🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng

seeking knowledge (and theoretical neuro) @Columbia
Masters Comp Neuro @Tuebingen

✨🧠🌎

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

I'll drop the texts from those "third year" Columbia Core courses below and the selections we actually read:

**AHUM UN 1399 Colloquium on Major Works from Indian and Middle Eastern Cultures:**

Rig Veda; Upanishads; Buddhist Tradition; Bhagavad Gita; Ramayana; Kalidasa; Gitagovinda; Qur’an; Conference of the Birds; Hallaj; Al-Ghazali; Muqaddimah; Arabian Nights.

**AHUM UN1400 Colloquium on Major Texts: East Asia**

Analects; Mozi; Mencius; Xunzi; Laozi; Zhuangzi; Buddhist scriptures; Lotus Sutra; Tang poetry; Kokinshū; Tale of Genji; Heike; Pillow Book; Essays in Idleness; Monkey King; Bashō; Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong.

**Selections we read**

List 1 — India & Islamic World
Wendy Doniger, trans., The Rig Veda — “Creation”: Introduction, “Creation Hymn,” “Golden Embryo,” “Hymn of Man”; “Death”: Introduction, “Funeral Hymn”; “Sacrifice”: Introduction, “Origins of Sacred Speech”; “Agni”: Introduction, “Pray to Agni”; “Soma”: Introduction, “Drunk the Soma”; “Indra”: Introduction, “Killing of Vrtra”; “Solar Gods”: Introduction, “Dawn and the Asvins”; “Varuna”: Introduction, “House of Clay,” “Varuna.”
Patrick Olivelle, trans., The Upanishads — Introduction; Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.1, 3.1–9, 4.2, 4.4–5; Chandogya Upanishad 6.1–16, 8.7–12.
William T. de Bary, ed., The Buddhist Tradition: In India, China, and Japan — “Buddhism in India.”
Barbara Stoler Miller, trans., The Bhagavad Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of War — entire.
R. K. Narayan, trans., The Ramayana — entire.
Barbara Stoler Miller, trans., Theater of Memory: The Plays of Kalidasa — pp. 1–41, 85–176.
Barbara Stoler Miller, trans., Love Song of the Dark Lord: Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda — pp. 3–125.
M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, trans., The Qur’an — Suras 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, 19, 33, 37, 44, 49, 56, 61, 81, 114.
Imam Nawawi, Gardens of the Righteous: Riyadh as-Salihin, trans. Muhammad Zafrulla Khan — Introduction and opening selections through p. 26.
Farid ud-Din Attar, trans. Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis, The Conference of the Birds — entire, with pp. 95–128 optional/omitted.
Carl W. Ernst, trans., Hallaj: Poems of a Sufi Martyr — poems 1–117.
W. Montgomery Watt, trans., The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali — pp. 9–92.
Ibn Tufayl, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, trans. Lenn Evan Goodman — pp. 95–166.
Ibn Khaldun, ed. N. J. Dawood, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History — Preliminary Remarks & Book One, First Prefatory Discussion; Ch. 2 §§14–28; Ch. 3 §§41–48; Ch. 6 §§1–16, 26–27.
Husain Haddawy, trans., The Arabian Nights — Foreword; Prologue and first nights; “The Porter and the Three Ladies”; Postscript.
Ibn Hazm, The Ring of the Dove, trans. A. J. Arberry — pp. 19–64, 208–214, 262–265.

List 2 — East Asian Classics
Zhu Xi, Learning to Be a Sage — selections on reading.
Confucius, The Analects — selections.
Mozi — “Honoring the Worthy,” “Obeying One’s Superior,” “Impartial Caring,” “A Condemnation of Aggressive War,” “For Moderation in Expenditures,” “Against Confucianism.”
Mencius (Mengzi) — Books 1, 2, 6, 7.
Xunzi — “An Exhortation to Learning,” “Cultivating Oneself,” “Discourse on Heaven,” “Discourse on Ritual,” “Human Nature is Bad.”
Laozi — Chs. 1–6, 10–13, 28, 38, 47, 61, 76, 80.
Zhuangzi — selections.
Buddhist Scriptures — “The Legend of the Buddha Shakyamuni”; “The Questions of King Milinda.”
The Lotus Sutra — Chs. 2, 3, 12, 16, 25.
Bai Juyi — “The Song of Lasting Pain.”
“The Song of a Faithful Wife, Ch’un-hyang.”
Wang Wei, Li Bo, Du Fu — selected Tang Dynasty poetry.
The Kokinshū — selections.
The Tale of Genji — Chs. 1–2, 4–5, 7, 9.
“The Tale of the Heike.”
“Yoshitsune.”
“The Tale of Hong Kiltong.”
Sei Shōnagon — The Pillow Book.
Kamo no Chōmei — An Account of My Hut.
Yoshida Kenkō — Essays in Idleness.
Yi Kyu-bo — selected poetry.
“Delicious Poison.”
Monkey King — Chs. 1–18, 32–36.
Matsuo Bashō — Oku no hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North).
The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong — “The Memoir of 1805.”

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

Will you end up writing a longer blog about this? I'm always curious to hear how adult learners going through a great books course found it.

I took the Core Curriculum at Columbia as a second undergrad, and continued to its "third year" of colloquium courses in 1) Middle East/South Asian, 2) East Asian, texts and it completely changed how I thought about the world. The third year was especially great as I was able to engage essays in those courses with the western art/music courses that were also in the Core, having also learned how to write humanities papers from first year writing. I think a proper great books course would actually hugely benefit from everyone reading texts in those third year colloquium areas to think about the comparison of ideas.

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

@nopranablem Starting reading and it’s exactly what I needed! Thanks friend :)

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

@__drewface Freedom would permit landlords to then stop providing up to code normal housing units as well no?

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

@nopranablem *(Pranab did not pay me or talk to me about this for this endorsement hehe)

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

@nopranablem Mmm, maybe I'm subconsciously forgetting that we did a session and perhaps that was the start that made the link very explicit, even though I thought it would take way too long at that point to ever continue doing this :). Good evidence to the contrary!!

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

@nopranablem Do you have any tips for going further? Or random resources you'd like to recommend?

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

@nopranablem Glad to hear that it resembles something you've seen before! This is the first time I've told someone who meditates a lot hahaha.

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

I'd like to keep furthering the practice so I'll likely do a self retreat in the next month with the Rob Burbea practice.

I think the thing that really unlocked it was really allowing myself to relax and be free. In that way, the freeness also feels more like a state to tap into! I don't really have too much formal training in all of this so it's just playing around for me.

I would like to thing the complete relaxation, diving into it, and resonance does generalize though.

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

@nopranablem access the joy. I think it correlates really well with clarity of thought and resolidifying confidence in self whenever I do it.

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

@nopranablem Then acting out of impulse becomes freeing, and is also directionally good.

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

@nopranablem Yeah I agree! In your direction/to add evidence, I think feeling my feelings first before I do any task has become more automatic such that identifying all of these problems also becomes almost authomatic as well.

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

@nopranablem Also just as a personal update, I've been having access to jhana-like states recently full of joy and ecstasy, and this also seems to help a lot whenever I like.

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

@nopranablem How do you think these relate to "just trying to go faster is better"? My friend and I were just talking about how speed begets success which begets fun and good feelings, in a virtuous cycle. Going slowly correlates a lot with not having fun for some odd reason.

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

@ohmyksh Amazing! Have wanted to see something like this for a while. A good substitute for just recording in labs more natively

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

@kanjun Would love to try it! :)

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

@SamuelLippl will be presenting this at the ICML "Compositional Learning: Safety, Interpretability, and Agents" workshop today! See it at the 2nd poster session.

[🏄🏻‍♂️ Luke Cheng @_lukecheng]

🧵 New preprint! "A mathematical theory of balancing relational generalization and memorization"

With @SamuelLippl

Real-world learning requires both learning rules AND memorizing exceptions. We introduce a task + theory for understanding how learning systems do both.

https://t.co/AkmjrcvRVp