One of the often quoted, somewhat grandiose term from mindfulness is that of Acceptance. You’re supposed to “accept the current moment” for what it is. I was under the impression that I was doing this already and that I had pretty much figured it out. I’m a pretty chill guy w . . . Read more

We’re still struggling to figure out exactly what Consciousness is. One theory that I kinda like (although I have no sense of how correct it is) is that consciousness is a way of approximating the base reality. There is too much data coming in through our senses, and it is impossible for every . . . Read more

“Do not try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are.” – Dalai Lama Mental Health This is the most obvious reason to meditate. If you think of your mind as another organ, then just as you need to keep your muscles healthy . . . Read more

I’m quite sold on Meditation and do it pretty regularly. In a separate post, I’ll write about what about Meditation interests me. Here, I want to collect all the things about the cult of Meditation that offend me in some way. I’m mostly doing this for my own clarification so that I . . . Read more

I encountered a radical idea in Robert Wrights’s Why Buddhism is True. Our last big phase of evolution happened during the hunter-gatherer phase and we haven’t yet evolved to adapt to the modern world (this is not the radical idea). I encountered this fact for the first time in Yuval Har . . . Read more

I’m an avid reader and there are quite a few books that have made me completely restructure my life and thinking. This is a relatively new phenomenon. It is only when I started facing a lot of uncertainty and conflict that I started to read and think more seriously and let what I read change m . . . Read more

Whenever I become aware of some chaos in my mind, I try to follow my chain of thoughts to the source. This makes “me” just how tenuous and ridiculous most connections from one thought to the next are. The fickle mind crosses the flimsiest of bridges simply to fulfill its own need of cons . . . Read more

I had been thinking on and off about free will for some time now. To anyone who has some time to think, the pandemic is bound to raise some serious questions about control and free will. The following marathon conversation between Lex Fridman and Sam Harris rekindled my interest in the subject. Do h . . . Read more

I often take long walks and think about things while walking. Being a mathematician, I have a tendency to figure things out in my head. While this works great most of the time, there are occasions when this causes me a great deal of anxiety and frustration. As life becomes more complex, the latter s . . . Read more

“You are right, Watson,” said he. “It does seem a most preposterous way of settling a dispute.” “Most preposterous!” I exclaimed, and then suddenly realizing how he had echoed the inmost thought of my soul, I sat up in my chair and stared at him in blank amazement . . . Read more

Meditation sucks at first. It sucks badly for a long long time. It is SO bad, SO sucky. The harder you try the more you suck at it. But it is hubris to assume that you would naturally be an expert at it. I have been trying it on and off unsuccessfully for many years. Only now, thanks to the lockdown . . . Read more