EPTSo my primary reason for starting this blog is that I don't really have anyone who I can discuss my studies with. Now that its summer and I have hardly any obligations I've decided to dedicate most of my time towards studying things I'm interested in.
Anyway, I've decided to start off my studies by developing a strong understanding of Calc 1 and reading The Story of my Experiments With Truth by Gandhi, The Art of Happiness, by the Dali Llama, and Ethical Religion by Gandhi.
I took a calc class this year but it only got up to integration by u-sub, and it skipped over major things like the fundamental theorem…..Today I spent learning integration by parts & partial fractions. By parts is pretty easy, its just applying what I already know in a specific way but partial fractions is giving me a really hard time. I pretty much dicked around in math class up until the end of 11th grade, and my weak-ish understanding of basic concepts is making it more difficult than it should be. The textbook gives a nice table of how to set up the partial fractions depending on the denominator of the fractions but even with it, it takes me a minute to figure out what I'm looking at in the denominator. Also, why the hell is it that the coefficients on both sides of the equation need to be equal? When I look at examples it makes sense but I don't understand why its true…the whole thing just confuses me. I think I have most of the execution down though.
So i've read up to around page 160 in Gandhi's autobiography. Around January of this year I re-watched the movie Gandhi made in 1982 and I watched it like 10 times over the period of a month. Every time I watched it I began to realize more and more how fucking awesome all of Gandhi's principles are. Non-violence makes so much sense to me but I also recognize how hard it is to turn into action. So I've been reading his autobiography and I've begun to realize that his lifestyle was so much more radical than the one I'm used to. First of all he lived almost half his life celibate, made all his own clothes, fasted, took vows and constantly denied himself emotional pleasures. I really want to believe, and do to a certain extent, that his ideals are brilliant and genius but I sometimes think he might have just been crazy. He says that he receives freedom and pure happiness from restricting himself. I can see how disallowing your desires to influence you can be freeing, but it seems like he is just restricting himself in other ways. I just cant understand how denying pleasures can bring anyone happiness.
I've begun a few of my own 'experiments with truth' from reading his book. The first is, that I have stopped eating meat. Its been probably a bit over a month now since I've eaten any meat. It hasn't been that hard, and I do honestly feel better about what I'm doing. I claim to be stopping for moral reasons, but before I stopped I never felt guilty about eating meat. I think that from reading his book and considering the reasons for eating and not eating meat I have developed a stronger moral conduct in general. It's only been a few days since I started to try and actually develop a disliking for meat though. "Renunciation of objects without the renunciation of desires is short lived, however hard you may try". That quote really stuck with me, and I realized that to truly comply to my experiment I had to reject not just meat, but the desire to eat meat.
The other experiment I tried was to not lie, exaggerate or manipulate what I understand as truth in anyway. It has been realllllyy fucking hard. I seriously can't go a single day without letting one lie or exaggeration slip. I never thought that I was a liar before, but now I realize that I lie all the fucking time when communicating with other people. Gandhi saw truth as the end all be all, he once said "god is truth". He dedicated his entire life to following what he saw as truth. On a side note, thats also what's kind of awesome about math, its the only place where absolute truth exists, in every other field truth is relative. I've also been trying to talk less. Gandhi said in his book, and I agree, "Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth". Also, "proneness to exaggerate to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man and silence is necessary to surmount it."
Gandhi spent most of his life reforming the bestial elements of his nature in order to develop moral and spiritual consistency. He said that this is what brings true happiness. I can't say I understand or relate to any aspect of that statement but I feel that it is worth the attempt, and my own endeavors have centered around understanding this statement.
Okay, so thats it. Sorry if this is terrible/boring/snobbish…
