Meditation

“Although it can be useful to think of mindfulness as ‘being with things as they really are’, it is in fact more accurate, and more helpful for our purposes, to understand basic mindfulness practice as a way of looking that merely fabricates a little less than our habitual ways of looking.” -Rob Burbea, Seeing That Frees

“We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being… we are here to become more and more ourselves.” ― James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life

Deconstructive meditation, specifically, makes you realize that your mind is fundamentally changeable, composed of transient phenomena. All mental states are just assemblages of whirling particles, pixels briefly flickering on a screen. Nothing is “at the heart of it,” no one sensation is crucial. Your opinions, your beliefs, narratives about your

“If you let go a little, you will find a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will find a lot of peace. If you let go absolutely, you will find absolute peace and tranquility.”

The path of Buddhism is often called The Middle Way, as it’s midway between indulging in sense desires and renouncing them. The Buddha essentially said you can eat and feel good, but if you want to be liberated from suffering you can’t be attached to eating and feeling good.

Chunks of my identity are falling off, month by month. Parts of me that kept track of my social status and my anxieties are relaxing and falling into the void. What’s left, increasingly, is a feeling of complete satisfaction with the way things are. You know that feeling of drinking a glass of water that’s exactly correctly cool on a hot day? Imagi

In spite of what I just said about how serious practitioners do get triggered, it’s also true that the shape of your mind changes such that you are not default worried. And when this happens, you realize that most people are default worried. Like, most people have a free-floating existential worry drive that latches onto any signal that things are

This journey of finding a meaningful alignment with ourselves and the world is not an easy one. To gain more clarity and understanding in this domain, I usually encourage people to explore the work of James Hollis. His book Living An Examined Life is a great start and full of meaningful contemplation that is sure to bring more clarity to the journe

Consider how much time you spend thinking—in even the subtlest way, in the back of the simulator—about what others think of you. Be mindful of doing things to get admiration and praise. Try to focus instead on just doing the best you can. Think about virtue, benevolence, and wisdom: if you sincerely keep trying to come from these, that’s about all