The Compass of Zen

My parents are believers in Buddhism. I went to a preschool run by a small Buddhist temple. I learned not regular courses like Hangeul(the Korean Alphabet), simple counting, and manners, but also Buddhist culture like the tea cult, meditation, and the way of bow politely.

I'd like to go Hwagyesa where my family go to. Like a normal temple, Hwagyesa also nestles in the valley, Samgak Mountin. I enjoyed to take a path through a forest, smell a moist wood, and listen the sound of running water. When I was a boy, I regarded the temple as a playground.

On November 2004, my mother brought along me and my older brother to attend a funeral of one monk. His Buddhist name is Seung Sahn(숭산). He was the head monk of the Hwagyesa. I didn't recognize that he is renowned for virtues and one of the four great monks in the whole world, who are Dalai Lama, Thick Nhat Hanh, and Maha Ghosananda. Besides, Seung Sahn became more generally known as founder of Zen centers in the United States.

Here is the name of Zen centers which Seung Sahn founded:
The Dharma Zen Center in Los Angeles, the Choqye International Zen Center and the Empty Gate Zen Center in New York City, and the Providence Zen Center in Cumberland.

When Seung Sahn was engaged in missionary work in United States, he met one smart American grad student at Havard, who become a monk later days. His Buddhist name is Hyon Gak(현각).

Both of monks, Seung Sahn and Hyon Gak, wrote a book, The Compass of Zen(선의 나침반1,2)

They tried to explain about Hinayana Buddhism(소승불교), Mahayana Buddhism(대승불교), and Zen Buddhism(선불교) in a luminous remark. But it maybe still hard to understand to a novice because of an irrelevant answer.

When googling about Zen, there are definition and a bunch of links and data. Those are right. And those are not right. There is Zen. But, Zen is empty. There is not Zen.

I'm still confused, but only I don't know.
Seung Sahn didn't say what is Zen. But, he just snap down his table with a BANG!

Stunning Presentaion Tool

Below is Jeff Jarvis’ presentation, which he made using new software from Prezi. Just click within the screen and advance to the next slide.

Click here to see the presentation full-screen.

Sigmund Freud

I read two books about psychoanalysis. One is a Korean version of the interpretation of dreams(꿈의 해석 in Korean), the masterpiece of Sigmund Freud, translated by Lee Hwan and the other is the conversation with Sigmund Freud(프로이트와의 대화) written by Lee Chang Jae.

Today, many of scientists and scholars acknowledge Freud's works and admire his effort. However his life didn't run in a groove when he conducted researches.

After looking through his story and recognizing his work, I think he is also one of the paradigm shifter like Galileo Galilei found the Copernican theory, Darwin found the evolution theory, and Einstein found the principle of relativity.

When he set up the psychoanalysis, the society couldn't admit his theory. Because of strong religious atmosphere and ethical custom, some of his theory couldn't be accepted. But he never frustrate. Rather, he keep working hard on his way, and finally he established the psychoanalysis.

Marketing Strategy keep Evolving

After reading WWGD(Here is a realated story), I add Jeff Jarvis' blog, buzzmachine.com on my google reader. I get inspiration from his insight.

He introduced the new book, The Chaos Scenario, on his blog. Bob Garfield, the author of the book, said that traditional media and marketing are going to collapse, and so we need to prepare in a digitally connected, Post-Media age.
By the way, he does not suggest some idea on the book, but also show how it works.

He designs a cool widget enabling purchase, I'll embed it here:



Actually, this is not my first time observing this kind of book promotion. One of the my favorite masters, Seth Godin used viral marketing strategy when he published his book Purple Cow.
His strategy made a great hit that Purple Cow was ranked on Amarzon.com even before publishing.

Just like Seth Godin's word

"Transform your business by being remarkable",

Bob Garfield transform viral marketing by using widget, it's fully remarkable.

After publishing Purple Cow at 2003, almost 6 years have passed. Times change, and Marketing Strategy keep evolving.

Darwinism To Business, and YOU

Fortune 500 publishes the annual ranking of America's largest corporations. Here is the list from 1955 to 2009. The ranking of top 100 is not too many changed, but there is a little fluctuation. When the dinosaur company show up on the list for a decade, no one expect they're going to collapse.

However, it is truth that after sunrise, there is sunset. As looking through and comparing the list year-by-year, you can figure out who is going upward and who is going downward.

According to Charles R. Darwin who is famous for the Origin of the Species, what the last survives is not the strong, but the adaptation. Some dinosaur companies which once ruled the the world fail to read the change.
There are a few reasons. Some of them rested on their laurels, or other went to too far away from their capability because of greed.

Darwinism could be applied to personal career, too. The mass of niches control the world these days. Each person is able to have their brand power by using various PR tool.

Let me think,,

How often reintroduce myself?

They launched something, But..

I just knew POSTECH launched service offering the video of open lecture on their media website. This is av.postech.ac.kr
However,, I'm afraid to say that's suck... it doesn't mean they are really suck. I think they could be better, and should be. But they've been not yet, even though they could afford to be cool.

I know they have high quality open lectures, forums run by a various research centers, and notable faculties. Most of all, they have the great reputaion for top-notch science school.
For example, the university has grown into an institution that is known for its research and its professors have written an average of 4.4 SCI (Science Citation Index) research papers per professor in 2005. Earnings from research conducted at POSTECH total 435 million won ($370,000) per faculty a year ,according to Koreaherald 15Mar2007. Article 1:POSTECH Spent Most Money on Students [The Chosun Ilbo 23Sep2008], Article 2: Kaist takes back No. 1 spot from Postech in rankings[JoongAng Daily 29Sep2008]

That's reason why they can afford to gather good enough videos more. They need to live up to their reputation.

Beyond YouTube

I think YouTube.com is the biggest Internet video platform. Now it's run by the google, the god of the WWW. Through the whole world, more than a thousand of UCC(User Created Contents) are updated daily. There are a bunch of varieties such like personal life, street report, academic, art, music video, reproduced program, and of course porn. The world is wildly exited at surfing YouTube.

At Internet video portal was in its youth, people felt thirsty for enjoying UCC. YouTube is quite well designed for unskillful people to play it. So, YouTube have been soon filled. There is few guidelines. As looking through category, it's the large percentage that reproduced programs, hot music videos, and sexual stuffs. That's reason why YouTube now make sort of bottom line.

As I mention ahead, from now on the quantity doesn't matter, but the quality. The problem is related to both the consumer and the producer. The consumer considers the verified video, not rerereproduced stuff just made without any edit. Also, the producer is worry that their devoted video is placed next by porn.

Some web engineers find out that problem. There are some good enough video portals.
I sometimes surf researchchannel.org in order to listen a voice of scholar. There are a lot of institutes, research centers, business companies, and universities take a participation to upload valuable videos into researchchannel. Here is the list of contributors.

If you think researchchanel is a little bit boring and unattractive because too academic, I highly encourage ted.com. Ted.com is really cool. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. They said their mission is Spreading ideas. They hold annually TED Conference and award TED Prize and $100,000 in order to stimulate participation.

Also, here is another online video market player, hulu.com. It founded in March 2007, with NBC Universal of GE, FOX of News Corp., and the Walt Disney Company. Hulu's market concept is to help people find and enjoy the world's premium video content. Here is review about 'Growth and expandability of Hulu.com' from Camo's blog. Unfortunately, however, hulu.com offers video service only in America.

Actually, I had term project making business plan in a course of management. At that time, I and my buddies also thought about this kind of instructional video portal. We thought there are both sides around portal. One is video supplier, and other is video demander. We focused to the side of suppliers, because at least we needed to show something we can. We tried to contact some universities and noncommercial public broadcast like EBS. First of all, we contacted our university, POSTECH. At that time, my alma mater opened lectures from famous speakers like Nobel Prize laureates in series, celebrating the university has been open for 20 years. However, they hesitate to join us. I think they might worry who's going to take the proprietary rights of the lecture. Who is that among our portal, university, and speakers?

I think university should have been more brave and cool. Spreading idea is one of what we would like the university to do. It's not commercial business area, but it's good enough opportunity to say WE ARE COOL!

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[매경]TED 콘퍼런스: 18분의 매직