Say to yourself that I shall face the ungrateful, the arrogant, the deceitful and the uncaring knowing that all these behavior stem from either their nature which they have no control over, or their own ignorance. I know what is good and beautiful, and i know what is bad and ugly. These people i shall experience just the same as the ones who are close to me.

I am my body, my sensations and my cognition. Stop looking for more information - it's not allowed anymore. Imagine how much you would identify with your body if you were just dying right now. Look at your emotions as always changing - yet the different ways you feel are finite and always repeat themselves. The third is cognition - From now on consider yourself an old man who has no future. You are no longer a slave to the society. You are no longer swayed by fads. You are no longer either dissatisfied with the present or afraid of the certain future.

Everything that exists involves causality. Those which are accidents involve things which are caused by something or made up of accidental events themselves. That's how everything happens. Consider causes as both necessary and good as a whole. Reality works as a chain of causality. Understand this and hold on to this belief. But drop your thirst for more information, so that you don't die dissatisfied but content and congruent to yourself.

Remember now how long you have been putting off these things, how often you had opportunities but did not capitalize on them? You have to at last accept you place in the universe, the causes that created you, and the limited time you have left, which if you don't use to clear your mind will go away forever with your end.

Every moment think like a soldier and do what task you have in your hand optimally with focus, love and intensity. And you will give yourself relief, if you live each moment of your life as the last one bereft of carelessness, distractions from your mission, hypocrisy, selfishness and discontentment with what you have.

If you do something wrong, you don't have the time to redeem yourself. Every man's life is sufficient, but your's is almost finished; And yet you don't put yourself first and let your happiness at the mercy of other people!

Do things events distract you? Learn something new, grow and don't vascillate. But don't go overboard this way too - for there are people who have been doing things all their life, yet never had a goal to think and act coherently to, and burn themselves out.

Those who are not concerned about others are rarely unhappy, but those who are concerned about themselves are always unhappy.

You should always keep in mind who you are, what the world is, what your relationship to the world is and what you're here to do. And no one can hinder you to do things which you are here to do.

It's far better to give in to anger than to give in to mere pleasure, for an angry man blunders because he has lost his reason, but a man who is blinded by pleasure will err despite it.

Since you are moments away from your end, regulate your every act and thought carefully. You always have the means to resist evil for effecting your life - That which doesn't effect your life doesn't effect you. Life and death, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure - all of these happen equally to good and bad men; Thus they themselves are not good and even. They simply are.

Things disappear quickly in this world, people and also their memories. Notice how temporary pleasure, fear and fame are. When one reflects on the death of all things as inevitable, all these are just things which happen to everyone at all times. And men who are afraid of things which happen to everyone all the time are children. Understand that for this world to be, these things are inevitable.

Nothing is more wretched than a man who never learns his lessons and worries about other people's opinions without realizing the fact that his own self perception of the world and himself is the most important. And that ideal self-perception comes resisting emotions, thoughtlessness and dissatisfaction with your current state.

You may have a life of 3000 or 10000 years, understand that no man looses any life other than which he lives right now, and lives any life other than he will loose right now. Thus long lives and short ones are just the same. A man doesn't have a lost past or future, since how can one loose something which he never had in the first place. So remember these two things - one, that all things repeat themselves and two, both the long-lived and the short-lived loose the same at death. A man has only the present moment and that is the only thing that can be deprived from him.

Remember that everything being perceived subjectively holds true, as much as a man can extract value from it.

A man lets himself down when he stops giving value, because to not being accepting of the moment is to separate yourself from the world. When he separates himself from other men or even maligns them. When, he's overpowered by pain or pleasure. When he lies. Also, when he acts aimlessly or thoughtlessly.

Time is just a point in the human life. Things change. Perceptions fade away. The body rots away. Cognition keeps repeating itself. Luck is beyond control and fame devoid of judgement. More simply, everything bodily is a stream, cognition vaporizes instantly, life is a constant uncertain war which one must navigate alone. Then what should a man base his life on? One and only one thing - his philosophy. But this involves growth, being above pain and pleasure, being purposeful, being authentic, being independent, being accepting of all events and circumstances and lastly, being accepting of his own death. Understanding that death is just degradation of things which make him. If a man has no problems with the transience of other things which make the rest of the universe, why should he object to the the transience of the things which make him? Death is just natural - it's not evil.

This in Cali.

From my dad, i learned the importance of careful planning and being meticulous. The importance of being fiscally minimalistic, of being sceptical about things which sound too good to be true. The necessity of being realistic.

From my mom, i learned the pleasantness of femininity, the touch of deep love that a mother gives to her own child and the associated security which comes with it. I also learned how to make the most perfect scrambled eggs and the joy of reading - all the way from Dickens to Enid Blyton.

From Russel, Dawkins, Dennet, Harris and Hitchens, the arguments against existance of god, and a framework for testing commonly held beliefs. From the first two, how evolution by natural selection works and the various complexities in design space.

From Pickles, Ratz and Don, i experienced what friendship meant and how it's different from mere aquaintance. Friendship is the only type of relationship that one chooses in his life, and thus deserves a special place in one's emotional universe - with the highest selectivity.

From M1, i experienced the sting of rejection for the first time in my life. Given the fact that it doesn't hurt me in this present moment, it's raw data - rejections don't matter in the long run.