Applied Philosophy Series

Koans are a useful sign-post on the path to enlightenment. They reveal abstract Truth that cannot be expressed logically through presenting the reader with a paradox that can only be solved by shifting one's perspective. The venerable Koans of the past, those that have been handed down through the generations are expressed in archaic language. If you cannot enter into that archaic language the koan is unlikely to bring you much benefit. This book represents the Koans in modern language, accessible to all. It will not please the traditionalists, but it will make the wisdom contained therein accessible to a whole new generation of seeker. Each koan encapsulates a profound truth for reflection. Zen counsels the lessening of the ego, not the strengthening of it as consumer culture would urge. Instead of making a name for ourselves in society, we should listen to the voice of pines and cedars when no wind stirs, in other words become no-thing, entering instead the field of pure being that is behind the phenomenal world.

Genius is an often misunderstood though perennially interesting topic. Down through the ages, researchers have observed and studied the nature of genius in an effort to understand it. This book gives you the essence of that research. The material comes from across many cultures and historical periods. It is the lowest common denominator of this fascinating phenomenon, presented in plain English. The book explains the underlying nature of genius, charisma and leadership and gives you a series of exercises. If you take the time to read, understand and practice the principles outlined here, you will be well on your way to increasing your creative output and your ability to persuade others to listen to your ideas. In today’s globalised economy, we increasingly compete with low-cost workers in the developing world who charge much less for their labour. The labour market has expanded, and the competition has never been greater. The trend will continue well into the foreseeable future. As a knowledge worker, how can you increase your value in the market and future-proof your earning ability? The answer is to be able to generate great ideas that add value to whatever enterprise you work in. Creativity is a very bankable skill, regardless of where you work and what you do. Creativity, or indeed genius, can indeed be learned; it is how you think, rather than what you think that matters. Like leadership, You cannot conjure genius on demand. You can only create the right conditions and wait for it to spontaneously occur. Throughout this book, I use the terms ‘genius’ and ‘highly creative person’ interchangeably. A genius is a highly creative person who has a mind-set that generates creative output. Many people assume genius requires a high IQ, but this is not necessarily the case. It is far more about attitude, and attitude is learn-able. You can learn how to think and act like a genius. Is there a human alive who has reached their fullest potential? Possibly, but he or she is so rare as to be perhaps one in a billion. It is the nature of being human to be imperfect. We all have room for improvement. So what does it mean to be a genius? This book gives you a profile of how geniuses think and act, based on the work of researchers across cultures over time. It gives you the essence of being a genius. If you follow the advice and emulate these practices, you will create the right conditions for genius to manifest in your life. How successful you are will be largely dependent on how much time and effort you are prepared to invest in this most noble of endeavours. Genius can be understood as an aspect of the self-actualised person; someone who is in the process of living and expressing their unique human potential at its fullest. The process of self-actualisation is discussed in detail in this book.

The Tao Te Ching was written 2,500 years ago, making it perhaps the oldest book still in print. Its longevity is due to the power and simplicity of its message. Come to know more of its simple power and allow that to transform your life. The Tao Te Ching has always had the power to transform the reader, but the reader must first be able to understand the underlying message. Phrased, as it was, by its ancient Chinese author, the language and imagery were products of that far off time and place. Not easy for people in the modern world to understand. This edition presents this timeless message in plain English for all to understand. The Tao Te Ching shows you how to create harmony in your life by finding the Middle Path. It describes a force called the Tao that operates uniformly throughout the universe and is the causal agent of everything that happens. It explains how you can develop personal power through being in harmony with the Tao.

The Flâneur is an idea originating from the French poet Charles Baudelaire. In Baudelaire’s world, the Flâneur was an idly-rich dandy, who wandered about the streets of 19th century Paris seeking a remedy for ever-threatening ennui. In this book, the 19th century Flâneur is re-born in the 21st century as the Artful Traveller; a person, not necessarily wealthy or idle, who seeks an authentic experience of a city by strolling about it in an unstructured way, responding intuitively to what they encounter. The Artful Traveller remains detached, non-judgmental; appreciating the nuanced perceptions that come their way. This portrait of the Artful Traveller is painted from several perspectives; it begins with Baudelaire's original artful stroller as the outline, then the details of the portrait are fleshed out using Pyschology and Cognitive Science, with finishing touches from a Zen-Taoist perspective. Introduction. Travel is an expression of the human instinct for freedom and it is an instinct we share with every other creature on this planet. We all instinctively need freedom so we can find what we need in life. For many people living in the world today, travel is a luxury afforded once or twice a year, if at all. Living sedentary, indebted lives that keep us tethered to one place, the instinct to travel is frustrated but not extinguished. When we do manage to get away, do we really enjoy the experience? Not if we approach it with the wrong mind-set. The same journey can be a source of pleasure or misery depending. When travel is done with an open mind, it can be a transformative experience. When approached with a rigid, judgmental mind, every encounter is unpleasant. The Artful Traveller is a handbook for people everywhere wishing to deepen their appreciation of the gentle art of travelling. In all likelihood, if you are reading this, you are such a person. Read this book with an open mind. Suspend judgment long enough to absorb the message, and then decide. What people need. Today, most of the problems of survival have been solved. We live mostly sedentary lives where our needs are met by a abundance of consumer goods and services. Yet stroll about a the city streets or shopping malls and look objectively at the people around you. Notice how few of them seem happy with the abundance that surrounds them. Most walk about with a blank expression, some look downright unhappy. This is probably because while people’s basic needs for food and shelter are being met, their middle and higher order needs for a meaningful life, for self-esteem and self-actualisation are not being met. The psychologist Abraham Maslow describes this phenomenon in his Hierarchy of Human Needs model. To be happy, people need to satisfy the lower-order needs for food, shelter, sex, then middle-order needs for safety and security, then the higher middle-order needs for love and belonging. Above these is the higher-order need for self-esteem. But the highest need of all, sitting like the capstone on a pyramid is Self-Actualisation. The Artful Traveller is someone who has progressively learned how to satisfy their lower and middle order needs, and who is now using travel as a way to achieve self-actualisation. Of course travel is not the only way a person can do this; it is simply one way, and a very enjoyable way it is too.

Doing a PhD is no easy thing. It rates as one of the most difficult, yet rewarding things a person will ever do in their life. Much has been written on the process of doing a PhD, as a trawl through a book store will confirm. There have been quite few good books published on the topic. In addition to these, universities generously provide detailed information on doing a PhD. The world does not need another book that goes over that same ground. What the world does need is information about the psychological factors that make a PhD student successful. They are the same factors that make a good researcher, someone who can make a contribution to knowledge in their chosen field. If you are reading this, you probably have an interest in what it takes to get a PhD. Maybe it is a burning desire, maybe more like a passing fancy. In any case, it is a major life-choice, one which you need to be fully informed about before you make it. If you decide to do a PhD, you should know what the success factors are before you start. Many candidates start out confidently but drop out along the way because they were not clear on this important point. So if you are trying to decide whether to do a PhD, or are wondering if you have what it takes, this book is for you. It is a portrait of the successful PhD student. Do you recognise yourself? There has never been a better time to do a PhD. The number of people in the world who have the desire and the access to higher education is rising exponentially. As more people, particularly in the developing world gain access to the Internet more options are now available to people. Few things contribute more to raising the overall standard of living and quality of life in a community than education. The established university model has endured for a thousand years and is still going strong. Long may it prosper. In the 11th Century there were just four universities in the world; Bologna, Salerno, Modena and Paris. In the 21st Century there are around 10,000 universities around the world and the number is rising. The traditional university is now being supplemented by the rise of the on-line university, offering everything from Associate Degrees up to PhDs across a wide range of subject areas. Thankfully, geographic location is now no barrier to getting an education.

Desolation Row (released in August 1965 on the album Highway 61 Revisited) is not your average pop song. More like an epic poem set to music. Its epic-ness comes not from its relatively short length as epic poems go, but from the depth and breadth of its themes. It is very rare to find a song with such density of meaning. Most songs on the radio do not stray much past the theme of romantic love. As Douglas Adams observed in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy most (pop) songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being under a silvery moon. Dylan is not only a deep thinker, but also a broad thinker who is able to articulate and condense his ideas into elegant verse. He has been described as one of the most significant poets of the Twentieth Century. Sir Andrew Motion, the British Poet Laureate in 1999 cited another of Dylan’s songs, Visions of Johanna, as a contender for the greatest song lyric ever written. Dylan is remarkably well-read, having delved into the classic texts of many different cultures. In Desolation Row he takes these themes and weaves a rich fabric that expresses the reality of 1960’s America. By tapping into these archetypes, the poem gets its power to reach people at a deep level. When asked by a radio interviewer why he insisted on being so irritating, Dylan replied so where do you get the idea that I want people to like my music. It is more important to challenge people’s complacency and get them to think about their values.

While it is true that charisma is perceived as the result of certain outward behaviors, true charisma comes from within the heart and soul of a person who is reaching their fullest potential as a human being. This heightened level of awareness has been called enlightenment, awakening, Satori and many other labels. But these have connotations of mysticism that people in the 21st century may be uncomfortable with. So let us call it self-actualization, the name given to it by humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow. Charisma can be thought of as a subtle light that shines from within a person who is living their life to its fullest potential. People respond to this light and want it for themselves so they are drawn to that person as a leader. They perceive instinctively that here is someone who has reached an advanced state of self-realization and it is natural that they, the observer, should want that for themselves. It is after all a human need to become the fullest expression of your human potential. The qualities of a charismatic person can be summed up quite simply; they are positive (infectiously so), they see the potential in people and want to help them to achieve it, they envisage a bright future, and they are generous with their time and energies. While you might begin now to emulate these qualities, you should understand that they are a by-product of a larger process of personal development called self-actualization, a broad term covering many aspects of personality (this will be explored in detail in a later chapter). Being charismatic relies on a person having the emotional intelligence to know how to communicate with people at an emotional level, making a deep connection that is not possible at a purely rational level. Easier said than done, emotional intelligence is a difficult skill to master for people who operate principally in the intellectual zone. It involves understanding one’s own emotions, how to harness them to solve problems, and how to manage and regulate one’s emotions and those of others. In our evolutionary past, going back hundreds of thousands, even millions of years, our primate ancestors operated on the emotional level. Emotions are generated by parts of the brain that existed long before those areas that evolved more recently which allow us to think rationally. Perhaps this explains why we are so prone to being influenced by our emotions.

The Enchiridion (Greek for Handbook, pronounced En-ky-ridion) of Epictetus is a favourite text of the Stoic school of philosophy. Compiled by Arrian, a former pupil around the time of Epictetus’ death in 135 AD, this enduring text is a compilation of lecture notes based on Epictetus’ lessons. It has long been considered an excellent manual of practical philosophy. Epictetus (55 – 135 AD) was born at Hierapolis in what is now Turkey. Sold to Epaphroditos, who was secretary to Emperor Nero, he spent his youth in Rome. He developed a consuming passion for philosophy. With the permission of his master, Epictetus was allowed to study Stoic philosophy. Over time, as his learning and wisdom grew, he became a respectable citizen of Rome, and an esteemed philosopher. Epictetus, unlike some of his metaphysical forebears, concentrated on making philosophy practical. How it could be used beneficially in everyday life. The timeless message of the Enchiridion is as practical today as it was in ancient Greece. Perhaps this is where the Enchiridion gets its enduring power and long-life. A central theme of the work is to clearly distinguish between what we can and cannot control in life. We can control what we think, and how we act. We cannot control what others think and how they act. We must put our effort into what we can control and refuse to worry about what we cannot. Following on from this is to limit our expectations. If we understand we cannot control people, then we will not expect them to behave in a certain way, and we will not get upset or disappointed when they do something different. Another theme is to not become attached to people and things such that when they disappear from our lives, we will be upset. This idea bears a striking resemblance to the central Buddhist tenet of non-attachment to impermanence. Epictetus urges us to observe carefully the patterns of Nature and learn to live in harmony with them. This includes accepting what happens in life with grace, without resistance. It is how we think about events that makes them good or bad, not the event itself. Our beliefs create our reality. The same event could be interpreted by two people in diametrically opposed ways, according to their belief. These have been a sampler of the many practical recommendations to be found in this remarkable book. The first English translation was published around 1567, though this book is based on Elizabeth Carter’s 18th Century translation. Stoic philosophy, an Introduction Stoicism has come to have a narrow and somewhat negative meaning of being unemotional or indifferent to suffering, however this is a distortion. In a world of easy fixes, and mass consumption where pleasure is seen as the greatest good, Stoicism seems oddly archaic and irrelevant. Notwithstanding this, its real message has great relevance in the 21st Century. Influenced by the earlier work of Socrates and Diogenes of Sinope, the Stoic school of philosophy was founded around 300 BC by Zeno of Citium. Zeno taught that a wise person should not allow their emotions to rule them; instead they should master their emotions and use logic to think rationally about how to behave in life. He urged his followers to study carefully the laws of Nature and to live in harmony with them. A central point in Stoic philosophy is the active relationship between the laws of Nature that rule the Cosmos, and human free will. A wise person derives maximum benefit and happiness in life by bringing his or her will into harmony with Nature. They come to know themselves, recognising that their inner nature (microcosm) is a representation of the outer macrocosm, or universe; the same nature in both, differing only in scale. With its emphasis on duty and right action, Stoicism is therefore well-suited to the needs of those who would lead. It was used as a guide by the ruling class of Rome for centuries.

The essence of longevity is harmony. It is bringing your inner world into harmony with your outer world, the microcosm with the macrocosm. Your inner world is a reflection of your outer world and the two should be as closely aligned as possible. The more conflict there is, the more stress and strain there is, and the shorter life tends to be. At the physical level, longevity is achieved by keeping your body flexible and in good working order. At the mental level it is keeping your mind clear and sharp, thinking creatively. At the spiritual level, it is being at peace with your world. Each of these levels is addressed in detail in this comprehensive how to guide. Secrets of a Long & Happy Life goes well beyond lifestyle advice for long life. It works on the assumption that quantity of life must also be accompanied by the highest possible quality of life. What is the point of living to 100 if you are miserable? Nursing homes and aged care facilities are filled with people who are kept alive through advances in medical science, but whose enjoyment of life is poor or non-existent. Do not let this happen to you. The Romans had a saying; mens sana in corpora sano. It means a healthy mind in a healthy body. Mind and body depend upon each other, and both must be healthy. But having a healthy mind in a healthy body is the starting point. Secrets of a Long & Happy Life gives you detailed advice on how to achieve this, and does so in a culturally neutral way. Regardless of where you live, what cultural and religious traditions you observe, this advice will work for you because it operates at the level of underlying principle, not outward form. From here, it shows you how to become self-actualised (achieving your fullest potential), how to cultivate your intelligence well beyond its current level. Secrets of a Long & Happy Life does not shy away from the reality of death. Living in fear of dying erodes your enjoyment of life, so the book draws from ancient Buddhist wisdom about how to achieve enlightenment and what happens to your consciousness when your body dies. In short, it helps you understand how to have a good death at the end of a long and happy life. This could just be the most useful book you ever read.

It’s the thing that most people desire – a long-life, well-lived -- yet achieving it can be elusive. Sure, medical technology goes a long way, but what about staying healthy in the first place? This eBook is a summary of the collected wisdom of hundreds of researchers who have studied the ingredients of a healthy, long-lived lifestyle. It should be good news to us all that there are relatively simple rules that we inherited from our evolutionary past that have been proven to be true for everyone, everywhere; a few simple rules that you can apply to your life, wherever you live. Much research has been done into what makes people live a long time and be healthy. We now know that there are certain common factors that are true at a human level, true for everyone, everywhere. Of course, how these factors are put into practice is going to be different from place to place, but if we know what those underlying factors are, we can use our imaginations to work out how to live them ourselves. Looking at it from an evolutionary point of view, these factors describe the ideal way for humans to live. This is the key to understanding a long and happy life. The fossil record tells us that the human lineage split from our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, around five million years ago. By 200,000 years ago, humans were anatomically similar to people today. If a human from that time were brought into the modern world, cleaned up, given a haircut and dressed in regular clothes, it would be difficult to tell them apart from someone born in the modern era. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection tells us that the creatures that survive are those that are best suited to life in a particular environment. Humans evolved on the African savannah, so we are well-adapted to those conditions. Our ancestors lived in small family groups on the vast grassy plains along with all the other species, many of which still there today. Humans were not at the top of the food-chain. That position was occupied by Lions and other big cat predators. Our ancestors foraged for whatever they could find. For millions of years early humans lived like this. Then, about 120,000 years ago, our ancestors wandered north and found their way across the narrow seas to Eurasia. So began the human diaspora that resulted in humans spreading across that vast land-mass to the Americas and down to Australia. Logic would suggest that the key to long life is to adapt your lifestyle so that it is similar to what has been called the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness. This is the set of what anthropologists might call the ‘recurring selection pressures’ that have shaped us into the creatures we are today. A less scientific way of expressing this idea is to say that we should learn to live in harmony with Nature; to harmonize our inner world with the outer world. The chapters that follow outline the essential features of the lifestyle of early humans. They serve as a model that you can use to adapt your lifestyle so that it is in harmony with our inner nature. I do not suggest that we should leave our homes and become hunter-gatherers on the African savannah again. Let us make full use of the modern conveniences at our disposal, but let us do so in full knowledge of the grounding principles that make us human. If you can find a way to combine the two, you are well on your way to achieving a long and happy life.

'Every Moment is the Best Moment' is for anyone seeking a richer, deeper experience of life beyond our pre-occupation with material wealth and consumerism. There is nothing wrong with having a good standard of living, but when wealth and status becomes an end in themselves, we have lost sight of what is most important in life. This eBook is a short how-to guide that can help you to cultivate a higher awareness while continuing to live in the world. The phrase 'every moment is the best moment' is the essence of Enlightenment. It captures the feeling you have when you are so fully engrossed in the moment that you have no thought for anything else. The barriers between your inner and outer worlds dissolve and you feel a sense of connectedness with everything. Every moment is the best moment because it is the only moment. Moments recalled from the past, or anticipated in the future are products of your imagination. They have no substance in the outer world. The challenge is to feel this way about the ordinary things in your life, the things that many would consider mundane or even unpleasant. The enlightened person learns how to take great satisfaction in doing one thing at a time, focussing their full attention upon it and getting into a state of ‘Flow’ (discussed in more detail later). They understand that the virtue is not so much in what you are doing, but how you are doing it.

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is a perennial, belonging to a very special category of book that has but a few members out of the millions of books ever published; longevity. It has a simple, powerful message that is as fresh and useful today as it was nearly two thousand years ago. The greater the Truth, the more simply it can be put. The original book states a few great Truths, and states them very simply. That alone makes it worthy of careful study, but it has more to commend it than that. The greater the Truth, the more simply it can be put. The original book states a few great Truths, and states them very simply. Meditations is basically the author’s personal journal, written in private over a ten year period. It is doubtful whether he intended it to ever be read by others. It was a way for him to remind himself what he recognised as being most important to remember about Life. As a result, there is much repetition of ideas. A few big ideas are constantly discussed, these being uppermost in the author’s mind as the months and years rolled by. Therefore this Primer provides a summary of the recurrent ideas of Meditations, and does so in 21st Century language, easily accessible to modern readers. It presents the first five books as being representative of the entire twelve books. This is sufficient to grasp the essence of the original. In Meditations you come to know the real man, and to the reader this can seem an extraordinary privilege. But the man was also an emperor, and no ordinary emperor, one of the finest in Rome’s illustrious history. A truly remarkable man by any standard, but as you will see, a modest, even humble man. Even today, Meditations stands tall as a guide to staying calm under pressure when there is a difficult job to do. Marcus Aurelius might have been a Roman, but his thinking had been shaped, like so many educated Romans, by the classical period of ancient Greece. Indeed, Meditations was written in Greek. Even today, classical Greek thinking still permeates the foundations of Western civilisation.

Your brain is a truly remarkable thing. Neuroscience tells us that it is the most complex biological structure ever to have existed on this planet. It was made to work and work hard, probably well beyond its current level. You have the potential to raise your cognitive capacity beyond where it is now or where it was in the past. This statement runs counter to the common belief that as we get older, our brains inevitably go into decline. This is not true. There is no shortage of cases where people in their 90’s and beyond have minds that are still sharp and productively creative. In the absence of neurological disease, the decline in brain function as people age has much to do with settling into established and increasingly inflexible ways of thinking that has few new challenges. It is the mental equivalent of spending your days in a comfortable armchair, getting no exercise and watching mind-numbing TV. Sooner or later, your body, like your brain will atrophy through lack of use. Based on the work of the psychologist Howard Gardner, we know that there are no less than nine different kinds of intelligence that we all possess to some degree. Typically, one or two types are more developed in a person, while the remaining types are less developed or dormant. This eBook explains in detail about each of the nine types, and gives you action exercises to help you develop each of them to a higher level. It does promise to make you a genius, but if you follow the advice, it can definitely help you to expand your cognitive repertoire so that you can bring other modalities of intelligence to bear on the challenges that face us all in everyday life. Multiple Intelligences. Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner is well-known for his work on multiple intelligences. Since its emergence in the 1980’s, Gardner’s work is still generates debate, yet many psychologists believe it contributes greatly to a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of intelligence than that offered by the standard IQ test. The nine types include; Naturalistic intelligence, Bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence, Linguistic intelligence, Interpersonal intelligence, Spatial intelligence, Logical-mathematical intelligence, Musical intelligence, Intra-personal intelligence, and Existential intelligence. We possess all nine of these intelligences to a greater or lesser degree. Some remain dormant, while others are expressed more fully. Understanding something of these different modalities of intelligence will be of great help in recognising where your strengths lie. It can give you guidance on which ones might benefit from being enhanced in order to bring about a more balanced profile. Establishing a balanced profile across the nine types of intelligence will make you much more effective at meeting the challenges of life because your ‘cognitive toolkit’ has been greatly expanded. You will be able to use the most appropriate tool for the task, or perhaps a combination of tools might be found to work best. It is a tragedy and a terrible waste of potential that standardised school curriculums and intelligence tests that favour one kind of intelligence over others has produced generation after generation of people who believe they are not very bright. After all, their results at school and the comments from their parents and teachers seem to suggest this. A person who is well-endowed with some types of intelligence may have performed poorly on school curriculums based on the standard IQ assessment methods. A person with high Intra-personal intelligence would probably not engage with set school curriculums, even though they possess highly developed intuitive knowledge that gives them deep insight into people and situations. Arguably such a person is no less ‘smart’ than someone with highly developed mathematical ability.

For thousands of years people have tried to understand the elusive quality of Leadership. Still no consensus. What it means to be a leader differs according to the circumstances. This book examines the timeless, underlying qualities that must be present in a person if they are to be perceived as a leader by those around them. The distilled the essence of leadership is then formulated into a simple, easy to use process model for anyone to use, whether they be project managers, team members or simply people wishing to become the embodiment of those leadership qualities. Leadership and the Tao is a fresh take on the timeless question of "What is Leadership?" Read what the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu had to say and marvel at how up-to-date is this 2,500 advice when seen in comparison with what modern day experts have to say. Come to understand Leadership as an aspect of the self-actualising person; someone who is in the process of expressing their fullest potential as a human being. This book combines the distilled wisdom of modern day thinkers like Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis with the timeless wisdom of the ancient sages. You might be surprised how useful this book turns out to be.