I have a closed friend who is mathematician. We know each other during the orientation week for freshies once upon a time in the University of Malaya. We interact frequently, and maintain a high quality of intellectual and spiritual friendship. He is a typical kind of mathematician who is slightly mad (which is usual among mathematicians). Legend has it that if a mathematician does not has any madness above certain lower bound, he/she is not a good mathematician. He serves as an important figure in my life because he often becomes the target of my cynical comments, which result in the enhancement of the quality of fun I can enjoy. Recently, he started doing some other things beside mathematics. He picks up and reads quite a number of books on early education and the study of how to educate and observe young children. He does so because he has some problem in reading due to the lack of (1) basic vocabularies and (2) reading training since young. He is very well trained in mathematics and logic. However, certain part of his brain is not able to handle some form of passive information. For example, he can remember the location of his car in the car park, faces of people, or music/song easily, but he was not able to remember names of those things. He has this problem since in high school. He didn't understand why he has such a difficulty to remember names. Thanks to recent reading, he finally found out what was the cause of this syndrome: The lack of training in reading which causes him to have no good sensitivity of WORD. His brain used to process SYMBOLS faster than WORDS during the conceptual organization and processing of the input information. This is also the main reason he studies mathematics but not physics. He claims that another reason he does not do physics is because physics is much more challenging than mathematics. According to him, “physics studies the phenomena of the real world/universal, but mathematics just uses logic to study pattern. In other words, physics handles more thing than mathematics, and therefore, it is more difficult”. Well, that was his “logic” in comparing maths to physics, of which I don't really see much “logic” in itself. Anyway, his conclusion was that: We must train and develop our brain at the early age, and the most important training is none other than READING. The reading he meant is the reading just for fun but not for the purpose of examination. Once one is able to read effectively, one becomes versatile in the sense that he/she can acquire any knowledge required for whatever reasons.
Based on the books he has read on how to improve our brain ability, he suggests the following:
1. We should have good quality of sleep. It is even better if we can also meditate regularly.
2. We should have regular physical exercise. He particularly mentioned that I am a good example in this case as I used to exercise on regular basis. He has read many books that show scientific proofs on the benefit of exercising. Now he starts listening to me (finally, after so many years of constant urging) to exercise regularly - walking for 30 minutes everyday.
3. Read regularly on the topics that interest you. This will keep our brain consistently active.
4. Watch less TV and do less online chatting/face-booking.
5. Has a right attitude in life. We should regularly perform self-introspection so that we can get closer to the Truth. With a right understanding of our lives, our bad habit or defilement can be cleared bit-by-bit from day to day.
He thanked me for leading him to be a Dhamma practitioner. My response to him was: Lips service is not pragmatic. Can you give me angpow or treat me with exquisite restaurant instead?
