In Pursuit of Wisdom

  Last Tuesday Ahyan and I played the 5th and 6th round of Tuesday Night Marathon online over chess.com arranged by Mechanics Chess Institute. The games are live analyzed by FIDE Master Paul Whitehead and Abel Talamantez. After a nice win by Ahyan at 5th round he was jointly in second position with 4 out of 5 in the open section which is phenomenal at his age and rating. Ahyan and I joined the commentary by invitation from TD Judit Sztaray after the 6th round for a short time. Here are some excerpts from our games and the commentaries. The TNM newsletter for this round may be found here -  https://www.milibrary.org/chess-newsletters/931

  I have been thinking of learning Philosophy without going to a college or enrolling in Philosophy courses for some time now. Philosophy is such a vast topic that the biggest trouble for me was to figure out where to start, what are the major areas of Philosophy that I should focus on, and how to go about it within the limited time I have. Apart from my spiritual quest, I was very intrigued by  Jordan B Peterson 's mentions of  Friedrich Nietzsche  in one of the best books I have ever read  12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos . Some of my early attempts were watching the  Philosophy Crash Course  in YouTube (and planning to do these 47 videos another go in the next few weeks), reading  50 Philosophy Ideas you really need to know  by  Ben Dupre,  listening in audible  50 Philosophy Classics: Thinking, Being, Acting, Seeing: Profound Insights and Powerful Thinking from Fifty Key Books  by  Tom Butler-Bowdon , and r...

  I have been fascinated while listening to and reading about the Universe since my childhood. But most of those readings have been random, organic in nature just like my readings on everything else -   science fictions , detective novels, history, biography,   cricket , soccer, and so on. The notable exception is Chess and Software Engineering which I have done pretty significantly in terms of   method and volume .  In 2015 I started reducing my overall time spent reading, learning, and playing chess (it was not an easy decision, believe me). That gave me extra time to focus on my pursuit of knowledge outside of my day job and family responsibilities. So I picked up first to understand religions and particularly Islam as I felt it's my duty to know in detail as a Muslim.  About 3 years  of reading, watching videos, enrolling in seminars on topics related to Islam, Comparative Religions, Atheism, and relevant topics - I felt like it's good enough for m...