And that’s okay. Free will doesn’t make any sense, we just do what we do and get to watch it whisp in and out of awareness until we don’t anymore
Conversation
I don’t get a choice but I hope the things I do are good. I think it’s very hard to have an enjoyable life unless you’re trying to do good, whatever that means for you. We must have evolved that way. Trying to do anything but good just seems to build up layers of tension
3
23
I think this is probably what the original karma was referring to before it was mistranslated into metaphysics stuff. It’s adjacent to brahmavahara stuff (metta, etc). I think it’s probably right
1
10
It’s also hard to fake because your Self that controls the tension is bigger than your conscious self. If you try doing EA-style good but actually just want a lot of status or something, tension will build unless you address the underlying concern. You can’t outsmart your mind
1
14
In terms of purification or untensioning or whatever, it’s about intent, and you can’t fake it
1
13
Although as the leader of parts, your parts want to see that you can actually get stuff done (address their needs). So intent probably isn’t enough. You need to both have good intent and also be competent. A high bar because they can “see your whole hand”, full visibility
1
4
14
Succeeding in the “outside world” most of the time is incredibly easier in comparison. I’d guess for most jobs you don’t have to have good intent or good consequences to succeed, you just need to fit in the tribe and not be exiled and look like you’re trying
1
12
(Although that does sound like a recipe for hating your job though, and I certainly don’t endorse it or want to do it myself, but I’d guess it’s honestly probably sufficient at most jobs today)
1
10
I think stuff like this is why it takes thousands of hours. I don’t think it’s a fundamental low-level thing like synapses taking that much time to update or something. I think it’s just really hard and nuanced and takes jumping through a thousand hoops in the right way
1
11
that is, if someone were a prodigy (I’m certainly not) I think they could do it way faster, because the bottleneck is skill
2
10
Replying to
"...[Y]ou need to become a genius. You need to become brilliant. You will become brilliant, at least along some narrow dimensions, in the course of doing this thing. If you strive for that, relax into it, things will go more smoothly."
meditationbook.page/#64
thank you i am going to very slowly sell people on mark's stuff by linking to bits of it as contextually appropriate like this 😇
1
5
Show replies
hmm and maybe both “God” and “Buddha” point to an architecture where we can relax into the prior existence of a comprehensively perfect wisdom which then guides us slowly and patiently insofar as we allow it to manifest via careful humble attunement and sacrificial trust
4
