Buddhism in a highly personal and practical way with a generous touch of humor, which I think made Dharma a little more accessible to all.

And then life sort of happened to me, I moved to America to become one of those stereotypical overworked immigrant dotcom engineers, became a parent and, on the way, got distracted by other ways to serve the world, such as writing a book, creating Search Inside Yourself and co-founding Stanford CCARE and all. During that time, the website got seriously neglected.

Today, the website is just one of very many Buddhism sites on the web, once a prominent global pioneer, now just some forgotten old guy sitting alone at the corner of a nursing home reading the New York Times on a rocking chair.

The question is, what do I do with it? What is its next calling in life? I have no idea. If you do, let me know.

For $50,000 a piece, you think they'd get it right

2010-12-02T17:47:00.000-08:00

Every now and then, I should rant about trivial stuff. It keeps me grounded at Samsara level. Today is one of those days.

I'm in the market for a new car. I test drove a Mercedes-Benz ML 350 today. It's a good car, stable, handles well, accelerates competently and all. Except one major flaw. The navigation system is positioned in such a way you need to look DOWN to see it, taking your eyes off the road, which makes it dangerous to use. Who made THAT design decision? Maybe the vaunted German engineering doesn't extend to German UI. Hint to Mercedes-Benz: Every customer dead is a customer lost. Customer death, not good.

I also test drove the Lexus 450h, a lovely hybrid car. Beautifully smooth ride, lovely interior and all. Perfect. Except somebody decided to replace a perfectly good touch-screen navigation system with a lousy joystick-based system. Huh? Who made THAT design decision? And, oh, for $50,000, there is no power-folding side-mirrors. Nope, nobody driving a Lexus should ever be expected to drive into tight spaces like, I don't know, a garage.

For $50,000, you'd think you can get the car you want. But noooooo... I think I might just stick to my old car.

Dog on a leash

2010-12-02T11:16:00.000-08:00

Something I read earlier this week that touched and moved me to the very core. When I finally got to the end and found out where the quote came from, I thought to myself, "Wow, the Old Man got to me again". Thanks to my friend, Evan Smith, for sharing.

Dog on a Leash

"Suppose, monks, a dog tied up on a leash was bound to a strong post or pillar: it would just keep on running and revolving around that same post or pillar. So too, the uninstructed worldling regards form as self ... feeling as self ... perception as self ... volitional formations as self ... consciousness as self. He just keeps running and revolving around form, around feeling, around perception, around volitional formations, around consciousness. As he keeps running around them, he is not freed from [them]. He is not freed from birth, aging, and death ... from sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection, and despair; not freed from suffering."

-- The Buddha

(SN 22:99, translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi)

My TED talk at the United Nations

2010-11-27T09:55:00.000-08:00

On 18 November 2010, I delivered a TED talk at the United Nations. The theme of the event was "Creating a Compassionate World". I titled my 15-minute talk, "Compassion for Fun and Profit".

The video is available at http://on.ted.com/Meng. There is also a TED blog post about it here. For those of you who prefer text, my script and slides are below.

Compassion for Fun and Profit

Compassion is the greatest happiness

What does the happiest man in the world look like? He certainly doesn’t look like me. He looks like this. His name is Matthieu Ricard.

How do you get to become the happiest man in the world? There turns out to be a way to measure happiness in the brain, you do that by measuring the relative activation of your left pre-frontal cortex vs your right pre-frontal cortex. Matthieu’s happiness measure is off the charts. He is, by far, the happiest person ever measured by science.

Which leads us to a question. What was he thinking when he was measured? Something naughty, perhaps? Actually, he was meditating on compassion. Matthieu’s own first person experience is that compassion is the happiest state ever. And his brain scan backs that up.

Reading about Matthieu Ricard was one of the pivotal moments of my life. My dream is to create the conditions for world peace, and to do that by creating the conditions for inner peace and compassion on a global scale. Learning about Matthieu gave me a new angle for looking at my work.

Matthieu’s brain scan shows that compassion is not a chore. Compassion is something that creates happiness for the giver. Compassion is fun!

This mind-blowing insight changes the entire game. If compassion is a chore, nobody will do it, except maybe the Dalai Lama. But if compassion is fun, everybody is going to do it. Therefore, to create the conditions for global compassion, all we have to do is to re-frame compassion as something that is fun.

But fun is not enough. What if compassion is also profitable? If compassion is also good for business, then every boss in the world would want it.

THAT would create the condition for world peace.

Compassion in Google

So I started paying attention to what compassion looks like in a business setting. Fortunately, I didn’t have to look very far. What I was looking for was right in front of my eyes, in Google, my company. I know there are other compassionate companies in the world, but Google is the one I’m familiar with, so I use it as the case study.

Google is a company born of idealism, and thrives on idealism. And perhaps because of that, compassion is organic and widespread company-wide.

In Google, expressions of corporate compassion almost always follow the same pattern. It starts with a small group of Googlers taking the initiative to do something. They don’t usually ask for permission, they just go ahead and do it. Other Googlers join in. And sometimes, it gets big enough that it becomes official. In other words, it almost always start from bottom up.

For example, the largest annual community event where Googlers from all over the world donate their labor to local communities was initiated and organized by 3 mid-level employees before it became official.

Another example is when three Googlers, a chef, an engineer and a massage therapist learned about a region in India where 200,000 people live without a single medical facility, so they spontaneously decided to organize a fundraiser, raising enough money to build and equip the first medical center in the entire region.

During the Haiti earthquake, a number of engineers and product managers spontaneously came together and stayed up overnight to build a tool that allows earthquake victims to find their loved ones.

Expressions of grassroot compassion is also found in our international offices. In China, for example, one mid-level employee initiated a large social action competition involving more than 1000 schools working on issues such as education, poverty,and healthcare and the environment.

There is so much organic social action all around Google that the company decided to form a Social Responsibility team to support all the grassroot effort. This idea came again from the grassroot, from two Googlers, who wrote their own job descriptions and signed themselves up for the job. I find it fascinating that the SR team was not formed as part of some grand corporate strategy, but was formed by 2 ordinary Googlers to support all the social action that was already everywhere in the company.

Main benefits: highly effective leaders and an inspiring workforce

It turns out that Google is a compassionate company because Googlers found compassion to be fun.

But it’s not just fun, there are also real business benefits.

The first benefit of compassion is it creates highly effective business leaders. There are 3 components of compassion, the cognitive component (I understand you), the affective component (I feel for you), and the motivational component (I want to help you).

What has that to do with business leadership?

According to a very comprehensive study led by Jim Collins and documented in the book Good to Great, it takes a very special type of leader to bring a company from goodness to greatness. He calls them “Level 5” leaders. These are leaders who, in addition to being highly capable, also possess 2 important qualities: great ambition and personal humility. These leaders are highly ambitious for greater good, and because their attention is focused on greater good, they feel no need to inflate their own egos. That makes them highly effective and inspiring.

Looking at these qualities in the context of compassion, we find that the cognitive and affective components of compassion, understanding people and empathizing with them, tones down the excessive self-obsession within us and therefore, creates the conditions for humility. The motivational component of compassion, creates ambition for greater good.

In other words, compassion is the way to grow “Level 5” leaders. This is its first compelling business benefit.

The second compelling benefit of compassion is that it creates an inspiring workforce. Employees mutually inspire each other towards greater good. It creates a vibrant, energetic community where people admire and respects each other. I mean, you come to work in the morning and you work with people who just up and decide to build a medical center in India, you just cannot not be inspired by those co-workers. This mutual inspiration promotes collaboration, initiative and creativity. It makes us a highly effective company.

“Secret formula” for brewing compassion

What is the secret formula for brewing compassion in a corporate setting? In our experience, there are 3 ingredients:

The first ingredient is to create a culture of passionate concern for greater good. Always think about how your company and your job are serving the greater good, or can further serve the greater good. This awareness of serving greater good is very self-inspiring and creates fertile grounds for compassion to grow.

The second ingredient is autonomy. In Google, there is a lot of autonomy. One of our most popular managers joke that, “Google is a place where the inmates run the asylum”. If you already have a culture of compassion and idealism, and you let your people roam free, they will do the right thing in compassionate ways.

The third ingredient is to focus on inner development and personal growth. Leadership training in Google, for example, places a lot of emphasis on inner qualities such as self-awareness, self-mastery, empathy and compassion. We believe that leadership begins with character. We even created a 7-week curriculum for emotional intelligence which we jokingly call “Search Inside Yourself”. I’m an engineer by training but I am one of the creators and instructors of this course, which I think is quite funny. This company trusts an engineer like me to teach emotional intelligence. What a company!

“Search Inside Yourself” works in 3 steps:

Step 1: Attention training. Attention is the basis of all higher cognitive and emotional abilities. Therefore, any curriculum for training emotional intelligence has to begin with attention training. Idea: to train attention to create quality of mind that is calm and clear at the same time, and that create the foundation of emotional intelligence.

Step 2: Self-knowledge and self-mastery. Use super-charged attention to create high-resolution perception into cognitive and emotive processes. Become able to observe thought-stream and the process of emotion with high clarity, objectively from a 3rd person perspective. Once you can do that, you create the type of self-knowledge that enables self-mastery.

Step 3: Create new mental habits. Imagine whenever you meet anybody, your habitual, instinctive first thought is “I wish for this person to be happy”. Having such habits changes everything at work, because the sincere goodwill is picked up unconsciously by others, and there is trust. This also creates the conditions for compassion in the work place.

Someday, we hope to open-source “Search Inside Yourself” so that everybody in the corporate world can at least use it as a reference.

Closing

I like to end the same place I started. Happiness.

The Dalai Lama said, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” I found this to be true both for individuals and entire companies. I hope that compassion will be fun and profitable for you too.

Thank you.

(UPDATE 4/6/2011: Added link to the video at ted.com.)

Making peace can be easier than making love

2010-11-06T15:22:00.000-07:00

The organizers of the World Peace Festival have bestowed much honor upon me. They invited me to become a Founding Patron and named me a World Peace Ambassador.

A few months ago, they further honored me by inviting me to write the introduction for their booklet, Tools for Peace, alongside Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I started the first draft of my introduction with:

Sometimes, making peace can be easier than making love. You can make peace in a house of worship, you can do it with many people at once, and you can tell your wild peace-making adventures to the Dalai Lama without feeling too awkward.

In the final copy, they wisely decided to edit that out. Lucky for you.

Anyway, the booklet is available to you for free. Get it at:
http://www.chademeng.com/Articles/tools_for_peace_booklet.pdf

At forty, I could no longer be confused nor tempted

2010-10-28T23:41:00.000-07:00

Chinese sage Confucius famously said this about his own life:
- When I was fifteen, I was determined in my studies.
- At thirty, I was self-established.
- At forty, I could no longer be confused nor tempted.
- At fifty, I understood my divine destiny.
- At sixty, I was undisturbed by anything I hear (ie, opposing views).
- At seventy, I could do whatever I wish and still stay within moral and ethical bounds.

(Original text: "吾十有五而志于学，三十而立，四十而不惑，五十而知天命，六十而耳顺，七十而从心所欲不踰矩。")

As I turn forty, I realized that not being a sage myself, I've miss every one of his development milestones.

I didn't learn Dharma at 15, I did so at age 20. My delta with respect to Confucius was 5 years.

I didn't become financially independent until 33, my delta was 3 years.

Having turned 40, I still can be confused and tempted. Given my historical trajectory, I'm hoping the upper-bond of my next delta will be 3 years => I should reach that milestone no later than age 43. I hope.

Mind is vast, self is a dick

2010-10-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

As I was sitting in meditation, I observed the sense of self getting increasingly subtle. It reached a point where identity disappeared. This is a mind where there is an observer, but there is no identity. Since there is still an observer, this is not full-blown “no self”. I call it “subtle self”.

The greatest quality of this mind is freedom. Identity is nothing more than a mental construct. Once you experience this, a vast, beautiful open space becomes accessible. Freedom from self, even at this limited level and even for just a short time, is the greatest freedom I have experienced so far. Mind is vast, self is a dick.

It gets funnier. The moment I emerged from the meditation, the first thing, literally the very first thing, that arose in my mind is my “to do” list. The “to do” list may be the thin line between nirvana and samsara.

UPDATE (10/29/10): I realized I'm closer to the truth than I thought. One of the classical descriptions of Nirvana is "Nowhere to go, nothing to do, that's it". So, it's true, Nirvana is not having a "to do" list. Another one of my jokes turning out to be true. Life is funny.

Never become a vampire on a bad-hair day

2010-10-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

Is it true that once you get turned into a vampire, your physical form can never change again?

If that's true, please give me 6 months notice before turning me into a vampire. I would like to do 6 months of intense workout before my physical form becomes unchangeable. I can probably use some dental work too. And, oh yeah, I need to do something about my hair. Thank you for your understanding.

Emotional self-mastery: Like writing on water

2010-09-17T09:48:00.000-07:00

Emotional self-mastery is not about never having certain emotions, it is about becoming very skillful with them. For example, in Buddhist psychology, there is an important difference between anger and indignation: anger arises out of powerlessness, while indignation arises out of power. Because of that difference, when you feel angry, you feel out of control, but when you feel indignant, you can retain full control of your mind and emotion. Hence, you can be emotional and fighting for change without ever “losing your cool”. Indignation is, therefore, a skillful state and a good example of self-regulation at its best. I think the person who best personified this was Gandhi. Gandhi was not an angry man, but that did not stop him from fighting injustice or leading massive marches. And all that time he was fighting, he never lost his calmness and compassion. That is how I want to be when I grow up.

Still, there are situations in life where you really need to dampen unwholesome thoughts or emotions, what do you do?

I think the first question to ask is whether it is possible to prevent an unwholesome thought or emotion from arising in the first place. In my own experience, I think it is impossible. In fact, Paul Ekman, one of the most eminent psychologists in the world, told me he discussed precisely this topic with the Dalai Lama. They both think that it is impossible to prevent any thought or emotion from arising. That must be the correct answer then, since Paul, the Dalai Lama and myself can’t all be wrong at the same time, right?

However, the Dalai Lama added an important point, which is that while we cannot prevent an unwholesome thought or emotion from arising, we have the power to let it go, and the highly trained mind can let it go the moment it arises.

The Buddha has a very beautiful metaphor for this state of mind. He calls it “like writing on water.” When an unwholesome thought or emotion arises in an enlightened mind, it is like writing on water; the moment it is written, it disappears.

An engineer's view of self-confidence

2010-09-14T19:55:00.000-07:00

An easy way to get an injection of self-confidence is to attend a “motivational speech” where some guy speaking perfect English without my funny accent shouts at you and tells you how great you are, “You can succeed, you are great, you can do it!” And everybody claps. And we all go home feeling great about ourselves, for three days, maybe. In my experience, however, the only highly sustainable source of self-confidence comes from deep self-knowledge and blatant self-honesty.

In my engineer’s mind, I think of it as understanding two important things about myself, my “failure mode” and my “recovery mode”. If I can understand a system so thoroughly I know exactly how it fails, I will also know when it won’t fail. I can then have strong confidence in the system despite knowing it’s not perfect because I know precisely what situations I must keep it away from. In addition, if I also know exactly how the system recovers after failure, I can be confident even in situations where it fails, because I know the conditions where the system can come back quickly enough that nothing major will be affected. Similarly, by understanding those things about my mind, my emotion and my capability, I can gain confidence in myself despite my numerous failings and despite looking like me.

The type of deep self-knowledge and blatant self-honesty needed for sustainable self-confidence means having nothing to hide from ourselves. It comes from accurate self-assessment. If we can assess ourselves accurately, we are able to clearly and objectively see both our greatest strengths and our biggest weaknesses. We become honest to ourselves about our most sacred aspirations and darkest desires. We learn about our deepest priorities in life, what is important to us, and what is *not* important that we can let go of. Eventually, we reach a point where we are comfortable in our own skins. There is no skeleton in our closets that we don’t already know about. There is nothing about ourselves we cannot deal with. This is the basis of self-confidence.

Accurate self-assessment in turn comes from strong emotional awareness. I think of it as receiving emotional data at a very high signal-to-noise ratio (ie, “clean signal”). To strengthen our emotional awareness, we must carefully study our emotional experience. We are like a trainer studying a horse, the more we carefully observe the horse in different situations, the more we understand its tendencies and behaviors, and the more skillfully we can work with it. With that clarity, we create a space that allows us to view our own emotional lives as if seeing it as an objective third party. In other words, we gain objectivity, we begin to perceive each emotional experience clearly and objectively as it is. This is the “clean signal” that creates the conditions for accurate self-awareness.

Finally, strong emotional awareness comes from mindfulness.

That is how mindfulness leads to self-confidence. At least for an engineer.

(Also posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chademeng-tan/an-engineers-view-of-self_b_717221.html )

Always comb your hair before meeting a famous monk

2010-09-13T15:43:00.000-07:00

My hair was a mess, but the Dalai Lama didn't seem to have that problem.

Neither did Matthieu Ricard.

I don't remember what I was laughing about, but I like making fun of enlightened beings.

Shinzen Young at Google

2010-09-12T20:05:00.000-07:00

Shinzen Young is one of the best meditation teachers I have ever met. He is very intelligent and extremely knowledgeable about science, and he speaks in a way that someone who values scientific, logical and rational thinking would find extremely attractive. (Also, he speaks fluent Mandarin, so I like to say he speaks my language in more ways than one). His audiobook, the Science of Enlightenment, is the best description of enlightenment (with a small 'e') I have ever come across. I very highly recommend it. There are also many video clips of him on YouTube, I highly recommend them too. I was so impressed with him the very first time I met him in person, I asked him to be my teacher.

I had the honor of hosting Shinzen at Google twice, once for a public talk and once for a meditation session. I highly recommend them. Here are the YouTube videos.

Shinzen Young's talk at Google (YouTube link)

Meditation with Shinzen Young at Google (YouTube link)

Play meditation like a video game

2010-09-03T10:37:00.000-07:00

Meditation requires a balance of effort and relaxation. Too much effort makes meditation tiring and unsustainable, while too little effort causes you to lose your grip on your attention. The classical analogy for this balance is having just the right tension on the strings of a sitar. If the strings are too tight, they break easily, but if they are too loose, they cannot produce beautiful notes. So the strings need to be in the "Goldilocks zone" of being not too tight and not too loose.

A very common question among people learning meditation is how to find and maintain this balance. I suggest one fun way of doing it is to play it like a video game. When playing a game on the XBox, it is most fun when the difficulty setting makes the game just difficult enough to be challenging, but not so difficult that you’ll lose every time. So I like to start a game at a “beginners” setting and increase the difficulty as I get better at it. We can play the same way in meditation, especially since we get to control the difficulty setting. Initially, we can make the game easy. For example, we can tell ourselves, “If I can sit for just five minutes, and I can maintain a solid attention on my breath for ten continuous breaths anytime during these five minutes, I win!” If you can beat the game at this difficulty setting say ninety percent of the time, you can increase the difficulty setting for more fun. Once again, the key is to create just enough difficulty to be challenging, but not enough to discourage you.

One funny thing I discovered about playing this game is after I became quite good at it, the lowest difficulty setting became really fun. That setting for me is, “Just rest my mind for ten minutes, in an alert sort of way”. That is it, just rest. I like it so much I still play at this setting a lot in between days where I play the more challenging games. It is a game where the easiest setting never gets boring.

(Also posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chademeng-tan/play-meditation-like-a-vi_b_705118.html )

Mingyur Rinpoche at Google

2010-08-29T11:26:00.000-07:00

My friend and teacher, a wonderful man in every way, the Very Venerable Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche delivered an Authors@Google talk and guided a meditation session after that. Here are the videos.

Authors@Google talk (YouTube link)

Meditation with Mingyur Rinpoche (YouTube link)

A candid shot of Meng annoying Mingyur while Mingyur was relaxing on a massage chair.

(Also see: Mingyur and Meng)

Google: The Movie

2010-08-20T14:42:00.000-07:00

For the Google movie, Meng should be played by Jet Li or Jackie Chan. "Hey, you not take picture with me, I break your face! YA!!"

If played by Jackie Chan, add a funny scene where Chris Tucker (playing himself) keeps calling Meng "Jackie" for no reason, and Meng keeps saying, "Hey, I not Jackie, I Meng. You keep calling me Jackie, I break your face!"

There will be a kung-fu scene involving Meng and the Dalai Lama (played by Sammo Hung). Natalie Portman plays herself.

But seriously, if a movie ever gets made about me, the person I want to play me is Keanu Reeves. See, Keanu played Ted in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, he played the Buddha (badly), and he played Neo. That sounds just like my life, a combination of Neo, Ted and a badly played Buddha. Whoa.

Wanted: One Million Bodhisattvas

2010-08-18T17:39:00.000-07:00

All my best ideas come to me during my morning meditations. I'm not sure if that makes me a really good or really bad meditator. I think it's both, and neither, simultaneously.

During my morning meditation today, I figured out what I want for my 40th birthday. What I want is ...

One .... Million .... Bodhisattvas.

My biggest goal in life is to create the conditions for world peace within my lifetime. I know it's impossible. I also know it becomes slightly less impossible if a lot of people also work towards the same goal in support of each other. So one of my sub-goals in life is to "Awaken One Million Bodhisattvas" **. There are very many good people in the world, if we can get a mere one million of them to regularly commit to actions that increases wisdom and compassion in the world, that may create an unstoppable momentum towards global enlightenment and world peace.

During my morning meditation today, it just hit me: Let's ask for one million Bodhisattvas for my birthday. I'll start by inviting my friends (especially those who can't run away from me quickly enough) and anybody else I can annoy to commit to one act a month intended to increase wisdom and compassion in the world. I'm only asking for this commitment from my friends for the rest of their lives, so I didn't think it was too much to ask. I know most of my friends will say "yes" because they are enthralled by my good looks.

I hope that, eventually, this will become a movement that will extend far beyond my circle of friends and people enthralled by my good looks. I hope to eventually reach one million people.

To get the ball rolling, I've created a "Bodhisattva Wannabes" group on Facebook. (I think that if this catches on, we'll eventually need to create some sort of real support infrastructure, but for now, all we have is a lousy Facebook group. Sorry).

If you are a Bodhisattva wannabe, or already an union-certified, card-carrying Bodhisattva, or you just want to give me something for my birthday, I'll love to invite you to join the group. I promise you'll warm this old man's heart.

[** I know, I can also awaken one million Bodhisattvas with one million alarm clocks, or one very very loud alarm clock, but that won't be very compassionate, especially not towards me.]

Birthday Bash for Boring Buddhist?

2010-08-17T10:45:00.000-07:00

I need some suggestions from you, my friends.

You see, I have an embarrassing problem: I'm turning 40 in October. I'm going to be, like, old. Pretty soon, boy scouts will offer to help me to cross the street and people will give me senior citizen discounts without me even asking. Ouch.

I would like your suggestion on how to mark this milestone in my life. The easy solution would be a big birthday party of some sort. But the problem is, I'm boring. Like really boring. I dislike parties, I dislike loud music, I dislike being in dancing crowds, and I dislike drinking alcohol. Another easy solution for someone in my position would be to use that occasion to announce a major philanthropic gift, and have a group of people clapping and pretending to be interested (buffet provided, string quartet optional). Yeah, I'm not THAT boring.

What to do?

What I'm hoping for is a way to have a "Birthday celebration with the Buddha". I honestly have no idea what that means, but here are some features I'm wishing for:

Having a strong Buddhist theme (best if also involving Buddha Dharma).
Bringing meaningful and sustainable benefit to many people.
Involving one or more celebrities, such as the Dalai Lama or Natalie Portman.
Not boring.

Let me know if you have any ideas.

If not, that's fine too. I'm happy to just blow a candle on a cake in the presence of my family and a cheap videocam, and then think about this problem again in 10 years.

One week, three continents

2010-07-31T13:49:00.000-07:00

Sunday: Flew out of California.

Monday: Set foot on Europe for the first time.

Tuesday: Got to hang out with Tom Oliver (CEO of the World Peace Festival). Tom took us around Cannes, Nice and Eze. It was nice and easy.

Thursday: Went to Rome for the first time. Got to cross a couple of items off my "Places to see before I die" list.

Saturday: Set foot on Africa for the first time.

What a week!

On Leave From Google

2010-07-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

I'm on unpaid leave from Google until November 16, 2010. For details, see FAQ below (which is an edited version of the "out of office message" from my google.com account).

Frequently Answered Questions (some occasionally asked) about Meng's leave

Q: Meng, how do I become as good-looking as you are?
A: Just attend Engineering school for a few years. Everybody who goes through Engineering school becomes physically attractive, I don't know why. But, hey, this FAQ is about my time away, not about my stunning good looks, so stop distracting me.

Q: Why are you going on leave?
A: To write my book (actually, the book is going to write itself, but somehow my presence is needed, I'm not sure why). I'll also take short vacations and speak every now and then.

Q: When are you coming back to work?
A: On November 16, 2010. Unless I die, or get fired, whichever comes first.

Q: What's your book about? Why are you writing it?
A: The book will be about happiness and compassion for fun and profit. Specifically, I plan to write on the content we cover in Search Inside Yourself (SIY). The book will explain how to develop Emotional Intelligence using contemplative practices, the science behind it, how to apply it in business settings in ways that help everybody become more successful, and how this helps build world peace. This book is part of my plan to create the conditions for world peace in my lifetime (details). I also plan to open-source all SIY teaching materials with the release of the book, so that everybody in the world who wants to develop EI will have an additional resource, hopefully a very useful one that is also fun to read.

Q: What is the title of the book?
A: I don't know yet. The title I really want is, "Buddhas Just Want to Have Fun". I told that to Mingyur Rinpoche, he did NOT try to hit my head with a heavy object. I interpret that as an enlightened master's silence implying consent. (Actually, he laughed).

Q: Being a first-time author, will you be able to complete a draft of your book by November 15, 2010?
A: I honestly have no idea, but I know one way to find out.

Q: Are you trying to take over the world?
A: No.

Q: Will we see you during your leave?
A: I hope so. I'm not going away, this is a working leave. Outside of short vacations and a few speaking engagements, I'll most likely be hiding somewhere in or near Google HQ to write. Maybe Stanford Library, maybe even Building 40. So, yeah, if you have something fun lined up, I'm likely to be available.

Q: During your leave, can we have you meet and greet visiting world leaders and megastars?
A: Yes. Especially Celine Dion.

Q: Will you reply to my emails during your leave?
A: I may. Especially if you're Celine Dion.

Q: I noticed you're taking unpaid leave. Don't you like money?
A: I like money. Thank you for asking.

Q: Wise One, what is the meaning of life?
A: Simple. The meaning of life is not.

More Personal Growth Talks at Google

2010-06-28T21:36:00.000-07:00

My friend, Sudhakar "Thaths" Chandra, compiled playlists of personal growth-related talks at Google (some of which were hosted by me).

Happiness is the default state

2010-06-13T18:28:00.000-07:00

Life is funny. The biggest joke in life is that, after all that has been done in the pursuit of happiness, it turns out that sustainable happiness is achievable simply by bringing attention to one’s breath.

If you practice brining a firm and gentle attention to your breath, after a while, you may find yourself in a state where you are alert and relaxed at the same time. If you practice often enough, you may even become able to bring your mind to that state on demand.

Imagine you have a pot of water full of sediments, and imagine that pot is constantly shaken and agitated. The water appears cloudy. Imagine that you stop agitating the pot and just let it rest on the floor. The water will become calm and, after a while, all the sediments will settle and the water appears clear. This is the classical analogy of that mind in the alert and relaxed state. When we bring the mind to that state, we temporarily stop agitating the mind the same way we stop agitating the pot. Eventually, the mind becomes calm and clear, the same way the water appears calm and clear.

There is an extremely important quality of mind in that state that is not captured by this analogy. That quality is happiness. When the mind is calm and clear at the same time, happiness spontaneously arises. This mind becomes spontaneously and naturally joyful!

But why? Even after I found myself able to access that mind on demand, it didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Why should a calm and clear mind automatically be happy? I put that question to my friend, Alan Wallace, one of the Western world’s top experts in the practice of relaxed concentration (a practice known as Shamatha).

Alan said the reason is very simple: happiness is the default state of mind. So when our mind becomes calm and clear, it returns to its default, and that default is happiness. That is it. There is no magic, you are simply returning the mind to its natural state.

Alan, in his deep wisdom, said that to me in his usual calm, joyful and understated manner. But to me, that statement represents a profound life-changing insight. It implies that happiness is not something that you pursue, it is something you allow. Happiness is just being. That insight changed my life.

To paraphrase a famous Zen saying, you are already happy, you just have not yet realized it. Such a funny insight.

(Also published at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chademeng-tan/happiness-is-the-minds-de_b_610672.html )

Funny Thought: Make me look like Tom Cruise

2010-06-08T15:36:00.000-07:00

I get a haircut about 4 times a year. I try to time my haircuts to roughly coincide with when I need to file estimated taxes. That way, I only have to remember one of the two.

I often found it too difficult to describe how I want the end result of my haircut to look like. Then one day, I figured out a visual solution. I printed out a picture of Tom Cruise in Top Gun (with short hair) and just showed it to the hairdresser and said, "Make me look like this". It worked like a charm, and the extra opportunities for humor came free. When the hairdresser was done, she would say, "There, now you look just like Tom Cruise", and I would say, "Good, good, all I need now is a new face".

I did that often enough that the hairdressers started calling me the Tom Cruise guy. The last time I went for a haircut, Dana, the owner of the place, made this comment. "You know, everytime Tom Cruise comes in here for a haircut, he brings a picture of you".

Three musketeers and one young-ish guy

2010-06-03T17:37:00.000-07:00

I really like this photograph, not just because everybody in it is so handsome, but also the story it represents.

Once upon a time, there were three highly talented young men who wanted to serve the world and who became close friends with each other. Their names were Danny, Richie and Jon. When they grew up, they each became world-famous in their own unique ways, but the success of each one beautifully complemented the success of the other two and, together, their combined work may change the world.

Danny is Daniel Goleman,. He became a highly successful author who popularized Emotional Intelligence for the world, thereby illuminating the importance of emotions in school, at the workplace and everywhere else. Richie is Richard J. Davidson. He became a highly respected scientist who, among numerous achievements, founded the field of Contemplative Neuroscience and gave the world much of the science behind contemplative practices, thereby illuminating the power of meditation in a scientific way. Jon is Jon Kabat-Zinn. He became the first person to bring Mindfulness into mainstream medicine, thereby illuminating the transformative power of Mindfulness in real life in a modern Western context, and in the process, pushing Mindfulness into mainstream modern culture.

Together, Danny, Richie and Jon illuminated a path towards a next possible step of humanity's evolution. When humanity discovered industrialization, some of us went from "poor" to "not poor", and in the process, went from "miserable" to "not miserable". We then decided that if we just continued doing more of what we did, namely producing and consuming more and more stuff, thereby going from "not poor" to "rich", we can go from "not miserable" to "happy".

But it turns out things don't work that way. On an individual level, when you go from poor to "not poor", which some studies suggest is an income of around $60,000 per year for an average American family, your level of happiness increases very significantly. But when your income goes from that $60,000 per year to a much higher number, your level of happiness doesn't change very much. It turns out that having more material wealth makes you happier when you are poor, but when you are already out of poverty, having more doesn't make you happier, an entirely different approach is required. The way to increase happiness from that point is doing the inner work of cultivating emotional well-being and increasing inner peace and happiness, and the external work of cultivating loving and satisfying social relationships.

This key insight may be the next step in our evolution, and Danny, Richie and Jon illuminated the path. They are not the only ones doing it, but they were among the earliest in this culture, they bore most of the risk of being pioneers, and they are among the most successful (due perhaps to their extraordinary talent). And just to make for a good story for the movie, they were also close friends since young. All three of them are not just my friends, they are also my heroes.

I added myself to the picture because I feel that my work would have been impossible without any one of them. If Danny hadn't popularized Emotional Intelligence, or Richie hadn't pioneered the neuroscience, or Jon hadn't introduced Mindfulness into the mainstream, Search Inside Yourself would likely never be successful. I stand on the shoulders of giants. I'm happy for them that I'm not too fat. At least not yet.

The school of Buddhism I belong to

2010-06-02T09:09:00.000-07:00

People who know about the different schools of Buddhism are often curious which one I belong to, so they'd ask me, "What type of Buddhist are you?" And I would say, "A lousy one, of course."

In truth, I think I have benefited tremendously from all 3 branches of Buddhism.

I benefited tremendously from the concreteness and clarity of Theravada Buddhism. Theravada scriptures are the closest thing we have to the original teachings of the Buddha, the greatest hero in my life. Theravada teachings are systematic, logical, highly accessible, historically authentic, and contains minimal amount of the magic and mystery I found distasteful. The Vipassana practice (a somewhat relaxed version of which became known as "Mindfulness meditation" in the West), which comes out of the Theravada tradition, is the single most important thing I have learned in my entire life. Theravada teachings form both the theoretical and practical foundations of my Buddhist practice, from which I became able to understand and appreciate the other schools of Buddhism. Theravada is my root, my foundation. This is the body of my practice. The body of my practice is Virtue, Concentration and Wisdom (Sila, Samadhi and Panna).

I benefited tremendously from the inspiring power of Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhism. Vajrayana Buddhism is the result of at least two major rounds of evolution from the original teachings of the Buddha (either evolution or degeneration, I'm happy to argue either or both) and includes many important refinements and additions to more traditional forms of Buddhism. In many ways, Vajrayana is Buddhism on steroids. It has awed and inspired me. It has given me my Compassion practice. It inspired me to take my Bodhisattva Vows. Vajrayana is my thunder, my power. This is the heart of my practice. The heart of my practice is Emptiness and Compassion (Sunyata and Karuna).

I benefited tremendously from the simple directness of Zen Buddhism, which is, in my opinion, the greatest of all the Mahayana schools. True wisdom is simple and full of lightness and humor. Zen embodies it. Just be. Enlightenment is the perfection of just being. Zen is my no-self-ness (无我). This is the soul of my practice. The soul of my practice is. Just is.

Hence, I belong to all 3 major schools of Buddhism. At the same time, I belong to none of them. My true Dharma is the Hahayana. Ha ha.

Have Your Karma and Eat Cake Too

2010-06-01T18:32:00.000-07:00

Letting go is one of the most important skills a meditator picks up on her way to enlightenment. Letting go is so important it is one of the essential foundations of meditation practice. As usual, the Zen tradition has the funniest way of articulating this key insight. In the words of the Third Patriarch of Zen, "The Great Way is without difficulty, just cease having preferences". When the mind becomes so free that it is capable of letting go of preferences, the Great Way is no longer difficult.

The central importance of letting go leads to a very important question, "Is it possible to let go and still appreciate and experience life fully?" The way I like to ask the question is, "Can you have your karma and eat cake too?"

I think it is possible to have a mind of letting go and still live life to the full. The key is to let go of 2 things, grasping and aversion. Grasping is when the mind desperately holds on to something and refuses to let it go. Aversion is when the mind desperately keeps something away and refuses to let it come. These 2 qualities are flip-sides of each other. Grasping and aversion together account for a huge percentage of the suffering we experience, perhaps 90%, maybe even 100%.

When we experience any phenomena, we begin with contact between sense organ and object, then sensation and perception arise, and immediately following that grasping and/or aversion arise. (Traditional Buddhism classifies the mind itself as a sense, thus easily extending this model of experience to mental phenomenon as well as physical phenomenon. I myself find it very convenient to use this model, please feel free to do so if it works for you too.) The key insight is that grasping and aversion are separate from sensation and perception. They arise so closely together that we don't normally notice the difference. However, as your Mindfulness practice becomes stronger, you may notice the distinction and maybe even the tiny gap between them. Once your mind reaches that level of resolution, two very important opportunities become available to you.

The first important opportunity is the possibility of experiencing pain without suffering. The theory is that pain is just a sensation, that sensation leads to a strong aversion, and that aversion is the actual cause of suffering. Hence, if the mind recognizes this and then becomes able to let go of aversion, then the experience of pain leads to greatly reduced suffering, perhaps no suffering at all. Jon Kabat-Zinn has a great example of how this theory works in practice in his book, "Full Catastrophe Living". He described the story of a man in his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) clinic:

Another man, in his early seventies, came to the clinic with severe pain in his feet. He came to the first class in a wheelchair. .... That first day, he told the class that the pain was so bad he just wanted to cut off his feet. He didn't see what meditating could possibly do for him, but things were so bad that he was willing to give anything a try. Everybody felt incredible sorry for him. .... He came to the second class on crutches rather than in the wheelchair. After that he used only a cane. The transition from wheelchair to crutches to cane spoke volumes to us all as we watched him from week to week. He said at the end that the pain hadn't changed much but his attitude towards his pan had changed a lot.

The second important opportunity is the possibility of experiencing pleasure without the after-taste of unsatisfactoriness. The biggest problem with pleasant experiences is that they all eventually cease. The experience itself causes no suffering, but our clinging on to them, our desperate hoping that they don't go away, causes suffering. Thich Nhat Hanh has a very nice way of putting it, he said that wilting flowers do not cause suffering, it is the foolish desire that flowers not wilt that causes suffering. Hence, if the mind recognizes this and then becomes able to let go of grasping, the pleasant experiences lead to little or no suffering. You can fully enjoy flowers even though they eventually wilt.

Thus, by letting go of grasping and aversion, you can fully adopt the letting-go mind and also fully experience life in its glorious technicolor detail. In fact, you may be able to experience life more vividly with the letting-go mind because it frees you from the noisy interferences of grasping, aversion and suffering.

Good karma. Good cake. Yum.

(Also posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chademeng-tan/letting-go-have-your-karm_b_597026.html )

Meng at Wisdom 2.0

2010-05-31T16:19:00.000-07:00

I gave a talk and participated in a panel at the first Wisdom 2.0 Conference in 2010. Here are the videos:

Talk: http://vimeo.com/12161470

meng tan from Wisdom 2.0 Conference on Vimeo.

Panel: http://vimeo.com/12155567

conscious business panel from Wisdom 2.0 Conference on Vimeo.

Zen and a Walking Baby

2010-05-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

One of the best analogies I have ever come across for meditation practice is a baby learning to walk.

I remember my daughter taking her first step when she was about nine months old. One beautiful step. But one step was all she could manage before she would fall, in the uber-cute way that only babies can fall (everybody say, "awwwww"). Eventually, she graduated from one step to two steps. And then she plateaued for a while. For a couple of months, she could walk no more than one or two steps before she would fall (awwwww). Then a few days after her first birthday, I noticed her walking four steps. That same day, she doubled that achievement and maxed out at eight steps. (Yes, I measured, I'm an engineer, remember?) The next day, she seemed to plateau at eight steps, but in the late afternoon, she managed 16 steps before she fell. In the evening, she exceeded 30 steps. Once she broke that barrier, she could walk. On that day, she mastered walking (awwwww).

I found an important similarity between that experience and my own meditation practice. There seems to be two stages in one's meditation progress. I call the two stages "initial access" and "consolidation." The "initial access" stage is when you find yourself able to access a certain state of mind, but you can't maintain that mind for very long. For example, you may serendipitously find yourself in a state of mind where you are very calm and alert, and feel a deep sense of joy permeating your mind, but after just a few minutes you lose it. This stage is like a baby taking her very first step. The baby is finally able to access the experience of "walking." She finally knows what it feels like, but it only lasts a single step, maybe two, and then it's over.

The "consolidation" stage is the long process of going from one step to being able to walk around the house. For the meditator, it is becoming able to bring up a state of mind on demand, at a desired intensity and duration. Progress in this stage seems to be an exponential function that looks like a hockey stick on a graph, which means that you go for a frustratingly long time seemingly without any meaningful progress, and then suddenly, boom, within a very short period, you make huge progress and arrive at full consolidation. It's like my daughter plateauing at two steps for months, and then suddenly, in the space of two days, she became able to walk. To the casual observer, it may look like she learned to walk in just two days, but in reality, she did it over three months. It is her constant practice over three months than enabled the last two days of sudden progress and mastery.

I think the lesson to be learned is to not feel discouraged when your meditation doesn't seem to be progressing. If you understand the process, you may understand that when change does come it will come suddenly, and every moment of effort brings you a little closer to that point. The classical analogy is the breaking up of the ice over a frozen lake. To a casual observer, the breakup seems like a sudden phenomenon, but it was actually due to a long period of gradual melting of the underlying ice structure. In Zen, we call it gradual effort and sudden enlightenment.

So the next time you see a baby learn to walk, pay some attention. That baby is really a Zen Master teaching you a thing or two about progress in your meditation (everybody say, "awwwww").

(Also posted at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chademeng-tan/zen-buddhism-zen-and-a-wa_b_593632.html )

Funny Thought: Humor can help you get lazy

2010-05-27T17:23:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, you can get away with being lazy just by being funny.

Example 1:

Boss came into my office looking all flustered. He looked at me with a face full of tension and said, "Meng, I need you to give me a hand". I said, "Sure". Then I stared blankly at him and clapped for a few seconds. He laughed and left my office. I didn't even have to do any extra work.

Example 2:

Daughter wanted to race me up the stairs. I didn't want to. She got in a "ready" position and asked, "Race?". I said, "Chinese". I didn't have to run.

The Daddy Lama

2010-05-24T19:00:00.000-07:00

I've been invited to become a senior adviser to a tech company. They also invited me to choose a title for myself. I like funny titles (unfortunately, "Jolly Good Fellow" is already taken by one very good-looking guy in Google). I also like the idea of being regarded as wise and compassionate, but not actually do very much beyond saying wise and funny things and meeting famous people. Yes, sort of like being the Dalai Lama, except much lazier.

Given that context, I asked my daughter what a good title would be, and she said, "Daddy Lama".

I may actually use that title, His Happiness the Daddy Lama.

Random Thoughts

2010-05-23T21:27:00.000-07:00

Couple of random thoughts that came up over the past few weeks.

Quiet Mind
In giving up, I find.
In letting go, I gain.
In just being, I become.
In my silence, hear me roar.
In this void, is Dharma.

The Lazy Bodhisattva
With great compassion, aspire daily to save the world.
But don't actually put in any real effort.
Just do whatever comes most naturally to you.
Because when aspiration and compassion become strong,
Whatever comes most naturally is also the right thing to do.
Thus you, the bodhisattva, saves the world without effort.

Life, Yum
A Bodhisattva's great sorrow is like his salt,
His deep pain like bitter vegetables,
His naughty pleasures like a greasy hotdog,
All encompassed by the sourdough of profound peace.
Delicious and nourishing is the life of compassion.
Mindfully consumed.

Funny Thought: Buffet with the Dalai Lama

2010-05-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday (16 May 2010), I may have had one of the coolest tweets in the world. My tweet was:

Stood right behind Dalai Lama at buffet line!

Background story: We were having a buffet lunch at the house of Biddy Martin, Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was a buffet because the Dalai Lama wasn't supposed to be eating there (if he was, it would probably have been a bit more formal). His Holiness was suppose to just come say a few words, greet people and then go on to his next event. However, he came early and decided he wanted to stay for lunch, and (playfully perhaps) he decided he wanted to get his own food. I was right at the buffet table when he was walking towards it, and we decided to let him cut in. (My general rule is to not come between a man and his food, especially if he's a Tibetan lama because, as everybody who grew up reading kung-fu novels knows, all lamas know kung-fu).

So there I was, right behind the Dalai Lama at the buffet line. Another one of those comical moments in my life.

I told this story to a few friends, they all asked me the same thing, "What did the Dalai Lama have for lunch?". I told them that he liked everything he saw, and so .... ahem .... the Dalai Lama made himself one with everything.

Funny Thought: Product ideas of the day

2010-05-19T18:09:00.000-07:00

Product idea 1: A program you can install on your computer that locks up the computer every now and then, and the only way to unlock it is to smile at the webcam. That way, you'll smile at least a few times a day.

Product idea 2: Competitive smiling. Your laptop's webcam monitors your face for smiles, records the total amount of time you smiled each day and sends that data to a website, so that you can compete with your friends from all over the world. World's longest-duration smiler wins the Dalai Lama Award, unless you are actually the Dalai Lama, in which case, you'll win the Happy Llama Award.

Product idea 3: Instant water. Just add water!

Funny Thought: Luke at the restaurant

2010-04-25T18:40:00.000-07:00

(Silly joke that my young daughter and I came up with)

Luke and his daddy were in a restaurant. Luke tried to pick up his food using his hands. Daddy said slowly and deliberately, "Use the Fork, Luke".

Luke protested, asking, "Why do you keep telling me what to do?"

And daddy answered, with a deliberately deep voice, "Luke, I am your father"

Meng in the News: Why meditation has a place in business

2010-04-24T11:03:00.000-07:00

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/after_hours/lifestyle_activities/article.jsp?content=20100426_10027_10027

Why meditation has a place in business
Mindfulness is being championed by a growing number of high-powered firms, including Google.
By Jordan Timm

Chances are that you’ll be interrupted before you finish reading this story, especially if you’re at work. It might be a phone call or a text message, a tweet or an e-mail. It might even be a real, live co-worker tugging at your sleeve. (Has it happened already? It’s OK. I’ll wait.) Studies suggest the average worker is interrupted once every 11 minutes; it takes on average about 25 minutes for that worker to get back on task. It’s just one of the everyday strains on the modern worker, and just one reason why some companies are incorporating meditation practices into the workplace, in a bid to preserve their employees’ productivity, never mind their mental health.

Increasingly applied in western psychology, the practice of mindfulness comes out of the Buddhist tradition of meditation, and is championed by a growing number of celebrities, athletes and executives. A report funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research defines mindfulness as “a kind of nonelabrative, nonjudgmental, present-centered awareness in which each thought, feeling, or sensation that arises in the attentional ﬁeld is acknowledged and accepted as it is.”

If that sounds far out, its proponents insist it produces very tangible workplace benefits. “When we’re mindful, we’re able to work from a presence of mind that enables us to be effective and efficient,” says Maria Gonzalez, co-author of the new book The Mindful Investor. Her Toronto-based Argonauta Consulting trains executives in mindfulness techniques. She says the practice creates a greater calm, helping workers better manage stress (and with U.S. companies losing an estimated $200 billion annually on stress-related workforce issues like absenteeism and subpar performance, that can make a big difference to the bottom line). What’s more, it improves workers’ ability to concentrate and focus. “The workplace benefits are enormous,” says Gonzalez, whose clients include BMO Financial Group, Ontario’s Hydro One and the Conference Board of Canada. “There’s personal resilience, and the ability to sustain performance. You’re able to prioritize better, your time management is better. You have an enhanced ability to undestand client needs. You’re also much more creative, and come up with better solutions.”

The highest-profile example of a company investing in workplace mindfulness remains Google. One of the search giants’ original employees, a software engineer named Chade-Meng Tan, has invested a portion of the loot he garnered from Google’s IPO to research the scientific basis of meditation’s benefits. “The short story was, I wanted to create the conditions for world peace in my lifetime,” Tan says of his efforts. In 2007, he created the Search Inside Yourself program under the sponsorship of Google University, the company’s in-house employee education apparatus. That program, which Tan estimates has served as many as 500 Googlers, led to his current role as Google’s head of personal growth.

Search Inside Yourself focused on developing workers’ emotional intelligence, and educating them about the scientific underpinnings of material that can seem a touch New Agey. It incorporated instruction on mindful breathing and listening techniques that would offer personal benefits for its students, but with an eye on improving the company’s bottom line.

“We do not just teach empathy and compassion practices,” says Tan, “we also relate them to the skillful exercise of team leadership and also use those practices as a foundation for developing business-relevant skills like conducting difficult conversations and developing trust in teams. The idea is to make the business and employees far more effective (and hopefully, more profitable) by developing emotional intelligence company-wide. ‘Spiritual wellness’ and happiness are just the unavoidable side-effects.”

Google has since created meditation spaces around its campuses, and employees have organized classes. Of course, most of the business world still needs convincing of the merits of mindfulness, but Tan is optimistic it will gain traction. He cites the example of HP, which years ago was considered an oddball company for its notion that treating employees very well could increase profitability. “Today, it’s taken for granted by everyone, at least in Silicon Valley,” Tan says. “Similarly, one day, there will be a company that will demonstrate that having employees practise deep mindfulness and compassion is very good for business, and eventually, it will be taken for granted everywhere. I hope that company is Google.”

Meng in the News: The Science of Love

2010-04-24T10:51:00.000-07:00

I was briefly mentioned and quoted in this story about Stanford's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE).

Link to Article:
http://chademeng.com/Articles/shambhala_sun_ccare_may10.pdf

Joyful Mindfulness

2010-03-13T19:14:00.000-08:00

Most meditation instructors I know tell their students to sit for 10 minutes a day. I tell my students to do that if they can, but if they can't, just commit to one single Mindful breath a day (see: Just One Breath a Day). A friend jokingly called it "Mindfulness Lite". I teased him back by saying, "No, it's much worse, it's Mindfulness UltraLight".

In practicing meditation, one often comes across interesting surprises. My biggest surprise in practicing Shamatha (Calm Abiding), a practice leading to profound concentration, is the insight that relaxation forms the foundation of Shamatha. When the mind is relaxed, it becomes more calm and stable. These qualities deepen Shamatha, which in turn strengthens relaxation, thus forming a virtuous cycle. Paradoxically, deep concentration is built upon relaxation.

A similar mechanism seems to work in the practice of Mindfulness. I found lightness to be highly conducive to Mindfulness. Lightness gives rise to ease of mind. When the mind is at ease, it becomes more open, perceptive and non-judgmental. These qualities deepen Mindfulness, which in turn strengthens lightness and ease, thus forming a virtuous cycle of deepening Mindfulness.

That is why I like my Mindfulness served light. Mindfulness is best when it is strong, and paradoxically, light and easy may be the best path towards strong. Yes, there is a degree of cosmic humor here.

This insight suggests that a really good way to practice Mindfulness is during experiences of joy, especially the type of joy with a gentle quality that doesn't overwhelm the senses. For example, when you are taking a nice walk, holding hands with a loved one, enjoying a good meal, carrying a sleeping baby, or sitting with your child while she is reading a good book; these are great opportunities to practice Mindfulness by bringing full moment-to-moment attention to the joyful experience, to the mind and to the body. I call it "Joyful Mindfulness".

The first effect of bringing Mindfulness to joyful experiences is they become even more enjoyable, simply because you are more present to enjoy them. Extra enjoyment at no additional cost (really exciting for the bargain-hunter in me). More importantly, I found this Mindfulness gain to be generalizable. What that means is if you practice and strengthen Mindfulness during joyful experiences, that gain in Mindfulness infuses into other experiences as well, so you end up with stronger Mindfulness in neutral and unpleasant experiences too.

Joyful Mindfulness. Have fun on your way to Enlightenment. What a great deal!

Truth be told, I think you actually get much more bang for your buck doing formal sitting Mindfulness practice. Formal practice requires you to bring Mindfulness to your breath for a prolonged period. This is good because our attention naturally gravitates towards things that are very pleasant or very unpleasant, generally ignoring things that are neutral, so when you train yourself to bring Mindfulness to something as neutral as your breath, that Mindfulness gain is very generalizable, far more generalizable than the Mindfulness gained from joyful experiences. Pound for pound, you really can't beat sitting on a zafu. Unfortunately, formal practice requires lots of discipline, and discipline is a scarce resource, making formal practice hard to sustain. In contrast, Joyful Mindfulness offers much less punch but is far more sustainable. Plus it's fun, and nobody can argue with fun. I know I can't.

I think it is most optimal to do both formal meditation and Joyful Mindfulness everyday. By doing both, after a while, your formal meditation may get infused with a calm, blissful quality known in Sanskrit as sukha, and the stimulus-free experience of sitting meditation becomes joyful. Almost all seasoned meditators I know arrive at sukha at some point in their meditative careers, however, my own experience suggests that Joyful Mindfulness intensifies sukha in formal sitting. I theorize that practicing Joyful Mindfulness got my mind accustomed to ease, humor and lightness, thus allowing it to connect with sukha more readily during formal practice. That sukha then quietly infuses into daily life and makes daily experiences a bit more joyful, thereby increasing the frequency and intensity of joyful experiences that I can then use for Joyful Mindfulness practice. And thus, another happy virtuous cycle is formed. Joyful Mindfulness works great by itself, but becomes very powerful in combination with formal Mindfulness practice.

I think Joyful Mindfulness reaches its best when even doing nothing becomes a Mindfully joyful experience. Because of that, and because Joyful Mindfulness requires so little extra effort, I jokingly call it the "Lazy Way". I tell my friends I strive very hard to be lazy. Be not afraid of laziness; some are born lazy, some achieve laziness, and others have laziness thrust upon them.

(Reposted from the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chademeng-tan/joyful-mindfulness_b_497718.html )

Funny Thought: How I knew I was famous

2010-03-13T09:50:00.000-08:00

As some people know, there is a Google tradition where anybody who is really famous who visits the Googleplex in Mountain View needs to have a photo taken with me so that he/she can go on "Meng's Wall of Fame" near the lobby of Building 43. The New York Times even did a front page story on it. (See full story)

In November 2007, when I asked Barack Obama for this photo op, that New York Times story was still fairly recent. When I approached Mr Obama, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Ahh, you are the guy on the New York Times".

I gasped. That was the moment I knew I was famous. How do you know you are famous? When Barack Obama knows you from the New York Times, that's how!

(Truth be told, I don't think Mr Obama actually recognized me from the NYT. Most likely, he was told that I was going to approach him, since I had to clear security beforehand, and he just took the trouble to remember. He is a really great guy in person, charming, warm, sincere and modest, yet very Presidential).

Sustaining a Mindfulness practice

2010-02-27T19:37:00.000-08:00

(Reposted from Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chademeng-tan/just-one-breath-a-day_b_479060.html )

Just One Breath a Day

As an instructor, I found it fairly easy to get people started on Mindfulness practice. I just need to show them the brain science, explain the benefits, introduce a short sitting, and viola, people get it. That's the good news.

The bad news is after the first few days, many people find it hard to sustain the practice. Many of us start the first few days with great enthusiasm, committing ourselves to 10 or 20 minutes a day of this wonderful practice, but after that initial enthusiasm, it starts to feel like a chore. You sit there bored and restless, wondering why time goes by so slowly, and then after a while, you decide you have more important and/or interesting things to do, such as "getting stuff done" or watching cats flush toilets on YouTube. And before you know it, you've lost your daily practice.

How can we sustain a Mindfulness practice?

Happily, the difficulty of sustaining a Mindfulness practice often lasts only a few months. It is like starting an exercise regime. The first few months are usually really hard, you probably have to discipline yourself into exercising regularly, but after a few months, you find your quality of life changing dramatically. You have more energy, you suffer fewer sick days, you can get more stuff done, and you look better in the mirror. You feel great about yourself. Once you reach that point, you just cannot not do it anymore. The upgrade in quality of life is just too compelling. From that point on, your exercise regime becomes self-sustaining. Yes, you probably still have to cajole yourself into the gym every now and then, but it becomes fairly easy.

It is the same with sustaining a Mindfulness practice. You probably need some discipline in the beginning, but after a few months, you notice dramatic changes in quality of life. You become happier, calmer, more emotionally resilient, more energetic, and people like you more because your positivity reflects on them. You feel great about yourself. And again, once you reach that point, it's so compelling you just cannot not practice anymore. Yes, even a seasoned mediator needs to cajole herself onto the cushion every now and then, but it becomes fairly easy and habitual.

So how do you sustain your practice up to the point it becomes so compelling it is self-sustaining? I have 3 suggestions:

1. Have a Buddy

I learned this from my dear friend and mentor, Norman Fischer, whom we jokingly call the "Zen Abbot of Google". Once again, we use the gym analogy. Going to the gym alone is hard, but if you have a "gym buddy" whom you commit to going with, you're much more likely to go regularly. Partly because you have company, and partly because this arrangement helps you encourage each other and hold each other accountable (what I jokingly call "mutual harassment").

We suggest finding a "Mindfulness buddy" and committing to a 15-minute conversation every week, covering at least these 2 topics:

a. How am I doing with my commitment to my practice?
b. What has arisen in my life that relates to my practice?

We also suggest ending the conversation with the question, "How did this conversation go?"

We instituted this in our Mindfulness-Based Emotional Intelligence program (named "Search Inside Yourself") and found it very effective.

2. Do Less Than You Can

I learned this from Mingyur Rinpoche, whose book, "The Joy of Living", I most highly recommend. The idea is to do less formal practice than you are capable of. For example, if you can sit in Mindfulness for 5 minutes before it feels like a chore, then don't sit for 5 minutes, just do 3 or 4 minutes, perhaps a few times a day. The reason is to keep the practice from becoming a burden. If Mindfulness practice feels like a chore, it's not sustainable.

My friend, Yvonne Ginsberg, likes to say, "Meditation is an indulgence". I think her insight beautifully captures the core of Rinpoche's idea. Don't sit for so long that it becomes burdensome. Sit often, for short periods, and your Mindfulness practice may soon feel like an indulgence.

3. Take One Breath a Day

I may be the laziest Mindfulness instructor in the world because I tell my students all they need to commit to is one mindful breath a day. Just one. Breathe in and breathe out mindfully, and your commitment for the day is fulfilled, everything else is a bonus.

There are two reasons why one breath is important. The first is momentum. If you commit to one breath a day, you can easily fulfill this commitment and can then preserve the momentum of your practice, and later, when you feel ready for more, you can pick it back up easily. The second reason is having the intention to meditate is itself a meditation. This practice encourages you to arise an intention to do something kind and beneficial to yourself daily, and over time, that self-directly kindness becomes a valuable mental habit. When self-directly kindness is strong, Mindfulness becomes easier.

Remember, one breath a day for the rest of your life. That's all I ask.

Mindfulness in 2 Minutes

2010-02-24T21:47:00.001-08:00

(Reposted from Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chademeng-tan/mindfulness-in-2-minutes_b_474317.html )

Most evenings, before we sleep, my young daughter and I sit in Mindfulness together for two minutes. I like to joke that two minutes is optimal for us because that is the attention span of a child and an engineer. For two minutes a day, we quietly enjoy being alive and being together. More fundamentally, for two minutes a day, we enjoy being. Just being. To "just be" is simultaneously the most ordinary and the most precious experience in life.

As usual, I let my experience with a child inform how I teach adults. This daily two-minutes experience is the basis of how I introduce the practice of Mindfulness in an introductory class for adults.

In learning and teaching Mindfulness, the good news is that Mindfulness is embarrassingly easy. It is easy because we all already know what it is like and it is something we all already experience from time to time. My friend and personal hero, Jon Kabat-Zinn, skilfully defined Mindfulness as, "Paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally". Thich Nhat Hanh, perhaps the greatest Zen Master of our time, refers to Mindfulness poetically as, "keeping one's consciousness alive to the present reality". Simply put, I think Mindfulness is the mind of "just being". All you really need to do is to pay attention moment-to-moment without judging. It's that simple.

The hard part in Mindfulness practice is deepening, strengthening and sustaining it, especially in times of difficulty. To have a quality of Mindfulness so strong that every moment in life, even in trying times, is infused with a deep calmness and a vivid presence, is very hard and takes a lot of practice. But Mindfulness per se is easy. It is easy to understand and easy to arise in oneself. That ease is what I capitalize on as an instructor.

In some of my classes, after explaining some of the theory and brain science behind Mindfulness, I offer two ways to experience a taste of Mindfulness, the "Easy Way", and the "Easier Way".

The creatively-named "Easy Way" is to simply bring gentle and consistent attention to one's breath for two minutes. That's it. Start by becoming aware that you are breathing, and then paying attention to the process of breathing. Everytime your attention wanders away, just bring it back very gently.

The "Easier Way" is, as its name may subtly suggest, even easier. All you have to do is to sit without agenda for two minutes. Life really cannot get much simpler than that. The idea here is to shift from "doing" to "being", whatever that means to you, for just two minutes. Just be.

To make it even easier, you're free to switch between the Easy Way and the Easier Way anytime during these two minutes. Anytime you feel like you want to bring awareness to breathing, just switch to Easy. And anytime you then decide you rather just sit without agenda, just switch to Easier. No questions asked.

This simple exercise is Mindfulness practice. Practiced often enough, and it deepens the inherent calmness and clarity in the mind. It opens up the possibility of fully appreciating each moment in one's life, every one of which is precious. It is for many people, including myself, a life-changing practice. Imagine, something as simple as learning to "just be", can change your life.

Best of all, it is something even a child knows how to do. Oh, and an engineer too.

Meng at Davos

2010-02-09T10:34:00.000-08:00

No, I didn't go, but Larry Brilliant found a sign advertising my presence there.

Funny Thought: Perfect Tan

2010-02-07T11:01:00.000-08:00

They love me so much in this town somebody even named their business after me!

Funny Short Thoughts

2010-02-03T19:03:00.000-08:00

A collection of funny thoughts I've had over the past weeks, each too short to be a blog post on its own:

Back when I was doing Machine Learning, I spent a lot of my time tuning parameters. Then I suddenly realized, the "training data" was actually training me.

When I'm introducing myself to a semi-familiar audience, I like to say, "For those who don't know me, my name is Meng. For those who know me, my name is still Meng."

Whoever is paving the road to hell, please stop using good intentions. Thank you very much.

I have discovered the solution to world hunger. The solution is: food. You see, if people have food, they will no longer be hungry. I don't know why nobody has thought of it.

A rational decision is one that I can rationalize to myself.

I find it annoying to have one plaque per patent. I wish there was a single plaque to cover all my past and future patents, a plaque that says like, "Wow, you have so many patents, you must be really smart, your father must be secretly proud of you even though you grew up to be a nerd" or something.

When I grow up, I want to be just like me.

Most days when I did a lot, I accomplished very little. Maybe if I do very little, I might accomplish a lot.

Random Vacation Notes: Caribbean Dec/2009

2010-01-02T12:09:00.000-08:00

I vacationed in the Carribean and Miami for the first time in Dec 2009. Here are some random thoughts.

Funny Thoughts

- In Tortola, I saw for the first time a real chicken crossing a road. I wondered why.

- I set up a webcam at home to keep an eye on our backyard chickens. The best part about doing that is being able to tell my wife daily, "Honey, I'm going to check on chicks on the Internet". (Not my original joke. My friend, Simon, had naked newly-hatched chickens, so he pointed a webcam at them and gave the world nakedchicksontheinternet.com ).

- I was amazed how well alligators can stay perfectly still in a pose for an extended period of time. If meditation was about staying physically still, alligators will attain Nirvana before any of us.

- My impression of Miami Beach: It's not a city with a beach, it's a beach with its own city.

Grumblings

I'm amazed by the number of things I get to grumble about during this vacation. All the 3 worst city tours I've ever been on in my life happened during this vacation. Wow.

- In Tortola, we experienced our first content-free guided city tour. It was weird. The tour guide went like, “On your left is a gas station, followed by a tour agency, on your right is a grocery store, and a hardware store for all your hardware needs ….”. It was funny for the first 2 minutes, but it just went on and on for the entire 3-hour tour. “Coming up on your right is another gas station, and on your left is a post office and a construction company …”. Wow. Some nice people tried to tease useful content out of him, but to no avail. My wife, for example, asked him what the average income of islanders was, and the guy said, “It depends, some people earn more, some people earn less. For example, doctors and lawyers earn more, you know”. That was his full answer. Freedom from content, my countryman, freedom!

- The most boring “tourist attraction” I have ever visited was the Bacardi Museum at San Juan, Puerto Rico. The entire 1-hour-plus “experience” was little more than the telling of a fairly boring family story about how some guy and his kids made a fortune making rum. “Here’s Don Facundo, he made Bacardi rum, and here’s his first son, Emilio, who later became the company boss. Here's his second son, Facundo, who planted a palm tree. And here’s his other son who did this or that at the company, and oh, here’s the son-in-law who did something or other ……”. And the story was told at least twice, maybe more, I don’t know, I sort of blanked out after the second telling. It was a 5-minute tale tightly compacted into 45 minutes for your convenient enjoyment. And we didn’t even get a factory tour to see how they made rum. It gets worse. When we arrived at the museum, we had to wait 45 minutes for our tour to start. It was like visiting the most boring distant relative you didn’t even know you had who kept telling the same story about his rum and his sons over and over again, and making you sit and wait before telling you that story. We paid $39 a head for a city tour, which includes this museum tour and a bus ride around San Juan with only a single stop.

- Our city tour with Safari Tours Miami was very disappointing. We spent an hour sitting in the bus just picking up other tourists from their hotels (chaotic, of course), and worse, the "city tour" just made a single stop (at Little Havana). Just one stop. Basically, a $39/head bus ride with not a lot to see.

- Loews Miami Beach Hotel: $570 a nite and no bathtub? You kidding me?

Cultivating Compassion: Meditation For Better Relationships

2009-12-31T13:38:00.000-08:00

(Reposted from the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chademeng-tan/cultivating-compassion-me_b_401048.html )

A long time ago, I came across this joke:

Once, a disciple asked, "Master, is associating with people half the holy life?"

The Master replied, "No, associating with people is the whole of holy life".

This joke probably started as a misreading of the famous Upaddah Sutta in Buddhism, where the Buddha told Ananda that friendships with "admirable people" is not half of holy life, but the whole of holy life. Over time, however, I found the humorous apocryphal version to be deeply insightful. There are at least two components to one's spiritual practice, Wisdom and Compassion, and associating with people, especially in difficult situations, helps us grow Compassion. Therefore, you probably cannot live a holy life without associating with people.

I have found three practices to be extremely useful in helping me deal with people.

The first practice is a combination of "Just Like Me" meditation and Loving-Kindness meditation. There are three premises behind this practice. The first is that when we perceive somebody as being similar to ourselves ("just like me"), we become much more likely to feel and act positively towards that person. The second is that kind and loving thoughts towards another can be generated volitionally. The third premise is that mental habits can be formed with practice, so if we spend time and effort creating thoughts of similarity-to-others and loving kindness, over time, these thoughts get generated habitually and effortlessly, and once you equipped yourself with that mental disposition, people start liking you even more, and you become more likely to have satisfying relationships that contribute greatly to everybody's happiness.

The practice itself is very simple. In formal meditation, I would ask my fellow meditators to sit in pairs and I would guide with this script:

Become aware that there is a person in front of me. A fellow human being, just like me.

Let us now consider a few things:

This person has a body and a mind, just like me.
This person has feelings, emotions and thoughts, just like me.
This person has at some point been sad, disappointed, angry, hurt or confused, just like me.
This person has in his or her life, experienced physical and emotional pain and suffering, just like me.
This person wishes to be free from pain and suffering, just like me.
This person wishes to be safe, healthy and loved, just like me.
This person wishes to be happy, just like me.

Now, let's allow some wishes to arise:

I wish for this person to have the strength, resources, and social support to navigate the difficulties in life.
I wish for this person to be free from pain and suffering
I wish for this person to be happy.
Because this person is a fellow human being, just like me.

In real life, I have found this practice to be tremendously powerful in healing relationships. Whenever I have a major conflict with somebody, I would find an excuse to leave the room and after I'm sufficiently calmed, I would recollect that person in my mind and do the above exercise. By the time I'm done, at least half my anger would be gone. It's a very useful practice, both at home and at work.

The second practice is something I call "Multiplying Goodness". It is an adaptation of the Tibetan tonglen practice. In tonglen, you breathe in suffering (of self and others), transform it within your heart, and breathe out relief (to self and others). We found tonglen too difficult for our students, so I made a change to it. Instead of breathing in suffering, you breathe in goodness (of self and others), multiply it in your heart by 10 times, and then breathe out all that goodness to the world. The idea is to use mental visualization to create these three mental habits:

1. Instinctively see goodness in self and others.
2. Become confident in multiplying goodness.
3. Create desire to give goodness to the world.

In formal meditation, I would guide with this script:

Connect with the goodness within ourselves, our capacity for love, compassion, altruism, and inner joy. If you wish, you may visualize your goodness radiating out of your body as a faint white light.

When you breathe in, breathe in all your goodness into your heart. Use your heart to multiply that goodness by a factor of 10. And when you breathe out, give all that goodness out to the whole world. If you wish, you may visualize yourself breathing out a brilliant white light representing this abundance of goodness.

Now, let us connect with the goodness within everybody in this room. Everybody in the room is a good person, possessing some goodness. (Repeat above)....

Finally, let us connect with the goodness within everybody in the world. Everybody in the world possesses at least a hint of goodness. (Repeat above)....

This practice helps us gain confidence in our own inner goodness and equips us with the mental disposition to see goodness in others. The ability to perceive underlying goodness in all even in difficult situations affords us the inner resources to calm ourselves and others in those situations.

The final practice is a mantra I created for myself that summarizes many of my practices. The mantra is, "Love them, understand them, forgive them, grow with them". Whenever I find myself in a difficult situation involving other people, I would silently repeat the mantra to myself. I found that it works especially well with children and bosses.

My friend, Rigel, suggested that my mantra may also apply to magic mushrooms. Very funny, Rigel.

Short Funny Thoughts

2009-12-18T10:56:00.000-08:00

Here is a collection of funny thoughts I've had over the past few weeks, each too short to be a blog post on its own:

The meaning of life is not.

I knew saving the world would be impossible, but I didn't think it'd be hard.

I have so many things to do I don't even know what to do anymore.

I enjoy debating with myself. Everytime I debate with myself, I win.

When things are bad, better is good, but good is even better.

In the gym, nobody can hear you scream.

I'm good at being selfishly compassionate, but fail at being compassionately selfish.

What's new with me? Just the same old same old, everything is different everyday.

I discovered I'm the most stupid person I know with an IQ of 156.

If ever you're promised 72 virgins for blowing up a building, you should confirm their gender and sexual orientation first. Otherwise, there may be nasty surprises.

It turns out that the job of the Vice President doesn't actually involve vice. Once I realized that, I didn't want the job anymore.

I crack myself up sometimes. I'm glad I'm not Humpty Dumpty.

I think the God of the Old Testament had way too much fun.

Transforming Your Brain at Work

2009-12-06T23:29:00.000-08:00

Recently, my team at Google had the privilege of hosting 2 amazing talks by 2 great speakers, Richie Davidson and David Rock, on subjects very near and dear to our hearts.

Richie is one of the most famous neuroscientists in the world and a pioneer in many fields of neuroscience, including the one I care most about, Contemplative Neuroscience, the science of transforming our brains with contemplative practices. To me, he's a rock star. In person, besides being extremely smart, he's just really kind and sweet. I'm truly honored to have a friend like him.

David is a well-known coach and author who, in my opinion, is on his way to becoming a rock star (if he isn't one already). I'm sure history will remember David for being a pioneer in bringing neuroscience to the workplace in general and to corporate leadership in particular. In person, I found him to be very smart and intellectually adventurous, an inspiring ball of energy working towards greater good for humanity. I'm very thankful to our mutual friend, Dan Siegel, for introducing us to each other.

Richie spoke in Google about Contemplative Neurosicence, and David spoke about application of neuroscience at work. My own work in Google is to apply neuroscience to work for Googlers, particularly Contemplative Neuroscience. Each talk was amazing in itself, but taken together, they just fit perfectly in my grand scheme of things. That creates a warm fuzzy feeling in this old man's heart. I highly recommend both talks.

Also, David blogged about his visit to Google (coincidentally, he did it today, just as I was blogging about him).

Related: Other talks available at: http://www.mengstupiditis.com/2009/09/collection-of-personal-growth-talks.html

Funny Thought: Giving Food Advice to Alton Brown

2009-11-20T17:20:00.000-08:00

I'm a true Google foodie. I (only half-jokingly) tell my friends I'm so rich I'm working for food. Gluttony is my favorite sin.

Hence, I was thrilled yesterday to have the opportunity to lunch with Alton Brown, the host of Good Eats and main commentator of Iron Chef America (both of which Angel and I watch all the time). In a way, it was just another lunch with a new friend, but given the context, it feels almost surreal. Eating with Alton Brown is almost like Nirvana-ing with the Dalai Lama.

And yes, we both had good eats.

I'm proud to say that I was able to give food advice to Alton Brown during lunch. Yes, me giving food advice to Alton Brown.

During lunch, Alton mentioned that when he turned 30, he suddenly developed an allergy to raw oysters, and could never eat them again. So I said, "Alton, I can give you some advice on that: Never turn 30 again. I did that turning 30 thing myself, it didn't work out for me too".

(For those who are wondering, yes, Alton Brown is really nice. Hundreds of his fans lined up to get an autograph and photo op with him, it took one and a half hours to clear the line, and he took the time to greet everybody in line and was nice to all. I was impressed. I could almost call him a .... jolly good fellow).

Random Thought: Birthday Aspirations

2009-10-29T21:51:00.000-07:00

Strong like the mountain.
Deep like the sea.
Vast like the sky.
I aspire to be.

壮如山。
深如海。
阔如天。
我志在。

Funny Thought: Birthday Meal

2009-10-29T13:47:00.000-07:00

(Sung to the tune of 12 Days of Christmas)

For my lunch on my birthday, my true love gave to me,

A five-course meal.
Four types of sushi,
Three-dollar oysters,
Two scoops of ice-cream,
And a bowl of nabeyaki.

Funny Thought: Chief Humor Officer

2009-10-25T17:21:00.000-07:00

I aspire someday to hold the title of Google's Chief Humor Officer. Even if I'm bestowed the honor posthumorously.

Sadly, the Chief Humor Officer will never be appointed a Member of the Bored.

(Fedor's comment: He would also not be able to allocate any FUNds, but will be reimbursed for smilage.)

Life Story: Taking my Bodhisattva Vows

2009-10-11T11:19:00.000-07:00

The first time I took the first Bodhisattva Vow, it was done with humor, in a very serious way, of course. Not surprisingly, the person who opened that door for me was Dr Larry Brilliant, a laughing bodhisattva I'm honored to call my friend.

In the Zen tradition (which is the Mahayana tradition I'm most familiar with), the 4 Bodhisattva Vows are:

Countless are sentient beings, I vow to liberate them all.
Endless are afflictions, I vow to discontinue them all.
Measureless are the Dharmas, I vow to learn them all.
Supreme is the Buddha Way, I vow to attain it in full.

眾生無邊誓願度
煩惱無盡誓願斷
法門無量誓願學
佛道無上誓願成

For me, the last 3 vows are relatively easy. I mean, learning all the Dharmas, for example, that sounds like getting 2 or 3 PhDs, that's doable in my lifetime. But the first vow was very tough. The first vow implies the aspiration to be the last one out of Samsara. It means choosing to purposely stay in the realm of endless suffering until the last sentient being is liberated. It's like is being the first person to know how to get out of a large burning building, but choosing to be the last person to get out so you can help everybody else out first. For a long time, I didn't feel I was remotely up to the task.

What annoyed me even more was that other Buddhists seem to have no difficulty taking the Bodhisattva Vows at all. I know of weekly ceremonies at temples where large numbers of people recite the vows once a week without batting an eyelid. Why is it so easy for them and so hard for me? I can think of 2 possible explanations. The first explanation is that I'm a useless coward and lousy Buddhist. The second explanation is, unlike those who recite them as a ceremonial ritual, I was actually serious about fulfilling those vows, in my lifetime if possible. My best guess is that both explanations are correct.

The event that helped me get over that hump occurred in May 2006. My friend, Larry Brilliant, had just recently joined Google as the Executive Director of Google.org, Google's philanthropic arm. One of Larry's first tasks was to figure out the strategic directions for Google.org. As part of that effort, he hosted an "offsite meeting" with some leaders of the philanthropic world he knew well, and perhaps because I was so good-looking, Larry invited me to come along too.

That offsite meeting was a fascinating experience for me. I spent 2 days in the presence of highly inspiring people like Larry Brilliant and Jane Wales, people who gave their adult lives to saving the world, listening to them explain and strategize about solving some of the biggest problems in the world like global poverty and climate change. Whoa.

That experience was deeply inspiring for me in 2 ways. First, it was the experiential realization that these people are around us. That, yes, there are people who dedicate their lives to humanity, people of greatness who are also ordinary at the same time. They are not just folks you read about occasionally on Time Magazine, they are real people with real lives, and they are here, just doing their best like everybody else, trying to save the world in their own quiet ways. Second, I realized how happy they are. Saving the world is a career choice fraught with stress, frustration and failure, but it's also full of meaning, purpose and positive engagement. It's a life full of love. It turns out that saving the world is not necessarily miserable, saving the world can be fun (which is the topic of another blog post, stay tuned).

At the end of the 2 days, my mind was in a different state. My mind was now full of inspiration and possibility.

To end the 2-day meeting, Larry invited all of us to sit in a circle and talk about how we felt. When it was my turn to speak, I said,

"Last person out of Samsara, please turn off the lights. And, let that be me".

And then, it occurred to me, I finally took the first Bodhisattva Vow. Effortlessly, in light humor, and in full readiness to fulfill it.

Funny Thought: My job was to say "Google sucks"

2009-10-05T15:59:00.000-07:00

There is a great story on Business Week ( http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/10/googles_scott_h.html ) about Google's "Evaluation Team" ("Eval"), the team which, among other things, measures the performance of Google's search algorithm. In case you were wondering what I did when I was in Google Engineering (back when even I was young), I used to run that team. Of course, that job was much smaller back when I was doing it than Scott's current job (the company itself was also much smaller). Part of my job, perhaps the most important part, was to know where and when Google's search is broken.

The most fun I had in that job was describing what I did to new Googlers. When they asked me what I do, I would say, "My job is to tell my bosses 'Google sucks', and they give me a salary".

The other joke I used to crack about "Eval" is, "Only 'I' can make eval evil". Bad joke, I know, but it made people laugh.

Random Thought: Training Level 5 Leadership

2009-10-03T15:15:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I wrote about the idea of "Egoless Ego". Main idea: To achieve breakthroughs, you need to have enough ego to know you can change the world, AND at the same time be egoless enough to know that you are mostly irrelevant. It is like being as big as Mount Fuji and as small as a grain of sand at the same time.

I also mentioned that the state of mind that is conducive to "Egoless Ego" is something I called "Selfless Glory", a mind that seeks glory without the glory, the state of mind of peaceful stillness surrounded by powerful motion.

I have recently come across a less poetic but much clearer description of this state of being. It is something Jim Collins describes as "Level 5 Leadership" in his book, Good to Great, which I recommend very highly. (If you read only one business book, read this one).

In Good to Great, Collins defines 5 levels of leadership. "Level 4" leaders are what he calls "Effective Leaders". Most successful CEOs (such as Lee Iacocca) are "Level 4" leaders. "Level 5" leaders are the type of leaders that turn good companies into great ones. They are the "good to great" leaders.

What is the difference between a "Level 4" and "Level 5" leader? A "Level 5" leader has all the strengths of a "Level 4" leader, plus 2 important qualities: strong ambition AND personal humility. One way Collins describes such leaders (page 22):

Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless. To quickly grasp this concept, think of United States President Abraham Lincoln (one of the few Level 5 presidents in United States history), who never let his ego get in the way of his primary ambition for the larger cause of an enduring great nation. Yet those who mistook Mr. Lincoln’s personal modesty, shy nature, and awkward manner as signs of weakness found themselves terribly mistaken, to the scale of 250,000 Confederate and 360,000 Union lives, including Lincoln’s own

In other words, a Level 5 leader is one who works towards glory and greatness, but in a way that is selfless and humble. To tie this in with my initial thoughts, I think a Level 5 leader is someone with a mind of "Selfless Glory" expressing "Egoless Ego". Here's what Collins says about Level 5 leaders and ego (page 21):

Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves into the larger goal of building a great company. It's not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious - but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.

Hence, it seems that the thoughts I've had about extraordinary personal achievements ("achieving breakthroughs") also apply to leadership, and Collins has the data to prove the effectiveness of such leaders. That is incredibly encouraging for me.

That leads us to an important question: How do you cultivate the "Level 5" leadership?

Given that the distinguishing features of Level 5 leaders are ambition and personal humility, whatever you do to create those leaders needs to down-modulate their ego while strengthening their motivation at the same time. Two obvious ways of achieving that are surviving personal trauma (eg, surviving cancer) and having a significant religious experience. Obviously, not everybody can or wants to experience trauma or get religion (personally, I prefer neither for myself, thank you very much). So, outside of trauma and religion, are there ways to train Level 5 leadership? I think so.

I can think of 2 qualities that are conducive to cultivating Level 5 leadership that can be trained in a secular, workplace setting:

1. Compassion
2. Ease of Mind

1. Compassion

Compassion has 3 components, a cognitive component (I understand your suffering), an affective component (I feel for you) and a motivational component (I want to help you). Compassion is also strongly altruistic in nature.

Compassion helps develop Level 5 leaders in 3 ways:

1. Being altruistic in nature, compassion is a great antidote for excessive self-obsession. Hence, the compassionate leader becomes strong in the humility needed for Level 5 leadership.

2. Compassion's motivational component keeps the compassionate leader highly motivated and ambitious towards greater good. Hence, he is unafraid to do big things despite his personal humility.

3. A compassionate leader inspires people (because "his heart is in the right place") and understands and work well with people (because he understands and feels for them). Hence, he usually has the bottom-up support needed to be successful.

In fact, compassion is so conducive to Level 5 leadership I believe that compassion is the foundation of Level 5 leadership. I even believe all Level 5 leaders are compassionate leaders, but I don't have any data at this time (if you do, let me know).

2. Ease of Mind

I like easy. Easy is good.

I think the best way to do big things is with a mind that is at ease. This is the mind where you have nothing to gain and nothing to lose, you are doing what you are doing only because it is the right thing to do, and it is fun. With this mind, the sense of ease doesn't go away even when you have to put in real effort, and even when you get frustrated.

The best analogy for this mind I can think of is playing serious golf for charity. Sure, it takes work, the double bogeys are frustrating, and you have nothing to gain for the entire afternoon of effort, but hey, it's fun, you have nothing to lose, and you're doing it as an act of kindness towards others with a bunch of your best friends. The mind is at ease the entire afternoon.

Why is this ease of mind important? I can think of 3 reasons.

First, it frees you. If you have nothing to gain or lose, then you cannot be demotivated. There is nothing to hold you back. You are free to play at your best, and you're free to take risks that help you become even better.

Second, it opens you up. When you're at ease, people find it much easier to work with you. And if you happen to be the leader, you can better take full advantage of other people's talents, partly because people enjoy working for you (so they don't hold themselves back), and partly because you don't suffer from petty jealously that unconsciously makes you fear their success (so you don't hold them back, consciously or otherwise).

Third, it motivates you. If your mind is at ease, most likely it's because what you're doing is fun to you in some major way, and most likely that ease of mind makes it even more fun, thus forming a virtuous cycle. Fun is important. I often say that saving the world can be fun, and has to be fun, because if it's not fun, nobody will save the world. So, please, be at ease, have fun.

It is important to note that "ease of mind" does not exclude experiencing strong emotions. Indeed, great leadership often includes strong positive emotions such as joy, excitement, exuberance sometimes, passion, hope, deep satisfaction and the like. It also surely involves stress- some good, some very bad. "Ease of mind" includes the ability to contain all strong emotions. The analogy is a deep ocean. The water on the surface is choppy, but the water in the depths is calm despite the movement on the surface. Similarly, one whose mind is at ease experiences strong emotions from time to time, but in the depths of his mind, his ease is largely undisturbed. Which is why he is capable of experiencing strong emotions without being derailed.

How, then, is this ease of mind cultivated?

I can think of 3 conditions for that mind to emerge. The first is to having a stable inner happiness that exists fairly independently of one's life conditions. That stable inner happiness eventually helps you become comfortable with who you are, what you have, and how the world sees you. The second is developing mastery over one's own emotions, developing a mind that is capable of experiencing and transforming emotions (for example, channeling anger into energy to fight for change). The third is finding alignment with what you like to do, what is important to you, and your work. That alignment helps you find motivation at work in a way that is fun for you.

This powerful combination of Compassion and Ease of Mind is what makes Level 5 leaders, in my opinion.

The good news is that all these qualities are covered in the Search Inside Yourself (SIY) curriculum we developed (admittedly, not in enough detail, but enough to get you started). So it is possible that SIY is the foundation of a training program for Level 5 leadership. This thought is gloriously exciting to me, in a selfless sort of way, of course.

###

Update 10/4/09: Added clarification on strong emotions in "ease of mind", also added "emotional mastery" as a condition for that mind to emerge, after discussion with Annie McKee. Some of the wording are Annie's own.

Funny Thought: Letter of Recommendation

2009-09-30T15:35:00.000-07:00

My friend, Ke, told me that in China, it is common for graduating students to write their own letters of recommendation in the names of their professors.

If I got to write my own recommendation in the name of my professor, it'd look like this:

Meng is, by far, the best student I have ever had. In fact, he is the smartest person I have ever met. It is hard to imagine someone so stunningly handsome can, at the same time, be so brilliant. I admire him so much even his mere shadow inspires me. It is my professional opinion that anybody who doesn't hire him is an idiot. If you don't hire him, I'll personally beat you up.

Random Thought: Dealing with distress

2009-09-27T15:43:00.000-07:00

Over the years, I've developed a 4-step plan to deal with my distress. I hope this would be helpful to you too.

My 4 steps are:
1. Know when you're not in pain.
2. Do not feel bad about feeling bad.
3. Do not feed the monsters.
4. Start every thought with kindness and humor.

1.Know when you're not in pain.

When you're not in pain, know that you're not in pain.

This is a very powerful practice on multiple levels. On one level, it increases happiness. When we're suffering pain, we always tell ourselves, "I'll be so happy if I'm free from this pain", but when we're free from that pain, we forget to enjoy the freedom from pain. This practice of constantly noticing the lack of distress encourages us to enjoy the sweetness of that freedom, and thereby helps us to be happier.

On another level, I find that even when experiencing pain, the pain is not constant, especially emotional pain. The pain waxes and wanes and there are times (perhaps short intervals of minutes or seconds) when a space opens up where one is free from pain. The practice of noticing the lack of distress helps us abide in that space when it opens up. This space gives us temporary relief and it is the basis from which we launch our recovery and find the strength to face our problems.

2. Do not feel bad about feeling bad.

We have the tendency to feel bad about feeling bad ("meta-distress", I call it). This is especially true for good people. We would berate ourselves by saying things like, "Hey, if I'm such a good person, why am I feeling this much anger?". This is even more true for good people with contemplative practices like meditation. We would scold ourselves by saying, "Maybe if you're actually a good meditator, you won't feel this way. Therefore, you must be a lousy meditator, a hypocrite, a useless piece of [insert context-appropriate noun]".

It is important to recognize that distress is a naturally-arising phenomenon, we all experience it from time to time. Even Thich Nhat Hanh, the very symbol of enlightened peace in the world, once got so angry about someone he almost wanted to stand up and slug him.

Also recognize that feeling bad about feeling bad is an act of ego. It's a reflection of our ego's image about itself, and the net result is the creation of new distress for no good reason at all. The antidote is to let the ego go, with good humor where possible.

And remember, meta-distress is really bad economics.

3. Do not feed the monsters.

Let's pretend our distress are monsters that arise from and occupy our minds, wrecking havoc in us. What can we do to stop them? They seem so overwhelmingly powerful, we feel so weak at stopping their arising, and we are powerless to make them leave.

Happily, it turns out that our monster need us to feed them. If we don't feed them, they'll just get hungry and maybe they'll go away. Therein lies the source of our power. We cannot stop monsters from arising, or force them to leave, but we have the power to not feed them.

Not feeding monsters is very good economics.

4. Start every thought with kindness and humor.

In every situation, distressing or otherwise, it's useful to begin each thought with kindness and compassion. Kindness both for oneself and others. The practices most useful for cultivating this quality of heart are Metta Bhavana (Meditation on Loving Kindness) and Tonglen.

In my experience, the most important quality of kindness is its healing effect. Imagine taking a rough, spiky brush and repeatedly brushing it hard and quickly on an area of your skin. Eventually, your skin will become inflamed and painful. Kindness is the quality of gently stopping that harmful brushing action, and if you do that, eventually, the skin will heal.

I also find it very useful to see humor in my own failings. Everytime I lose my anger or arise a thought of greed or spitefulness that doesn't go away for a while, it's like I've fallen off the wagon again. I can interpret falling off the wagon as a painful, humiliating, embarrassing experience, of course. However, I found it much more fun to think of the experience as a scene in an old black-and-white comedy. Guy fell off wagon in the context of fast, playful music, makes a funny face, dusts himself off, and then climbs back up the wagon in awkward, jerky, quick motion. It's all very funny. So everytime I fail, it's a comedy.

Sometimes, When I'm Alone, I Search Inside Myself (Part II)

2009-09-21T23:13:00.000-07:00

(Continued from Part I)

In Part I, we described the 3 principles behind Search Inside Yourself (SIY), Google's homegrown program for developing Emotional Intelligence:
1. Emotional skills are trainable
2. EI training starts with attention training
3. Work with emotions in the body

In this post, we'll describe an overview of the structure and content of SIY. Note that SIY is still in "beta" (perhaps semi-permanently). That means that we're never fully satisfied with it and we're constantly trying to make changes to improve it. So this information is only valid as of today, and we're almost certain to make some important changes every now and then.

SIY is a training program consisting of 3 courses totaling 19 class hours. The 3 courses are:
1. SIY 101: Introduction to Emotional Intelligence (2 hrs)
2. SIY 102: Day of Mindfulness (7 hrs, pre-requisite: SIY 101)
3. SIY 103: Developing the 5 Domains of Emotional Intelligence (10 hrs, pre-requisite: SIY 101)

1. SIY 101: Introduction to Emotional Intelligence

The objective of this course is to introduce participants to the neuroscience, application and development of Emotional Intelligence. It includes a theory section and a practical section, so participants walk out of the classroom armed not only with new knowledge on the topic, but also with useful practices they can apply in daily life.

The content covered in this class includes:

The neuroscience of emotions (in which we ask participants to watch this video before coming to class).
What Emotional Intelligence is and how it relates to work.
Our method for developing Emotional Intelligence (see the 3 principles of SIY above) and some of the neuroscience behind it.
Introduction to "Mindfulness".
Introduction to 3 foundational practices: Attention Workout, Journaling and Mindful Listening, how each relates to Emotional Intelligence and suggestions for developing and applying them in daily life.

The "Attention Workout" practice is the Mindfulness of Breathing practice, intended to help you strengthen your "muscles" of attention. "Journaling" is the practice of "free writing", where you're given an open-ended prompt (such as, "What I'm feeling now is ...") and then you just "brain-dump" whatever comes to mind onto paper, whether or not it relates to the prompt, and whether or not it makes any sense at the moment. Mindful Listening is the practice of giving the gift of your full attention to another person when she speaks. In a way, it's a form of meditation where the object of meditation is the other person.

We hope that by the end of SIY 101, participants will have an introductory understanding of the topic, gain some confidence that we can all become more emotionally skillful with training, and pick up enough tools to start making a difference in their own lives.

2. SIY 102: Day of Mindfulness

SIY 102 is a full day class lasting 7 hours (usually held on a weekend day), where participants gain a deeper understanding of the practices covered in SIY 101, get an opportunity to spend an entire day practicing them, and pick up a few additional useful practices.

The content covered in this class includes:

A more indepth understanding of Mindfulness of Breathing (this is actually the same content as the Meditation 101 class I teach in Google, which I plan to put on YouTube "real soon now").
A practice called "Looping" (short for "Closing the loop of communication"), which is an extension of Mindful Listening (covered in SIY 101) where participants graduate from merely listening mindfully to conducting a mindful conversation with mutual feedback.
Mindful standing, walking, eating and emailing.
Experimenting with "open awareness" vs "focused awareness" (mindfulness vs concentration).
A practice called the "Game of Self", where one person repeatedly asks the question to another, "Who are you?"
More journaling.

We hope that SIY 102 helps participants build a solid foundation for further growth of emotional competencies.

3. SIY 103: Developing the 5 Domains of Emotional Intelligence

SIY 103 is a series of 5 sessions, each lasting 2 hours, conducted over 5 weeks. Each session explores one domain of Emotional Intelligence in some depth and introduces practices relevant to that domain. "Homework" is given at the end of each session (eg, 10 minutes of mindful sitting a day).

Session 1: Self-Awareness.

The theme of this session is developing a deeper understanding between body, thoughts and emotions. Topics covered in this session include:

Body scan ("The insula workout").
Discovering emotions in the body.
The relationship between emotion, aversion and thoughts.
"Looping" (for those who didn't take SIY 102 before this).

Session 2: Self-Regulation

The theme of this session is moving from Compulsion to Choice. Topics covered in this session include:

What Self-Regulation is and isn't.
Dealing with emotional triggers.
Moving from existential to physiological (from I am angry to I experience anger in my body).

Session 3: Motivation

The theme of this session is discovering your deepest motivations (which you already know, you just have to uncover them). Topics covered in this session include:

Alignment: Aligning my deepest values with what I do.
Envisioning: Seeing my best future.
Optimism: Maintaining self-confidence by becoming honest and comfortable experiencing both "positive" and "negative" emotions.

Session 4: Empathy

The theme of this session is developing a "social radar". Topics covered in this session include:

Seeing similarities ("Just like me" meditation).
Offering kindness (loving-kindness meditation).
Listening for feelings (empathic listening).

Session 5: Social Skills

The theme of this session is "Leading with Compassion". Topics covered in this session include:

Development of compassion (Tonglen).
Compassion and leaership.
Conducting difficult conversations.
Exploring who I am as a leader.

One feature of SIY 103 is the "buddy" system. During the first class, we ask participants to pair up, so each would have a "buddy". The idea behind this is to provide companionship for practice. The analogy is starting a training regime at the gym. Regular practice at the gym is very hard to maintain, especially in the beginning, so what helps many people stay with their training regimes is having a "gym buddy". The gym buddy is somebody who goes to the gym with you 2 or 3 times a week. The main benefits of having a gym buddy are that you never have to be alone at the gym, you have someone to encourage you as you work out, and there's someone to bug you if you don't go. The SIY buddy is designed to do the same thing for your SIY practice.

We ask SIY buddies to converse at least once a week, with at least the first few minutes of the buddy conversation structured to cover these topics:

How is your practice?
What is one thing that happened this week that is relevant to SIY practice?
How was this conversation (we just had)?

We are very encouraged to find that SIY had been very helpful to many people. We hope to "open source" all the SIY content soon, so that more people can benefit. This will happen once we find the time to improve the presentation of the content (see, this bearing the Google name, I can't be as sloppy as I usually am). My idea is to release SIY content under some sort of Creative Commons license that allows anybody to use SIY content in any way (including for profit), as long as they attribute the source. An additional condition I'd like to impose, if I can, is that if anybody makes any improvements to the content, they are obliged to tell us and allow us to give that improvement away to all for free under the same license if we choose to. That way, everybody can benefit from improvements made by everybody else.

Once we get our materials in order, I'll post it on this blog. Stay tuned.

Sometimes, When I'm Alone, I Search Inside Myself (Part I)

2009-09-19T15:51:00.000-07:00

(For the story on what motivated us to create Search Inside Yourself, see this post: "Three Easy Steps to World Peace")

Search Inside Yourself (SIY) is Google's homegrown Emotional Intelligence (EI) curriculum. It was created in Google with the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, and further refined with help from Stanford University. Dr Daniel Goleman was our advisor. We intended for it to be an effective EI curriculum for adults (perhaps the first of its kind in the world) that can be applied in the workplace and that is helpful both to increasing businesses profits and to people achieving more success in their careers.

Given that I had a reputation as a supposedly good engineer, I'd love to tell you that we had a strategic, carefully thought-out curriculum design process that decided on design principles first, followed by proper structure and format, and then content creation, eventually resulting in a flawless curriculum the first time it was released. But no, it didn't happen that way. We unconsciously followed Google's "launch and iterate" model, which meant first forming a team with the best and most qualified people you know, hammering together things that are most likely to work, launching it as "beta" to a bunch of innocent bystanders, figuring out retroactively what worked and what didn't work, and then rinse and repeat. This process is especially effective for doing anything cutting-edge where there is no way for you to know in advance what will certainly work and what won't.

Out of this process, 3 "design principles" of SIY emerged retroactively. Actually, everybody already had these principles in mind right from the beginning, but they were never stated formally until a few iterations later, and the iterative process itself helped us gain clarity and conviction in the principles.

The 3 principles behind SIY are:
1. Emotional skills are trainable
2. EI training starts with attention training
3. Work with emotions in the body

1. Emotional skills are trainable

When people come to a course that advertises itself as an "Emotional Intelligence course", most people expect it to be a behavioral course. People expect to come to class to be told how to play nice, share the candy and not bite their co-workers.

We decided on an entirely different approach. We begin with the assumption that Emotional Intelligence is a collection of emotional skills, and like all skills, emotional skills are trainable. So we set out to create a course to train emotional abilities, and we feel that if we develop abilities, all behavioral issues go away. For example, if a person can acquire the ability to overcome anger, then all behavioral issues involving anger go away.

Examples of skills we explore in SIY are:
- Responding to triggers.
- Conducting difficult conversations.
- Maintaining confidence during stress.

2. EI training starts with attention training

We began with the assumption that EI is trainable. But how do we begin training? We begin by training attention. This may seem a little counter-intuitive at first. I mean, what does attention have to do with emotional skills?

The answer is that a strong, stable and perceptive attention that affords you calmness and clarity is the foundation upon which Emotional Intelligence is built. This quality of attention gives you a strong base for building Self-Awareness and Self-Regulation, the first 2 of the 5 domains of Emotional Intelligence that leads to all other domains of Emotional Intelligence.

An example of how attention relates to Self-Awareness: Self-Awareness depends on being able to see ourselves objectively, and that requires the ability to examine our thoughts and emotions from a a third-person perspective. Not getting swept up in the emotion, not identifying with it, but just seeing it clearly and objectively. And this requires a stable, non-judging attention.

An example of how attention relates to Self-Regulation: There is an ability called "response flexibility", which is a fancy name for the ability to pause before you act. You experience a strong emotional stimulus, but instead of reacting immediately as you normally would (like slapping the CEO, for example), you pause for a split-second, and that pause gives you choice in how you want to react in that emotional situation. That ability depends again on having a quality of attention that is unwavering and unimpeded at the same time.

How do you train this quality of attention? The training method we use is something known as "Mindfulness Meditation". "Mindfulness" is defined by Jon Kabat-Zinn as, "paying attention, in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally". (Thich Nhat Hanh defined Mindfulness very poetically as "keeping one's consciousness alive to the present reality", which we really like, but we found Jon's definition easier to explain to the engineers). Mindfulness is a quality of mind that we all experience and enjoy from time to time, but it is something that can be greatly strengthened with practice, and once it becomes suffuciently strong, it leads directly to the attentional calmness and clarity that forms the basis of EI development.

(There is strong scientific evidence that meditation changes the emotional brain, including the ability to lower activition in the amygdala in response to a negative stimulus. A topic for a future blog post).

3. Work with emotions in the body

Once we develop strong, stable and perceptive attention, what do we do with it to develop Emotional Intelligence? Well, use it on the body, of course. This again seems a little counter-intuitive. Why do we want to do that?

The first answer is, "Because we can". Every emotion has a correlate in the body. For example, some of us experience anger as a contraction of the chest, or a change in the pattern of breathing, or a tightening of the neck and shoulders and so on. Every emotional experience is also a physiological experience. More importantly, we can experience emotions more vividly in the body than in the mind. Therefore, when we are trying to perceive an emotion, you usually get more bang for the buck if you bring your attention to the body rather than to the mind.

The more important reason to bring the attention to the body is that it affords us a high-resolution awareness of emotions. What does "high-resolution awareness" mean? In answering that question, let's ponder on an interesting question, "Are you able to detect anger the moment it is arising?". This is an important question, because we may not be able to prevent anger from arising, and once it's in full bloom, we are usually unable to turn it off, but we can usually turn it off at its moment of arising, when it's small enough to be managable. That is our window of opportunity. Doing that, of course, depends on being able to detect that moment of arising. That's what I mean by "high-resolution awareness", when your awareness is so sensitive across both time and space that you can watch an emotion as it arises or falls. Can we do that?

Yes, we can. And the way to do it is to apply powerful attention onto the body. Using anger as the example again, you may be able to train yourself to observe your mind all the time and then catch anger as it arises in the mind. However, in our experience, it is far easier and more effective to do it in the body. For example, if your bodily correlate to anger is tightening of your chest, shallowing of your breath and tightening of your forehead, then when you're in an awkward social situation, the moment your chest tightens, breath shallows and forehead tenses up, you know you're at the moment of arising of anger, and that knowledge gives you the ability to respond in ways of your own choosing (eg, leaving the room before you do something you know you'll regret, or choosing to allow the anger to bloom if that's the right response for the situation).

Another important reason to work with the body is that it may help the development of empathy. It is already known that the part of the brain known as the insula is related to the ability to experience and recognize bodily sensations. People with very active insula, for example, are able to become aware of their own heartbeats. There is also evidence that people with active insula tend to also have high empathy, which seems to make sense since the neural equipment we use to monitor our own feelings can also be used to monitor other people's feelings. Finally, there is evidence that people who spend a lot of time paying meditative attention to their own bodies also strengthen their insula. From our experience, we know that doing a lot of Mindfulness meditation on the body strengthens our ability to recognize bodily sensations. We now have evidence to believe that it can strengthen empathy.

Last but not least, a good and useful reason to develop a high-resolution awareness of the body is to strengthen our intuition. A lot of our intuition can come from the body, and learning to listen to it can be very fruitful. Here's an interesting quote from Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink (also available at http://www.gladwell.com/blink/blink_excerpt1.html)

In front of you, are four decks of cards--two red and two blue. [....] What you don't know at the beginning, however, is that the red decks are a minefield. [....] You can really only win by taking cards from the blue decks [....]. The question is: how long will it take you to figure this out?

A group of scientists at the University of Iowa did this experiment a few years ago, and what they found is that after we've turned over about fifty cards, most of us start to develop a hunch about what's going on. We don't know why we prefer the blue decks. But we're pretty sure, at that point, that they are a better bet. After turning over about eighty cards, most of us have figured the game out, and can explain exactly why the first two decks are such a bad idea. This much is straightforward. We have some experiences. We think them through. We develop a theory, and then finally we put two and two together. That's the way learning works. But the Iowa scientists did something else, and this is where the strange part of the experiment begins. They hooked each gambler up to a polygraph--a lie detector machine--that measured the activity of the sweat glands that all of us have below the skin in the palms of our hands. Most sweat glands respond to temperature. But those in our palms open up in response to stress--which is why we get clammy hands when we are nervous. What the Iowa scientists found is that gamblers started generating stress responses to red decks by the tenth card, forty cards before they were able to say that they had a hunch about what was wrong with those two decks. More importantly, right around the time their palms started sweating, their behavior began to change as well. They started favoring the good decks, and taking fewer and fewer cards from A and B. In other words, the gamblers figured the game out before they figured the game out: they began making the necessary adjustments long before they were consciously aware of what adjustments they were supposed to be making.

It is important to note that in developing our Emotional Intelligence, we are not suppressing our emotions. In a class I taught recently, one woman raised a very important question. She wanted to confirm that when we talk about "turning off anger", for example, we were not actually talking about suppressing anger. The analogy she used is a fire alarm. Anger is like a fire alarm, it is unpleasant, but it yields useful data and suppressing it may create unintended consequences. I think she is right. Using her analogy, I would say that SIY is not shutting down the fire alarm. In fact, in SIY, we actually learn to hear the alarm better, AND at the same time, we develop the ability to not be under its control AND we create the choice to turn off unnecessary alarms (eg, false alarms) anytime we want. Our emotional development begins with more awareness, not less.

In Part II, I will talk about how we actually structure SIY and what we put into it.

(Continued on Part II)

Collection of Personal Growth Talks

2009-09-15T20:46:00.000-07:00

Here is a collection of some of the most popular publicly-accessible talks in Google relating to personal growth. This list is compiled by my very capable associate, Jenny Lykken, who works with me in Google University's School of Personal Growth.

Neuroscience

Karl Diesseroth: Cracking the Neural Code: Tools from the Deisseroth laboratory have been used to optically deconstruct Parkinsonian neural circuitry, setting the stage both for cracking the neural codes of normal brain function, and for re-engineering neural circuits in disease.
Daniel Siegel: MindSight: The New Science of Personal Transformation: This interactive talk examines two major questions: "What is the mind?" and "How can we create a healthy mind?" We'll examine the interactions among the mind, the brain, and human relationships and explore ways to create a healthy mind, an integrated brain, and mindful, empathic relationships.
Thomas Lewis: The Neuroscience of Empathy: Author Dr. Thomas Lewis discusses "The Neuroscience of Empathy" and how it applies to collaboration and understanding others.
Philippe Goldin: Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation: Philippe examines the effect of mindfulness meditation practice on the brain systems in which psychological functions such as attention, emotional reactivity, emotion regulation, and self-view are instantiated.
John Medina: Brain Rules: How does the brain work? How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget--and so important to repeat new information? Is it true that men and women have different brains? John tells you.
Richie Davidson: Transform Your Mind, Change Your Brain: Richie explores recent scientific research on the neuroscience of positive human qualities and how they can be cultivated through contemplative practice.
David Rock: Your Brain at Work: David takes advantage of the latest research in neuroscience to explain what happens to our brains in different work situations and how we can optimize our effectiveness at work by understanding our brains.

Emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman: Emotional Intelligence: Daniel Goleman discusses the basics and importance of emotional intelligence and his book "Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships."
Philippe Goldin: The Neuroscience of Emotions: The ability to recognize and work with different emotions is fundamental to psychological flexibility and well-being. Neuroscience has contributed to the understanding of the neural bases of emotion, emotion regulation, and emotional intelligence, and has begun to elucidate the brain mechanisms involved in emotion processing. Of great interest is the degree to which these mechanisms demonstrate neuroplasticity in both anatomical and functional levels of the brain.

Meditation and Mindfulness

Matthieu Ricard: The Inner Conditions for Authentic Happiness: If happiness is an inner state, influenced by external conditions but not dependent on them, how can we achieve it? Ricard examines the inner and outer factors that increase or diminish our sense of well-being, dissect the underlying mechanisms of happiness, and lead us to a way of looking at the mind itself.
Jon Kabat-Zinn: Mindfulness Meditation: In this session, Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the world's leading experts on the science of mindfulness meditation, leads a discussion on meditation and a meditation practice.
Jon Kabat-Zinn: Mindfulness, Stress Reduction and Healing: Jon describes the revolution in medicine that has integrated the mind back into the body and developed a remarkable range of practices for integrating one's experience, reducing stress, healing the body, coping more effectively with emotions such as anxiety, anger, and depression, and cultivating greater well-being and happiness.
Robina Courtin: Be Your Own Therapist: We spend our lives being seduced by the outside world, believing without question that happiness and suffering come from "out there." This deeply held misconception is at the root of our dissatisfaction, self-doubt, anger, depression, anxiety, and the rest. By becoming deeply familiar with the workings of our own cognitive processes through introspection and learning to deconstruct them - truly, being our own therapists - we can loosen the grip of these neuroses and grow our marvelous potential for contentment, clarity, and courage.
Charlie Halpern: Practicing Wisdom in the Obama Era: In this talk, Charlie draws on the main theme of his book— that the practice of wisdom is necessary to make our work in the world effective and sustainable. He discusses the reasons that wisdom is particularly urgent in dealing with the unprecedented challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. He illustrates his points with personal stories of his career as an institutional innovator and his interactions with Ralph Nader, the Dalai Lama, Barack Obama, and others.
Shaila Catherine: Focused and Fearless: A Meditator's Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity: Focused and Fearless speaks to ordinary meditators who wish to attain non-ordinary states with ease. It offers a creative and contemporary slant to this ancient path of happiness and wisdom.
Dr. Villy Doctor: Managing Stress and Psychosomatic Disorders Through Meditation: This practical session on meditation teaches the technique of awakening the subtle energy from the position of the nervous system and the energy centers using positive affirmations to attain self-realization.

Update 9/18/09: Added talks by Philippe Goldin and John Medina.

Update 12/6/09: Added talks by Richie Davidson and David Rock.

Funny Thought: Lie your way to physical attractiveness

2009-09-13T10:53:00.000-07:00

If you lie about something often enough, it eventually becomes the truth. The Bush Administration has already demonstrated this to perfection, of course.

Based on this insight, I'm conducting a psychological experiment. The experiment is I take a generic, plain-looking guy, lie repeatedly that he's very good-looking, and then see when people start thinking of that guy as physically attractive. The subject I chose for this experiment is me.

Which is why I keep lying about how good-looking I am. The theory is if I do this often enough, eventually you'll think to yourself, "Wow, Meng suddenly looks very attractive today, I don't know why".

And when that happens, let me know, so I can collect the data. I'm very scientifically-minded, even thought I'm obviously very good-looking.

Random Thought: When I become CEO, you get to slap me for $100

2009-09-10T00:16:00.000-07:00

When I become the founding CEO of a company (which will soon grow into a large and very successful enterprise, of course), there are 3 principles I want to institute:

1. Compassion as the Prime Directive
2. Make it impossible for the CEO to ignore employee sentiment
3. When the company wins big, everybody wins big

1. Compassion as the Prime Directive

Google's Prime Directive is "Don't be Evil" and Google has shown that it is possible to be non-evil while still making a crapload of money. I want to push that envelope. I want to go beyond not being evil, to show that a company can be compassionate and still make a crapload of money.

Truth be told, I don't really know what it means for a company to be compassionate. I suspect this is something that takes a lot of trial and error to figure out. But I don't think figuring out the exact answer is so important. What I think is more important is that stating such a principle encourages people to think about it and measure themselves against it in every action and decision. Even more importantly, perhaps, it gives them permission to question decision-makers and hold them to a high ethical and altruistic standard (like, "Hey, I don't think this is a compassionate decision, boss").

2. Make it impossible for the CEO to ignore employee sentiment ("Slap the CEO")

It's important to find a way to make it impossible for the CEO to ignore what everybody else is feeling. The best idea I can come up with so far is to create a system to allow any employee to anonymously slap a fine on the CEO. Here's how it works:

Any employee can use the internal system to "slap the CEO" anonymously.
Everytime an employee does that, the CEO automatically gets $1000 deducted from his paycheck.
To "slap the CEO", the employee has to state what the CEO is doing wrong, what he/she should have done instead, how he/she should correct it, and why it's important for the company.
This is not for free. Doing this will cost the employee $100, which is automatically deducted from his/her paycheck.

The idea is that doing this costs the employee real money, so it's not done frivolously. Which also means that whatever the issue is must have really angered or bothered the employee, so it's important for the CEO to know. And if the CEO gets a lot of "slaps" in a short period of time, it's something he/she cannot ignore because it's costing him/her real money (50 slaps in a week is $50,000, which is real money even for a CEO).

3. When the company wins big, everybody wins big

Back in the old days when my current employer was a small company, I observed that there was no politics amongst the engineers. Whenever there was important crap that needed to be done, somebody just went ahead and did it. Nobody needed to be ordered by managers, and nobody gave a second thought about receiving credit or looking good to the boss.

There were a number of reasons why that happened (eg, people liked and respected each other). I think the most important reason was that, like in most start-ups, we each had a meaningful amount of stock options. Because of that, everybody was keenly aware that if the company were to become very successful, we would each become very successful too. Hence, it didn't really matter that the boss didn't pat your back for what you did, or if working for the common good interfered with your promotion (because doing the more important stuff for everybody's benefit took time away from your "real job"), all that mattered was making the company wildly successful, because that common good clearly led to handsome rewards for oneself.

Given this insight, I want to create a system where great success for the company leads necessarily and unambiguously to great rewards for everyone. The best idea I can think of is to share a significant portion (10%?) of annual profits equally with every employee. The sole variable is the number of days you worked in the year. So 2 people who worked the entire year will get exactly the same profit-share, and one person who worked half the year will get exactly half the profit-share of the person who worked a full year. It's as simple as that. Everybody from CEO to receptionist gets the same amount. This is in addition to your fair-market salary, of course.

Ten percent can end up being a lot of money. If the profit per employee per year is $250,000, for example, 10% is $25,000 for each person, which is a meaningful amount of money for most people. And if the company hits jackpot and makes a million dollars per employee, everybody hits a $100,000 jackpot.

The most important feature of this system is that there is no committee of managers hiding in a room somewhere deciding how much pork to allocate to each person based on perceived relative contributions. The link between profit per employee and one's own reward is unambiguous and not subject to petty office politics. When the company wins big, everybody wins big. That's it. And that feeling can be a powerful motivator towards common good.

Yes, this system has obvious downsides (eg, the free-loader problem, which needs to be solved) and would probably take us a few iterations to get it right. However, the idea of a system that unambiguously links great company success to great personal reward immune to office politics is just too compelling to dismiss. I, for one, would be willing to try it out with the future multiple millions in annual profits of my very successful multi-billion-dollar-company-to-be.

Caveat Emptor

I am obviously not (yet) a successful CEO. So if I were you, I'd just ignore everything I say, as usual.

Funny Thought: Expecting Mother

2009-08-29T13:37:00.000-07:00

There are a number of parking lots around the Google campus labeled "EXPECTING MOTHER".

Sadly, I never get to park in those lots, because whenever I'm in Google, I'm never expecting my mother.

Random Thought: Three Assumptions at Meetings

2009-08-26T22:55:00.000-07:00

Back when I used to chair meetings with more than 3 people, I liked to start every meeting with what I call the Three Assumptions.

1. The Greater Good Assumption. We assume that each of us is in this meeting to serve the greater good, each motivated to achieve something beyond satisfying our own selfish desires.

2. The Transparency Assumption. Given Assumption 1, since we are all here for the greater good, we therefore assume that none of us has anything to hide. Hence, we assume that each of us is transparent in intention and communication.

3. The Reasonableness Assumption. Given Assumptions 1 and 2, since we are all serving the greater good and have no hidden agenda, we therefore assume that we are always reasonable. Even when we disagree intensely, we are doing so for good and honest reasons.

(And after stating the 3 assumptions, I usually invite all to abide in 30 seconds of silence to generate the conditions for inner calmness).

Of course, none of these assumptions may actually be true. For example, somebody in the room may be a real jerk. But I like the idea of starting a meeting with these assumptions about ourselves and other people around the table. My hope is that starting with positive, altruistic assumptions may actually lead to positive, altruistic behavior.

If you decide to try this at your meetings, please feel free to let me know how it works for you. That includes you, Barack. Yes, and Joe too.

Meng in the News: Google Searches

2009-08-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

"World peace - expressed without irony - is the recurring theme for Meng".

Link to article:

http://www.chademeng.com/Articles/shambhala_sun_sept09.pdf

(Above article refers to this post: Three Easy Steps to World Peace)