Philosophy is Life

“Know Thyself”

Everybody who knows Socrates will surely recognize the words which he uttered almost 2,500 years ago yet still gives out a challenge to every man of this modern time.

What does really make a better you? What makes a good life? Most of us would think it would be things, material things.

During my childhood years, we lived at a subdivision in Norala. Some of my friends came from well-to-do families and they have as it seem everything they want. They have computers on their homes. Encyclopaedias don their living room. Bulky dictionaries would be their companion during studies. Their “yaya’s” would even accompany them going to school with their cars to bring them to and fro. At a young age they have cellphones to call their own. To sum up, they are rich while my family is only from the middle class. Though our everyday life is alright, not as bad as others, to dream of someday also becoming rich was implanted to my being. I was taught that if I study harder, someday I will also have these things and my life would be better. Better if I also have those things.

At first I succumb to that temptation of dreaming of having also those things. I wished I also live on a big house; I can be brought to school with a really nice car. I also dreamed of reading those thick encyclopaedias in our home and scan that dictionary everytime I have assignments. I really thought happiness, before you will have it, you should have these things also. But it is not.

I was transferred school when I was in Grade 4 because of my Mother’s work. It was really a new life where I transferred, totally a new life.

I was transferred to Laconon Elementary School. It was actually the second largest school in T’boli but still a few kilometres from the town proper. We will be trekking an 8-kilometer road with 2 rivers just to get there. Our house there is made of nipa. We live in a compound where teachers are boarding. Our water supplies come from springs. There are springs there where you can tap a hose up to your house and would be the source of water for your house. Sometimes if our tapping system would break we will be most happy because we will have no water and we will be washing ourselves in a river at the back of our house. The water is so pure and clean and it is literally as cold as water with ice! We used to heat water first before bathing.

Life is very different from that of Norala. Everything my classmates at Norala have, that’s the very opposite of what my classmates in T’boli has. Literally, small houses, no cars and we don’t even have books from the school. My classmates would start “walking” from their houses at 4 and still they would be late for the first period. Our school also practice an “early dismissal system” so that those who live in the barrios can reach their homes early. At 3:30 pm we are already dismissed. Life is just so simple in that mountain. But, one thing makes them superior than my rich classmates before. They truly know life.

With all the scarcity of what they have, they would still share, laugh and enjoy each day. You would even think if they have problems at all! They are all relatives by the way; they can trace every member of their clans though they do not have the same surname. Even those whom you would expect to be “siga” can be so gentle in his sister, can share the little he has with his friends and can be of company for his brothers in walks miles away.

Well, that is philosophy especially in the practice of metaphysics. It teaches us how to truly live our lives. It teaches us how to see beyond. Seeing from the simplest of things the greatness of meanings it wants us to perceive. Later, we may realize that this life we live is a great unveiling of mysteries.
They would say, “Philosophy is so hard!” Others would ask, “If you graduate the course, what good will it bring you?” Well, it is bringing good to you now.

Philosophy is never detached from the world. It actually gives balance and meaning to the world. As a telescope would help astronomers venture the heavens, know the vastness of the cosmos and discover the deepness of the universe so is Philosophy leading us to discover what life truly is, the life itself. It leads us to our inmost being. If you look into the heavens under a light post, that artificial light from the post may blur our eyes from seeing the very beauty of the moon and the stars. If we look into what happiness in life is through the lenses of material things, we may be disillusioned from what real happiness is.

Our life is like the universe, so vast and full of wonders yet unknown. It may be discovered but still there are more to offer. The stars, the moon, the comets and many other wonders lie beneath the dark spaces. We are told that these wonders are only fragments, debris; trash of what happened millions of years ago. If this debris would fall so beautiful, what more is that very nucleus which happened long ago? Philosophy does that; it makes us discover that very beautiful self of us. That very nucleus of ourselves which if discovered is so beautiful.

So let us anchor to Philosophy and let us live life itself.

Read More

Everything Flowing

We Filipinos are well known all over the world for our extremes. We have in our culture things with no match around the world. We are a people of uniqueness that other nationalities consider to be a blessing and even viewed with envy. From our geographical point of setting which produced our rich floras and faunas to our unique culture produced from a mixture of other different great cultures of the Chinese, Malay and Indo, with that of the west, the Spaniards, Germans and the Americans which contributed to this unique culture of ours and produced great people as Dr. Jose Rizal and Manny Pacquiao. All made it possible for this people being jealous by the world.

Our geographical setting is situated just above the equator of the earth making our archipelago a tropical biome. With this setting in the ecological point of view would produce a biodiversity which will have no match from other biomes. And we can actually verify this fact. We have in our country archipelago the highest statistics of floras and faunas. We have 52 species of Nepenthes, also known as pitcher plants. This is the highest record of species of Nepenthes all over the world present in a single country. This is just one example of the many great facts about the Philippines’ faunas and faunas which makes our country really unique. Scientists would estimate that only about 10% of these unique floras and faunas are known and given name by the scientific world.

From the point of view of sociology, the Filipino culture is also unique. It is a product of different cultures possessing qualities with no match from the world. It is a culture of ‘bayanihan’ or team-work-coupled-with-kindness-and-love-of-neighbour. It is a term that cannot be anglicized because it is a value which has no match.

Of course, it would be bias if we only state the positive qualities that we possess. For we also have those negative which only makes us humans and help in testing the authenticity of our values and the goodness of being Filipinos.

We are a country archipelago situated beside the Pacific which makes us susceptible to typhoons and extreme weathers. The La Niña and El Niño made it almost a common sound of words for our ears as Filipinos. Just recently is the example of the super-typhoon Yolanda which devastated the Tacloban and almost of Visayas. But, what matters in this negative that we have is that test of value it gives. Amidst these, especially the typhoon Yolanda, Filipinos still smiled and expressed their Bayanihan. Helping the fellowmen, even if, they too needed help. They shared, even if, they have their very least.

These are just but a fraction of the best and even worst of Filipinos. There are a lot more for us to be proud of. But, a question still bugs my mind: “Why many of my fellow youth ambitions to be part of other countries’ culture, considering it better than our own?” But, do I really have the right to question this? By questioning this am I not boxing up a being into my own and only perspective? Yes, it is good to care for my culture because it is my identity, it forms my being. But, at the expense of suppressing the reality of that being, I realized it is a no. By suppressing and ending the possibility of being into the context of another culture is to make that being static and we fall into that trap very easily. I tend to realize that everything that I do is a product of that desire to put everything in order with what I am. It is like making mini-me’s in another person’s person and to do so is to suppress that being’s being.

There was once a TV show where kids are encouraged to dress up as their idols – artists, Filipinos or Foreign. In the hope of parents that their children be like this people someday they, famous, they would enlist their kid to that show and make them perform. It is like suppressing these kids’ possibilities and making them live a life already fixed. Why not let the child live in his own ways and develop in his own ways?

Let everything flow, like flowing water in the course of the rivers. Without form, forever changing, forever flowing. Like in the words of the Tao Te Ching: “It is easier to carry an empty cup than one that is filled to the brim.” Let being flow. Let not hinder the uniqueness of it. Let it flow. Do not conceive being. Let it flow.

Read More

Experience

In my mind, Cotabato City has almost become synonymous with danger. There are bombings and terrorism. Bombed buses and building are on the news bearing the name Cotabato. It has a gloomy face inside my head. Stories of priests and nuns martyred for their faith by fundamentalist Muslims in that part of mindanao tend to darken all the more this gloomy pictures that I have. Yet, I have never really been to Cotabato which leaves all my pre-conceptions of that city all hearsays.

These thoughts of Cotabato City occupied me until my family planned a visit to my father’s baptismal Godmother when my father became Catholic from being an Aglipayan. She is a Dominican Sister assigned in a hospital managed and owned by their congregation in Cotabato.

It was a 3-hour bus ride from Koronadal City with 15 minute bus stops at every terminal from Tacurong City and municipalities of Isulan and Sharif Aguak. It was a very smooth ride far from my conceptions of checkpoints managed by armies searching for rebels with the brink of an encounter between them just in hand. But, it was very different. No checkpoints only terminals, safe terminals and routes.

We arrived at Cotabato City around 10:30 in the morning and headed to the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena’s convent to pay our visit. The convent is just around the hospital they manage. I did not expect they also own a midwifery school and what surprised me is that those who patronise that school, such school managed and owned by a Catholic congregation, are young Muslim students. It was Saturday when we visited and the school is filled with students taking their NSTP with scarves in their heads.

Our next stop is to check in for a hotel room. We realized we become total strangers to such foreign city since my parents’ last visit was years ago. But, the people did not bring me back to my pre-conceptions instead proved me wrong with all that I thought about their city. People were actually ready to help giving directions which place is this and that and where to take ride.

Of course, in such a city where Muslim population dominates there is no religious destination which a Christian would interest to go instead mosques. So, what made our trip to Cotabato meaningful are the people. I met people of different creeds, not formal meeting, but on the streets and sidewalks, cabs and tricycles, stalls and restaurants experiencing their authentic way of dealing with people far from my pre-conception again of people divided due, not to their colour, but on their creed. I spoke with Bajao street kid not expecting a polite ‘Thank you’ as a sign of their gratitude. I spoke with a Muslim cab driver about the day’s fight of Manny Pacquiao. I spoke with a Christian waiter for the direction of the Lourdes Grotto. Everybody responded politely without showing indifference. Cotabato is an experience of people united though diverse.

From there I have realized the value of experience. From the language of people things are different when you yourself immerses to that fountain of reality. Language may symbolize such reality but the danger is when you fossilize it forever. I have fossilized Cotabato in relation to danger only when I melted it down again into a fresher way – a society of diversity in unity. It is actually a cradle of peaceful people very much immune to different cultures. A respectful people to whatever creed you may belong.

The problem of language confronts us everyday. It governs our daily relationships both strengthening it but mostly ruins it. We tend to express different symbols on our different experience but the connection that we could build on the other varies. So, we must realize we can never reduce everything to words. We may symbolize our experience of it but we must make it clear to the other that it is not everything that it is. We must not establish finitude. Let the other also experience it for himself. Often times we control for some other reasons without realizing that we suppress the value of experience.

Read More

On Being

For what is being?

During one of my classes in art appreciation, I found myself being in a certain situation which made a great impact on my psychological balance and led me to sleepless nights. That was only last 13th of November 2014. We were in Doherty 112 deliberating a meeting for our project in fulfilment to that class, Art Appreciation, which is a stage play, to be presented on the next term of this semester. The leader is a Political Science senior student and is facilitating our discussion. The first part of the meeting ran smoothly. She raised her concerns and also her plans and we cheerfully participated. Jokes were even thrown. Until, when concerns from the members are asked and some raised theirs that the dark side of the discussion dawned. Harsh deliberation sparked and the whole cheerful meeting had its dark ages. The problem? Only in the level of language.

I felt very bad that my ideas were rejected just because it was not understood. Not even not understood per se but not understood only by her. I felt that sense of inferiority and thought what is happening to that class. It became as if I was in the time of the Nazis or the time of Marcos that there is no need to understand what I say but what is the only important is what her say.

On the positive side, I have another incident which I want to include here. It happened in the evening of 15th of November 2014. We are in the mall around 7 in the evening just after buying stuffs and heading the exit. My father happened to meet someone. As is usual customary, hands were exchanged for shaking. But, what is interesting to that incident was the fact that when my father extended his hands they were actually smudged with paint. Paint of different colors. My father is not a painting artist.  He was out during that morning painting in the school which happened to be where he is the Principal. I jokingly said to him: ‘As if you do not want to shake his hands, huh?’ From where I received a rebuke: ‘Why not?’

His answer actually made me bad. I felt insulted but I realized it was actually I who first insulted him with my question. That question which belittled his way. Ways which is him authentically. Ways which are the product of the life of simplicity and sense of poverty. He always asks us: ‘Never ever forget the life from where we, your father and mother, came.’

Last Nov. 10, 2014, during our first meeting in metaphysics, it was said that metaphysics is the study of ‘that’ which is and ‘is’ is is. I felt that tingling sensation thinking that it was only the beginning, what would be the next? At first hearing, I thought my professor was only emphasizing the word ‘is’ until he wrote the whole three words down on the board with broad strokes that I realized the whole three were in fact three words in themselves that corresponds to a single fragment and gives a whole definition to something that which is – being.

But, what does the two scenarios above talk about? What is the significance of those two stories to that of our first discussion? They actually talk about very same thing, which is also the topic of that subject – being. My consolation then: be ready to the unfolding of every mystery by every being.
The two stories presented to me how the great schemes of things revolve in our existence. How our being encounter another beings. From our discussion, being is that which is. Being is ‘that’ and not ‘this.’ Being as ‘that’ because being display uniqueness. Not as simply ‘this’ because it is inexhaustible. The quality of being and its interpretation does not depend on another being but in itself. It is unique. It does not depend on the other being but in itself. Being is like water, forever flowing. If it is grasped, the one trying to may wet his hands but water will forever flow. Just as being, as I try to know it I may but never exhaust it.

The two scenarios had also its common result on me feeling bad. I felt insulted but what is the problem? The problem is that on the two scenarios I tried to control being. I tried to box being up inside the context of my perspective. I tried to box everything up inside my perspective when in fact being is emanation. It is like the sun which gives light. I can only see what it shines.

At this point, being as like the sun, we can also understand it as also giving itself its own meaning and we cannot control how a being express itself. We cannot judge a being if that reacts in such a way because it is that, it is how that emanate. We cannot see something if the sun does not shine its light on it. So, if I put that the sun is the being then we cannot understand how a being sees something if that does not light it itself. In other words, we cannot put words on a being’s mouth because every being has its own light to shine over from itself. Then, every being has also its perspective. A perspective which is being’s being and the being’s perspective should be respected because to suppress it is to suppress the being’s being altogether.

Read More

My Historicity

As we breathe our breaths each day we always dedicate it for the compensation of yesterday and for the betterment of tomorrow. Resulting to the making of the present a mere intermediary to what has been and what is to be. With this mindset, we come to conceive of time of having the past, the present and the future. With mechanical time to govern our everyday lives- to set what is past, what is present and what is future. But, the problem is that we no longer live the present but instead engross ourselves to what is the future.

Our existence is not that of early video recorders wherein in it is composed of different slides to project. What has been projected is the past, what is being projected is the present and what is to be projected is the future. I come to points of my life wherein I look at myself in the present not focusing on it but focusing on what I have been and what I am to be. Neglecting altogether my present and never living it.

Imagine a potter. He has clay in hand and facing his spinning wheel. The clay is so simple and irrelevant coming from the roads we tread, from the gardens we toil and from other uninteresting locations. But there the potter is, never stopping of dreaming of forming something beautiful and precious from this irrelevant clay. He put the clay on his spinning wheel and began to spin it. With his bare hands he began to form the simple clay into something different. With the simple spinning and with the graces of the potter’s hands comes out from earth’s clay something unique- a jar.

I spent the last 3 years of my elementary education in a rural school in Laconon, T’boli because of my parent’s teaching work. My classmates were natives of the T’boli tribe with only few of us from the lowlands. My earlier elementary schooling was spent at Notre Dame of Norala, Inc. After graduating from that school I proceeded my high school at Koronadal National Comprehensive High School. At first my parents are not confident of my status taken that I am only a graduate of a rural school. So, they comforted me that I should not hope too much of getting into the honors of that school. They are not even hoping that I get into a higher section. But then I realized that its not about which school you were really from but it’s about how much you value education and how much you value learning.

If the potter did stop dreaming and instead of thinking of forming something unique from that clay but focused on the irrelevance and ugliness of the clay he will find himself not forming something appreciative but instead stuck in his folly with nothing to accomplish.

Life is like that, at certain times we take time blaming and blaming the cause, things that have been done and cannot be undone, for the mistakes of the present that we neglect the things that we can do to better the things of the present. We take more time blaming who is responsible that we realize that we have spent all the time with nothing more to do because the time that we can spend in making things right we have already used in blaming who’s who.

Life will not always be perfect. We come to crossroads wherein the choices to choose is never positive. All four corners of the road are in flaws. But, the thing is that we are gifted with creativity for us to use. Besides, because of this creativity of man do all priceless possessions on earth arose. To name a few does from the sands of Egypt arose the pyramids and the Great Sphinx of Giza, from the clays of Yuang tze, the great yellow river of China, does came the great Chinese porcelains and from the great Alps of Italy came the raw marbles that became sculptures donning the great halls of Italy and the Vatican.

We can never choose which part of history does destiny wants us to place. We can never choose who we are and what we are on the day we were born. The thing is that, wherever and whichever part of history we are in we can always change the world. Remember that He who is the prince of the world was born in a simple manger but his love became the epitome of love for mankind- He has changed the World. Why don’t you?

Read More