>I have trouble managing other aspects of life like socializing
How so?
>hanging out with the family
What are you doing when not hanging out with the family?
>Hell I even often get blamed for wearing the same types of outfit
This isn't your problem at all it's someone else's.
>I just can't get enough time to complete my work.
Honestly, try cultivating Shamatha, which is meditative equipoise or calm abiding mind. Singled pointed concentration is relaxing and has the effect of increased mental stability over time. Check out this book on it [1].
No doubt. Threats, threatening people, and threatening regimes exist and I'm certainly not advocating for a lack of justice and ethics.
It would help if society at various levels became less divisive, that's all. That certainly involves moving beyond the us vs them mentality in a lot of different ways, which takes emotional development starting at the level of the individual.
I can tell that you feel very strongly about the ongoing political situation, but there are of course many other contexts.
This is so true. I've tried to explain why an organization is the way it is before via cause and effect and some people refuse to believe that there is any sort of subtle force that factors into how organizations turn out.
Even if you point to things like Conway's law they still won't listen sometimes!
The best organizations have compassion for their employees and customers, but it takes right-thinking from the top.
Laughing at the manson family reference from the other comment, that's an example of hostile brainwashing by a cult leader, whereas what is being described here is an exploration of self and the true nature of consciousness, which is compassion.
Shamatha is calm abiding mind, single-pointed meditation, temporary emotional stability.
Vipassana is analytical meditation, wisdom, lasting mental stability through deconstructing the self and other phenomena to repeatedly discover that all is empty at the ultimate level.
Going through this you can then approach the conventional world with more mental stability than just reacting naively to every event and occurrence.
You're the only one calling anything stupid, I simply pointed out how selfishness arises from a well-known and well-developed perspective on the human mind (and how it interfaces with reality) and pointed to some contemporary discussions (with scientists) on the nature of compassion and how it has the potential to bring people together in a world that is struggling with divisiveness as it faces one collective struggle after another.
The book I recommended is particularly insightful as it probes into how a society such as South Africa can move forward after such heinous human rights violations as the apartheid era through forgiveness and compassion instead of revenge and retribution.
It's not based on faith and has a rich history of academic development and logistical analysis by trained Nalanda scholars of 4th, 5th, and 6th century India.
Also there is a rich history of independent development and contemplative examination of the nature of reality, consciousness, and mind.
The western mindfulness genre is almost entirely made up of bits and pieces of Buddhist contemplative practice.
I don't expect to convince you that you don't know exactly what you're talking about.
Don't think for a second I'm surprised that most commenters here are pure material realists, part of the fun I guess.
You may think I'm falling into an idealist's dilemma, however, that single statement is speaking on the nature of emptiness of phenomena and how certain thoughts and emotions arise. Objects do not exist inherently and independently. Everything arises from an interdependent network of causality.
The scientist will go splat, but why does he fear death?
I have to lightly refute your point about it not being a successful philosophy, it was very successful for thousands of years in India where it originated and very successful in Tibet and other eastern societies. Western materialism tends to be in direct conflict with Buddhist wisdom.
All beings suffer, compassion is the way out of suffering for the individual and for others. Ask the Tibetan Yogis who were imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese who harbor no resentment toward their captors after release and who say that the greatest danger they felt during their imprisonment was losing compassion toward their captors.
No one ever said it was easy to develop, as can clearly be seen by such stringent resistance to the notion of having compassion for others, even enemies.
It's okay to admit that it's difficult to display unwavering compassion with respect to the conventional truth (there are two truths). Instead of insulting you back, have an upvote!
You should look for markets where a reconfiguration of leading technology could serve a new market that existing leaders in the space are unable to service due to structural necessities in their own established business models.
Trying to compete against incumbents by improving what they are already making progress on (sustaining innovations) is nearly impossible because they've set themselves up to be leaders in incremental innovation already.
Disruptive markets are so because they emerge at profit margins and market sizes much too small for large existing organizations to justify servicing, and also the new products do not meet the requirements of the established customer-base. Eventually, there is a chance that the disruptive technology will intersect with mainstream customer requirements and this is where customers begin to see the 10x benefits you're looking into, much further down the road.
As it has been well-known in the east for thousands of years and well preserved by the Tibetan people, the us vs them mentality arises naturally through the nature of consciousness which grasps at the notion of a non-existent self.
Through ignorance we fail to see reality for what it truly is, ultimately empty, but conventionally existent.
Thus, we reify our perceptions as real, instead of recognizing that all objects are simply names and labels imputed over aggregates and the introduction of the mental afflictions that cause protectionist and selfish thought arise.
First comes the individual, then the small group, then the group of groups, then the nation and so on - all grasping at a sense of self that isn't truly there when thoroughly analyzed.
Every human being on this planet is the same. We all would like to avoid suffering and would like the causes of happiness.
Ridding yourself of the us vs them mentality involves waking up and developing unwavering compassion for other sentient beings. This requires the realization that all sentient beings want to avoid the causes of suffering.
Does this lengthy article mention this ancient and well-developed philosophy? Not a single word on it.
I recommend listening to just some of the conversations the Dalai Lama has conducted with western scientists and researchers:
I highly recommend you read Pumla's book (who appears in the second conversation): "A Human Being Died that Night" which is highly illustrative of the power of compassion for others even in the midst of human rights violations.
I'm no one special, just a person who has finally made some progress on these very issues.
I've struggled for quite a while with the same fundamental questions about self as you seem to be struggling with now.
>I'm at one of the best universities in my country, have top grades, have a part-time position in a pretty good research facility, and I'm also slowly chipping away at my startup idea.
All of this takes hard work, these are certainly accomplishments that bring temporary satisfaction and happiness.
>Sometimes I'm all happy about this, but other times I see that there's not much time for being "myself" between all these activities.
This is a very subtle form of suffering. Things are going well, there isn't necessarily something obviously wrong, but still you can't shake the feeling and it has the potential to cause (a lot of) anxiety.
>I’m asking myself whether I actually care about these activities
There's no need to find yourself at one extreme or the other (caring or not caring). You do care about these things, but perhaps you overestimate their ability to provide you with lasting happiness and satisfaction. As you say, it's a never ending search for the next source of momentary satisfaction: "what's next for me?".
>Often I ask myself whether the values I have been raised with are really _my_ values, or whether I follow and fulfill them just due to some kind inertia mixed with inability to find my own values.
Inevitably, it's both. All of us are a result of an unbroken chain of cause and effect which started long before we were ever born. Part of your value system comes from your parents, part of theirs came from their parents, and so on. On top this, your personal experience and conditioning is overlaid. Recognizing this fact is important if you would like to break out of this cycle of questioning.
>To be frank, I’m not sure what to do about this. I’m not exactly unhappy, I’m just not sure whether I’m taking the right path here.
Yeah, I get you.
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To answer your technical question, I stumbled into the Tibetan school of Buddhism known as Dzogchen several months ago, this has exposed me to the wider landscape of the Madhyamaka (or middle way) view in Buddhism. I hesitate to scare you off thinking I'm trying to convert you to a religious practice, but as I've discovered myself, this is a highly logical and first-person oriented form of scientific philosophy that had been developing in India for at least 2500 years before Hinduism took over. Buddhism continued to develop in Tibet and has been well preserved by the Tibetans. In fact, quantum physics and modern science and the Madhyamaka view are in stunning alignment when it comes several factors, including the reality that things do not exist exactly as they appear to us.
There are two techniques (neither involving faith) to decomposing phenomena as I displayed with washing dishes.
The first is known as Shamatha, which means quiescence, calm abiding mind, singled pointed concentration, or even meditative equipoise. Shamatha is the act of meditating single-pointedly on some object with unwavering focus. This leads to mental stability overtime because through the process of cultivating Shamatha you develop right-thinking about discursive, roving thoughts, and eventually the waves settle (so to speak) and you're left with a very calm mental disposition (which can easily bring you joy). You may know of similar westernized meditation techniques in the mindfulness genre, they were almost certainly developed based on Shamatha, where one of the most popular objects of meditation is the breath or "mindfulness of breathing".
The second is known as Vipassana, which means wisdom, true seeing, or true insight. Vipassana is a form of analytical meditation in which an object of meditation is decomposed and deconstructed over and over again, forcefully illustrating the true nature of the object (which is always empty of inherent existence). Emptiness does not mean that the conventional world we live in does not exist, but rather that nothing in the conventional world exists in its own right as an independent object (as we humans tend to take for granted), but that everything manifests from one or more interdependent causes. This is known as dependent origination. Lucky us in the modern world, we already know that every thing we see is actually composed of sub-atomic particles which are constantly in a state of flux. This was actually something that took people a LONG time to fundamentally accept in the ancient east.
A common example in the literature is a chariot.
What is the chariot? Is there anything substantial to this notion of a chariot?
Is the chariot the wheels? Is it the axle? Is it the bars that connect to the horse? Is it the seat for the rider? Is it the wood?
Of course, the answer is no, that none of the parts are the chariot, and that even the parts themselves are empty because they can be decomposed all the way down to the sub-atomic level.
Therefore, the chariot is simply an imputed concept over an aggregate and has no inherent existence, even though it appears to simply exist when we look at it.
Okay, now ask yourself how do phenomena that are essentially empty trigger afflictive thoughts and emotions (which are also empty)? Then ask yourself, if thoughts and emotions are fundamentally empty, how can they cause me to suffer?
The answer comes from not seeing reality as it really is and is at the core of my example about the dish washing, which is a display of Vipassana.
There are countless entrypoints to this philosophy, some lean more on the classical Buddhist side and some lean more towards a purely secular approach, although like I've said, if you think that Buddhism is based on faith, then you're 100% misconceiving its nature. Therefore I don't view it even in the slightest as a faith based religion. The Buddha Shakyamuni himself urges you not to trust his words any more than you'd trust gold you buy at market, which is to say you must test and experience these truths yourself for there to be any lasting benefit.
I'll point you to two books by the same westerner. This was not my entrypoint, but it may serve you well and he's been immersed in Tibetan studies for most of his life so he is legit I promise. It's called Minding Closely by B. Alan Wallace (a great person indeed)[1].
If you'd like to continue this discussion or have any questions, simply reply again and we can link up over email or something. I hope this brief introduction helps you if even in the smallest way.
Develop Shamatha, which is a calm abiding mind, meditative equipoise, single pointed concentration.
Then engage in analytical meditation, typically known as Vipassanā in the Buddhist tradition, but essentially it involves analytically decomposing whatever you're meditating on.
I realized that before I ever dove into Tibetan philosophy that I was developing these two as I designed and constructed software (as I'm sure a lot of us do).
I agree and have been there in terms of looming depression preventing you from getting the basic human activities done, but I can't separate that depression from the spirit of my comment either. It was largely related to feeling trapped by our western work culture.
In terms of the basic activities of living, it can still help to address the aversion to the task head on by realizing the actual nature of the task.
The task isn't what it appears, but is in fact just a concept we impute to aggregate phenomena.
Is washing dishes standing at the sink? No.
Is washing dishes the running water? No.
Is washing dishes holding a single plate and sponge? No.
Is washing dishes dispensing soap onto the sponge? No.
Washing dishes is the combination of several interdependent causes.
Tasks that we're averse to are simply aggregations of various other imputed concepts, and so the unified activity that triggers our sense of aversion isn't actually based on anything substantial.
Speaking personally, aversion arises for me a lot of the time as a sense of lost time to one activity or another, but the concept of 'just being' suggests that whatever activity you do is perfectly fine on a fundamental level.
No time is wasted because every activity you do is 'of one taste' essentially - it's all the same in terms of being aggregate phenomena wrapped up into a unified concept by humans that triggers aversion based on our individual conditioning.
So realizing that the aversion isn't real and substantial, reflect on the positive nature of completing the task and the positive effects it will have. Instead of repressing your negative thoughts (forcefully not thinking), see them as insubstantial.
>After years of feeling guilty about not wanting to do everything...
Has the author asked themselves why they feel guilt about not wanting to do "everything"?
Is it possible that the form of discipline being promoted here under the tag "Productivity" is entirely unnecessary for a satisfying human existence, and that it is primarily caused by cultural forces?
Is it possible that such a focus on this relentless productivity, caused by our society, is related to the feeling of guilt that comes with perceiving oneself as 'undisciplined'?
Anyone who is commenting on how this opposes the nature of zen or other mindfulness lineages is on the right track and anyone who is still justifying cramming as much activity into every moment of their lives in the name of productivity is doomed to repeatedly feel the guilt and shame that comes along with not living up to these cultural standards.
How so?
>hanging out with the family
What are you doing when not hanging out with the family?
>Hell I even often get blamed for wearing the same types of outfit
This isn't your problem at all it's someone else's.
>I just can't get enough time to complete my work.
Honestly, try cultivating Shamatha, which is meditative equipoise or calm abiding mind. Singled pointed concentration is relaxing and has the effect of increased mental stability over time. Check out this book on it [1].
[1] - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64084.The_Attention_Revo...