 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
| 2013 August: "Happy" Messages exchanged among classmates (dialogues initiated by Che-Bao Ma 馬哲保) |
| Taiwan Island Village: 台灣島村: Hsinchu (Xinzhu) High School Reminisced 憶竹中 忆竹中 |
| Email from Che-Bao Ma So much about Bill Bryson books, kindly allow me now to recommend one published by a different author on an interesting hot topic much needed by people in modern society “Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment” by Tal Ben-Shahar, 2007. (I got hold of a copy of its translated Chinese version in a two-day seminar on “Positive Psychology and Learn to Be Happy” held last weekend in Taipei.) Che-Bao Ma Email from Ding-Jen Lee Hi Che-Bao: Thanks for the email. Speak of happiness, I once watched a Harvard open course: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WiS8CgYm8M D. J. Lee Email from Che-Bao Ma Ding-Jen, I wrote my previous email brief for trying to make it easily readable. Having received your feedback, I can perhaps share with you further about two questions I raised in the seminar last weekend: 1) Positive Psychology aims of course at teaching kindhearted individuals not to lose confidence. What about evil persons? An evil person, when he is encouraged by positive psychology, he might do even more harm to the society. The first instructor gave me a lengthy answer, which I could not catch what he was saying, even though he thanked me by saying it was a very good question. The second instructor, to whom I asked two question, answered my first question (see below) well but forgot or skipped answering this question. 2) The first question I asked the second instructor is about how to deal with, instead of individuals, the society as a whole. If the society is sick and filled with all kinds of negative & pessimistic view-points, other than give lessons on Positive Psychology to the media and politicians, are there any effective measures we can do? He gave me also a lengthy answer with a list of things we can do including among others: (2-1) Such situations have occurred in history, for instance, the era prior to the world wars in Europe. But as bright days always come after dark nights, we better look forward to the bright future, not to get ourselves indulged in matters resulted from all those negative & pessimistic view-points. (2-2) Whenever the negative & pessimistic comments appear on TV, shut it off or change to a different channel. He said most people who feel disgusting but tend to continue watching, which misleads TV stations to think those views are welcomed by mass population based on their simple watching statistics. Thank you for your feedback and nice to communicate with you. Che-Bao Ma Email from Ming-Cheng Chang 太棒了！ 多年來我一直認為人生應該是以快樂為目的，再加上奉行修身、齊家、治國、平天下，又自認自已能力有限，也許可以做到修身齊家，讓自己和家人都不愁溫飽而得 到快樂，至於治國平天下則留待給其他能者們。不過有餘力也盡量傳播一些個人在房地產投資的心得，希望有助於親友們的投資收益及快樂，同時也盡量傳播一些個 人對所有華人正面特質的認識（或許被大多世人所忽視），希望有助於華人的自信心和未來的發展及快樂。 定楨兄的這篇 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WiS8CgYm8M，似乎也是說以快樂為目的及正面態度，我心有戚戚焉並覺得吾道不孤。 又有勞各位將我的 email 改為 ming99chang@gmail.com 張銘琛 敬 Email from Joe Wu 吳 武 田 Dear 1960 HCHS Friends, We are pursuing happiness as soon as we were born. We always want to be happy, but it is not easy to achieve that status of mind. Through the history, only one person we know of who was always gloomy is 紅樓夢中憂鬱小姐林黛玉. 古 人 說 : 人生不滿百、常懷百歲憂。事事難預料、不要太計較。哈哈一聲笑、 煩惱去了了。何況 , 每件事都回不去，卻沒有一件事過不去。 We all know the above statements loudly and clearly, but it has been so difficult to practice and to get the results we need. After I have got involved in the business world, I have to go through all the government regulations, IRS, customer/personnel relationship, etc. They always give me tremendous headache, and has caused me very hard to sleep all the time. It has affected my well-being. Therefore, I have developed a method how to cope with “worry and unhappiness” over the years. I wrote the attached article to share my thought with my NCKU alumni of Greater New York many years ago. Let me cite the article here for your reference, and I hope that you can have some input or any feed back, so that I can modify the method in order to fulfill my goal of “pursuing happiness” in a much easier way hopefully for me and for everybody as well. Attached please find that article. Have a great summer Joe (吳 武 田) Email from Che-Bao Ma I am glad that my classmates of HCHS Class 1960, as well as a number of other recipients of my emails, are interested in the dialogues of pursuing happiness, which is the aim of “Positive Psychology” that has become popular and drawn a lot of attention since the turn of this century. (Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania has been pioneering the R&D of this branch of modern science.) ************************************************************************************************** Following paragraph was what (with minor revisions) I responded to a friend a couple days ago: “唯有隨其流而揚其波，和光共塵，處世而不染。仍然不失赤子之心”was among the answers the speaker instructed me in dealing with a sick society in the seminar on positive psychology of last weekend. He said that it is advisable to keep ourselves awake and not follow the bad examples. We will then be ready to welcome the good time, when it comes in future. There are good examples in the field of psychology. A number of Jewish scholars who were situated in an awkward circumstance but enthused about work on psychology and excelled after the ending of the war. Of course, aiming at pursuing happiness is not new. Furthermore, searching for purpose beyond pursuing happiness abounds in the philosophy of ancient times of both Western & Oriental civilizations. The following passages are taken from a review article, which I find well-thought in this regard, by an NTU Professor in Psychology commenting about the 2007 book of Tal Ben-Shahar titled “Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment”: 快樂是人生的終極目標嗎？對此問題，可能很多人不以為然。例如，人本心理學開拓者之一的馬斯洛就不認為如此，自我實現才是；文藝復興時代的義大利哲學家芬 希諾主張應是昇華的靈魂；英國作家狄更斯認為是高貴的心靈；亞里斯多德則強調應是美好事物的偉大實踐 (Eudemonia)。 至於東方，中國儒者始終以為無私與天人合一才是人生大道；道家著重清靜無為，佛家修行人則側重證悟，且更強調要超越快樂與痛苦之外。 ************************************************************************************************** Best Wishes, Che-Bao Ma |
